A Portrait in Time by S. Nadja Zajdman, chai served in a tall glass with a twist of lemon

 As a little girl, I was fascinated by a portrait on our living room wall. The elegant woman in the portrait seemed out of place in our shabby apartment.  I loved to look at this portrait which, I later learnt, was an enlargement of a photograph my mother’s sister hid in her underwear during the course of the Second World War.  It contained the profile of a regal-looking lady whose long thick hair was swept back, revealing a swan-shaped neck and bare alabaster shoulders.  The lady had high, wide cheekbones, and a strong, confident jaw.  Pearls hung from her ears, as if in suspended animation, and her almond-shaped eyes stared vacantly into a future she wouldn’t live to see.  While I studied the portrait my mother studied me.        

              “Who is she, Mummy?”

          My mother answered sadly.  “She’s your grandmother.”

          I was shocked.  “She can’t be my grandmother!  Grandmothers are old!”

          The pain in Mummy’s sigh was palpable.  “My mother never got a chance to get old.”  Together we gazed at the portrait, in contemplation.  “Her name was Natalia.  She was my mother.  That makes her your grandmother.”

          “But she doesn’t look like you.”

          Under the spell of her mother’s image my mother’s smile was sudden, and sweet.  “No.  She looks like you.”

          I searched the portrait for a resemblance to my innocent face, and couldn’t find any.  “I don’t look like her!  She’s beautiful, and I’m ugly!”

          “What?!”  Now it was my mother’s turn to be shocked.  “Where did you get such an idea?”

          “Well, when you look at my face you get sad, so I figured it has to be because I’m ugly.”

          “Slodka, sweetheart, you can see that when I look at your face, I feel sad?”

          I nodded.  Mummy snapped into alert.  “Slodka!”  She insisted  “My mother was beautiful, and so are you.  You are beautiful in the same way she was, and when I look at your face I see her beauty in it.  That’s why I feel sad.”

          I forced myself to face my mother’s pain.  “You get sad because you miss her, right?”

          “That’s right.”

          “Then you don’t think I’m ugly?”

          “No no.  Of course not.”

          “But how can I look like your mother when she was a lady, and I’m just a little girl?”

          “Slodka,” my mother was adamant.  “My mother is who you are going to look like.”

 

          In Warsaw on the morning of September 1, 1939, my mother was setting the kitchen table for a celebratory breakfast.  It was Natalia’s forty-sixth birthday.  She had been widowed six months before.  On a wonderfully sunny morning, without a cloud in sight, my mother heard what sounded like a loud storm.  The skies darkened suddenly.  Within an hour the windows of Natalia’s luxury apartment on Krolewska Street were shattered, and she was huddling against a bedroom wall with her two daughters curled under her arms.  The bombardment of Warsaw had begun.  So had the Second World War.  

          September 1, 1939 would prove to be Natalia’s last birthday.  Within a month, Natalia and her children were homeless. Before the end of the year, they would be refugees.  Natalia fell victim to the war’s first epidemic of typhus and, with my mother beside her, died in a Russian-run hospital, at the dawn of 1940, on the evening of New Year’s Day.

 

          The year I was thirteen, my mother took me to a photography studio to have my picture taken.  Mum put me through this ritual every few years.  Shortly after she made her first trip to Israel, where she discovered relatives on her mother’s side, they presented her with a photograph she hadn’t known existed.  It was a picture of a younger Natalia, as Mum had never known her.  She is facing the camera, with her head tilted to one side.  Her hip-length hair hangs loose.  She wears no jewellery.  Her hands are folded demurely over her crossed knees.  Her mouth is closed, with a mere hint of a smile.  There is a wistful expression in her eyes, which do not look directly into the camera, but look shyly away.

          When Mum came home, she brought this faded and scratched photograph to the same photographer who had recently taken my picture.  He gasped.  The picture of Natalia looked like a painting of the picture the photographer had taken of me.

          The photographer restored and enlarged this picture, though he was unable to remove one large scratch.  It was framed and hung prominently in my parents’ living room, along with the cameo-like portrait of the older Natalia.

          After my mother was widowed and she moved to a smaller apartment, the younger Natalia still claimed a wall in the living room, while the older Natalia-in-profile was positioned over the headboard of my mother’s bed, seeming to gaze down on her sleeping child.  She kept vigil on my mother’s bedroom wall to the end of my mother’s life, and beyond.  My mother did get a chance to get old.  When terminal cancer came for her she met it at home, in her bed, with me beside her.  On the evening of the first snowfall in 2013 the spirits of three women came together; the grandmother who was dead, the mother who was dying, and their memory keeper, who was being left behind.

