On the first night, it was nightlights with which to illuminate their hallways on their ways to the toilet to pee out their shimmery gold; on the second night, waterbeds all around to replace their old, uncomfortable, unsafe, bunkbedding units; then the third, ferns potted and other plants like aloe, say, and flowers like irises, symbolizing the trees Israel had purchased for them out in Palestein, a transaction made certain with the seals of certificates stating as much and printed on the paper that is their rough flesh; on the fourth, new lamps and new fixtures and sconces — the better to read by, the better to be read to by; and then, upon the fifth, stuffed birds and fish, a herd or pack only to become increased like sands and stars on the next night, the sixth, on which it’d been stuffedanimals again this time like lions and bears they beat each other with on their heads then ripped the limbs off them and tails and eyes, ears, and noses and slept with them near (except for Liv, for her it’d been the renting of a horse, a pony, really, and leased on monthly installments, to be stabled just three exits north, free to be ridden on weekends, whenever else she was free after school for Hanna to drive, Israel to pick up); upon the seventh, pillows and sheets and comforters both solid mature and youthfully cartoonily patterned, new bedding on which they would finally rest watery-eyed, swollen with appreciative lap; and lastly upon the eighth…hymn, they forget. After the litany of creation in its lights, water, leaves of grass, fish and meat, they could care less what came next, waiting all the while for what they really desired, which they knew just as well as their parents did would be posthumous: whatever it was the kinder nextdoor and at school had gotten, and so how they had eventually to get that, too, come the start of school after break and then, later — upon the longer, phantomly plagued ninth night and beyond, the wandering night soon to consume with its darkness and oil be damned — to receive into their midst a brother, their greatest gift gotten, or so Israel would say to their disappointment, or so Hanna would have them believe.
To receive is to want, it’s been said, that to give is to ask.
As for Him, what if anything did He Himself get, save parents and sisters and life itself, for this His first holiday: what booty, what bounty, what price?
In one tradition, it’s only a memory, coming early, In the beginning belated…a present, a past — even before the birth, this a life prior to the laden table, all trauma’s to be repressed, to a basement ever lower, and even less finished. It’s a memory that’s gifted into His stream, winging around Him with veiny ribbons and bows a week before birth, two weeks prior to the death of His mother He’s inside, awaiting arrival, outliving a Messiah’s gestation, nine months, nine moons, a sunstilled Biblical day, only a moment — until He falls through the gate no longer strait, through Hanna’s lips wilting. His isn’t sleep in the womb, isn’t awake, neither dreaming, that was a previous life. A thrum or sensation, what He remembers as either, or both, as blood through His now bodied soul, a movement, a rush: it’d been a knock, there was a distinct rap at the door, at first, it’s a given…might’ve been a knock on the frontdoor, or at the backdoor, whether it’s at the porchdoors exterior to the interior doors of the porches, or, improbably, at the garagedoor, the exterior door to the basement perhaps wholly unfinished, or else upon any one of the who knows how many, too many of them, interior doors, including those of the showers and the toilet stalls’ sliding partitions. Benjamin’s not about to know which, how could He, prisoner of this swell, trapped behind the fleshdoor, the stomach’s high and thick wall. As per our sages, however, it’s at the frontdoor, and it’s the knock of the elderly, the frail, a wizened mensch who’s been denied so many times that three or so wouldn’t seem so terrible, would they, a mensch named Nitz this night of nights, none too witzful, how he makes do: he knocks onto His heart — a clock caged in His rising ribs, an alarm, and Benjamin’s moaning, to suck at both His grown toes.
Though once such suckling is over and done with, only interpretation is left — the life of the lips without nipple.
