Early Harvest, Best of Issue No.1

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

There's a Summer Place

There's a summer place
in my memory and a small girl
warming herself on a boulder
overlooking Lake Ontario
face reflecting the sun, dreaming.

Seagulls rode updrafts -
she watched them and they her
as she clambered barefoot
over huge granite outcroppings
lining the lake - each day

venturing a little further
than the day before. She
explored the vastness of the
landscape, her fantasies
separating the waters and the

melting sky. The smells of
fish scales shining, baking,
drying. Birds swooping each
cresting wave. A jungle of
drifting fronds under the blue

the green of the water. Her
probing hands explored each crack
of the granite walkway
where one incautious move could
drop her into a watery dream
deeper than she could wake from.

Yet it was as much her element
as it was the dragonflies'
filtering above her as she lay
immovable, creating her future.
Once, I drove back that way

knowing the summer place was
still there; knew if I looked
I'd see the birds, the grey rocks
that blue vault still scudding
forms resembling clouds.

And the lake, those wild and
quiet waters, they too.
Only the child is absent.

C. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Early Harvest, Gusto Press

The Covenant

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

The Covenant

The old man sat in the centre of the tent, glowering. His striped robe lay carelessly on his shoulders, the waist-belt untied, his bare legs ropey with lean muscles, dark with hair not yet turned as white as his flowing beard. He hooded his eyes and brooded, watching the three women, his wives, as they bustled about the tent nervously. He followed the movements of the youngest one, Rebeka, as she fluttered around, re-arranging his bed, the coverings, drawing the old matted straw out, piling it in a heap under the watchful eye of her mentor Hagar, who knew just how Ab-ram liked his bed. Not too stuffed so he found it difficult to rise from its depth in the mornings and not too brittle so that pieces chafed his skin through the loosely-woven fabric that covered it. As though sensing his mood their voices, often raised in light banter, were hushed and only simple directions, often-repeated reminders, punctuated the uneasy silence.

Rebeka, he thought, had been a poor choice. He should never have listened to his brother. A closer alliance between the two houses yes, but not through Rebeka. There was that about her that invited men's glances. Lithe and handsomely dark, the flowing robe that covered her could not hide the suggestion of lush flesh which lay beneath; she moved too sensuously, her eyes, dark and large, promised that which she could not give. Little wonder, then, that I-sak walked so often by the women's tent. Not to see Sarai, his mother, but to furtively watch Rebeka. How far had it gone? Ab-ram wondered and flushed with a new wave of anger.

His eyes glazed over and he momentarily forgot the women, recalling yesterday's confrontation with the tribal men. E-nor and his brother Mar-duk, he was certain, were the instigators of the growling protest which, left unchecked, threatened to become a revolt. They had always agitated for the keeping of swine. They had shorter memories and less respect for tradition than he. They scorned the ancient malediction visited upon their great forbear, that "Thy sons' sons will consort with swine!", the meaning of which could not be lost on those wishing to perpetuate their line. Sheep were their mainstay and so it would remain.

He had promised them a sign, some significant indication that the new God that spoke to him in his trances would undertake to be their sole totem. And now he wondered, could he induce the God to do this thing? To protect and enrich them, bring them to a state of comfort, a belief in His ineffability?

A spasm of pain washed over him as his stomach rebelled from the morning meal, and he passed wind.

A titter from the women brought him back to the present and he glared at them. "Go! Be you gone with your women's airs and your nattering patter!", he ordered, raising himself and towering over them.

Rebeka looked worriedly at Sarai who motioned the other two to leave. They quickly gathered up the discarded straw and in their haste tripped over their robes, leaving a litter trail behind them. Ab-ram kicked angrily at the strawbits, raising a fine layer of dust. "And you?" he said to Sarai.

"Soon enough", she replied calmly, rising to stand before him, her wizened face still carrying traces of her fabled beauty, questioning his anger. He sighed, lifted his hand to her shoulder and pulling her close, rested her head on his chest.

As always her touch, her steadfastness soothed him; her calm manner instilled him with confidence. The past intruded; even when he ordered his sister to become his wife, his wife to be transformed to his sister, she had remained by his side. Fear of the hegemon called Faro caused him to disown the flesh that had cleaved to his, yet she had never rebuked him. She had followed him from Chaldean Ur acknowledging him her master in all things. Now, these late years should have brought them surcease of discontent, of troubling decisions.

If only their son, the image of his mother in her young days, were not the tribulation he was, a weight would be lifted. But Sarai would hear no ill word of the boy, and he would not make her unhappy.

"Is there something?", she asked, drawing back, her dark eyes searching as no one else could, within his. He looked away uneasily, fearful that she could read his thoughts as she sometimes seemed to do.

"No thing is wrong", he said finally. "Other than I must persuade the others that our way is the way and the others are false."

She nodded. "What will you do?"

"Wait for the voice again. It no longer visits my dreams, so it is to the man-thing that I must turn for advice."

An obvious revulsion washed over her face. "That abomination!" She spat three times to ward off evil - not believing in its efficacy entirely, yet not wishing to leave herself vulnerable to unknown malicious powers. "Wait", she said. "Yesterday I found a ring of the mystic growth under a large Terebinth. I dried them and ground them and will bring them to you in a fermentation."

He agreed not to consult his oracle, the newborn manbaby Rebeka had borne, her first. As was customary, its head had been taken, anointed, and left in sacred oil to speak when advice was needed of it. The women always complained, but no leader of men could be without the Teraphim. Every few years a new one was needed as the old one gradually disintegrated, becoming one with the holy oil.

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As the day wore on, the heat became more intense and activity ceased. Men, women and children made for the still, yet cooler air of the tents. The fragrance of myrtle rose on the sultry air. Children's chattering voices were stilled in afternoon sleep. Ab-ram, alone in his great tent since the morning, still sat and thought about the problem facing him. Nothing had been resolved and he was tired of trying to summon the wisdom of the years reputed to be his, to his aid. He rose and painfully slid his feet into the thongs of worn leather sandals, then awkwardly bent and fastened them, his fingers stiff with disuse. But he was unwilling to summon one of the women to help. He was wearing now a chiton of dazzling whiteness, the linen fine and kind to his tired flesh.

Walking out of the tent, he stood for a moment in the furnace of the still air, momentarily blinded by the fierce intensity of the sun sitting high now in that great bowl of the sky, and merciless. It had been a long time since he had been foolish enough to expose himself at this time of day, but he had been overcome with a sudden compulsion to walk through a nearby olive grove. He flung the cowl over his head and strode laboriously over the dun, cracked earth, a lizard scuttling out of his path, frightened from its shelter under a nearby rock.

Lifting his eyes past the great cypresses throwing their meagre high-noon shade over the line of tents, his eyes followed the long swoops of two vultures over the nearby hills. The hills appeared verdant and sheltered from that distance. He wondered about the sheep; whether a lamb had strayed.

