At the gate, I paused to watch as she straightened up to catch her breath. Seeing her face made me tremble, but it was not the face I had struggled so hard to recall. Her hair had become white and streaked with iron, and the flesh of her thin cheeks was wrinkled.
Perspiration made her forehead glisten.
She caught sight of me and stared back.
I wanted to look away, to turn back down the street, but I couldn't—not after having come so far.
I would just ask directions, pretending I was lost in a strange neighborhood.
Seeing her had been enough. But all I did was stand there waiting for her to do something first.
And all she did was stand there and look at me.
"Do you want something?"
Her voice, hoarse, was an unmistakable echo down the corridors of memory.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
My mouth worked, I know, and I struggled to speak to her, to get something out, because in that moment I could see recognition in her eyes.
This was not at all the way I wanted her to see me. Not standing there in front of her, dumbly, unable to make myself understood.
But my tongue kept getting in the way, like a huge obstruction, and my mouth was dry.
Finally, something came out.
Not what I had intended (I had planned something soothing and encouraging, to take control of the situation and wipe out all the past and pain with a few words) but all that came out of my cracked throat was:
"Maaa…"
With all the things I had learned—in all the languages I had mastered—all I could say to her, standing on the porch staring at me, was, "Maaaa." Like a dry-mouthed lamb at the udder.
She wiped her forehead with the back of her arm and frowned at me, as if she could not see me clearly.
I stepped forward, past the gate to the walk, and then toward the steps.
She drew back.
At first, I wasn't sure whether or not she really recognized me, but then she gasped:
"Charlie!…" She didn't scream it or whisper it.
She just gasped it as one might do coming out of a dream.
"Ma…" I started up the steps.
"It's me…"
My movement startled her, and she stepped backwards, kicking over the bucket of soapy water, and the dirty suds rushed down the steps.
"What are you doing here?"
"I just wanted to see you… talk to you…"
Because my tongue kept getting in my way, my voice came out of my throat differently, with a thick whining tone, as I might have spoken a long time ago.
"Don't go away," I begged.
"Don't run away from me."
But she had gone inside the vestibule and locked the door.
A moment later I could see her peering at me from behind the sheer white curtain of the door window, her eyes terrified.
Behind the window her lips moved soundlessly.
"Go away!
Leave me alone!"
Why?
"Who was she to deny me this way?
By what right did she turn away from me?
"Let me in!
I want to talk to you!
Let me in!"
I banged on the door against the glass so hard it cracked, and the crack spread a web that caught my skin for a moment and held it fast.
She must have draught I was out of my mind and had come to harm her.
She let go of the outer door and fled down the hallway that led into the apartment.
I pushed again. The hook gave way and, unprepared for the sudden yielding, I fell into the vestibule, off balance.
My hand was bleeding from the glass I had broken, and not knowing what else to do, I put my hand into my pocket to prevent the blood from staining her freshly scrubbed linoleum.
I started in, past the stairs I had seen so often in my nightmares.
I had often been pursued up that long, narrow staircase by demons who grabbed at my legs and pulled me down into the cellar below, while I tried to scream without voice, strangling on my tongue and gagging in silence. Like the silent boys at Warren.
The people who lived on the second floor—our landlord and landlady, the Meyers—had always been kind to me.