Hothouse

By Adina Polatsek

Content warnings: domestic abuse, mentions of the Holocaust

I. 

It was Yom Kippur night, which meant nothing. The rooftop was rough beneath her; she was cross-legged, hands flat on the scaffolding. The night sky was the weak black of closed eyelids, the trees rising out of the dark like the waters of a split sea. Yael didn’t care. The whole thing could close in—really close in, choke her dead and all—and she wouldn’t move an inch away from him. She knew that fiercely. She knew it because she was starting to write poetry about him and didn’t even mind that it was cloying. He was sitting next to her, and she wouldn’t move for anything.

“I used to think I would never marry a Jew,” she said.

Refael laughed. They were both looking out at the night, the stars shining as brightly as his eyes—that’s good, she thought, I should write that down—but they didn’t need to see each other. She knew him so well. She felt him next to her and that was enough. “How come?” he asked.

“Because I knew if I married a goy, it would kill my mother,” she said, and glanced back at the window. “I still want her dead. Or I want to kill her. I don’t know.”

“And now?”

Her mother was inside, she knew, probably cleaning off the table and praying and retiring beside an empty bed. Probably having nothing to say to anyone, nothing to think, her mind whirring like a machine she turned off before sleep. She pulled a piece of scaffolding off of the roof and crushed it between her fingers, letting the edge cut into her skin before flicking it away as hard as she could. She just wanted to leave, to not know her mother anymore, a mother who was so quiet. “Now what?” she said.

“Now you would marry a Jew?”

“Oh.” She turned to look at him and blushed. His hair curled over his ears, his yarmulke held to it with three clips. “Yes.”

“What changed?”

He was looking at her now and she away, as if they weren’t allowed to meet eyes. She pulled at her hands, twisted them, pressed them against the rooftop. She shrugged. “I fell in love with you,” she said.

She lifted her head and let him see her then. He watched her carefully, and she wanted to throw herself off of the roof. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t make a big deal about this. It’s nothing.”

“You love me?” asked Refael, like it could possibly be a question.

“It’s not hard,” she muttered. Then—a hand on her face. He came close; kissed her; fumbled with his hands. They fell into place.

II.

“Does she still wake you at night?”

Rivka rubbed one hand against her face as Ilona lifted a cup of tea to her lips and pushed another out towards her.

“What do you think?” she muttered, bouncing the baby on her knee. 

“Don’t you think she’s old enough to be sleeping through?”

“Call for a doctor then.”

Ilona snorted. “Do I look like a millionaire?”

“She’s only seven months, Ilcsi. Give her time.” Rivka lifted Rózsa into the air. “Isn’t that right? You just need some time, don’t you?” Rózsa grabbed her hair and stuck it in her mouth.

There was no window in the apartment but the street was loud outside. After they finished their tea, Ilona laid on the couch and Rivka laid on the floor with the baby on her stomach, and they listened to passing cars and the drifting shouts of neighbors across the hall. A water-stained, yellow ceiling was their sky. The clock broke months ago and the noise continued on long into the night; often, when they woke, they had no idea whether the sun had risen. Rivka was exhausted all the time. If she managed to sleep through Oszkár’s stomping departure to the bakery at the crack of dawn, she’d be roused early by a fight in the hall or Rózsa’s crying. The walls were so thin they hardly seemed to be there.

“If you were a millionaire,” said Rivka, because they had to pass the time somehow, even if they didn’t know what they were passing it for, “what would you buy?”

“Passage on a boat back to Hungary, leaving tomorrow,” said Ilona immediately, “and if there were no boats leaving tomorrow, I would buy a boat of my own, and sail it myself.”

“You would be a terrible sailor.”

“Not true,” said Ilona. “I grew up next to the Danube River. Water is in my blood.”

“I thought you were afraid of water,” said Rivka, smiling.

Ilona rolled her eyes. “Once I get to Hungary, I would buy a house. It doesn’t need to be a big house, just a beautiful one.” She waved her hands through the air as if she was building something. “I would have a chef. And I would invite you, of course.”

“I’m not going back to Hungary,” said Rivka.

“Never?”

“No.”

“You would leave me all alone?”

“You would still have Rózsa and Oszkár, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m still alone with them.”

