With a bang, our handyman pounded the side of our newly exposed chimney. Tiny black ants floated through the air, released by his hammer. A dusting of white mold sheathed the newly exposed wood. Where he’d clawed deeper, other signs of the ant’s infestation were exposed. The blackened, splintered wood had been gnawed by demons. Up, up, up the outside of our chimney the moisture ants had chewed, leaving a trail of rotted desecration.

When my husband asked our handyman, Vlad, how this amount of destruction could have happened under our noses, literally under our roof, he squinted through sun-kissed eyes. Vlad shrugged in a way I’d come to understand is Ukrainian for “Act of God.”

“Mystery,” he said. 

Vlad was a man of few words. He didn’t need a bouquet of them to deliver this answer to most of life’s questions. He showed up every morning at 9:00 a.m. with his nephew, both masked to prevent the spread of a new virus circling the globe. Nephew resembled uncle with icy blue eyes and a toughness of sinew. I had never heard the nephew speak, but I had heard Vlad sing. Once. “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” His voice so purely sweet, drifted through an open window and into my heart. I felt that muscle relax. We were most certainly in Vlad’s hands, the hands that wielded hammers and saws and drills. Please, Vlad, save our beautiful home from the mystery.

••

While Vlad and Nephew tarped our exposed chimney against predicted gale force winds, I laid on the floor of my home office waiting for my yoga teacher to materialize on the laptop’s screen. The bumpy texture of the yoga mat prickled my back. The elephant imprinted there tethered me solidly to earth. I rested easy on her back, knowing that she had mine. I chose this elephant, because like Ganesh, the Hindu God with the body and head of an elephant, she, too, was a remover of obstacles. My elephant, however, unlike Ganesh, was female. I related to her. An elephant mother will make her way over rocky terrain and through storms to look for her baby years later at the watering hole where she last saw her. And if her baby was not there, tears will slide down her wrinkled gray cheeks. 

The elephant beneath me knew I needed her support. My house was rotting. My body was aging. My daughter was gone. I couldn’t find my daughter at any watering hole, no matter how hard I tried. She’d sliced off contact first with me, then her dad, then her brother two years ago. Slices from her thin blade criss-crossed my heart. My daughter, once of many words, now spoke in a silence that deafens us all. 

Outside Vlad—my Remover of Obstacles—drilled. Nothing stopped Vlad and Nephew. Not a killing disease with the musical name Corona or the air smelling of ashtray from wild fires up and down the West Coast, filling the sky with smoke over our little town outside Seattle. The two of them crawled all over my house like ants. The drill’s metallic, insect-like whining filled my office and bore into my head. Over it, my yoga teacher’s voice startled me by saying, “Namaste.” 

I sat up. My teacher’s dark, endless eyes pierced mine through the Zoom screen. Though I am Jewish, and this world of Zen was not my native land, I so want to learn her tongue of surrender. I craved the peace that accepting the unacceptable would bring. I imagined an unwinding in my gut while awaiting the next blow.

“Begin by beating your chest,” my yoga teacher said. “Pound on it and feel the vibration.”

As if I needed more pounding in my life in order to practice surrender. A staple gun outside picked up speed with rhythmic thumps. I clenched my fingers into my palms. My nails, too long, as the shut-down had precluded manicures, cut into my flesh. I strummed fist against breastbone. I felt shock waves forcing the blood down, behind my navel where once I had connection with my daughter. Does my daughter ever feel the beating of my heart?

The elephant under me stayed steady, even with all the thudding outside and in. 

••

During savasana, dead man’s pose, I laid back on the mat. I was a dead woman to my daughter. While recorded flutes covered the pounding outside, my mind wandered to when my daughter was five/six/seven and we’d stand in line at the grocery store, pummeled by Muzak. I’d twist my daughter’s pony tail while we waited. Often, she’d look up at me with her over-sized amber eyes.

“Mommy?” she’d say.

“Baby,” I’d respond.

“Mommy?” she’d say.

“Baby,” I’d respond.

