Three Sundays

by Penelope Weiss

First Sunday. Ten-year-old Lydia was sitting by the window overlooking 76th Street. The sun was striped by the metal of the fire escape, and the Third Avenue El roared by every few minutes. Aunts, uncles, cousins, even Grandma were all talking at once. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Samuel sat on the couch next to Grandma. Uncle Don and Aunt Sadie sat in the two soft armchairs. Bella, Lydia’s mother, sat on Grandma’s bed in the front room, looking at Lydia. Aunt Hildy was in the kitchen chopping carrots. Zoltan, Lydia’s father, sat by himself on a straight-backed chair. He had turned on the lamp next to the chair and was writing in a little notebook..

Lydia remembered a story her mother had told her about her own childhood. It was 1920. Bella, her mother, was five years old, playing outside her building on Rutgers Slip on the Lower East Side. A little boy came up to her and said, “You killed Jesus.” Her mother looked up and said, “Who’s Jesus?” The little boy ran away.

If Grandma had stayed in Russia, would Lydia’s mother have been born, would Lydia have been born? Maybe Grandma wouldn't have lived to marry Grandpa Chaim, to have children. Maybe she would have been killed at the Winter Palace in 1905 or in a pogrom or in a concentration camp.

“Lydia, come and help me peel the potatoes,” said Aunt Hildy.

After lunch Bella beckoned to the cousins. They sat on the floor in the front room. Some sparrows twittered on the window sill and flew off toward Third Avenue.

“Look at the sparrows on the fire escape,” Bella said. “How they chatter to each other and then fly away.”

“Do birds speak Yiddish?” asked cousin Marvin.

“I don’t think so,” said Bella.

“What language do the birds speak?” asked cousin Naomi.

“Bird language.”

“What about parrots?” Lydia asked.

“Parrots can speak human languages,” said Bella, “but I’m not sure they understand them.”

As the afternoon sun disappeared into the East River, Grandma said, "Time to go home.”

"No," said Marvin.

"Next week," said Bella. Grandma hugged Bella and Bella bent down and put her cheek against Grandma’s. Lydia hugged them both. The cousins and the aunts and uncles all hugged and kissed each other and walked down the stairs to the street, except for Aunt Hildy, who lived with Grandma. Grandma waved to them from the window.

On the bus ride home through Central Park, Lydia sat between her parents.

“I’ve been thinking about mystical parrots,” said Bella. “What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know. It’s too mystical for me.”

At dinner her parents continued their conversation. The table was in a corner of the living room, under the grandfather clock. The brass pendulum swung back and forth. Lydia sat quietly and ate her boiled beef and potatoes.

“Somehow your mystical parrot makes me think of Kierkegaard,” said Zoltan.

“A 19th-century philosopher-parrot?”

“Yes, a human parrot who helped give philosophy a bad name.”

“In the West, you mean.”

“Yes, of course in the West. In the East, philosophy is also psychology, not separate from life.”

“Psychology has a bad name, too.”

“Again in the West. That's because we’re afraid of Freud.”

“What about Jung?”

“He’s not so scary.”

“So the Jewish psychologist is more frightening than the Christian one?”

“Yes, because his truth is more frightening.”

“And what truth is that?”

“That we’re all alone.”

“Lydia, do you understand what we're saying?” Bella asked.

“No,” said Lydia.

Later, when Bella came to say good night to Lydia, she sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Lydia’s hair.

“Shall I tell you a story?”

“Yes,” said Lydia.

One winter afternoon, a little girl named Lydia was taking a nap on the couch. A small spaceship made of stars hissed to a stop beside her. She got in. The ship shot through the window and flashed across the sky. A little while later she felt she could eat the constellations and some tuna fish sandwiches, too. But there were no diners in the sky.

Finally the spaceship stopped on a wide street in front of a building guarded by two stone lions.
Lydia got out of the spaceship. Then she noticed a package tied with string and wrapped in brown paper leaning against one of the lions. Her name, Lydia, was lettered in blue crayon across the package. She opened it. Inside was a fat tuna fish sandwich. She nestled against the lion and ate. Then she folded the paper and string into a tiny square and put them in her pocket.

Suddenly, cracked and stony, came the voices of the lions: “We’re hungry.”

“Oh, no,” Lydia said, “was that your tuna fish sandwich? But it had my name on it.”
And the lions said, “We have many names, child, and yours is one of them. But don’t be afraid, we’ll eat later.”

