No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel Page A

heart revealed. The man, who had once been the jeweler’s father, was a lost ghost now and all of time silent at the bottom of the river. “Well, that’s one thing done,” said the jeweler, chewing his knuckles and hoping that he could support himself with wedding rings and child-size lockets alone. And what was to ensure that those would not be cast out? “Let there be wedding rings and child-size lockets,” the jeweler muttered. He remembered the small radio, which had kept him company for thousands of evenings since his parents died and his brother had gone off to seek his fortune. Now those people had been banished from existence, the past no longer a place. He was sure that radio too would be eliminated, but not if no one knew of it. The jeweler planned to hide it under the rotting floorboards of the old barn, where it would be safe.
    I gazed out at the unchanged river and hoped we remembered to save more than we gave away. Already, cash registers and horse plows were named as traitors. Bicycles would be blacklisted, non-blank books. Anything with a wheel or a switch would soon sink to the bottom of the river, where the mud would hold it prisoner, shut it up.
    The group looked up at the cloud-hidden sun, which had sunk to the side a little, making short shadows at our feet—small gray versions of ourselves who accompanied us back to town and shivered every time we crossed the mottled light of elm trees.
    Living in the new world
would not turn out to be that different from living in the old one. We had to survive with only the food we could grow and make ourselves, and the clothes we could knit or sew from fabric we already had. If a dish broke, there was no replacing it. But we found that it was not difficult. We had plenty of stuff. There were many bags of flour in everyone’s cellars, the cows and goats gave enough milk for us all to drink and make cheese with. As long as they kept reproducing, we could slaughter an animal every few weeks without diminishing the herd. Instead of trading with other villages, we traded with one another. Someone always had more forks than he needed, but not enough butter. One woman was always willing to offer a big bowl of soup and a loaf of bread if another woman would watch the children for a few hours. There was not enough chocolate, but we had a lot of sugar to make cakes. Beyond any accounting, we had the feeling of abundance—our world brimmed over.
    What disappeared completely, no leftovers, no crumbs, was news. For us, there was no outside world.
    My mother served
bowls of cabbage soup that evening. She put out the spoons. We children sucked and slurped, the whole room full of the sounds of our mouths, trying to create too much noise to talk over.
    Our mother said, “Regina is going to go and live with her uncle and aunt.” I hated myself for the relief I felt when my name was not the one spoken.
    “What uncle and aunt?” our father asked, his eyes full of sharp surprise.
    My mother explained with as much confidence as she could lie with that Regina would get music lessons and be a star. But mostly that she would be Hersh and Kayla’s child.
    “How did you choose me?” Regina asked. The words were as thin and sharp as ice breaking.
    “Your brother was here?”
    “She will come to love them.”
    “Regina is mine,” our father said.
    Regina looked around her. She was sitting at her own kitchen table, her own brother and little sister, her own mother and her own father and her own feet and her own hands. This was her table—the legs, the surface, the dents and edges. This was her wide, foot-polished floor. She now felt an overwhelming allegiance to the white enamel washbowl she had never thought much about before. And above all else, the cabbage soup—the smell of her life, the taste of it. “I will be their child?” she asked.
    “We’re all of us starting over,” our mother said. “The world is new. Everyone deserves to love something more than