Our call and response could go on like this for several rounds. Other shoppers in line behind us would catch my eye, smiling, enjoying our acapella concert of love. My daughter would quiet when it was our turn with the cashier. Even now in her late twenties, she remains Baby to me. 

I am no longer Mommy to her. 

••

Soon it will be Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a time when we Jews beat our chests in a steady rhythm, decrying, “We have transgressed.” I hadn’t been to temple—or done anything Jewish—in the two years since my daughter ghosted me. Losing my daughter had cost me to lose my faith. Being Jewish was something we did together, from making matzoh ball soup to lighting Shabbat candles to dipping apples in honey on Rosh Hashanah. 

As part of Yom Kippur, we are explicitly required to atone for sins we don’t know we’ve committed. So that I can make this right between us, I needed to know the sins I’d committed against my daughter. Sins my daughter had shut me behind bars for with no way of knowing the length of my sentence—or how to apply for parole. Perhaps this was what had caused me to lose my faith: I needed to know. 

The last time we spoke on the phone, I remembered saying, “You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother.” She hung up on me. Even a prisoner gets one more call. My calls after that last conversation went straight to voice mail. Our occasional squabbles didn’t seem to merit such a harsh punishment. There had to be something she wasn’t telling me, telling us. 

Every day was Yom Kippur with my daughter. I had asked her many times what I’d done to upset her, what we’d done to upset her to the point she had erased herself from our family. I had reached my hands through the bars with heart-felt letters, begging her for a do-over. I don’t expect a “Get out of Jail Free” card. I assured her I would do whatever it took to unlock the door between us, including atoning. 

••

I dreamed of my daughter most nights. Her amber eyes, the gaze of which makes my heart ache with love. Her soft, soft skin the color of honey. Her hair, when I stroke it, so satiny, so silky, reminding me of mink. The urge to pat her, to pet her was visceral. 

The last time I saw my daughter she stood at the front door in my goodbye hug with her arms glued to her sides. In my dreams, she leans against me as she used to, her arms entwined around my waist, head on my shoulder, hair smelling of peonies.

When I awoke, the nightmare continued. People our age were trapped at home without groceries. My friends heard from their grown children, concern mixed with sacks of apples and canned beans and toilet paper. My daughter’s ghost drifted from room to room, haunting my days, feeding on my grief. The phone didn’t ring.

••

Vlad knocked on the door, then stepped back when I opened it. We were deep into the pandemic now with no end in sight. We had to keep our distance as we might poison each other with the same breath that brings us life. I made eye contact with our Rabbi of Rot, and his eyes crinkled above his blue pleated mask. Sawdust streaked his forehead where he’d wiped summer’s sweat.

“You must see,” said Vlad.

I followed him to the front of the house where a large chunk of siding had been pried free. There lay more rot. 

Vlad shook his head. “Carpenter ants, not moisture ants,” he said. “Must re-flash all windows. Replace all boards.”

It felt as if everything beautiful in my life was destined to crumble. I looked into Vlad’s infinite blue eyes, my throat constricting, and wished I remembered how to pray.

••

When my daughter first stopped answering my phone calls, stopped answering my emails, stopped answering my texts, I felt as if the sky was falling. Now as I walked outside to the garbage can, the air thick with smoke from the forest fires, I almost stepped on a tiny black bird motionless on the driveway. Closer to the garbage can another little bird lay on the ground not moving, infinitely small claws curled around an invisible branch. It looked as if the sky was falling after all. 

While I stood rooted, unable to take my eyes from the small body, flashes of my daughter as a baby brought tears to my eyes. Her reaching to be lifted out of her high chair—not for her father, not for her brother—but for me. Me freeing her with the snap of a buckle, lifting her into the air, landing her into the safety of my lap. Her wriggling around on my thighs until satisfied with the place she’d made in the nest. Her leaning back, her small body warm and heavy against my breasts. This was our nightly after-dinner ritual until she outgrew her high chair.

As I stood gazing down at the feathered corpse, I wondered if it was our entwinement that pushed my baby bird so far out of the nest. Was it my love that caused her to fall?