Arrived finally at the grove, he cast about for a likely resting place, selected a gnarled old specimen, its leaves defiantly glowing the splendour of its life's aspiration despite the rotten state of its trunk, bleeding sap, inviting invasion from hordes of insects, and under it he slid to the ground. His back resting on the trunk, Ab-ram thrust his legs before him and watched a retinue of termites busy with the work of moving a dead unfeathered fledgling inexorably closer to their nest. He felt revolted at the dry shrivelled thing that had once held life, teeming now with the large insects determined to use it in the perpetuation of their own cycle. "And so it is with me", he sighed. "No sooner than I relinquish my authority will my enemies feast with Termagant on my rotting carcase."

The question was, how to persuade his people of the rightness of his vision? How describe to them the fleeting image come to him of the dark unknowable that was the Divine Spirit? Elohu, the Spirit of the One, the Only. That something, some gesture, some consecration would be necessary to bind him and his people to the Great Power, that Seminal Being, was obvious. Some sign was paramount to his being finally able to convince his reluctant followers - but what could that sign be?

The intense dry and burning heat seemed somehow magnified in the grove. Surely, it would have been better to have remained in his tent. Somehow, though, he felt, there was a possibility of communion out here, with the Divine Spirit. Not here perhaps, but on higher ground where such a one might reside, closer to the heavens. The hills? He raised his eyes and looked to the hills. For sacrifice, what? His bell-wether, a faultless and spot-free white specimen? Even so, not enough.

Ab-ram's eyes narrowed, his head seemed to be bursting with the fierceness of his concentration. Suddenly the answer was simple. Solving both his problems, temporal and spiritual. Ah, but was the intent without blemish? Who, he convinced himself, would ever know? His heart thudded, then skipped like a wild bird attempting to escape confinement.

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I-sak walked behind his father, an early morning mist dissipating before them as they approached the well-worn pathway leading to the nearest and highest of the two hills. Mountains, they called them, but they were merely tall mounds on the arid landscape.

"My brother was aggrieved that he was pressed into service. He mislikes tending the sheep", I-sak observed mischievously, glad to place his brother Ish-mael in a poor light; flattered that their father had this time chosen him, the younger son, to assist on this solemn occasion. Ab-ram nodded, noting the slur, but choosing this time to ignore it.

The trail wound tortuously around the hill. I-sak footsure, the shepherd, and Ab-ram, long unaccustomed to the demand, stumbling on the gravelly pathway, stopping now and again to draw breath, his chest fiery with the effort. Strapped to the sides of the ass were the necessary paraphernalia - two flasks, gurgling their contents, a large flat stone, some ground mandrake, a flat bread and cheese for their mid-day meal. Last, wound in linen, a ceremonial knife of obsidian blackness and a sprig of hyssop plucked from the foot of the mountain.

"But my father", I-sak had earlier observed, "the sacrifice? Where is it?"

"The Great Spirit will provide", Ab-ram had replied, not elaborating, his face an enigmatic mask.

"But my father ..." I-sak had begun his objection again - surely it was best to arrive prepared rather than trust to chance? But a curt "be silent!" cut him off.

They climbed the slope slower now, near the summit where the cedars were no longer symmetrical in shape but grew deformed yet defiant on the inhospitable mantle of rock barely sifted with soil.

Ab-ram drew laboured breaths, the sound stentorian, rasping his throat.

A harsh sound above them, familiar yet still startling, tore through their separate thoughts. Both raised their heads, stopping for a moment, glad of the rest, to look upon the rusty black form of a great rook, its harsh beak giving voice to a warning of trespass. The bird rose into the air, rising toward the pitiless sun. They watched as it became a mote above them, then noticed that a curtain of clouds, dark and menacing, drifted toward them, and around it, billowing grey clouds. It was as though the bird had changed, become dark water vapour and still stood over them, transformed, watching, jealous of its territory. But rains, seldom as they blessed the land at this time of year, were welcome and surely the glaring sun would soon be obscured by the scudding clouds and give them relief from the oppressive heat.

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They were shortly at the summit and tethered the ass to a gnarled cypress where it could feed upon the sparseness of grass. Ab-ram directed his son to remove the stone and place it on the ground. The sun was hidden now and its fingers of fire no longer touched them. Still, breathing was difficult. Silently they both slaked their thirst with wine. That same wine into which Sarai had sprinkled her dried morels. Already, I-sak's head was light and he walked with a delicate precision, obeying his father in the placement of the ritual objects; the euphoria granting him a girlish grace.

When the hyssop had been placed just so on the flat stone, and the obsidian blade sprinkled with oil so it glimmered as with a life of its own, reflecting the dark clouds above, Ab-ram urged more wine on his son, then sat and watched drugged sleep overtake the youth. In repose I-sak's face became the youthful trusting Sarai's and Ab-ram's heart was wrenched with misgiving.

A light breeze made itself evident, rustling the leaves of the sycamore, bringing relief to the two figures, one unaware, the other too painfully aware. Ab-ram looked to the sky and saw it was now completely veiled with clouds and oddly, the black cloud sat over them still, a dark squatting thing, unmoving. He sighed, then moved his son with the great effort that was required, on his back over the stone, and raised I-sak's chiton to his chest, revealing his naked form.

Ab-ram sat back on his haunches and took into his hand the ceremonial knife, rubbed his thumb carefully along its cruel edge. Great Spirit, he implored, let this be the end of your promises, let this mark the start of your commitment to us, to my people. No other sign can I think of that will indicate to you, oh Unseen One, my abandonment of the hegemony of other gods, my belief in only You, You who will make this existence finally explicable.

As though in reply, thunder rumbled above him, and he believed.

In a lesser hallucinatory fog than his son, Ab-ram believed that the voice that visited his dreams, his drug-induced trances, would utter finally the words to seal commitment. Even through his euphoria, a thought given to his sly triumph - ah, even the gods, even the greatest of them were amenable to flattery, could not delve into the true intent of homage; this sacrifice. This thought he banished from his mind, angry at its independent impudence; unworthy of the sacred moment.

Ab-ram raised his arm and began to plunge, but some thing stayed his intent. Through the pulsing thunder he could hear a voice. Clearly, he could hear a voice! Could he not?

"ABRAHAM! HEAR ME! I AM THAT WHICH IS! YWHWH IS MY NAME. DO THOU, ABRAHAM, AS DO THE EGYPTOS AND OFFER HENCEFORTH EVERLASTING PERPETUITY'S FLESHLY COVERING. SO IT SHALL BE A BOND BETWEEN ME AND THINE TRIBE."

Perplexed, thwarted, but awed and frightened by the lush richness, the awe-inspiring command of the voice, the mystery of its emanation resounding through his head, he could not but obey.