 

Today the two portraits of Natalia perch on my walls, along with portraits of my mother and the photograph taken of me when I was thirteen.  When guests come to my apartment the first item they notice is the large portrait of the younger Natalia, which is prominently displayed. 

Invariably they ask, “When was that picture of you taken?” 

 “Shortly after the First World War,” I deadpan, with a mere hint of a smile.   

About the author

 S. Nadja Zajdman is a Canadian author. In 2022 she published the story collection The Memory Keeper (Bridge House Publishing) as well as the memoir I Want You To Be Free. In 2023 Zajdman published a second memoir, Daddy's Remains (MacKenzie Publishing). 

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A STRANGER IN THE FAMILY CEMETERY by Joe Stout, chai latte

Golden leaves drifted to the ground as my daughter and I walked through the family cemetery. I’d always loved coming up here, walking among the aging stones on the quiet hill overlooking our family farm. These stones had character, they told stories that I thought were missing at the modern cemetery out on the highway. Someday, I’d be buried here, as would Sadie and her children.

We stopped at the foot of a pile of dirt with dying flowers piled on top of it. Two weeks had passed since my mother’s death, but the metal marker left to temporarily mark her grave still hurt to read.

Billie Shea Moore, 1932-1997.

‘You were so young,’ I whispered.

Sadie squeezed my hand. ‘It’s okay, Daddy.’

‘I know. Let me just walk around some, I’ll be fine.’

‘I’m gonna stay with Mamaw.’

While Sadie sat on the bench I’d put by Mom’s grave, I walked through the cemetery, looking at names and remembering stories. A white marble marker stood for Great-Uncle Jack, a revenue agent during the prohibition. He’d been the only honest one in Appalachia if Uncle Mark was to be believed. Mark was here too, his bronze marker two rows down, next to Aunt Meredith.

Going further, I found the old Civil War graves, some Union, some Confederate. The stones were starting to fade and crumble. These were the grand monuments of previous generations, ornate obelisks and towering pillars that made old cemeteries like this unique. When I was little, Mom sent me up here with paper and pencil to make rubbings of these stones. They were still down in her house, waiting for my sisters to come help me clean it out.

I’d walked down the hill to a newer section of the cemetery when a small hand slipped into mine.

‘I’m ready, Daddy.’

I’d expected tears, but Sadie’s blue eyes were clear as the wind pushed her blonde hair around her head.

‘Okay,’ we climbed back up the hill and walked toward the gate, stopping along the way as Sadie sounded out the names on headstones.

‘Who is Suh-Mur,’ she asked, pointing at a headstone a row away.

‘Samir,’ I corrected automatically, leading her toward the stone.

‘I don’t remember anyone in our family named Samir,’ she said, looking down at the stone.

I squatted next to her. This was one more of those teaching moments you’re never really prepared for as a parent. There’d been a lot of them the last few weeks, as Mom faded to nothing, then as Sadie learned about loss and the emotions that came with it. ‘Well, he wasn’t in our family.’

Sadie looked confused. ‘But this is our cemetery! Why is someone else here with Mamaw and our relatives?’

She’d put emphasis on ‘our,’ making it clear she thought this grave was an invasion. Sometimes I wished the world was as black and white as it was through my daughter’s eyes. ‘Because Uncle Jim saw a chance to help someone in need.’

 

Uncle Jim ran the county’s only wrecker service, and I’d been working for him since I was tall enough to reach the pedals on the wrecker. I’d been on call that night, when the Highway Patrol reported a wreck out on the Bristol Highway. It ran through our county as a winding, two-lane mountain road, but the wreck had happened on a small straightaway.

I pulled onto the shoulder behind the Patrolman’s car, and walked to where he was talking to the fire chief.

‘Fool kids, racing on this road. Ned Wilson is lucky he didn’t go like this one,’ the trooper pointed to a car tangled in a barbed wire fence on the edge of the road.’

Ned had been in my high school class, and I wasn’t surprised to hear he’d been racing. ‘Who was in the wreck,’ I asked.

‘Some kid from the University, I think it’s an exchange student.’ The trooper walked away, leaving me with Chief Britton.

