Pretend It's My Body by Luke Dani Blue

Author:Luke Dani Blue
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

A Full and Accurate Recounting

HOME (YOSVEN)

The name of our village is various names, as the country to which we are subject is sometimes Lietuva, sometimes Rossiya. So it is with each villager. That is why our handsome Yidl, as we village girls call him, is Yehuda at shul, Iudelis to the tax collectors, Lubya when the Russians make him fight their wars. He is Yidl still in my fantasies as I pine for him over yeasty dough, the whelp of stray dogs coughing hay dust, road dust, sawdust. Nine years, the order says, but girlish prayer stronger than orders brings him back whole in three. Yude now, he insists. Leaves turning from gold to red fall behind him like a royal cape.

The morning after Yude comes home, field to wood has frozen, walking outdoors as stunning as waking. Maybe this is why the goose is so shocking. I am half-asleep when I find its gray, broken-necked body in the square, clouded eyes staring at the cloudy sky.

My scream is of surprise. The villagers come running. Women comfort me with speculation.

“A fox.”

“A fox interrupted by a noise.”

“Someone likely slammed a door and scared it.”

“It dropped the goose.”

A vagrant interrupts our female chatter. “Him.” He points at Yude. “I saw him cross the fields in moonlight. He was covered in feathers.”

There is pause swollen with doubt, the beginnings of question, until the miller spits. “Quiet, you alte kocker.”

The crowd adds its favorite curses. We laugh the heretic back to his hole. Yude marries the miller’s daughter, and the country of which they claim we are subjects changes its name once more.

I remember the goose when the Germans arrive, led by a group of gentiles whose faces I know from the market. On this stunned morning, we villagers are the goose. The mouth of the fox is a truck bed. The goose snow white on white ground. Strangely bloodless. How is it that a murdering fox can be so gentle, and, too, so forgetful?

Yosven was the name of our village. Without us Yosveners, it must be only Josvainiai.

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