“I can’t go back, Ilona.”

“What if I adopted you and forced you to come?”

“You’re only ten years older than I am, you can’t adopt me.”

“So? You’d be my little sister.”

“I still wouldn’t go.” But she did miss it, didn’t she? She missed too much that was gone. She rubbed her left arm mindlessly.

“Then I can’t go,” said Ilona.

“You can’t go anyway,” answered Rivka, “seeing as you have no money.” She stood. “I’m going to take Rózsa on a walk.”

III.

Her mother was standing in the middle of the kitchen, wiping her hands with a towel. Her hair was covered with a dark blue tichel and her housecoat was buttoned to the chin. She hadn’t opened the blinds but the morning sun was forcing its way in regardless. Yael was dressed. She wore a tank top and bell-bottomed jeans; her hair was loose and straight, cut into bangs to mimic Anita Pallenberg, which she regretted ever since. Her room was packed already. She walked into the kitchen loudly.

“Happy birthday,” said her mother.

“I’m moving out,” said Yael. Her hand gripped the top of one of the three kitchen chairs. She had rehearsed those words the last few weeks. She relished them, wanted to throw them at her mother and watch her recoil, to wield it like a slap in the face. But they didn’t come out with violence but with a childish whine: I’m moving out; it was impetuous, and she was so sick of being young.

Her mother smiled and folded the towel, so Yael stepped forward. “Did you hear me? I’m moving out. I’m eighteen now, and you can’t stop me.”

“Right. And where are you going?” asked her mother. “Do you have a job lined up? Money? Do you have any idea what it’s like to take care of yourself—”

“You did it.”

Her mother dropped the smile, placed a hand on her elbow like she was nursing it.
“You’re not me.”

“It can’t be that hard.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because,” Yael said irritably, “you did it.”

Her mother laughed and turned away as if that was the end of things, which made Yael want to kill her.

“You did it,” she repeated, moving forward through the tiny kitchen, “and if you can do it, it must not take any smarts—”

“You’re calling me stupid.”

“Yes,” said Yael, and she was so full of sick anger. “You never noticed how Dad used to leave divorce papers—”

“Are you going to bring that up every single—”

“He left them out, he’d put them on the kitchen table, in the dining room, on the couch, just so you could see it, and you never did—he left them on your bed and you didn’t notice, you just swept them up, put them away, kept cleaning like a fucking machine, he could have recited the entire thing and you would have been like, ‘Maybe I’ll make meatballs tomorrow,’ you’re so fucking stupid you never noticed how much he hated you!”

Yael took a deep breath and stepped back and watched her mother press herself into the granite counter. She seemed so small, her faced closed like the kitchen blinds, her eyes like a cold sun forcing through.

“We both know they fucked you up back there,” she said, looking at her mother’s arm, the tattoo always hidden underneath her sleeve. “So why have me?”

Her mother didn’t answer.

“I’m moving in with Refael,” said Yael finally, her voice quiet. “I’ll be fine.”

IV.

Here’s what happened: she was there for a few months, she survived, she was a dead girl. Her hair turned white. She was sixteen and a refugee and an ancient woman on a boat to America; and often went on the deck to gaze over at the railing and watch the ocean churning below, thick and viscous and endless. She thought, as she stared at it, I could kill myself, and she didn’t. She spent her first night in New York on the streets. She went into a Hungarian bakery because she knew no English and begged for a job. She became the baker’s nurse. Friends with Ilona. Caretaker of her baby. Ilona said, “You’ll be a good mother,” and she believed it. Rózsa got old, she learned English, she left.

She got it wrong—that was the first thing she thought when the doctor lifted the tiny, wet baby from between her legs and placed her in her arms. She held her little child close and felt nothing; she was sure she was dead, ruined, whatever it was, till the nurse tried to take the baby away and she could not let go, gripped her so tightly that Eliezer had to say, “Careful, don’t hurt Yael.” She closed her eyes and thought of the matryoshka doll in the storefront of the pawn shop next to Oszkár and Ilona’s apartment. She thought she—the exhausted, labor-torn woman lying on the hospital bed—was the largest doll, and inside her were the rest, stacked neatly together, smaller and smaller; the smallest was her, not her baby, nine years old and not yet knowing of war.