Then the lions stretched and got up slowly from their stone beds. Lydia walked with them up the long staircase to the library. There were so many books there, Lydia knew she could never read them all. She didn’t want to leave, but when the sun came up the lions said it was time to go home.
“Come again soon,” the lions said as she got into the spaceship.

The trip home seemed short. Soon she was back on the couch and her mother was waking her up for supper. She wasn’t very hungry, but she tried to eat all her vegetables. Later, when she got ready for bed, she found the piece of brown paper in her pocket.

“What happened to the string?” asked Lydia.

“The string must have fallen out on the way home. She smoothed the paper out and put it in her diary, where it is to this day.

“Sleep tight, Lydia. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“I won’t. Good night, Mommy.”

* * *

Second Sunday. On the bus, Lydia sat between her parents, as usual. In the park, the mica in the rough-cut stone walls flashed in the morning light.

“Now I’m thinking about parrots and lions,” said Bella. “Lions who want to be birds…”

“That must mean something,” said Zoltan.

Everyone was late getting to Grandma’s. The cousins played a fast game of Monopoly. Bella looked at them and said, “Lydia, would you like to tell a story?”

“Okay,” said Lydia and sat down on a cushion next to Bella.

Everyone was quiet. Then Lydia began.

It was November, 1945, right after the war. I was three years old. Uncle Don’s submarine docked in New York, and Uncle Don invited us all to have Thanksgiving dinner on the ship.
When we got to the pier, Uncle Don came out of the sub in his uniform and tipped his hat. We walked down the gangplank. The portholes looked like eyes. We went through the passageways. Uncle Don stooped at each entrance.

In the middle of the ship a long table was set for Thanksgiving dinner. The whole family was there. Uncle Don sat down at the head of the table, like he does at our house under the grandfather clock.

Uncle Don stood up. His hat touched the ceiling. He picked up his glass. “To us,” he said. “To the Thanksgiving family.” Then he sat down. We all lifted our glasses. Then we ate everything."

Uncle Don coughed. Lydia looked up at Bella.

“Thank you, Lydia, for such a lovely story.”

Zoltan pointed to the sparrows on the fire escape. “Yiddish, the language that refuses to die,” said Zoltan. “The language of forest demons and lions who turn into birds.”

“The ancient people didn’t speak Yiddish, did they?” asked Aunt Hildy from the kitchen. She was chopping celery and carrots for chicken soup.

“Don’t be so literal, Hildy,” said Zoltan. “The language was there, waiting to be created.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hildy.

“Don’t be sorry, Hildy,” said Uncle Don. “If the spirit moves you…”

“You know, Lydia,” said her father, “Uncle Don was just a sailor on that submarine. Not the captain.”

“Zoltan, don’t,” said Hildy. She put down the chopping knife and wiped her hands on her apron.

Then Grandma said, “Time to eat,” and everyone rushed to pull out the old wooden dining table and find the proper number of chairs.

* * *

Third Sunday. “Are there other birds besides sparrows in the city?” asked Marvin, as he watched Naomi and Lydia play Monopoly.

“Pigeons, of course. But I know how to make a hanger-bird,” said Zoltan. He put his notebook on the chair and went to the closet. He pulled a wire hanger from the rack and faced the children. Then he bent the wire hanger so the curved top looked like a bird’s head and the rest of the hanger looked like a bird’s body. Bella and Zoltan looked at each other. Zoltan put the hanger-bird on the little desk next to his chair and sat down. He held his notebook in one hand and moved the lamp with the other. A little pool of light shone on the back of his chair and on the right side of his face.

“I think it’s time for us to go home. Marvin, would you like to have supper with us and maybe stay over?” said Zoltan.

Bella shot a look at Aunt Sadie. Aunt Sadie and Uncle Don nodded to each other.

“Marvin, would you like to visit with Lydia tonight?” said Don.

“Yes,” said Marvin.

Half an hour later Lydia and Marvin sat on the bus, looking out as the park rushed by in the dusk. Zoltan and Bella sat next to them. Bella looked sad. Zoltan looked like Mary Poppins. It was something about his mouth.

