Echoes of Paradise
Bernadette Miller
The only place she knew was warm, dark, serene. She had no fears, no hopes nor disappointments, no disturbing thoughts. Suspended in the womb, she was neither awake nor asleep; as her brain developed, she floated in and out of consciousness, soothed by her mother’s heartbeat. The steady rhythmical pumping became familiar and natural: a throbbing lullaby affirming the permanence of her peaceful world. Later, she felt the cushioned movements of her mother’s body, but that occasionally bumpy ride also became familiar and natural. Slowly she grew bigger. When she became aware of appendages, she sucked a thumb or kicked her legs. Convinced of eternal protection, she felt utterly secure in her nine-month paradise.
Then, one morning, she was rudely wrenched from that idyllic place. She screwed up her face in protest, but she was as helpless as someone caught up in a tidal wave and whirled toward an unknown destination. She was heaved down, down, down in what seemed an endless journey until hands gripped her head and eased her out into a harsh scene of blinding lights and abrupt movements, her undeveloped eyesight causing her to shut her eyes tightly against the glare. As air rushed into her lungs, she screamed her protest, while the nurse smiled, commenting, “What a lovely baby!” and the doctor cut the cord that had anchored her to that other tranquil world. She continued wailing her complaint. Finally, wrapped in a soft warm blanket she quieted, and was placed beside the smiling face of her mother.
“What will you call her?” the nurse said, smoothing the blanket.
“Sarah,” the mother said. Tentatively she touched the baby’s cheek. “Daniel and I want to name her after my mother whom we adored. She...passed away last year from cancer...only fifty-six. She taught the Torah and encouraged me to teach and attend synagogue, which is how I met my husband.”
The nurse nodded in sympathy. “Well, Mrs. Rothberg, you have a fine, healthy baby. You’ll be able to take her home soon.”
“Yes, soon,” the mother said, her face suffused by a joyful smile.
Sarah heard the odd sounds, muffled since her inner ears were still filled with liquid. After her isolation in the womb, a barrage of experiences suddenly confronted her. Such difficult decisions hadn’t existed before, and she yearned to return to her former Eden. She began to cry.
“It’s all right, Eva said soothingly. She stroked the flushed face of her first-born. “Oh, Sarah, my beautiful baby. I love you very much.”
The soft hand stroking Sarah engulfed her, comforting her like the amniotic fluid sloshing against that blissful place from which she’d emerged. For the first time since birth, she felt safe. Although blurry in appearance, her mother seemed protective, as Sarah had felt protected in that other place.
Eva snuggled close. Reassured by the warmth, Sarah lay calmly during these pleasant happenings, while her mother described the Westchester nursery.
By the time they left New York Hospital, Sarah still felt reassured, wrapped snugly in the blanket and held against her mother’s body as they walked to Sarah’s bespectacled father, his beard tinged with gray, waiting with a wide grin beside the Mercedes.
Her mother, swathed in woolen cape against the April chill, rocked her, whispering, “My precious one.”
“She’s so...fragile.” Daniel gingerly uncovered the blanket to touch again his first child, who burst into tears. “Was it something I said?” he tried to joke, his narrow forehead creasing in a worried frown.
“She might be hungry.” Eva smiled at her tiny, puckered duplicate. “Hush, hush, darling, we’ll be home in a few minutes.”
Comforted by her mother rocking her, Sarah enjoyed the speeding car that reminded her of those bumpy rides in that other place.
But in the Tudor-style house behind the tall, wrought-iron fence, before she could adjust to the pink nursery upstairs with its polka-dot curtains and huge, stuffed panda, voracious hunger gnawed at her insides; she felt intense gas pains, and more hunger, abetted by loneliness until her mother picked her up and fed her the bottle, changed her diaper, or simply held and rocked her. At such times Sarah vaguely remembered her former peace when no arduous trials had faced her, and a yearning washed over her. She cried her grief until comforted by her mother’s tender embrace.
A month later, she began recognizing Eva’s dark eyes and black curls, the silver Star of David hanging against the crisp white blouse. Every day Sarah grew stronger. She began reaching toward the mobile angels dangling provocatively above her crib, hung there because her father, pious but not orthodox, had thought moving objects might hone a child’s intelligence. Sarah stared, fascinated, at the swaying angels, though their cleverly eluding her grasp frustrated her. She felt unprepared for this new world fraught with unexpected danger, like the irritating object buzzing around her cheek that bit her. Her chubby arms waved in defense, but the fly, too, eluded her grasp.
Learning to stand and walk, she decided she liked this exciting activity. Now, finally, she could climb onto a chair and reach things; delicious, gooey things like the strawberry jam her mother had forgotten on the butcher block kitchen counter. Licking the jar, she then wiped her sticky hands on her cotton jumper and watched, pleased, as the white metamorphosed into a pretty pink. She happily spent her time opening and closing doors and drawers, pushing and pulling everything within her grasp. Her new world seemed filled with exotic, mysterious things--wall plates from Israel, the mantel’s candled menorah, the door jamb’s metal mezzuzah--that whenever possible she stuck into her mouth for thorough inspection. She explored her toys by pulling off limbs or examining the stuffing.