The next morning when they brought Yael back to her, she felt Rózsa in her arms instead. Remembered the first time: how the apartment was tiny, the rooms bathed in yellow, overhead light. The doors as thin as paper, a crib by the couch. Rózsa had been so small, still bald and toothless, and she lay on her back and screamed. Rivka lifted her up and settled her into her arms.

“Go to sleep, sheyfele,” she had whispered. Rózsa quieted, gazing at Rivka with eyes that seemed to take up her entire face, and then promptly fell asleep. But Rivka could not bear to put her down. She rocked her in her arms as she crossed the short width of the room over and over. She sang in Yiddish.

Unter Yidele’s vigele

Shteyt a klor vays tsigele

Dos tsigele iz geforn handlen

Dos vet zayn dayn baruf

Rozhinkes mit mandlen

Shlof zhe, Yidele, shlof

Once, her mother would sing this silly story of goats and raisins and almonds, holding her in the rocking chair even as she got too big to curl up on her lap. Now I’m carrying a stranger’s child, she thought. That she was not the baby had threatened to sink her to the floor.

She leaned back against the hospital bed, heavy and tired and blinking everything away. Yael started to cry.

V.

She missed home, was the ugly truth of it. They took an apartment in Jersey City, two hours drive from Rivka’s house, and it was far enough. Their apartment was on the sixth floor of their cockroach-infested building, the tiny windows opening out into streets that buzzed with cars. Yael couldn’t stop staring at them, remembering the long woods of her childhood home, spiteful and frustrated that she had left one for the other, relieved, too. She got what she wanted. She said what she wanted to say for years—the final confession, the words spat, hate falling out of them. She closed her eyes and saw her mother’s face. She looked out the window and saw it. It was done, Yael reminded herself. She had gone away.

But the wallpaper was peeling, and there were cockroaches that skittered under the bed, and Refael couldn’t hold down a job. He came home and kicked off his shoes and laid on the couch and brushed her away when she tried to show him the stack of bills. She never had to support herself before, and neither had he. “I’m doing my best,” he said, and closed his eyes and asked for dinner. She stared at the peeling wallpaper and worried.

The day the landlord threatened to kick them out, she paced in front of the door till he came home. He opened the door as if he were exhausted. His hair was cut short. He never wore a yarmulke anymore. She saw him briefly beside her on the rooftop, two years past, like an old dream returning.

“We need to pay rent,” she said as he came in. He looked at her lazily, took a cigarette from his pocket, stuck it between his lips.

“What happened to ‘Welcome home, sweetie,’” he muttered and pushed past her, opening up the kitchen cabinets. “I’m starving.”

“Seriously, Refael. Robby came by after you left.”

“Tell him I’ll have the money next week.”

“I did.” She closed the cabinet doors he left open, trailing behind him. “He’s a piece of shit. Said we’re two months behind already and if we don’t have it by tomorrow, we’re on the streets.”

“Robby’s all talk,” he answered.

She crossed her arms. “I don’t think he is. He really scared me today. He came by while I was alone and everything. Just barged in.”

“Don’t you lock the door?” He puffed out smoke and stuck his hands into the pickle jar.

“Course I do. He has a key.”

“He won’t kick us out.”

“Did you work today?”

He tapped the cigarette into the ashtray and let out a deep sigh. “Tried to. No one’s hiring.”

“Did you try?”

“Of course I tried. You try spending all day begging for a job, see how you like it.”

“Maybe I should,” she said.

“Yael.”

“I don’t mind, if it’ll help us out.”

His face softened. He got up and hugged her tightly. “I promised you a good life,” he said softly. “I can give it to you. I’ll prove myself.”

“Can you?” She stepped away. “You’ve been fired from ten jobs so far and we’ve lived here six months. You come home after doing nothing all day and tell me not to worry, as if we aren’t a day away from being homeless. I’m starting to think it was better at my mom’s—”

“So it’s my fault? I told you, I’m trying. No one’s hiring. You want to go back to your mother so badly? You begged me to take you away. Do I need to remind you that you hate her?”

“No,” she said. “But living like this? No food in the pantry, roaches under my pillow, mold on the ceilings? You promised me a good life and you’re a fucking failure.”