At supper Marvin ate his potatoes and his peas. He left a little of his flank steak. Lydia ate her potatoes and her peas, and all her steak. Marvin and Lydia helped clear the dishes and went to play in Lydia’s room. Marvin wanted to play with Lydia’s blue yo-yo. Lydia filled a large glass bowl with water and dropped some pebbles into it. The pebbles looked huge and the colors glowed in the water. Lydia and Marvin lay on the floor and looked into the bowl. They didn’t talk much.

In the living room Zoltan sat in his armchair and read his notebook. Bella sat on the couch. She folded her hands in front of her and closed her eyes.

Velma and the Cossack

by Penelope Weiss

Once upon a time there was a Cossack named Anatoly. On this particular day he sat in his house and drank vodka until the sun was low in the sky. Then he got on his horse. He rode east and he rode west; finally he stopped at the first Jewish village he could find. At first he tried to get off his horse but then he decided not to. He yelled that he was a very bad man and the Jews should be afraid of him. And they were, except for one little girl named Velma.

Velma was playing a game by herself outside her house. She had gathered some branches from the nearby wood and had laid them out on the ground in a special pattern. Then she hopped in the spaces between the branches, singing a little song she had made up called “Hopping in the Spaces.” Her mother watched her from inside the house as she prepared supper. Velma had always been a puzzle to her.
No one else was outside just then, but everyone could hear the Cossack. He swung around and saw Velma. Slowly his horse trotted toward the child. Velma's mother came to the door, but she didn’t know what to do. Velma looked up at the Cossack. The horse moved under his rider. The Cossack made his face stern and soldierly. He saw the little girl far below him; she seemed to be hopping from one foot to the other.

“Stop that hopping,” he said.

“I'll stop hopping if you stop swaying,” she said.

“You are telling me to stop swaying?”

“Yes,” said Velma. “You might fall off your horse.”

“And what would you do then?”

“Well, I might help you up.”

“Or...?”

“If you said nasty things to me I might run away.”

“You should be afraid of me, little Jew,” said the Cossack.

“Why?”

“Because I might hurt you.”

“Why?”

“Because...”

He pulled one foot out of the stirrup and lifted his leg so his weight was on the other foot. Then he froze.
The little girl looked right through him. The Cossack fell off his horse into the street. He wasn’t hurt, even though he was lying in the gutter.

He tried to get up, but his legs and arms had disappeared.
Velma came up to the Cossack. Even though she was quite small, she picked the Cossack up and put him back on his horse.

“I'm going inside now,” she said. “You’ll be all right once you get back on the road.”

The Cossack couldn’t speak, but his arms and legs had reappeared. His horse turned and trotted very slowly back to the road.

Velma picked up the branches from the ground and stacked them next to the kitchen door. She brushed her hands on her coat and looked at her mother, who was still in the doorway.

For months afterward, Velma’s mother, and everyone else who had witnessed the encounter, tried to make sense of what had happened. But Velma said it was nothing extraordinary, and people just had to take it at that.

Velma never saw the Cossack again. When she was eighteen she told her parents she wanted to leave the village. They were against it, but they couldn’t stop her. They gave her a letter for her mother’s second cousin in Bialystok. She packed a bag, walked to the station and took the train.

For a year she worked in the dry goods store owned by her mother’s second cousin, Etta. Her best friend was Anna, Etta’s daughter. At night Velma and Anna paid someone to teach them to read and write Yiddish. One day at the store Velma met a young man named Chaim. Six months later Chaim went to America to escape the Tsar’s army. A year after that he sent Velma a ticket to America. Anna, who was also a friend of Chaim’s, went with her to the train station, but Velma never got to America, and no one ever found out what happened to her. Later that year Chaim sent Anna a ticket.

And that’s how Anna, my grandmother on my mother’s side, came to America.

The Lion-Bird

by Penelope Weiss

Although the lion was free, roaming the desert, she could not speak. She wanted the power of speech, and she prayed to the lion god to give her that power. Soon after, a storm rushed across the desert, and lightning struck the lion down.

When she awoke she saw that her sandy-colored skin had split into hundreds of blue and green stalks. Squinting her eyes she saw that her nose had become sharp and hard, and when she looked down she saw that her feet had become claws. Looking further down, she realized she was no longer walking in the yellow grass but hanging on the branch of a very tall tree. At first she became dizzy, but her feet seemed to know how to balance, so she grew calm. As she looked around, she realized that all the trees looked strange. Vines wound themselves around every trunk, and droplets of water trembled on every leaf.
“I’m a bird,” she said out loud to herself. And now that she could speak, she could tell everyone about her life in the desert. But first she had to find someone to talk to.