One afternoon, spotting shredded panda on the white living room carpet, her mother shook her head and said, “Oh, that Sarah loves to rip up every toy we give her.”
“She’s investigating because she wants to understand,” Daniel said from behind his paper-strewn desk. “I remember growing up in San Francisco, my father explaining the books in his synagogue office.”
“Maybe our darling will grow up to be a lawyer, like her daddy,” Eva replied, “or perhaps a rabbi like her granddaddy.” She laughed. “That is, if the school is left intact.”
Sarah, looking up from beside the tufted white sofa, clapped her hands and joined the laughter. She loved to laugh because the happy feeling seemed to recreate that sense of well-being she’d felt before, though memories of that other place had faded into fragmented sensations of comfort and security.
Learning to talk, though, pleased her most of all. Sarah loved words, loved to roll them on her tongue. “Ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma,” she repeated to herself in the backyard playpen under the spreading oak. “Da-da, da-da.” After awhile she discovered that words could be useful weapons against danger in these unpredictable surroundings. Sometimes at night, when she lay in bed and a thunderstorm rumbled its fierce warning, fluttering the polka-dot curtains with fright, Sarah would say aloud, “Mama,” and suddenly, without any effort, she conjured up the image of her mother nearby, smiling and hugging her, so that the words themselves became substitutes for desires. Intrigued by this new concept, she repeated new words she’d learned, conjuring up, like magic, the images that satisfied her wishes: milk, potty, tv.
But it seemed that no matter how thoroughly Sarah investigated, her new world kept surprising her, like the Sunday her father brought home a puppy. Curious, she eyed the black ball of fur raising its front paws as high as possible against his new master’s trousers.
In the parqueted foyer, her father stooped to pet the puppy. “Sarah, honey, come get acquainted with your birthday gift.”
She reached over to touch it, but it suddenly leaped at her, stuck out its tongue, and licked her cheek. It was pleasant, not a stinging experience as the fly had been. She smiled, then giggled, rolling onto the carpet as the pink tongue insisted on licking her nose and ears.
“Well, I bet you two will become great friends,” her father said, laughing.
Sarah and Mr. Sam did become great friends; she confided all her thoughts in the pup who followed her from room to room, snuggling under her chair during meals in the formal dining room, and rarely straying from her side. Unlike that other place, this world she’d been thrust into offered tantalizing pleasures, and yet, despite her earnest explorations, she felt she’d never comprehend it. Her hopes rose and fell. She developed unpleasant fears, especially after being scolded for reasons she couldn’t fathom, like her running past the manicured lawn and opened gate to inspect an old, abandoned house across the road.
“Sarah, never leave without telling me!” her mother shouted, face contorted with worry. “You must obey us or you’ll be killed by a passing car!”
Despite her mother hugging her to comfort her tears, the scolding had terrorized Sarah. Afterwards, in her quilted bed, she couldn’t nap, but stared past the curtains, fearful that for unintentional naughty behavior, her parents might abandon her, like that old house. Then, overwhelmed by despair, she fleetingly recalled her former home, not the place itself but the residual sensations: how cozy and serene she’d felt without these tormenting problems, and that yearning she’d had at birth returned, though she couldn’t define it.
When school started, her mother drove her to the columned brick building a mile distant. In the small classroom, surrounded by curious children, Eva bent to smooth the black shiny hair, and said with a hug, “You’ll be in good hands here, darling. I’ll see you later.”
Sarah felt shy at first but she soon made friends. She enjoyed playing with them and the ball of fur that had ripened into a basset hound who growled if strangers approached her. In her back yard, she’d pulled at Mr. Sam’s droopy ears, and he shook his head goodnaturedly under the oak. Mr. Sam let her do anything she wanted; he kept following her and listening attentively to her conversation. Finally, Eva forced him to stay home when Sarah was old enough to catch the bus to school.
By now, Sarah enjoyed her familiar environment, the memory of her former home totally vanished. But during those moments when anxiety overwhelmed her, like the time her father broke his leg skiing on vacation in Colorado and Sarah realized with a shock her parents’ vulnerabilities, she again felt that inexpressible yearning she couldn’t tell anyone, not even herself, because after so much time elapsing, she’d forgotten exactly what the yearning was.
Which is perhaps why, when her parents discussed something called “God,” their tone hushed and reverent as they celebrated the Passover seder, Sarah sensed they must be referring to that yearning she’d kept to herself for so long after leaving her former paradise. Afterwards, in her bed she whispered, “God,” and conjured up the recent scene of her parents with their contented smiles. “God,” Sarah repeated, her imagination focused intently on her parents’ happy expressions, and she, too, felt happy. Once more, as in her remote beginning, she felt no fears, no disappointments, no disturbing thoughts.
Later, much later when a teenager, she had not even a trace of remembrance of the warm blissful place that had been her first home. She had only the word, “God,” which seemed to satisfy that inexpressible yearning, bringing her a sense of peace, though she never knew why.
