Mario Muscar

Old Befana, Combs, A Chain

by Janet Iafrate

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It is not January sixth, but the nineteenth,

and there are no kings upon camels outside our window.      

We know not to wait for gifts.  

I glance at the hole in the wall that is the width of an eye.   

 

I used to spend mornings telling Joseph my dreams,

but my sleep has turned thin, the dreams like powder.  

He hasn’t remembered his dreams in years.  

He is the good listener; they never ask what they want to ask.  

 

We have waited since the morning for our cousins to arrive,

four of them, three who speak and sing and pray.  

The youngest does not make a sound.  

Sharp angles of light appear on our table; I trace them to the tiny eye on the wall that lets in the light.

 

The words, pictures, myths: they will do right by the sky, at least—

It is nighttime when they arrive, though not from the east, and not by a star.  

Three of them enter with food in their hands, but the silent one holds out empty arms

in the shape of an arc, and the oldest sister whispers, “She’d like to see the baby.”  

 

For weeks I avoid the eye.    

Our cousins cook and clear and carry and ask for little.

I am not the same as before, but now my days are simpler, thinner.

I sleep again, real sleep, as if I spend the nights tucked under a rock at the bottom of the sea.  

 

I can dream again.  

But Joseph, he hasn’t remembered his dreams in years.

And that was how I understood.   

All that I saw through a hole in the wall the width of my eye—

 

They will not tell the story right, what you’ll pray over rosary beads.    

No angel, no dream, just limbs in a place where they did not belong.  

And on the morning when I knew he was there,

I noticed the little crack in the wall—a hole in our house.  

 

From inside my womb, he told me to look--

“Look, look, look” in a little boy’s voice.  

But I was afraid he would show me limbs,

The hands and legs of the stranger

from the day when I squeezed my eyes tight tight tighter until the bones might break,

until I opened my eyes like a deep breath:  

but there are limbs

in a place

where they do not belong.  

Twenty of them, not four, the stone limbs I still see in closed rooms.  

 

But “Look, look, look,” he said from inside my womb.

He is happy enough.  

Oh to be made inside a space where you do not belong.  

So I went to the hole in the wall that is the width of an eye, knelt down, pressed myself close.  

 

The first thing it showed me was Joseph and a dream,

But he hasn’t remembered his dreams in years.  

 

Then eye showed me shelters, lanterns, three men in crowns, always camels nearby.  

I was layered in blue after blue.  

Scroll, tapestry, clay, canvas stretched, oils mixed, glass, paper, porcelain, paper, ink, I am ink, I was ink.  

We held hands and were dipped into molds, Joseph and I—I could laugh, now, Joseph and his dream.  

 

The cousins will fix the hole in the wall,

the eye that told me how wrong our story will be: a story inside of snow-globes, poured into molds.

But he had told me to “look,” happy from inside my womb.  

We will be a holy family who share a secret.  

 

They are fixing the eye, the three cousins who speak,

while the silent one walks with him in circles, her arms shaped like an arc.

They’ll leave in the morning, but for now, I’ll sleep.

I dream:

 

We are melted down with the snow-globes and oils; we are covered in warm plastic.  

The baby and I are covered in familiar layers, but everyone else—something is wrong.  

They are all poured into molds where they do not belong:

Joseph into shepherds, manger into oxen, angel into hay.  

 

The cousins are shaped and kneaded, their breasts pushed back, until they are three kings:

Crowns, camels, constellations to tell them where everyone should be.    

The one who does not speak, she is turned into a lamb, and I am flushed with knowledge:

I know irony, now, because she is the only one who speaks.  

 

“Your story,” she says from the head of a lamb.  “Us.  The limbs.  A stranger’s limbs.”

And I stop my breath because no one has ever asked, not even Joseph.  

Good listeners never ask what it is they want to ask.     

“The hay.  Even your door,” she says.  “It all gets melted down, changed into something else.”

 

I blink awake to a wall without a hole, to the infant crying.

The cousins argue in soft voices—who will take him next, what is there to do.

The light is going down.

I wonder if he cries because he is not where he belongs.  

 

I think about a plastic angel on a lawn somewhere a thousand years away.  

“Make him just lonely enough.”  I decide it is a prayer, so I repeat it under my breath.  

I think about three kings and camels.  Old Befana.  O short story by O. Henry: combs and a chain?   

I don’t know what they are, but I know they are where they belong.  

Our silent cousin places him inside my arms. I imagine her with the head of a lamb, with a voice.

She finishes what I started, “Just lonely enough to make great art.”

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