BY FRANCES LEFKOWITZ
Copyright is held by the author.
No matter how many eggs I crack, I cannot unzip the blackness of our two selves alone together in this hot windless cottage. If there were a G-d, He might not necessarily have saved my baby or my marriage, but he would turn off this damn sun or at least whisper something obscene into the heavens to instigate a slight breeze here on earth.
Darwin, too, wondered about the existence of the supreme being, and not only because he found a method to explain evolution that did not rely on Him. It had more, I believe, to do with his daughter, whose little ears and curiosity and whose way of gladdening her father’s heart could not keep her blood vessels pumping when disease came. What kind of God would take this delightful child? Darwin asked. Darwin’s answer was, None.
And in this way I may compare myself to Darwin; I may pose the age-old question of a benevolent omniscience versus very, very dark clouds with absolutely no silver linings to them anywhere no matter how hard you bend and stretch to search.
But there is a glimmer here. My husband has begun to drink, to hit me, to go days without speaking to me; right now he is in the wooden director’s chair in front of the fan, reading his science journals, the ones that do not believe in God yet also prove Darwin wrong in all but the most basic of his ideas. He has ordered me not to speak until spoken to, and I am complying, as I know how to survive.
Imagine my daughter — she would have been a girl, she would have been named after my sister — discovering this ungodly self of the man she could not help but call Father. Imagine what else he is capable of that he has not yet revealed. Imagine all the rescuing I have saved her from, all the bruises I would have taken for her, all the bruising I would have missed.
In this heat, I am doing my part to make it hotter than hell: I turn on the stove, get the cast iron pan ready for the corn meal and the oil. I am sprinkling drops of water from my fingertips till they dance into evaporation on the black ice of the fry pan. I am doing what I’m told and I am thanking God for small ears and small favours.
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Frances Lefkowitz is the author of To Have Not: A Memoir, as well as essays and stories in Tin House, The Sun, Superstition Review and other publications. Her work has been named Notable for Best American Essays three times, and once for the Pushcart Prize. Born and raised in San Francisco, and educated on the East Coast, she now lives in Northern California.