‘Bad way to go,’ the Chief said. ‘Ned’s all tore up about it, he’s the one who pushed the dead guy to race.’

I nodded. ‘What happened?’

Britton pointed at the hill behind me. ‘Ned said they came off the hill there dead even, but there was a truck coming up through here. He slowed down to give the victim room to get over, but Ned reckons he didn’t see the truck until it was too late and spun the wheel a little too hard. Went rolling down the shoulder until he stopped in Lee Anderson’s fence.’

‘Damn mess,’ I muttered, as the trooper whistled and gestured for me to bring my truck over.

 

I’d barely made it home when I got a call from Uncle Jim.

‘You get that car from out on Bristol Highway?’

‘Yes, sir, just finished putting it in the lot.’ I tossed my keys in the bowl as Connie appeared in the living room, rocking Sadie in her arms.

‘Need you to do something for me in the morning.’

‘Okay,’ I moved the phone away and kissed Connie, then Sadie.

‘Go up to our cemetery and dig a grave in my section. You know where that is, right?’

‘West side, near the pine trees.’

‘That’s right,’ he said, his southern drawl revealing nothing. ‘I been talking to the family of the boy that died in the wreck. He’s from Pakistan, and their religion says they got to bury him quick, no embalming or anything like that. They asked me to work with the funeral home to get him taken care of, and I told them I’d do what I could.’

I checked the clock on the wall. The sun would be up soon, in about as long as it would take me to brew a pot of coffee and grab my tools. ‘Alright. I’ll call you when I’m done.’

‘Thanks, son. Say, you know four or five boys could help us out as pallbearers?’

I knew of one for sure, and figured I could round up a few more. ‘I’ll get it taken care of, Uncle.’

‘Good, bud. We’ll see you in a bit.’

 

There were no Muslims in our area to conduct the funeral, but Uncle Jim did the best he could under the circumstances. He talked Mae Frazier into opening up the library, and came out with a copy of the Quran and a book on funeral practices of the world. Aunt Laura was soon missing three of her best bedsheets, and an hour later the old black hearse wound slowly up the gravel road to where I was waiting with Uncle Jim and the pallbearers.

Ned Wilson was the first to step to the back of the hearse. Since there was no casket, the undertaker had strapped the body to a plastic board to hold it steady and make it easier to carry. Four pallbearers carried it across the cemetery, to where uncle Jim was waiting by the grave I’d dug.

Two of us climbed down in the hole, and the others passed the body down to us. Laying him in the bottom, we climbed out and stood with the other pallbearers.

Uncle Jim stood at the head of the grave. ‘The book I found wasn’t very detailed about how the ceremony should be, but I reckon reading some scripture over the body would be appropriate.’ He opened the borrowed Quran, then shook his head. ‘Trust Ol’ Mae to give me a book in a language I cain't read. Well, boys, let’s all recite the twenty-third psalm, then I’ll close with a prayer. Reckon that’s appropriate enough, and our God and the Muslim God can sort out any errors in translation.’

 

Ned filled in the grave himself, his tears mixing with the dirt. Jim and I stood at the cemetery gate with the undertaker and watched. Finally, the old hearse rolled slowly away, and Uncle Jim clapped Ned on the shoulder.

‘It’s done, boy.’

He nodded, but the look in his eyes told another story. As Uncle Jim walked away, I stayed with Ned, guiding him to a nearby bench.

‘What happened, Ned?’

‘What do you mean?’ He looked scared, like talking about what happened would break him. I’d talked to his girlfriend when I’d called about him being a pallbearer, and she said he hadn’t slept all night, had sat out in his garage staring at his car. The breakfast she’d taken him was untouched, and I figured his lunch had been too.

‘I mean, you have to put it into words,’ I said. ‘Everyone in the world can tell you it’s not your fault, but until you actually tell your story and let people tell you why it isn’t your fault, you’ll never believe it yourself.’

He sighed, then nodded. ‘You’re right. Well, I was down at the county line, and this kid blew in with some other college folks, talking about his car. He bragged a while, and I finally got fed up and told him speed wasn’t worth a lick where I came from, you had to have skill.’

I nodded. ‘That’s true.’

