River Read online

  River is a classic tale of longing—a quest story that takes its young heroine on a magical journey backwards through time and across the globe. As young Emily tumbles mysteriously from one decade to the next, from Brooklyn to Melbourne, from South Africa to Lithuania, she meets a long line of strong female ancestors, and witnesses their trials and triumphs at moments that send their lives in astonishing and unpredictable directions. If you’ve ever wondered what your mother or grandmother or great-grandmother went through when she was young, this richly-imagined story travels the river of time to a past that shows us who we are now.

  —Kate Manning, author of My Notorious Life

  RIVER

  GUERNICA WORLD EDITIONS 21

  RIVER

  Shira Nayman

  TORONTO—CHICAGO—BUFFALO—LANCASTER (U.K.)

  2020

  Copyright © 2020, Shira Nayman and Guernica Editions Inc.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Michael Mirolla, general editor

  Margo LaPierre, editor

  Cover design: Allen Jomoc Jr.

  Interior layout: Jill Ronsley, suneditwrite.com

  Guernica Editions Inc.

  287 Templemead Drive, Hamilton (ON), Canada L8W 2W4

  2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, N.Y. 14150-6000 U.S.A.

  www.guernicaeditions.com

  Distributors:

  Independent Publishers Group (IPG)

  600 North Pulaski Road, Chicago IL 60624

  University of Toronto Press Distribution,

  5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto (ON), Canada M3H 5T8

  Gazelle Book Services, White Cross Mills

  High Town, Lancaster LA1 4XS U.K.

  First edition.

  Printed in Canada.

  Legal Deposit—First Quarter

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2019946621

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: River / Shira Nayman.

  Names: Nayman, Shira, 1960- author.

  Description: Series statement: Guernica world editions ; 21

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190154942 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190155035 | ISBN 9781771834575 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771834582 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781771834599 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS3614.A96 R58 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  For my parents,

  Doreen Nayman (née Shapiro) and Jack Nayman, z”l, and my children, Juliana and Lucas

  —the river of generations, flowing into one another, eternally—

  It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

  —Diane Ackerman

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  THE WHIR OF ENGINES VIBRATED in my bones as the plane tilted upward. The skies separated invisibly, releasing us from the world left behind. This was the first time Ray and I were travelling together to Australia, where my mother had grown up. As a child, I’d spent a few summers there with my grandmother. The last time, when I was fourteen, my brother, Billy, and I had gone on our own. I have few memories from that difficult, hurly-burly summer.

  Now, I was going to visit Grandma, who had been unwell for some years. We’d had the sad news that she was in the final stages of her illness and didn’t have long to live.

  Ray didn’t love flying, and it was such a long journey—twenty-four hours in the air.

  “I can go on my own, truly,” I’d said.

  Ray had laid his hand on my belly. “I wouldn’t dream of that. I want to meet your grandmother and see where you stayed as a child. And I want to be with my girls.”

  When I’d gone for the ultrasound, we’d nodded yes when the technician had asked if we wanted to know the baby’s gender.

  Now, as the plane pulled away from the ground, I squeezed Ray’s hand. I looked down at our intertwined fingers, a tight sphere, strong as rock. I closed my eyes and an image swam into view—the most beautiful face I’d ever seen, a little girl with curly brown hair and dark green eyes, the color of her skin halfway between Ray’s and mine.

  Twenty-four hours of flying changes you, setting you back down on the earth’s crust subtly reborn. I felt unwell throughout the flight—fits of nausea, and unpleasant cramping. I was just entering my second trimester, and I reminded myself that the doctor had said it was perfectly safe to fly. The last few hours of the flight, while Ray slumbered, leaning up against the shuttered porthole, I was intensely and uncomfortably alert. I couldn’t wait for the flight to be over.

  The lights finally came on and the pilot announced we were beginning our descent. I felt a rush of relief. Ray stirred. I leaned over to kiss his cheek. I had known, when I sighted Ray across the room five years earlier, a week after my twenty-third birthday, that I would marry him. Our eyes had met, and as he walked toward me, I’d had the uncanny feeling that I could see the air around him—currents of shimmering color, liquid blues and burnt shades of orange—aware of a pungent feeling of his history. Something about that history within him seemed to connect with the history within me. Yes, I thought that very first day. I know him, and I always have.

  Ray opened his eyes. I loved catching him on the edge of wakefulness, when his eyes were bountifully open to me.

  “We’re landing,” I said.

  Uncle Michael met us at the airport. He gave us both bear hugs.

  “About bloody time you kids came to visit—now I get to show you around!” he said to Ray, grinning broadly.

  Uncle Michael had met Ray at our wedding in Brooklyn; he was happy we were now in Melbourne on his own home turf.

  “How’s Grandma?” I asked.

  His smile was snuffed. “Not too good, I’m afraid,” he said. “But she’s so excited about seeing you, and meeting Ray. I can’t tell you …”

  We drove directly to the nursing home. Uncle Michael gave Ray a steady stream of explanation all the way in, pointing out the different architectural styles—Victorian houses with filigreed wrought iron fences and awnings; sedate Edwardian buildings with broad arches and wild gardens. As we approached the city center, Uncle Michael pointed out the most prominent skyscrapers: Premier Tower, Eureka Tower, and Australia 108, still under construction, which would rise to 1039 feet.