Reluctantly, confused and inwardly seething with impotent rage, he nonetheless obediently sliced his son's foreskin, then poured holy oil over his son's body to purify it, and consecrate the offering.

c. 1978 Rita Rosenfeld

Spring Hunter

Spring Hunter

Wan shafts of sun
slipping the clouds
we descent newly ice-free
trails into the ravine
our tread newly assured.

Assertive winds flagellate
bare tree tops
the sound of rough passage
ferociously groaning
the atmosphere.

Faintly, another sound
nags seasonal memory
claiming ownership
floating over the wind's boasts.
Hoooo - Rrrrr - Yuiuiu?

The Great Grey Owl
that transited last winter, back.
Its fond recall of
small furred creatures in abundance
spurred return.

And there, high above,
he sits, alert and huge
under the mast of a
great green pine, perched on a bare limb
eyeing our transit
in this, his recalled territory.

c.2009 Rita Rosenfeld

Cranefly Dalliance

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Cranefly Dalliance

Two crane flies.
All angles
softened slightly
by wings transparent
as their preoccupation.
They sit glued
in a transport
of mindless lust.

All day they've
ornamented my
kitchen window
endlessly copulating.
(Only a cranefly
might consider
another cranefly
worth a second look.
No sensuous curves.
All angles and thrust.)

Responding to
the elemental urge.
Mindless gluttony.
There they sit
in mute agony
pantomiming life.

c. 1980 Rita Rosenfeld

The Antigonish Review 29

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

The Honolulu Sun

Years ago we used to drive down the Don Valley Parkway, past the old brick factories on our way to the old Toronto Zoo, at Riverdale. We'd pass great mounds of leaves gathered by the Parks Department, to moulder and turn into fertilizer - anyone who wanted to, could go and get some to fertilize their gardens. We had no gardens then. Once, we saw two hippos at the zoo, a young one and an older one, and watched them cavort in a shallow pool of water. They snorted water joyfully from their great snouts, diving and surfacing. It was fascinating. I read once somewhere that the hippopotamus has an unique method by which it claims territorial imperative. Waving its silly little switch of a tail at the end of its locomotive-heavy body like a fan, it defecates. The fanning action of the tail spreads a uniform spray of excrement everywhere. Where the ordure falls, that is its territory.

All of which isn't terribly relevant, but interesting. We mark our territories differently. The ponds we inhabit bear no resemblance to the hippos' and we think we differentiate our territories elegantly, but in actual fact, we throw dirt around just as extravagantly, only we think we don't.

And oh yes, I remember now - about the Riverdale Zoo - when Ben and I were a lot younger, oh, maybe about twenty some-odd years ago, when I was working and he was out of a job, he'd call for me at lunch time. Sometimes we'd eat our bagged lunches across the street in the little park at Avenue Road and St.Clair near where I worked, sitting near the statue of ageless Peter Pan. And sometimes we'd drive hurriedly down through the Rosedale Ravine, under all those bridges. It was a wonderfully private place, no other cars at all. We'd pass the Toronto Crematorium. We'd hurry to get there before the factories blew the twelve-noon whistle, and if we were on time, we'd get there on the second level, or was it the third? to stand before the wolves', the coyotes' and the foxes' cages in time to watch them lift their heads as though on cue and all howl and yodel with the factory whistles. Now the zoo's moved, what do they howl at, I wonder?

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In a supermarket last week I shoved my buggy up to the check-out counter, trying to decide whether my purchases could legitimately go through the express check-out. Ahead of me was a young woman with a maybe month-old baby in her buggy, surrounded by food. A five-year-old, obviously her older child, was sneaking his fingers into boxes of chocolates at the end-of-aisle counter. He had a plastic gun in one hand and while munching chocolates, banged the gun down on the display, smashing the chocolate boxes. I can't remember ever letting my children behave like that. Then I saw the boy slip behind his mother's buggy while she was busy putting her groceries onto the counter, and quickly look around him. The little brat stood on his toes and reached over to pinch the peacefully sleeping baby. Hard, on the nose. Of course the baby screeched and its tiny nostrils looked painfully red.

Never one to mind my own business, I said to the startled mother "It's your other child, the little boy. He deliberately hurt the baby. I saw him." She glared at me as though she saw the indelible mark of a child molester engraved on my forehead.

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Watching i musici play a piece for solo violin and bass continuo by Viotti, I was struck by their intensity; as though only they alone in the universe existed. As though, aside from their abstracted vision of sublimely soaring music of the spheres, nothing else is real. The sensitivity of the violinist manifested itself plainly in the exquisite pain on his mobile face. His face seemed that of an angelic mafioso. The earnest little bassist climbed all over his bass - a symbol if I ever saw one. Decadence is everywhere.

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I've got to stop collecting recipes from newspapers and magazines. Every time I see an interesting recipe, I tear it out and stick it behind the cheese board, meaning to type it out on a card after I try it. Kind of amass an interesting collection. Well, I've got a mass of newspaper bits-and-pieces now and I've still not typed any of them up. I guess I should toss them out, but I wanted them for something to do, kind of stretch out the time. There's so much of it.

Yesterday I tried one of the cakes. It was called a Daffodil cake and I thought it sounded intriguing. It failed, and I looked at the dismal mess, trying to decide whether to scrape the rubber uck out of the pans onto a plate and pour chocolate sauce over it, to serve as a 'special dessert' or just throw everything in the garbage, when Teddy came in from school and gave me his generous sympathy.

"Too bad, Mom. Don't feel bad."
"I don't, just inept."
"Aw, you're not. You're pretty good. Anyway, everyone has failures", he tells me and I long to tell him it's not the little failures that bother me but the big, big ones that band-aids won't cure.

"Tell you what", he says, his face brightening, "It's like this Mom, like when I get a rubber airplane kit and work like mad to get it done and then it won't fly. I know the fault isn't with me, 'cause my workmanship is painstaking, so it must be the faulty aerodynamics of the kit, Mom", he beams. "Buy cake mixes."

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When I was a little kid I always suffered from constipation. I used to get really desperate. I'd complain to my mother. She was indifferent. When I got older, I learned about nutrition and bulk and I guess, in retrospect, that I hadn't a proper diet as a kid. Now I know I'm a better mother than my own mother was and I know what constitutes a healthful diet and my kids don't suffer from constipation or anything else. I have no more problems - that way. Sometimes just a kind of mental diarrhoea, but that's all right.

I know my mother suffers from chronic constipation now. She's always complaining, always letting wind, always going for long walks, drinking hot water.

God, she used to drive us crazy, me and Ben. Our families disliked each other and we weren't supposed to meet. Well, we used to sneak out and meet at Christie Pits Park. I was supposed to be taking care of my youngest brother, Sammy.

Now Sammy's a cheerful twenty-six year-old bachelor. Last time he visited, he told us about his latest trip up to Tuktoyaktuk. He's an environmentalist, goes up there for Indian and Northern Affairs to check pollution, the effects of a possible oil spill on the flora and fauna.

