11 - Laserfiche WebLink

THE LADY'S TORCH Grass ages toward scruff, potatoes burrow deep in earth, fall fades to winter. Over the muddy road Russian soldiers slosh along, stare at Pauline's soft curves silhouetted beneath her ragged sweater. Hurrying home from Bubble Kuneh's, she feels their eyes burn her back. They whistle, pinch her ass, push her against the leafless shrub. After Shabbat, she packs her paper -thin suitcase, kisses her mother farewell and turns toward distant port. Pressed against her breast, a small photo of a curly haired man, who, her cousin says, knows jokes like the ones we told before the soldiers drained our skating pond. Ahead, the ship looms in evening's shadow. Pauline descends to steerage, sleeps with barrels of herring crates of rotting potatoes and mice, many, many mice. For weeks on end, bitter winds roil waves rocking back and forth until pre -dawn when a woman beckons, come see, she says, an island, you can see. She struggles awake, weak from rehearsing strokes she'll never rub into her mother's stooped shoulders, her mother, who churned sweet butter late into night. Sleepwalking with a photographic dream, she stumbles up wooden ladders. \Vide -eyed, she watches buildings strung along windy coasts like a clothesline of giant villages. She waits to disembark under shadows of an outstretched arm. Deborah Grossman c