••

Vlad knocked on the door—by now I knew his knock. I looked up from my computer where I’d been reading the good news that vaccines will be here by year’s end. When I opened the door, Vlad beckoned me outside with long, calloused fingers. He wore all white: white tee-shirt, white jeans, white running shoes. A small gold cross gleamed from his neck. I thought of him, this Pope of Pestilence, as surrounded by a celestial light that emanated from within and burst into white cotton. I followed Vlad to the corner of the house where fresh new boards have replaced the old ones. Last time Vlad and I met at this corner, he extended his finger and pushed it deep within the yielding black maw. This time, his fingers curl into a fist, and he rapped on sturdy wood. My house will hold. The sound of knuckle hitting hard surface sounded as sweet to me as Vlad’s singing voice. 

••

Later, standing outside in the waning light, I gazed upwards at Vlad’s soaring altar of scaffolding. Tomorrow it will be gone. It occurred to me tonight is Friday night. It’s the beginning of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, when we welcomed the Shabbat Bride and her gift of peace into our home. In the quiet of silenced hammer and saw, I realized I missed celebrating Shabbat. I missed the haunting Shabbat music from our tinny sounding CD player. I missed our Shabbat dinner of crispy whole chicken and plump potatoes. 

But most of all, I missed standing next to my daughter with Shabbat candles at the ready, my daughter’s amber gaze watching intently while I touched match to wick. As one, we would pass our hands in front of our eyes in three circles, bringing the smoke towards us. Our hands stopped after the third pass, covering our closed eyes. We chanted: Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha’olam… Our voices braided like challah, mine on top of hers, hers following my lead, and always, always my ear attuned to her sweetness, her closeness, her voice, soft at first, gaining strength, by the end fully joining mine.

I hadn’t lit candles on a Friday night since my daughter’s exodus. To have Shabbat without her had seemed like sacrilege. To overlay my memory of her with her absence at the Shabbat table was the final acknowledgement that I might suffer the loss of her forever. 

Before going inside, I sniffed the air and realized it smelled fresh for the first time in days. The last evidence of the disintegration of our home filled Vlad’s white trailer squatting on the driveway, soon to be hauled away. The trailer was white like the white in my hair. An eternal white not yellowed by the passage of time or disuse. White like the Shabbat candles hidden away. 

A cool breeze caressed my cheek. I shivered, thinking about those buried candles. It has been too high a price to pay, to lose my faith in order to keep my daughter’s ghost at the table. No amount of Zen could ever displace the yearning for a return to my holy land. With the turning of “Corona” into “Covid,” and my Baby into thin air, with my beautiful home splintering around me, I have needed her: My faith. My Shabbat Bride. I have needed the strength of the women before me—Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel—our matriarchs whom we recognized to this day in our temple prayers. 

I needed to stop wandering the desert. 

I needed to come home. 

Drawing my shawl closer around me in the crisp apple air, I nodded goodbye to Vlad’s scaffolding and the white trailer, squared my shoulders, and headed towards the door. Vlad had saved the outside of my home. It was time for me to reclaim the inside. I carried my soul in tender arms across the threshold. 

••

I knelt to dig out two stocky, white Shabbat candles from the bottom of our dining room drawers. Tonight I would pound them into waiting brass holders to make sure they stand sturdy into the night. 

I would welcome shalom bayit, peace in the home, once again. 

I would chant the prayers excavated from a place deep within. 

I would open my heart and home to the Shabbat Bride.

I would lower my eyes in humility and not demand with stomping feet that the world be any different than it is. 

I would strike a match and touch flame to wick. 

And in the quiet that follows, I would still. I would accept. I would do the trust fall onto the elephant’s back. I would let my daughter go, as certainly as she was already gone. 

I would look deep within the glow and surrender to the mystery.

 

Bliss Goldstein’s been published in HuffPost, LA Times, Judith Magazine, and On Being Jewish Now. CALYX awarded her the Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing in 2022 for “Homecoming,” and her work has since been nominated for Best of the Net. Bliss’s novel-in-progress “Cult Momma” is drawn from real life; find more bliss at blissgoldstein.com.

*This piece was previously published in in CALYX after winning CALYX’s Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing in 2022