"Me and two other guys, we were sleeping in this tent. We were bushed. All of a sudden I woke in a panic - someone was screaming. I saw one of the guys banging a long-handled frypan against the side of the tent, shouting. He's nuts, stir-crazy. We'll have to tie him up and wait for the helicopter to pick us all up, I thought. I started to move slow and easy toward him, kicking the cot of the other guy to wake him up. He slept like the dead and I was hoping that he wasn't yet - like the nut hadn't got to him yet or anything, when the screecher turned to me, his eyeballs rolling and yelled Bear! Polar Bear!

"I ducked my head around the corner of the opening and saw a mean looking bastard standing a few feet away, like it couldn't make up its mind to leave the tent area where Omar the Tentmaker was yelling like crazy, or assault the canvas and get all our edible goodies and us too. I started to yell and bang things around, and so did the third guy. We were all groggy and scared stiff. We must've been yelling and hitting each other with anything we could get our hands on long after the bear ambled off. Next time we'll take a rifle. We had to leave it behind that time, because the helicopter was loaded so heavily with all our equipment..."

He would've made a lousy meal anyway - all bone and gut. Ben always looks a little dazed and wistful when Sammy tells his tall tales. Like he's missing some great life's adventure.

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One day, an early spring afternoon, I answered the doorbell and was mildly surprised to see May Ennis standing there. She looked like spring herself, cool and promising. For some reason, I didn't want to ask her in - I don't know why I felt that way. I kept her standing in the doorway and asked yes? It was crazy, but I had a sudden premonition.

Later, we sat in the living room, me the stiff matron, her the courageous young beauty. Hell, she's not that much younger than me - she has a child by a previous marriage and I'm not bad looking myself.

"I love him", she said.
"Very nice. I love him too. I'm married to him. I've borne his children. What's more, my dear, he loves me."

A barely perceptible frown creased her smooth exterior. "But you don't understand, Mrs. Frier, he doesn't love you! He told me. He said he loves me!"

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I can remember when I was really young, that my mother helped a friend of hers get rid of a tape worm. She described for me in disgusting detail how she pulled in the bathroom and the tapeworm kept coming and coming. I vomited and never again asked her where she had been when I came home from school and no one was at home.

Much later I learned that anyone who tastes the raw fish she's grinding for seasoning when making gefulte fish, is a likely candidate for worms. My mother regularly tasted the raw fish she was grinding. She never got tape worm.

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That bloody little dog from across the road - Myra's pet, keeps coming over to do its job on our lawn. Once, Ben said he was going to collect the feces and put them in a paper bag. "Then I'll put them on the Adlers' verandah and set the bag on fire."
"What then, Dad?, Teddy asked, mouth agape.
"Then, of course, I'll ring the bell and leave." We all waited, blank-faced.
"Stupid! Old Adler'll stomp on the burning mass to put out the fire, won't he?"

Well, he never did, and that dog keeps coming around. The Adlers aren't bad, just kind of vacuous. Years ago, when we first moved here, we found out that they had a kind of cozy thing going with the Bensons.

The first neighbourhood party we went to was at the Adlers'. A swimming party. this must have been around two a.m. by then. There were around eight couples from the neighbourhood. Maybe ten. Lou Adler was kind of happy and he pulled Marg Benson's bikini top off and then Myra's (so she wouldn't feel neglected, I guess). Myra laughed, but Marg ran home next door, crying. She has tiny breasts and I imagine she was mortified. The party went on and Marg came back dressed to kill in a long white georgette dress.

That night, they switched and neighbourhood gossip has it they've been doing it regularly ever since.

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"Look honey, how can you even think I don't love you? Of course I do! You and the kids. What would my life be, without you?"

"Then how could you? How could you do that to us ... to me? How humiliating! This little tramp comes to my door, invades my privacy and tells me to get ready to give my husband up!"

"Look honey, it's all a big mistake. She's been working too hard lately. It's gone to her head. I gave her a little gift, kind of a gesture of appreciation for all her hard work ... and then her kid's been sick lately and causing her all kinds of worry. You've got to pity her, all alone."

"Are you kidding? What's to pity? I don't mind if she's looking for security, but not mine!"

"What're you talking! Don't think things like that, you scare me. Look, if it makes you feel any better, I'll speak to her. I'm going to tell her to behave herself. If worse comes to worse, I'll fire her."

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When my mother comes over for a visit, she sniffs around everything. Anytime I get something new, she pounces on it. How much did it cost? Where'd you get it? What for?

I bought a pair of late Nineteenth-Century terra cotta Blackamoor busts and marble plinths for the archway between the living room and the dining room and she sniffs 'Schvartzes!'. I tell her the Blackamoors were highly respected princes during the Italian Renaissance. She sniffs disdainfully.

"Where's Ben?" she asks. "'Ent he coming home for dinner? He's working late, lately?" She pries incessantly, infuriatingly.

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Ruthie thinks I'm crazy. I should have kept my mouth shut. Now everyone'll know. She says no. She says I can trust her. She doesn't want her mother to know. It would break the old lady's heart, she says.

"He's too damn good-looking for his own good", she says. "Where does he sleep?" I'm startled.

"Where? In his bed. Where should he sleep?" She's aghast.

"Rhoda, you're crazy! You let him sleep with you? From her to you? How could you!"

"Ruthie, I love him!"

"You stupid fool. He's a naughty kid - you catch him with his grubby little paws in the cookie jar and you give him candy? Make him pay!"

"He's going through a phase. What good would it do if I threw him out - I'd just be throwing him at her." She looks at me suspiciously.

"You don't ... you wouldn't let him ..." She's disgusted with me. I don't care.

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Kathy knows something is wrong. I'm broody and pensive all the time. She's very sensitive. Even when she was a toddler she used to say intuitive things, as though she had a psychological line running from my head to hers in place of the umbilical cord. Strange, she's a mystery to me. I can't begin to imagine what goes on in her head, but she always seems to know about me.

I thought that teen-age girls, when they realize their father's sexual interest is wandering, viewed their mothers with contempt.

Last night, when she was at the piano playing a lovely little piece, Hayden, Ben crept up on her as he often likes to do and planted a big kiss on the nape of her neck. She turned and angrily brushed it away, called him a creep. I was embarrassed for him. I've told her nothing's wrong, that she should stop picking on Ben. I don't want to turn our children against their father. Ben would never forgive me.

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When I was watering my house plants I noticed those squiggly little things on top of the soil again. I guess I've been keeping the soil too moist. They're the larvae of flies, I think. Sickening things. I consider whether I should try a folk remedy; pour a thin layer of boiling water over to cook them dead, or use the spray can of insecticide I bought and suffer pangs of conscience.

There, that's something. If we all contracted skin cancer from the radiation of the sun because we've destroyed the ozone layer, we'd be so busy moaning about our disease, we'd forget our pursuits. Monogamy by default.

