Still, the drawers aren’t all shut, the cabinet, the cupboard, Hanna stops reminding herself, to remind at her daughters — whatever you open you — place the breadplates, breadknives, the huge knife for the challah, handled in arm. Again, there’s an order: the plate for the fish atop the plate for the salad, atop the dinnerplate, then, with the soupbowl, dessertplate and saucer and cups for the coffee or tea to be brought in from the kitchen. Patience, is urged. The plates are set out, aired in a stack. Kinder scrape away sauce that’d dried along a rim, had hardened, though all the plates and the bowls had already been through the dishwasher once, twice, three times or more, cycles of cycles — it’s old, Hanna’d say, about the dishwasher rumbling, rabidly slobbing its soap — almost time for a new one, an upgrade for their anniversary, only if she asks first, then orders herself. And, nu, there’s an order to the dishwashing, too: handwash first, then dishwasher, and then a drying, in threes. Freshly washed then washed again and dried servingplates line the range, atop the stove he says atop the oven she says through which their guests’ll enter tonight. Hanna’s incredulous; you’d be, too. These hands, their wrinkles, this ring — maybe it’s the solution I’m using, you think?
An order, a door is opened, glasses are removed, the door is shut and is glass. Everyone gets waterglasses, only the grownups get wineglasses, all get cups for the blessing of wine later to be poured into glasses then drunk. A glass door’s opened, glasses removed, Hanna shuts it — to the right, to the right’s the reminder. For Kiddush, said to bless the fruit of the vine, sanctifies our crushing of bunches and clusters, makes holy our stompstompstomping. Annoyance. Insistence. Josephine returns to the kitchen, to another cabinet, from it removes the cups, hers and her sisters’ all from a tray, extras for the guests from the shelf above, then from that below the rest — to the left, remember, your other left…Hanna, tired of reminding, with a last reprimand — peace — exiles her daughters upstairs.
Daughters rush to their rooms, the rooms of their own and those rooms shared together depending on age, want, need, habit, lay out their just ironed, folded blouses and skirts, which is Wanda, upon their dressers and beds, pull pleats straight, air out the give inside pressed, wrinkleless pleats, wash their faces at sinks, other faces of hands are washed as they wash their faces with them then swab gargle mint pimple potion, they throw water at each other, scream at one another until Hanna shouts loudly to stop it up there, stomps a foot twice on the tile, rings the kitchen sink with a ladle dried now dirtied, they stop, step into their dresses and skirts, zip each other up and thumb buttons, then stand in line according to an age that corresponds to their heights in the hall and arrange hair in the mirror, littlest ones aren’t able to even reflect themselves, though they pretend to. Hanna’d put the flowers brought by last week’s guests into vases and into the vases she’d poured water from the vases of the week before last and the flowers, they’d wilted and died under the shadow of the kinder’s schoolwork, redletter tests and popquizzes aced, fingerpaint smudge, cutouts and crayon portraits of Ima, Aba, & Me that flap from the wall when doors or that of the oven are opened and shut — there’ll be new flowers tonight, reassures. She notices a photograph of herself that she hates hanging lopsided off at the far sun of the wall, makes her think to stomp another foot, straighten the floor. Or else, to accept disarray. Embrace mess. Exalt imperfection. Too much, every week. Hanna can barely remember her tired. Exhausted, more like pregnant again.
Rubina, upstairs and annoyed, frustrated, goddamn it. She’s in her room that’s hers alone trying to make up the bed she hasn’t yet shared with anyone else. This is what she was told once, never told again, it’s a rule, an order unspoken, old enough she should know better by now: Make your bed!
But the sheets always come off. Rather, the bed is always coming off, up from under the sheets.
Off, up, under: enough that one never stays on or off the other; the two rarely, never, commingle in perfection; she hates it. She’s always kneeling on one edge and stretching the sheet, fitted, over another edge whether opposite or diagonal it can’t, won’t, reach because she’s kneeling on that very edge that would give it enough slack, enough sheet, fitted, to fit, perfectly, the sheet, flat, also mussed, lying in a pile at her feet, whether on the bed or off, massed forgotten on the floor, along with her blanket, or comforter, whichever, what’s the diff.