‘Well, he didn’t like that too much, he said he had all the skill he needed and then some, so I challenged him to a race from the County Line to our courthouse. He accepted so fast, I didn’t know if he heard me right. We lined up and took off, and about the time we got to Connors Creek, I could tell he was out of his element. I eased off the gas so he didn’t have to run as fast, but he jumped ahead and took off.’ Ned shook his head. ‘Damn, that was hard to watch. His lines were all wrong,  he was using the wrong damn angles and approaches, I knew eventually he was going to wreck.’

I nodded. ‘Wasn’t anything you could have done. He got in over his head, you gave him a chance to back down, and he didn’t take it.’

Ned nodded, tears still falling. ‘I know you’re right, but it don’t feel like you’re right. I’d just caught up to him, was trying to signal to him to pull over when he flipped. As soon as I saw him rolling down the road, I knew he was gone.’

‘It still don’t mean it’s your fault, Ned. Pride goeth before a fall, and pride also goes before rolling down a highway shoulder because you get in over your head.’ I put my arm around Ned. ‘It sounds like you done everything you could to ease him back.’

He nodded. ‘I did. God, I wish I’d succeeded.’

‘Sometimes all you can do is try, and whatever happens is what’s meant to happen.’

‘You reckon that boy, his parents, they understand that?’ Ned looked at me, and I could tell this was the question he needed answered the most.

I thought for a minute. ‘I reckon there ain’t many that do, but if anyone does, it’s them.’

 

Silence fell as I finished the story. Sadie knelt next to the stone and ran her fingers over Samir’s name, thinking about what I’d told her. ‘I guess it’s okay he’s here, then,’ she finally said.

I smiled. She was so young, she acted like her approval was the final word on the matter. ‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘What’s this at the bottom?’ Sadie brushed away some fallen leaves, revealing an additional inscription.

‘Something his family said when they were talking to Uncle Jim. He thought it’d be a good addition to the marker.’

Sadie leaned over and slowly read, ‘Samir was never one to back down from a challenge.’

 

About the author

Joe Stout is an east Tennessee based writer. His work has been published by the Non-Binary Review and Literary Cocktail Magazine. When he’s not writing, he enjoys exploring the mountains and spending time with his children. You can follow him on Facebook at Joe Stout Writing or Instagram @joestoutwriting 

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The Festive Homecoming by Chris Pais, chai,

 

THE FESTIVE HOMECOMING

The sun has not risen but she is awake.  In a ritual unbroken for many years, she smears coconut oil on her hair, neatly braids it fastening the end with a rubber band, says her morning prayers and is ready to leave her one-room dwelling.  She snaps the rusty lock on her door that forever creaks on its hinges, ties the key to a knot in her sari and she makes the solitary walk to the main train station.  She hopes he will come home today.  At this hour, she rarely encounters anybody on the  narrow, twisted alleyways which are glistening with the remnants of a late night drizzle. It is festival season and some of the decorative string lights have been glowing all night, casting a colorful haze in her path.

At this early hour, things are slowly coming alive at the main train station.  Vendors are assembling their wares, brewing coffee and tea and cooking snacks for early morning travelers.  People who spent the night on the sidewalks are waking up to the sound of early morning pedestrians and the smell of freshly cooked food.  She enters the cavernous main hall of the station which is dimly lit and now merely a shadow of its previous glory.  She waits at the platform for the arriving overnight express and soon sees the lights of an approaching train.  Her heart races as it blows its signature horn because she is confident he will be on this train.  All she wants is for him to come home.  The train squeals to a halt and its passengers pour out like droplets from a showerhead.  She wonders what he would be wearing as she scrutinizes every face on the platform looking for him.  The passengers leave the platform with their luggage and soon the platform is empty.  She hangs her head over her chest and slowly leaves the station. 

Her employer will be waiting for her.  She will scrub floors, wash dishes and sweep the courtyard until her body aches.  She will do their laundry and depending on the strength of the fabric, beat it with a wooden paddle or against a large granite block to coax the dirt out.  As she hangs the laundry on the clothesline, she remembers the night he left home for the big city several years ago promising to come back with riches so she never had to work as a maid again.  I will be back by festival time, he said.  All she wants is for him to come back.  As she wrings the last drop of water from a large cotton bedspread, she knows he will return tomorrow.           

About the author

Chris Pais grew up in India and came to the US to pursue graduate studies in engineering. His work appears in Poetry India, Wild Roof Journal, Defunct Magazine and elsewhere. He lives in the SF Bay Area where he works on clean energy and tinkers with bikes, guitars and recipes. 

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