*******************************************************************

A while ago, for my thirty-sixth birthday, Kathy built me a birdhouse in Industrial Arts. Sparrows inhabited it as soon as we put it up, and started their families. We'd find the occasional featherless blue corpse under the Maple. One year we counted five separate broods, all from the same pair of adults. The following autumn a miserably behaved black squirrel bit away at the opening until it'd been stretched large enough to admit it entry. The birdhouse was only made of thin plywood. The squirrel was one of our regulars. We had about four who came around for handouts all summer. All that winter we'd see the black tail switching around outside the opening in the blowing snow. Occasionally, the squirrel would come down for peanuts. If we weren't quick to put them out, he'd climb the screening on the storm door and make a racket. When spring came, the squirrel abandoned the house and made a regular squirrel nest of leaves and twigs over in the park.

A new sparrow family came along. We were always hoping for a more exotic kind of bird, but we had to be content with sparrows, they were the only kind who nested in our backyard. Then the starlings came along and bothered the sparrows. I understand they lay their eggs with the sparrow eggs and the baby starling bird-curmudgeons, when they hatch, do in the sparrow-innocents. Well, we didn't want that happening, so Teddy and Kathy, him holding the ladder and her hammering on a new front, put up a smaller hole.

But it was too small and the sparrows couldn't get in and soon we noticed a regular ingress and egress of bumble bees which didn't really bother us all that much.

One of the last things Ben did before he left for Honolulu was to take down the birdhouse with the intention of fixing up the front for a new crop of birds,next season. But when he looked inside, he found it full of all kinds of larvae, different sizes, colours and shapes. The house, he said, was beyond redemption. Like some futures.

**************************************************************

"You've got to understand, Rhoda. It's true I still love you. But, God help me, I love her too. She's so helpless! She needs me!"

"God won't help you. You can't love us both. You love me and you letch after her and she's helpless like an aroused bull. She's hoodwinked you; she wants the security you give us, that's what she wants."

"You're wrong, dear. She would never do anything to harm you or our family. We're both helpless in the face of our love for each other. It's pure."

"Pure! You mean Platonic? Honest? No sweating between sheets? Just holding hands and looking into each other's limpid pools? And we've been doing all those gross things in bed all these wasted years!"

"Don't be bitter ... it's not like you. It's not like you to be so coarse. Please, please try to understand, Rhoda. You don't know what it's like to be a man and never to have any kinds of experiences. What did I know? I was just a kid and there you were, before I had a chance to live, to know anyone else. I want to know what I've missed! I want to live a little too!"

**************************************************************

Tartini, that dazzling violinist, that brilliant composer, was also not satisfied with his life, with his prolific, admired output. Nothing would do but for him to make a bargain with the devil. His soul for a scintillating work of art par excellence, a tour de force of heavenly - pardon me - devilish melody - and so was born "The Devil's Trill".

What have I got to bargain with? Would I wish a tape worm on her? A dybbuk. A dybbuk should inhabit the temple of her defilement.

My uxorious husband. I want him back!

******************************************************************

I was crabby at the supermarket yesterday. Told two different people, almost snarled at them, to put their cigarettes out until they got out of the store. I don't want my meat and vegetables ashed upon; my air polluted with their second-hand carcinogens.

I meant to get some wheat-germ and looking close at some torn packages on the shelf, saw unmistakably, rodent droppings. I marched right up to the manager and demanded the place be cleaned up. He ignored me. I was stunned. He said he was busy.

Funny. I tried pointing the mess out - and it was a mess; on the lower shelves of the loose-packed cereals there were even small dried pools of urine among the feces - to other shoppers and no one was interested.

***************************************************************

A week ago, I wandered into Robert Dirstein Interiors for a look around. I hadn't really meant to. I hadn't planned on buying anything. I just thought that looking at beautiful things would cheer me up.

I liked a 17th-Century Flemish landscape, unsigned, a la Breughel the younger. But I liked even more a French commode in the style of Louis XV. Serpentine-fronted with exquisite floral marquetry, brass-mounted legs and escutcheons with a pie-crust bracchiated brown marble top. I was almost certain I had seen a similar one at the Royal Ontario Museum, once. It was expensive for a mid-Victorian reproduction of an earlier era, but I figured I could afford it. It was meant to grace my living room, lighten my heart.

The piece was delivered today. Two men clomped their heavy shoes through the living room and set it down beside the blue velvet loveseat. After some deliberation, I topped it with an earlier acquisition from the shop: a French baroque rococo clock with a cunning suspension, ornamented by a bronze shepherd boy fluting to his bell-wether.

It hasn't cheered me up, it hasn't lightened my mood at all. I feel forlorn, strangely removed from pride of acquisition. It doesn't mean anything now.

*************************************************************

"How long is he going to be away?" Ruthie wants to know.

"Who knows?" I shrug. "He's there, finding himself. When he discovers exactly what it is he's looking for he'll come back. There's no hurry, Morley is looking after the business."

"You seem unconcerned. Not at all what I'd thought you'd be like. Don't you care?"

She wants to see me bleeding. My nerves are shot, my stomach churns, my head aches, and I can't sleep.

"Of course, I care. Would you like to see me wear sackcloth and ashes?"

"Rhoda, take my advice. An ultimatum. Give him an ultimatum. You're entirely too calm. When he comes back, scream and rage. Tell him it's either the tramp or you and the children. He adores the kids - it'll be battle over. And don't sleep with him until you're sure!"

"He'll make his own decision, unassisted by any histrionics on my part. I want him back because he wants to come, not because I've issued an ultimatum."

"Listen to me, Rhoda. Don't be so proud. You think he's a man? All men are babies; they need to be told what to do. Show me the man who's a true adult and I'll show you a man with more than his share of female hormones. Men are just grown-up kids. As long as you don't get upset by his fooling around he'll take it for assent. You're just fooling yourself!"

*********************************************************

I find myself wondering how his ice-maiden shapes up in that hemisphere of Gauguinesque beauties. I wonder what she's done with her daughter. If we were truly civilized I could have offered to look after the girl. The height of sophistication. My head is splitting.

***********************************************************

Teddy's read his way through Ryder Haggard. Nordhoff and Hall, and now he's working on Joseph Conrad. Doing his adventuring vicariously. Like me. I wonder if he'll mature earlier than his father.

Kathy is reading, of all things, Machiavelli's 'The Prince'. What's she plotting, I wonder. What a crafty adversary she'll be in some future life.

Speaking of precocious children; although I don't mean to imply that I feel my children qualify for the genius category. I've read about Leonardo da Vinci, apprenticed as a child to a guild of artisans and already turning his brain and cunning hand to works of art. Then there was Beethoven, a reluctant marvel whose father insisted that genius come to fruition. And clever Mozart who at three and a half followed his sister to the Clavichord; a virtuoso before he was five, a composer of sparkling music toasted by cultured Europe, and just incidentally delightedly exploited by his loving father.