There were other birds, all beautiful colors and shapes. But not all of them could speak the same language, just like humans. Some birds speak a forest language, but only the Great Gray Parrot, who lives in the heart of the forest, knows all the languages. The Great Gray Parrot is a creature who has never been seen by humans. She is very old, so old she can’t remember when she was born.

The birds knew about the Great Gray Parrot, and they came to the heart of the forest to find out how to speak to each other. The Lion-Bird didn’t know about the Gray Parrot, but she wanted to explore her new home. So she jumped off the branch. Somehow she managed not to fall,  to fly between the tree trunks.

At first the Lion-Bird thought she’d follow the sun, but it was hard to tell where the sun was. First it glinted through the trees in the west. Then it glinted through the trees in the east. Then the Lion-Bird heard a humming sound that seemed to come from all around her. She flew higher, but she couldn’t find the sound. She looped back but she couldn’t find the sound. So she landed on a branch, and what did she see but a cloud of small birds beating their wings in the air. She bowed to them. The cloud bowed to her, and several very small birds fell down like leaves in a storm.

They were hummingbirds. Hummingbirds who knew the way to the Great Gray Parrot, although the Lion-Bird didn’t know that’s where they were going. But the Lion-Bird followed the cloud, and the cloud flew through the forest to the home of the Great Gray Parrot. When all the birds were assembled in front of the Great Gray Parrot, she began to speak.

Queen Helena kept her alphabet necklace in her jewel box. It was a gift, but she hadn’t worn it yet. She was sure her husband, the king, wouldn’t understand. Instead, she always wore her big ruby necklace whenever they were together, except when they were in bed, of course. She even wore the ruby to breakfast, which sometimes confused the king, whose name was Theobold.

“Why do you wear that ruby necklace to breakfast, my dear?” he asked her one morning as they drank their royal tea.

“It’s so beautiful I have to wear it.”

“Oh,” said the king. He wasn’t a quick thinker.

"Do you mind?" asked Queen Helena.

"No, not at all," said Theobold.

They continued to drink their tea.

"Maybe you could wear a different necklace one day," said the king,

“I could. Which one?"

“How about the one with the opals. You wore that once. It's very pretty.”

“You could wear it sometimes, too.”

“Kings don’t wear necklaces.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not proper.”

“We both wear crowns. Why can’t we both wear necklaces?”

“I never thought of it like that.”

"Neither did I until just now."

The next morning, when the king and queen woke up, the king went over to Helena’s jewel box on the dressing table by the bed and lifted the lid. He sat down, quite naked, at the table.

He put his hand in the box and stirred the necklaces around. He took out a string of silver letters on a silver chain and held it to the light of  the bedroom window.

"What's this one?" he said.

Helena stretched under the covers and turned around to look at him.

“Oh, that’s my alphabet necklace,” she said.

“I never saw it before,” said Theobold.

“I haven’t had it very long.”

“It’s very beautiful. Maybe I could wear it.”

“Yes, if you want to,” said Helena. Then she told Theobold how she got the necklace.

And that’s how the king started wearing the queen’s alphabet necklace.

Then it was night, and all the birds went to sleep in the trees. The Lion-Bird realized she could balance on a tree and still sleep. She slept without dreaming and when she woke up she was glad to see that the cloud of hummingbirds were nearby.

One day, when the Lion-Bird had been in the forest for about a month, the Great Gray Parrot had a sore throat and couldn't tell any stories, and the hummingbirds were asleep after a hard day of humming.
The Lion-Bird was awake, listening to the water dripping from the vines. She was thinking about the desert.

“I’ll fly over the treetops and look for the desert,” she thought to herself. “Maybe I’ll fly home.”
But she wasn’t sure how far she would have to go.

She began to fly through the forest. The trees were too close together. Soon she was lost. Then she thought, “The sky must be at the tops of the trees.” She stopped flying and landed on a branch of a very tall tree. Slowly, slowly, she began to walk up the trunk of the tree. After a while she thought she could see the sky. The branches were smaller and she was afraid she would fall, but she kept on going.

Then she saw the sky. It was blue and wide. At the top of the tree she flew straight up into the air. There was nothing to see below but the tops of trees.

“Now what?” she said to herself. A gust of warm air pushed her up, and she floated in the sky, her wings spread wide.

