And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,1
addressee are all the more slim. Deep inside, the old woman is hoping for a hostile reaction that will wipe out the story once and for all.
But to undo it completely would be impossible.
Besides, she knows that in her case just telling it will take a supreme effort. To try not to undermine it. To continue loving even in those places where the story is devoid of love.
Because once she lets go of it, it will be told differently. People will add things, leave things out, twist it out of shape. And all she has to go by is her own version, her own inadequate best. Deliberately, cautiously, the old woman will pry out spikes from the body of her story, hoping for it to work its way to the surface carefully and discreetly.
As for the brutality of it, she’d better just let that be.
For now.
***
The girl sits facing her. Her hands are unclenched.
Grandma, tell me.
The old woman says nothing.
Grandma, it’s me.
She’s still prying out those spikes.
***
She’s not as old as she seems. But since her granddaughter sees her as planted in a world which can hardly have existed, let’s just call her “the old woman”, though age, at least in her case, is an elusive notion.
In her case, in fact, it is her childhood that is fixated. And not out of nostalgia.
The old woman is the little girl who once was. True, it would take a daring leap of the imagination to connect pudgy little hands to the body as it is now, or to visualize the dimples and the baby teeth. But since the reflection of the little-girl-who-once-was has none of that wistful sweetness to it, we will not refer to her as “that little girl”. Whenever the old woman stands in front of the mirror, she searches – and she keeps searching – in the hope of not finding.
***
I lost it.
I lost everything.
Not everything.
Almost everything.
***
Patience, Child. Every storyteller has trouble finding the right words, and this particular storyteller is finding it especially hard, since her spikes and the sudden jabs have never before been translated into storytelling language.
That was an excellent pretext for not telling it to the girl’s mother, whom the old woman also called “the girl”, though it was a long time since she’d been young.
The old woman uses “girl” for all those who’ve been born to her, including those born to the ones who’ve been born to her.
How should she begin? Maybe with the beginning that came before it began.
Once upon a time, there was ... – that’s the usual format, the proper way of starting a story. Well, once upon a time there was a man and a woman. They met. They fell in love. More or less. They had a daughter. A family. A neat and familiar pattern. How’s that for a promising beginning?
Except that the story refuses to be told that way.
***
Why are they doing this to me?
What did I do wrong?
Why?
That’s the whole story in a single word.
***
A story? The old woman protests. Why call it a story anyhow?
The very word implies something fictional, and may even allow the harsh details to be turned into anecdotes.
But the girl who is sitting across from her won’t take no for an answer. It is a story. That was what she was taught. Not just any story, but a first-person account. She’s even brought a notebook along, to take it all down. There’s a sweet angel on the cover, a commercial print that you see everywhere. Its chin is resting on its hand. Its wings are colorful, and its eyes are looking upwards.
The girl sitting across from the old woman is her granddaughter. Knowing that she herself is going to be seen differently by her young listener as the story unfolds, the old woman holds back. She must not cause the child to age prematurely. She’s afraid of changes.
What might have happened if...
What if the girl sitting across from her had been there instead?
It would have been totally different.
Or maybe not.
***
A home. Her room. There’s a window in the wall. A rose-patterned lace curtain. A doll with braids. She’d gone to sleep with the doll under her pillow. In the middle of the night she got up and pulled out the doll, worried that it might suffocate. She told the doll she was sorry.
Her mother laughed.
The granddaughter is disappointed. That wasn’t the beginning she’d been hoping for. Some day, when she retells the story, she’ll choose a different way to begin it. Her