Will Teddy read Darwin next and relish his voyage of discovery to the Galapagos? Will Teddy be influenced by him as Darwin as a child had been by von Humboldt, and will Teddy go on to discover new frontiers? For example, that mankind doesn't reallye xist? That we are demented figures of our own tortured imaginations?

Will Kathy go on in the shadow of tyrranical Indira Gandhi, tempered by the clever political finesse of Golda Meier to become Supreme Ruler of this Earth, to complete a manifest destiny of a people that doesn't exist? Angels of Destiny!

I am a babbling idiot. All that Honolulu sun and play has gone to my febrile brain. I can actually feel my brain bubbling and fermenting in the heat of the Pacific. There'll soon be nothing left of me but a mechanical shell, a dutiful automaton.

Ben, come back!

c. 1977 Rita Rosenfeld
published in The Antigonish Review, Number 29, Spring 1977

Canadian Jewish Outlook, December 1985

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

The Neglected Tribe

Operation Moses, the furtive airlift of Ethiopian Jews from refugee camps in the Sudan, took place during November and December of 1984. It brought approximately 7,000 Ethiopian Jews into Israel, many of them harbouring tropical viruses, many in severely emaciated condition, but all overjoyed to walk upon the soil which they considered sacred.

When these people finally arrived in Israel from their overcrowded refugee camps, most went through a careful screening process to make certain that they were Jews, and not Christian Ethiopians. Those who could prove they were Jews were proffered immigration cards; their identity cards would only be awarded when they 'renewed their Judaism', the women by ritual immersion in the mikvah, the men through a re-enactment of circumcision, although they were already circumcised. The Israeli government contended that these rites were necessary as a result of the Ethiopians' "significant isolation from Judaism and the Jewish world for hundreds of years". Those 'unfortunates' discovered to be Christian Ethiopians were spared this humiliation, and given temporary visas, then sent to work on kibbutzim.

The most immediate problem of re-settlement was health; doctors were faced with infectious diseases they'd previously only known through their medical textbooks, including malaria, typhoid jaundice and widespread malnutrition.

These thousands joined a like number of Ethiopian Jews whose slow migration had begun twenty-five years earlier. During that period, a mere trickle of Ethiopian Jews had pulsed into the country, aided by Jewish welfare groups. Later, associations were set up for rescue - and finally, bit by bit, a kind of underground railroad was established by the Israeli government itself.

The Action Committee for Ethiopian Jews had been pleading with the Israeli government for years to act more decisively to negotiate with the Ethiopian government to re-unify families and to bring in greater numbers of Ethiopians from their severely underprivileged environment. Governmental inaction resulted in suicides of despair, with some Beta Israel threatening suicide by immolation before the Israeli Parliament in a last desperate effort to embarrass the government into action.

Who are these dark-skinned Africans who proudly wear the mantle of Judaism? They're familiarly known as Falashas, an Amharic term denoting 'strangers'. But Ethiopian Jews consider themselves denigrated by this, as indeed, the word in Amharic is meant to convey 'outcast'. These black Jews call themselves Beta Israel. The House of Israel; indicative of the pride in their Jewish identity, their biblical descent from Solomon, their adherence to ancient religious rites, and faithfulness against all adversity. They have been ritually scorned, publicly stoned, and officially neglected, in Ethiopia.

This is also a people lost in time, an iron-age still-life, a once-isolated group convinced that they represent the only Jews on earth, the only remnants of a once-numerous tribe. Legend had it that they were one of the ten lost tribes of Israel.

Ethiopian Jews fervently believe their genesis was a bright amour between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the beautiful Abyssinian Princess Makeda, which produced a son, whom Queen Sheba had sent as a child to Solomon to receive his education. His father returned him eventually as a young man, purportedly with the Tablets of the Law of Moses. This son, Menelik I, later ruled Abyssinia.

Although as a group the Ethiopian Jews of this era are largely illiterate, unskilled and desperately poor, in the historical past they were influential and of the ruling class. Several civil wars disrupted the ruling hierarchy and other groups entered the ascendancy. So for past centuries, the Beta Israel have lived alongside other Ethiopians in miserable poverty, practising such lower-class occupations as pottery and iron-mongering. They have lived mostly in Gondar Province, and in Tigre, in northern Ethiopia, among their neighbours, many of whom were Coptic Christians, some of whose religious customs are almost identical. Beta Israel celebrate Passover and observe the Sabbath; succeeding post-Diaspora religious rites were unknown to them. This is, then, a people unfamiliar with the Twentieth Century, for whom a subsistence standard of living has been a way of life. They lived in small thatched huts, and built small circular clay buildings as synagogues.

This is also a people which has been inexcusably neglected. By their country, by the world at large, but inexplicably, by their co-religionists. Their presence has long been known, but interest in their state of being, and later their pathetic plight, has been slow to spark. Even when isolated groups of Canadian and American Jews began to evince some interest and concern, there was no organized movement to attempt to provide support. The State of Israel behaved as though this group did not exist.

No less an historian than Abba Eban, in Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, mentions them on three occasions in passing, with no reference to their historicity and heritage. Similarly, in the seminal work, The Jews: Their History, edited by Louis Finkelstein, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in a brief, dismissive sentence, it is noted: "The dark-skinned Falashas of Abyssinia, presumably descended from proselytes made in a remote age, retain their individuality even now." Thus in one fell swoop, while the venerableness of their existence is not disputed, the genuineness of their heritage is, and thus the legitimacy of their pride.

These views, sadly, are typical. As a result, Jewish welfare agencies neglected the Ethiopian Jews. Although some relief work was undertaken from the 1950s, it was sparse and sporadic. In 1973 the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel declared himself finally to be satisfied that the Beta Israel were legitimately Jews. Soon afterward the Israeli government pronounced them to be eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

But no energetic activity to aid their emigration to Israel was undertaken. The Beta Israel themselves obviously hadn't the means by which they could effect transit to Israel, nor lobby the Ethiopian government to permit emigration. Relief agencies were slow to convince themselves to act in the interests of the Beta Israel.

Finally, North American concerned groups such as Friends of Falasha (Calgary), Ottawa chapter for Ethiopian Jewry, the Canadian Association for Ethiopian Jewry (Toronto and Montreal) began moving things forward. Countdown - New York Association for Ethiopian Jews and Centre for Beta Israel (Ramat Gan, Israel) began to lobby vigorously for public subscriptions. They sought to raise massive amounts needed to send food and medicine to the villages in Ethiopia, along with medical teams, and to pressure the Israeli government to act. Even so, the Israeli government appeared to be loathe to follow through on its own welcoming edict.

Finally, the desolation of the drought in Africa. Ethiopia was hard hit. the drought had devastated the countryside. With the growth of public concern and outrage over the horrific conditions in Ethiopia in late 1984, the world responded, sending great sums of money for relief work, airlifting medical teams, foodstuffs, tents and drugs to those hellholes of human despair.