He slapped her. One hand whipping air away and she stopped breathing. Her hand went to cover her face like a headscarf and she could do nothing but stare at him, wide-eyed, mouth open, finding that his face matched hers.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “Oh god, I’m so sorry.” He stepped in, hugged her again, and she didn’t move. “I love you so much. I lost control. It’s just been so hard for me, all this pressure, trying to keep us afloat. I love you. You know I love you. I’ll never do it again.”

He apologized till he fell asleep, beside her in the cramped bed, his head heavy on her shoulder. She stared at the ceiling a long time before pushing him off, packing her things, and leaving, closing the door behind her as the clock hit four am, in a daze, not sure where she was going but knowing she needed to go.

VI.

It wasn’t a surprise, the things that Yael said. She’d hinted at it plenty, laughed at her, gave her that look that said, You’re so stupid and you don’t even know it. Rivka had been defending herself in her mind for years already. She thought, I didn’t get the chance to learn. I never went to school. The war started when I was nine. She thought, I speak English and Yiddish and Hungarian, and I can still read Russian even though I learned it decades ago, and my memory is sharp and I never forget any groceries or to get the toilet fixed. She thought, Who cares about intelligence anyways. But it didn’t matter. Yael wouldn’t hear her, even if she said it. Yael never heard her. She saw her being quiet and closed, busy with the domesticities in life and enjoying it. She did enjoy it. She found pleasure in what Yael labeled as boredom, in what Eliezer had ignored. Cleaning and cooking and keeping tidy and taking care of errands came naturally to her, though sometimes she heard a gong going as she woke, and German cries as she slowed her mopping to take a rest.

It was six months now that the house was empty all day. It was a relief, at first, to no longer dread Yael coming in through the door, to let go of motherhood with a spiteful hand. That’s it, she decided. She quit me. I’m done. But she was alone now and the quiet demanded to bring everything back. She spent the days half in an already-lived life. She thought of Ilona for the first time in decades, let herself remember that time. The hours they spent wondering what the future would look like, whether they would get what they wanted.

She succeeded. She never went back—but it followed her. It didn’t matter that she ignored it, refused to speak of it. It came into their house, ruined everything with Yael. Made her live with all that she had seen there. The tattoo was faded but not gone. “I could have been a good mother,” she said aloud, like she was on trial. “Ilona said I could. It’s not my fault it followed me.” The silence afterward felt nothing like agreement.

But she wasn’t wrong. Yael didn’t understand. Of course she didn’t. Yael was a child, got to be a child. She was coddled and kept warm and never even knew it. She didn’t know what she had. Rivka would die to have had it. She wanted to curl up on her mother’s lap and cry; she wanted to throw a tantrum on the floor. She wanted to scream with no care as to who she would bother. She wanted to be held like a baby, her head cradled, her forehead kissed. She wanted to be able to kill her mother with words and to stomp out impetuously and to be forgiven because she was young. She never got to be young.

Who shall rest and who shall wander. Who shall be at peace and who pursued. The Yom Kippur prayer ran through her head. On Yom Kippur, it is sealed. It was sealed, wasn’t it? Long ago. She was destined to wander.

The sun was starting to ruin the night, and she had been lying awake all the while. She dragged herself out of bed, trying to scoff away an anger that didn’t go. The clock blinked five-thirty. She put the kettle on, made oatmeal on the stove. It was raining lightly outside, coming out of the dawn. She was staring out the window watching it when she heard a knock on the door.

“Nu?” she said. “Ver klaft in di sheh?” She ignored it but it came again, louder and more frantic. She buttoned her housecoat, shuffled to the door, opened it.

Yael stood on the doorstep. Her hair clung to her cheeks. She was thin, shivering slightly in a tank top. A taxi pulled away in the street behind her. Rivka could not move. Her mouth was empty. Her hand was stuck on the doorhandle.

“He hit me,” Yael said, all at once. “I didn’t mean to come back. I have nowhere else; he hurt me and I have nowhere else to go.”

Her eyes were dark, her hands against her heart. Rivka watched her from far away. Yael waited, trembling.

“You know nothing of pain,” said Rivka, and closed the door softly.

The End.