Soon there was another bird flying beside her. He turned his head and dipped his narrow beak in her direction.

“What bird is that?” the Lion-Bird wondered. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know anyone.”

“Don’t be afraid,” said the new bird. “I’m the Hanger-Bird. What do you need?”

“Thank-you,” said the Lion-Bird. “I’m the Lion-Bird of the Desert, and I need your help.”

“What’s the problem?” said the Hanger-Bird. He hung in the air from an invisible string. His steely wings glinted in the light.

“I want to go back to the desert, but I don’t know which way to go.”

“One thing you might do is fly higher. Then you can see the curve of the earth.”

”How will that help?”

“Well,” said the Hanger-Bird, “I’m not sure. But it always helps me to see the curve of the earth.”

“If we’re already at the top of the sky, how can we go higher?”

“I’m not sure about that either,” said the Hanger-Bird. “I guess we have to go above the sky.”

The two birds flew higher and higher until they were above the sky. It was very cold up there, colder than they could have imagined. Icicles coated their wings. They flapped their wings harder and the icicles turned into water and fell down like rain on the forest. And when they flapped their wings harder, they flew faster. And as they flew faster, they flew beyond the forest, over rivers and mountains and across the Atlantic Ocean.

They flew along the Mediterranean to Egypt, on the east. And there the Lion-Bird saw the desert. The Hanger-Bird saw the desert too. He had never seen such dry land before.

As the two birds flew above the desert, something glittered on the sand.

“What’s that?” said the Hanger-Bird. He folded his long steely wings and pointed with his narrow beak.

“I don’t see anything,” said the Lion-Bird, but she flew closer to the ground. “Oh, now I see it,” she said, and dived toward it.

“Don’t fly too fast,” said the Hanger-Bird, but he came down right behind her.

“It’s a necklace,” said the Lion-Bird as she picked it up in her beak and flew to a cliff of reddish stone. The Hanger Bird followed her.

“Let me see that,” said the Hanger-Bird.

The Lion-Bird put the necklace down on the rock. It glittered in the desert light.

“What do you think this is?” she asked.

“It looks like letters,” said the Hanger-Bird.

“What kind of letters?” said the Lion-Bird.

“Letters people write when they want to remember something.”

“What do they want to remember?”

“Recipes, thou-shalt-nots, the names of their children.”

“What should we do with this necklace?” said the Lion-Bird.

In the distance the two birds saw the white domes of a city.

“Let’s go there and find some people,” said the Hanger-Bird.

And so they flew east toward the city. One of the domes was especially beautiful, and they flew down to see it better. A woman was standing on a balcony facing west. The woman looked up and saw the two birds.

“Hello,” said the Hanger-Bird as he and the Lion-Bird landed on the balcony. The Lion-Bird couldn’t speak, since she had the necklace in her beak.

“Hello,” said the woman. “I'm Queen Helena. Who are you?”

“I’m the Hanger-Bird, and this is the Lion-Bird,” said the Hanger-Bird.

The Lion-Bird put the necklace down on the balcony. “We’re here to give you this necklace,” she said.
“It’s beautiful. Why me?”

“You’re the first person we saw,” said the Lion-Bird. The Hanger-Bird nodded. His wings glinted bronze in the morning light.

Queen Helena invited the two birds to rest in her fig garden. She sat on a bench under the oldest fig tree and put on the necklace. The Lion-Bird and the Hanger-Bird came to rest in the wading pool near her bench.

After a while the two birds whispered to each other and flew over to Queen Helena.

“Thank you, kind lady,” said the Hanger-Bird. “We must go before the sun sets. We’re on our way to the Lion-Bird’s home and it may be a long journey.”

“Yes, I know you have to leave. Thank you for the necklace. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Queen Helena,” said the birds. And they flew east, away from the setting sun.

It was a long journey, but at last they saw the place where the Lion-Bird had started life as a lion. The wind had painted the desert with its spiny breath and the Lion-Bird led the way. She remembered her everyday life, when she looked up and saw birds in the sky.

She said to the Hanger-Bird, “I'd like to be a bird in the desert. Will you stay with me?”
The Hanger-Bird thought about his sweet dark forest and the canyon of sky above. Then he thought about the Lion-Bird.

“I’ll stay with you,” he said. And the two friends wheeled about and flew around some fig trees that grew near a mighty river. And to this very day you will find the Lion-Bird and the Hanger-Bird flying together at the top of the sky.