The 400,000 Ethiopians who had fled from the dreadful drought and the fallout of the civil War in Eritrea Province to try to find comfort in the burgeoning camps in the Sudan were dying of starvation almost as quickly as those left behind in their villages.

Even in the camps of Sudan, mostly crowded with Muslim Ethiopians, the Ethiopian Jews were harassed and harried. The death rate from starvation and illness mounted day by day. Of the Ethiopian Jews who had made their way into the camps, roughly one-third died of privation and an epidemic of diseases before Israel launched its airlift. The rescue was never completed. It was estimated that some four thousand Jews were left behind in the camps when premature disclosure of news of the rescue halted the airlift.

The U.S. had acted as liaison to bring Sudanese officials and Israeli agents in concert to plan the logistics for the airlift. The Sudanese government had insisted that the planeloads of refugees from the rescue mission not be flown directly to Israel, but that they be flown first to another destination, then on to Israel - for diplomatic reasons. The news media were urged, and pledged themselves to security so that the rescue attempt would not be jeopardized.

However, word did leak prematurely, effectively aborting the mission. When Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir had visited the United States several weeks earlier, he had told Jewish leaders that Israel would require about $100-million to resettle Ethiopian Jews. And then Leon Dalzhin, chairman of the Jewish Agency, the Israeli organization charged with absorbing new refugees, is said to have noted also in early December that there had been "a sudden jump in immigration, far beyond the figures we had projected for this and the coming year - one of the ancient tribes of Israel is due to return to its homeland". An Israeli magazine picked it up. One of its reporters had been the recipient of this coy little bit of news, and soon afterward the news of another dazzling Israeli coup was flashed around the world.

Dismayed, American Jews pressured their own government to rescue the estimated remaining four thousand Ethiopian Jews left behind in the camps. A later American airlift was able to find and remove a mere additional nine hundred, all that could be found of those who were left. Many had perished, and no doubt some had made the long trek back to their mountainside villages.

It is now estimated that an additional eight thousand women, children, the ill and the elderly are left to languish in Ethiopia. In early 1984 the Beta Israel communities had steadily been depleted as the young and the hale left to find refuge in the Sudan. Those who were unfit for travel were left behind in the primitive villages. Young children, the ill, the old and the women who care for them, are now left to fend for themselves. Those who had travelled to the refugee centres set up in the Sudan found the situation slightly better, with relief supplies and food being supplied as a good-will gesture by the Sudanese government for 'fellow Muslims' in an effort to help their neighbours. (This was, of course, at a time when the Sudan hadn't yet been hit as hard as Ethiopia; since then the situation in Sudan has paralleled that of its neighbour.) Food was anything but plentiful in the camps, hygiene was poor, and if those Jewish thousands had not been rescued what is left of a once-numerous tribe might well have dwindled to an endangered species.

The government of Israel still appears reluctant to use diplomacy to complete the rescue of Beta Israel. One might think that Israel is unwilling to further burden itself with this dark-skinned and primitive people. Granted, the rescue itself, the relocation of the refugees, their housing, medicine, food, clothing, education, work placement and training all require a massive expenditure of bureaucratic planning, and scarce Israeli shekels in an already over-strained war economy. But public subscription (particularly from North American sources) to assist the State in its commitment should help considerably to make up for the costs involved.

Perhaps settling this people throughout a country housing Jews whose background is European/Mediterranean/Arabic presents the government with another dilemma, integrating a socially and economically disadvantaged group whose existence was an embarrassment to the State.

Another thorny issue of course, is the reaction of the orthodox to this influx of 'others'. Both the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic chief rabbis have finally declared the Beta Israel to be truly Jews, with no need for further demeaning 'conversion' ceremonies. But regional orthodox rabbis are steadfastly refusing this recognition without the ceremonial of the mikva and ritual circumcision. The Beta Israel, deeply insulted by these emotionally injurious demands, are heartbroken at the turn of events. A protest march staged around Israel by the Beta Israel to bitterly demonstrate their opposition to the symbolic conversation (which holds their belief in their heritage in absolute contempt) was emotional and led many Ethiopian Jews to declare that this final humiliation compelled them to compare Israel unfavourably with their former condition in Ethiopia where they were at least recognized as Jews among strangers.

This is a sorry dilemma which deserves a fitting end. That end appears to be a long way off yet.

c. 1985 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Canadian Jewish Outlook, Vol.23, No.11

Someone's Child

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Someone's Child

The bedroom stuffy, oppressive. Not even a stray breeze wandering through the bedroom windows. Was it that, the heat, that woke her? Outside, something outside. A voice mumbling something. Then what, sobbing?

Her hearing seemed to sharpen, determined in some manner as though independent of her wishes, to pick up the sounds. The voice below her window walking along the street outside the house, the sidewalk running below and fifty-feet before the window. Just a voice? a disembodied voice? A girl's voice, a young girl.

Why was she so awake? And if she was so wide-awake, why didn't she get up, walk over to the window and look out? Was it a dream, only a dream?

She thought of the newspaper story, surely she'd read it earlier in the week? Of a bus driver stopping his bus at four a.m. because he saw a young girl crying in a bus shelter. He'd urged her to get on the bus, gave her some of his thermos coffee. She told him her father had thrown her out of the house. Just like that, thrown her out! Only fifteen years old and nowhere to go. Ah, but there must have been some reason, mustn't there? For throwing her out? A father wouldn't ... would he? Pregnant? Is that a reason, is it?

She'd gone to the end of the line with the driver, talking and weeping. He gave her a few dollars; she had no money. Perhaps he didn't know what else to do. Take her home, say to his wife "Hi dear, here's a lovely girl I've just picked up". At any rate, the girl had thanked him, got off the bus and said she had to work things out for herself. Then she disappeared. He didn't know where, he said, reporting the incident.

The voice outside the window became clearer, or closer, that was it, closer - and she stiffened in horror; could it be the same girl, wandering forever down city streets only to be seen and heard in the small hours of the night, trying to understand, to come to terms with her life? A young girl; vulnerable and unhappy. Nowhere for her to go. If your parents won't have you, who will? At fifteen.

Oh God, she breathed, let it not be so: Let it be several people walking down the street, talking. It happens, happens often enough that I wake up hearing their voices, snatches of conversation floating on the night air, through the window. Annoyed that they've awakened me, but soon falling back to sleep.

But not this time. The voice went on, moaning, keening in the black night air. Black - she hadn't even opened her eyes, just lay there, listening, waiting, wanting to hear another voice, to know that someone was there with the girl who could comfort her, the forlorn creature.

