as needing to hear me say the next line, as wanting a response to an anxious call, the assurance of a shared picture book and fixed storyline to confront an apprehension that arises in a world of ever-changing scripts?
Of course, it could mean many, many things. At the time when he had begun to lose language, when physical gestures had taken over where words had existed, Jacob could have found an emotional affinity with these lines. His mind could have woven the tone and color into some meaning to which he only had access—but sought to share. To his young ears and eyes, did the slapstick of the Bad Guy capture the dangers of adult whims and warnings? (And did Bill’s cage and Pete’s urgent pecking at the lock lead to the worrisome tone of Jacob’s echolalia?) Even words meant to name what has passed or to point toward the present feast can carry worry. Their exodus is a reminder of the place where even God cannot be named, where the words that come tell of the need to slaughter the lamb and shut the door, where the passage to freedom runs the muddy gauntlet of the Red Sea, where the banks of the path rise like cresting waves. How should I hear his words? Were they a sign of a feast prepared, a banquet set for those who have endured years of slavery? Or a prophecy of famine, a slave’s straw mat spread with the last of the unleavened bread?
I climb the stairs to find the book and look again at the last page. Even now, in a remembering that pulls at my chest, I feel a tightness, the expiration of breath in the body memory of a distant confusion. There stands Bill with that silly, toothy grin suspended above the table. Just beneath Pete’s beak rises the steam from what appears to be a bowl of rice or mashed potatoes. To the left, the Bad Guy streaks disrobed through the desert night. Above the feast, a yellow slice of moon smiles amid the blue.
And the stars, I want to say they seem to fall from the sky like manna; I want to say that they flew like doves back to Noah’s ark. I want to see signs of passing things, of what has been and not what will be endured. No hunger. No apocalypse of water. But, in the outlines of this tale’s beginning, I am still caught up in the young father’s grieving, his struggling to make out the meaning of Jacob’s words. I feel in my gut that distant time and place. It is as if I am the last of the chosen scrambling toward the distant shore. I hear the merciless thunder of the collapsing waves amid the cries of the faithless and know that I have surely lost my way.
Since just after midnight, Jacob has been awake. He is nine. He wants Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline to come out of the television. He extends his arm, makes straining noises, and acts as if he is reaching toward and into the TV downstairs. Hanging from a string taped to the slanting wall above our heads waves a drawing of Madeline. She is in a cloud. It is the kind of cloud that often leads from the mouths of comic strip characters, and I wonder if Jacob means for us to know that Madeline is in his dreams. I remind Jacob that Madeline is pretend, a storybook character. His body tightens at the news.
“Not pretend!” he says. “Reach. Reach. Not say pretend.”
Tonight, Jacob is fighting something. After midnight, half-asleep, he kicked off the blankets and then pounded his feet against the wall and then against me.
For a short time, I try to relax. I know that it is likely Jacob will be awake all night or fall asleep shortly before dawn. Around the room, the signs of his demands begin to break out of the shadows: the red plaid sheet hanging from the curtain rods to keep out the morning light, the run of thin rope from bookshelves to ends of curtain rods that used to hold up sheets for a tent, two Madeline video boxes, scattered drawings of Madeline and Pepito, a Pooh helium balloon that dances against the ceiling when the heater kicks in. Beside me, Jacob asks repeatedly for Madeline. I stop answering, and he tosses his water cup across the room, tears off the bedding, and then lunges at me, pinching and scratching at my forearms. When he starts to throw books toward the window, I move in to hold him, wrapping my arms around his. Our feet shuffle in an awkward dance before we collapse to the floor. The room grows close with the smell of sweat and anger; my limbs ache with hopelessness.
Not every night is such a struggle. Jacob frequently sleeps from nine to six without interruption. Awake, he often lies wide-eyed but quiet, occasionally laughing or running through his own version of a video script or leaning toward me and uttering “hug.” In time, he allows me to fall in and out of sleep. In the slumber broken occasionally by his sudden laughs and phrasings, I begin to imagine stories that I might tell. Beyond the red sheet and window blind, I think, moonlight washes the south side of the house. Toward the east, past the thick branches of an oak and the sullen stillness of its leaves, the stars begin to congregate. In this tale, I imagine the precarious dots of light mapping the constellation of our limbs, as if creating an enchanted blessing to redeem the day. On some nights, caught up in the promise of an image or combination of words as I edge toward sleep, I reach toward the floor to find something that might serve as a morning sign, something to help me remember where my story left off. I take whatever is within reach—a book or scrap of paper—and put it beneath my pillow or slide it toward an uncluttered space between bed and door. I am Hansel in the forest, hoping to leave just enough stones or bread crumbs to find the way back. More truthfully, Jacob is the forsaken child, and I am the father after his return. I yearn for the treasure taken after the witch’s burning, the pearls that drive away hunger, the forgiveness of open hands and pockets emptied out. I want forgetfulness, no word of my anger, no hint of abandonment. My wants are abundant, thick as the needles beneath rows of pine.
Here is one memory stone near the open door. When I was younger, I used to tell Grimms’ stories to my brother. He was nearly four, I was thirteen, and we both shared the same bedroom. In large families, it is rare that a child sleeps in a room or bed alone. For all of their years prior to high school, my sisters, three years apart, slept in the same bed. Until I was a sophomore (and my two older brothers had moved away), we rotated three single beds in a variety of arrangements. In the first home that I can remember, we all slept in the narrow second-floor room of our small cape cod. After we moved, I was for a short time in the same room as my second oldest brother. When my first of two younger brothers came along ten years later, I soon became the older sibling sharing a room and occasional stories with the younger.
When I began the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel from memory, I did not yet understand that bedtime stories fraught with evil risked restlessness and worked against the task at hand: ushering a child to sleep. Even now, I still feel the gut check of the sudden suspicion that the impending cruelty might be too much for my brother. I remember moving past the wickedness of the stepmother and the cowardice of the father; I lingered instead upon the ingenuity and wit of Hansel’s effort to leave a trail and the magical features of the gingerbread house. I congratulated Gretel for her bravery and overlooked the oven’s flames and witch’s shrieks. With the ending, I painted a joyous reunion. (Looking over Grimms’ published story, I realize that I had also forgotten much, including the jewels retrieved from the old woman’s gingerbread house.) Perhaps I even invented a kind mother and left my brother imagining Hansel’s and Gretel’s full stomachs, warm beds, and forgetful slumber. But of all that comes back to me in the traces of this memory, I am still surprised by the vivid emotional echo of the storyteller’s dilemma, the sudden worry of unleashing first-time fears like evils from Pandora’s Box.
My grandmother also used to tell my older brothers, sisters, and me Grimms’ tales. My father’s mother lived in a small cottage on the east side of Storm Lake, the side that caught the snow blown across the ice during long Iowa winters and left six to ten foot drifts between homes. Bitter winds made her windows moan and whine in mid-January. In the spring, big-leafed rhubarb bordered her back yard, and in the damp, shady places beneath bushes and trees, a strong aroma of weedy flowers invaded the air. Inside, the small kitchen smelled of tea and cinnamon, the cupboard always seeming to hoard a pan of bread or graham cracker pudding atop wax paper. I learned to love the texture of soft foods like bread pudding with raisins, covered in thick cream. At some point during our visits, in the time after outside exploring and before our mother picked us up, my grandmother would sit us beside her on the couch or alongside a chair capped with cross-stitched doilies and tell stories. In these years, I heard “Hansel and Gretel” but also another Grimms’ tale, “The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean.” Spiced with a Liverpool accent,