  We pulled off the freeway.

  “When we were kids, Melbourne was a bit of a backwater. There was none of this. Last time your mum was here, she said she hardly recognized the place.”

  I wondered how it all looked to Ray’s eyes; he was a long way from where he grew up, in suburban Atlanta, part of a sprawling African American family. I could hardly imagine what his childhood must have been like; I’d grown up far away from all relatives outside of our little island of four. Ray sat in the passenger seat beside Uncle Michael, looking intently out of the window, the bright Melbourne light pouring in through the windshield. I wondered what he was thinking.

  As we approached the Spencer Street Bridge, the Yarra River came into view, glimmering faintly in the morning light. In the weeks leading up to our trip, Ray had done some research on Melbourne and the surrounding areas. He’d learned that Melbourne had been built on the fertile land around the Yarra that for more than forty thousand years had been home to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin
nation. We were both looking forward to visiting the Koorie Heritage Trust, dedicated to the culture and history of the country’s First Nations.

  “Fun fact,” Uncle Michael said, as we merged onto the bridge. “When they began digging in 1927 to build this bridge, they ran into trouble, twenty meters down. Red gum stump that took them three weeks to remove. Turned out to be eight thousand years old! There’s a big number. You have to think about the people who were here at that time. A lot of us Westerners—when we think of ancient cultures, we come up with Homer’s Greece and the Roman Empire. But Australia is home to the oldest continuous culture on earth.”

  Uncle Michael turned to the back seat for a moment to cast me a glance. “Sorry, guys. You probably know all this yourself.”

  “I’ve done a bit of reading,” Ray said. “But barely scraped the surface. It’s all new and interesting to me, Mike.”

  “The latest research suggests that the Aboriginal peoples are descendants from the first people to leave Africa, seventy-five thousand years ago. Emily, I remember when your mum and dad went to see the Kakadu cave paintings in Arnhem Land—those are about forty thousand years old. Boggles the mind, right?”

  “My family also left Africa,” Ray said. “Not quite so long ago, though. And not exactly by choice.”

  “Yeah, bloody awful,” Uncle Michael said. “Colonizers the world over—” he muttered. “They started it, and we kept it going. It’s a national disgrace here, same as over in the United States.”

  The nursing home sat on a park, with patches of tailored lawn, carefully tended flower beds, and mature trees spreading shade just where it was needed. Grandma loved flora of all kinds; I’m sure she adored sitting on the porch I could see facing directly onto the park.

  The entry foyer opened onto a large living room. A dozen or so residents were seated around a fireplace alight with gas flames, involved in a discussion being run by a staff member. Several called out greetings, others smiled. We passed through a narrow room where less able residents sat in wheelchairs or reclined on daybeds, some tended to by helpers, others alone and looking forlorn. I felt a rising panic—I could hardly imagine Grandma, my beloved, vibrant, oh-so-energetic Grandma here, rather than in her house, the house I’d known and loved and realized in that moment I would never see again.

  Auntie Liora emerged from the dining room.

  “Darlings!” she said, embracing first me and then Ray. “I can’t tell you how excited Grandma is to see you.”

  I could see the worry in her face.

  “How’s your mum?” she asked.

  I could feel my face doing its squirrely thing, rushing up into a tree to hide among the leaves. A stiff smile pulled at my lips.

  “Not so bad, this time,” I said.

  “Three weeks into the chemo …”

  I nodded.

  “Well, she’s a trouper, no doubt about it. Best mum in the world.”

  I smiled. “Well, one of them. You’re another.”

  She squeezed my hand and together we made our way down a long corridor. At the end of it, Uncle Michael paused before the door to the left.

  “Remember,” he said, “she may look different, but she’s still Grandma.”

  The panic turned to a hard knot that sat in my throat. I managed to nod. Uncle Michael rearranged his features back to the cheerful expression I associated with him. He opened the door.

  Grandma sat propped up in a hospital-style bed in the corner of a bright L-shaped room. Her tiny frame, the size of a slight teenager’s, came as a tremendous shock. I recalled the photograph I’d once seen of her as a girl of fourteen, slender as a reed, her wavy, dark hair caught by a breeze, a wistful and yet determined look on her face as she peered into the future. She’d returned to the size she was when still a girl, though now, her freshly styled hair was white and her cheeks sunken. She wore an elegant bed jacket in shades of mauve; a matching hand-painted silk scarf was draped around her neck. Her face broke into the brightest smile, though not before I had registered the expression of endurance and eyes deep with pain. The same look I’d seen in my own mother’s face during her long bouts with chemotherapy treatments.

  “Emily! Ray!” She reached out her hand.

  Many familiar objects leapt to my eyes: the portrait of Grandpa Jack, whom I never met since he died before I was born; another of my great-grandmother Sarah who had presided fiercely over Grandma’s difficult childhood in South Africa. The shiny brass samovar originally from Lithuania, and the beautiful small sculpture of a mother and daughter that Grandma had made decades ago in a pottery class. Grandma’s talents had always seemed boundless to me; everything she touched turned to beauty.

  “Darling,” she said, “how lovely of you to come.”

  I took her delicate hand and leaned in to kiss her. Her familiar scent, milky and sweet.

  “Ray,” she said, “I’m so happy to lay eyes on you in person.”

  Grandma had been too unwell to travel to New York for the wedding. She’d spoken to Ray on video chat, but this was her first time meeting him for real.

  Ray kissed Grandma on the cheek.

  Now, Grandma turned her full attention to me.

  “Mama wanted so much to come,” I said.

  The clench line hardened along Grandma’s jaw, and she tried to hide the sorrow in her eyes.

  “Well, you’re here for her, too,” she said softly. “I spoke to her an hour ago. She sends her love, of course. And she’s doing so much better!”

  I nodded, wiped away the tear that had trickled down.

  “And you, my darling. How are you feeling? You’re really very tiny—I can hardly see the bump!”

  I removed my coat and pulled my sweater around my belly.

  “There she is,” Grandma said, her eyes twinkling. “I’m so eager to meet her.”

  Grandma would likely not live to meet the baby. But her face was full-wattage joy—she certainly was not allowing any such thought.

  Within moments, Grandma and Ray were chatting away. Grandma wanted to know everything! All about his work, and family—the name of every sibling, aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandparent, all four of whom were, miraculously to me, still living. I’d only ever had Grandma, and she lived a world away.

  In between visits to Grandma, Ray and I explored Melbourne and the surrounds—a visit to the Healesville animal sanctuary, and also Phillip Island, where at sunset, we saw a thousand tiny fairy penguins emerge from the sea, blanketing the wide white sands before waddling into hundreds of burrows hidden around the scrubby vegetation abutting the beach. I took Ray to places Mama and Grandma had taken me as a child—the aquarium, the planetarium, and the Victorian Hopetoun Tea Rooms in the Parisian-style Block Arcade. There we sampled their famous vanilla slice, similar to what we called a napoleon, but with less cream and a distinctive two-inch-thick yellow custard. Ray loved the friendly “Aussie” way—broad, relaxed smiles that seemed to match the broad, relaxed sound of the accent, the dropped consonants, elongated vowels, and habit of shortening nouns into flippant half-words—bicky for biscuit, Chrissie for Christmas, arvo (afternoon), cuppa (cup of tea), chocky (chocolate), and my personal favorite, the composite chocky bicky! Wherever we went, it was G’day mate, and people interested in striking up a conversation once they caught wind of our American accents—Luv ya accent!

  The day we spent at the Koorie Heritage Trust felt complicated. If we were here to travel around Australia, rather than to visit Grandma, we could have immersed ourselves in the culture and history of Australia’s First Nations. Visiting the Koorie Trust, while wonderful in some ways, also felt frustrating, like we were looking through a tiny peephole onto a wafer-thin sliver of an unimaginably rich domain. We stood for some time looking at the scar tree; Aboriginal peoples would remove sections of bark to make shields or canoes in ways that allowed the tree to stay alive, leaving scars that the tree would then grow around, resulting in unusual markings and shapes. Sometimes, an artist would decorate the open scar
tissue, further transforming the wound. Some scar trees held special spiritual significance.

  We took our time walking through the gallery spaces, pausing in a room hung with paintings. One caught my eye and held me spellbound: Exile, by an artist named Lin Onus, who I read was an Aboriginal-Scottish Australian painter. The painting showed a youth walking alone on a path through a wide field, dwarfed by a vast sky hung with a low white sun. High in the sky, darkening the top quarter of the canvas, the cloud was a roiling sea, deepening with blue smoke and dabs of orange fire, shading to darkness up by the frame. The youth was carrying a small can with a handle, what the Aussies call a “billy,” a tin used for heating water over a fire. Though his carriage was upright and dignified, he gave the impression of being slightly stooped, as if the sky were a burden he must shoulder as he made his way to an uncertain destination, carrying only a small tin.

  Grandma’s decline accelerated. On the last day of our two-week trip, I arrived at the nursing home to find her dozing. I sat by her bedside, listening to her breathing, which seemed newly shallow and clipped. I gazed at her face, my mind traveling back to the many weeks I’d spent in her home, the house my mother grew up in: the conversations over endless cups of tea, trips to the city and to the countryside, and to concerts, the ballet, and on one occasion, to see the Melbourne production of The Lion King, which Grandma had loved with the same overblown child’s enthusiasm that my little brother, Billy, and I had both felt.

  I took her hand. Her eyes fluttered open.

  “There you are, my darling.” A muted version of her electric smile rose like a pale sun on her face. “You have no idea what your visit has meant to me. Spending time with you, getting to know Ray.”

  I chatted to her a little about our adventures—told her how much Ray had enjoyed the vanilla slice at the Hopetoun Tea Rooms.

  “You always loved those,” she said. “We also called them napoleons in South Africa, same as you Americans.”