The words - muffled, indistinguishable. Could she be saying: "And what's to become of me? Where will I go? I'm frightened: Help me, someone help, please!" Then that sobbing again, and the voice growing stronger as it comes abreast of the window - and she listening, helpless, aghast at her own inaction, her pitying inaction - went on and slowly receded. The voice echoing in her head, drowning itself in the darkness, going on down the street.

She was awake. Fully awake, but hadn't opened her eyes. Wouldn't.

She turned on her side, her face feeling weighted. It had been her imagination hadn't it? No, it hadn't been. A scream in the night, a cry for help and she hadn't responded. Beside her, Robbie, his back to her; asleep, naked. She drew herself to him, hugged her nightclad body, clammy, to his, hot and dry. No response, he slept on, hadn't heard the night noises. Perhaps only a woman could.

She passed her hand over his chest, then further down; he lay relaxed. She removed her hand. But he turned to face her and brought his face close to hers, lips covering hers. The odour of the shallots he'd eaten with dinner enveloped her. But it was his breath, and comforting. She clung to him.

No word, not a word passed between them. She marvelled at the heat of his body; hot but not sweaty. She felt lathered with sweat. He ran his hands over her, cupped her buttocks, prepared her. She had a need and here he was, completing it, responding. How could he know, how know she needed this? This ... reassurance.

Finally, she clutched at him as he rose above her, pressed him feverishly close, closer, moving her legs traplike, up over his back, capturing him, forcing him to slow. He stopped, gently reached behind to push her legs down and began again. Her hands busy over his shoulders, his back, his skin smooth, fine-textured and silky like a woman's yet with a kind of hard plasticity her own lacked.

Later he lay on her, the dimples in the small of his back clammy. He was asleep, sleeping on her; his breathing shallow, regular. Had he ever been awake? or just answered her need.

She moved, then again, insistently, and he lifted himself, lay once again on his side, back to her. Was she forgotten now? But then, had she been thought of at all? She moved close to him, fastened her body to his outline.

But sleep would not claim her mind. Instead that lonely, hopeless weeping echoed in her head. Get up, she told herself, get up and look out the window. Lean over the sill and look at the sidewalk. You'll see there's no one there; never had been. The street lamps, she knew, would illuminate a shallow patch of sidewalk, then the walk would recede into the night. The only night sounds she'd hear would be the endless gnawing of tent caterpillars on the leaves of the maples.

From another bedroom, a mumbled question. One of the children talking in her sleep, she knew.

************************************************************

Robert sat there at a round table in the McDonald's feeling foolish as the place began to hum with the noon-hour crowd from the high school. He fumbled in his pocket for his cigarette pack, lit one, then nervously butted it out on his coffee saucer, noting there was no ashtray, belatedly recalling the 'no-smoking' sign posted over the entrance. Wondered where the hell she was, and just as the thought crossed his mind again, she stepped through the door, looked around tentatively, waved at a table of her peers, then spotted him and pushed her way through the throng. He watched her approach with an unaffected appraisal he usually reserved for strange women. But this honey-haired girl with the high cheek bones and sensuous mouth was his daughter. He shifted uneasily - what was the matter with him?

She plunked herself unceremoniously into the seat opposite his, shrugged her bag from her shoulder and sat there, appraising him, it seemed, as coldly as he had done her. "Well?" she prodded.

"Can I get something for you?" he offered.
"No", she waved his offer aside.
"Colleen ..." He cleared his throat ... "How are you?"
"Fine", she said, flipping the ends of her hair. "Have a look, don't I look fine?"
"Yes", he agreed. "You look fine. But you know what I mean. I guess I really want to know about your mother. How is she, your mother?"
"My mother?" she mimicked. "Oh, you mean your wife, how's your deserted wife? Gee Dad, she's fine too, just fine. Can't keep track of all the guys trying to hustle her. The other day she got a movie offer she just can't refuse. And a distant relative popped off, leaving her a fortune."

Robert dropped his eyes from his daughter's derision-flecked green eyes, those same eyes that had fascinated him in Irene, when they were younger and he'd thought that her looks and submission might be enough.... And then, even he couldn't lay the ghost of her father tossing her out, her desperation. He'd been trapped. "Try to understand", he pleaded softly, knowing how useless it probably was, but hoping anyway.

"Understand? Sure Dad, don't give it another thought. The power of the pussy, isn't it? She's a tender young thing, isn't she? At least I've been told."

"It's not like that at all!" he hissed, looking surreptitiously around, hoping no one had heard, embarrassed by her crudeness. "Look, I love the girl ... woman", he hastily corrected himself, flushing. "You don't know what a hell it was, living with your mother all those years. When you kids were young, it was always for the kids that we had to sacrifice - me anyway - when I said I wanted to leave. Well, now you're old enough to be understanding. I've got my own life..." God, that whining inflection in his voice, and it doesn't cut any ice with her, she's still sneering.

"Well, live it!" she snapped, throwing back her head. Then, lowering her voice: "You selfish bastard. You took everything from her, left her an empty shell. You know what it's like to live with her, see her drag herself around? She woke us up last night, moaning and crying in her sleep, mumbling something about someone's child, about how she loves you. And you come creeping around like this, saying "how's your Mom?"

A hot compassion flooded him for her, for her mother. The other kids would be okay. She was most like her mother, most attached to her. No use trying to explain how Irene's cloying possessiveness, her deadly suspicions drove him crazy, all those years. The irony was that she had driven him to someone else, him looking for some relief from her, finally finding it with another woman. Hell, it was just one of those things. Marion was young, it could've been an older woman just as easily.

"Okay, I'm not going to try to convince you that I'm concerned about her, but I am. You're too young to understand what it's like to feel genuine affection for a woman, but loving another one. And I want what I've got now too badly to let you manipulate me by feelings of guilt. I miss you all, but I made my choice and I'm prepared to live with it."

"Jeeze, fine. What the hell do you want from me then?" she snapped.
"Colleen, I owe something to her too. She's pregnant now." He recoiled from the disgust he saw on her face, flushed again. "I'm not too old to start another family", he defended himself.

"Hell no!" she agreed. "You did such a great job with the last one, why not try again? You might even want to make a lifetime career of it, with your special serial talents."

"Colleen!" he said sharply, "you're an adult, behave like one. I'm trying to reason with you, trying to have a civil conversation. This is important to me."

"Sorry Dad", she said, a look of mock contrition pushing the implacable sneer off her face.

"Look" he leaned forward. "Would she be amenable to divorce? After all, it's been over a year. There's no chance I'd leave Marion. I want to marry her." He sat there, muscles taut, hoping beyond hope she'd relent, her voice lose its bite. She'd try to understand, put herself in his place, in Marion's place; realize that her mother was sick in hanging onto a dead issue like their marriage.

"You want me to help you?" she laughed incredulously. Then she rose, grabbed her bag and snarled "rot in hell, dear Dad, rot in hell."

He watched her angry exit, sighed and gathered up his briefcase, cigarettes. No mistaking whose child she was.

How would he tell Marion?

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld