Wanda slivers open the door, admitting the light Adela’s shied on in violation, the hallway streaming its perfectly acceptable known into the darkness of a room at midnight past, framed in drapery that resembles anything sweet and girly pink: the taste of sunrisen marzipan, of icecream melting, cotton candy or saltwater taffy, and then set high enough on the wall that He couldn’t crawl out of it, and He could crawl, and also walk, especially when hungry like always, the window’s open and outside lights from the street mingle with the hallway light in through the doorway, in their diffusions dusting sleep across the still face of the eightdayold.
Wanda rushes up to Him, futz the tip of the toes exposed, uncovers His stomach, without navel, it’s said: in later accounts, as if the cord had been attached to His tongue instead, its own limb. Wanda soothes at His beard, smoothes down a stray hair of His moustache. And then, says His name, what His name would’ve been had He lived to be named tomorrow in the midst of His family, friends, and professional others, sanctified amongst the trays of fish, basketed loaves, and cases of liquor; held high above the assembled by hands their winish fingers and mouths reeking of herrings; what His name is still: as it’s said, Hanna and Israel had settled on Benjamin Ben Israel Israelien, or so — it’s been passed down — Hanna had told only Wanda surviving upon her return from the hospital, in the course of conversation idled in the kitchen, over a soup said they’d intended to name Him Benjamin, to be foreshortened to Ben after a paternal relative irretrievably distant, other relatives’ names apparently having been gendertwisted or otherwise incarnated by twelve daughters preceding; Benjamin the namesake one of the only relatives not represented among the portraits hung on the wall of the stairwell down to the basement, however finished it might have been claimed. Security Officer Bundy appears behind Wanda, holding Adela in the doorway, too close for the light. Wanda turns, bears Adela and the officer out on her breasts, then turns to pronounce Him again. Benjamin, attempting to lift Him up in her arms, Benjamin…as weak as raked leaves, stormshook, the floor trembling a pile a burn in that breast — it’s impossible; the strain, the weight, that and He’s soiled Himself, slippery gripped in a flow from His sex.
Benjamin, Wanda says again, that hot mouth opening up inside of her, as if speaking her life into His.
Though, something’s amiss. Whether an unpropitious disposition of furnishings despite what’s been paid in consultancy fees, or a draft of winter in through the opened window to make amid the sheets, pneumonia — or maybe the scalding knob of the door sealed shut to her palm, Adela singed.
Benjamin, He isn’t crying.
What else to do but check the diaper, not yet rag material, an old shirt of Israel’s — soiled in blood, Wanda’s thinking, dirtied in guts.
As she goes to peel the shirt from Him, she’s recalled — there’s a mush from the roof, a great tearing of hooves.
As she turns to Him again, He’s scratching at eyes, kicking His legs out, and tearing.
The Gatekeeper mandated to his hut, dumbly wondering of Misses Herring, who wouldn’t have gone to bed without her brushing and combing — if he should remind her he thinks, use the Development Line, phone her up and say only, Scrub…just then, his extension exploding.
Eight members of the Maintenance Staff, they’d been picking huge wax out of the Development Menorah, anonymously donated, about to be yearly retired, when their radios go staticky mad.
A switch flicked.
And lampposts turn searchlight — vigilance…the perimeter’s secured by a force that’d make any Third World proud, or jealous.
It’s amid these cries and officialdom’s echoes that He calls to her His first word — a word first whispered, then spoken, then shouted out from the halo of gut. He screams, Ima, which is the language for Mom, what Hanna’d preferred to be called.
To lick His own tongue…
