Chosen People
by Ethan Ashkin Stanton
I follow the only light through rising wind, enter the empty office for my nightheart appointment. A random, fluorescent temple. Crash landing on an abandoned planet.
Hello hello I’m here for the a p p o i n t m e n t?
Question ricochet. No response.
Dim brown chairs like fading stars, TV monitors looping facial peels.
Lost fingering my gold necklace. Finally a thick man in navy scrubs, speaks my name looks over my shoulder. Beckons. I go. Take off your shirt, he says, boots up the glowing green machine. So. Extra pathway. More heart than the others, huh? And you’re Jewish. The blue-gray probe, a miniature steamroller. Shockshivering, incomprehension. Bouncing yellow star, tanmottled belly. A routine appointment. They call me white in this country.
Dabs greasy gel. Yeah I saw your necklace. Lie down. You think God chose you? (Blinking, up at the light.) I’ll tell you a story. In Ukraine, the last war, my family. Just potatoes to eat, and the people in the well. Turn on your right side. Cold, slime, jagged heart cliffs on the screen. Yes the well. A little hole dug on the side. In the mud. Go get water, lower some potatoes. Little tricks like that. My grandfather saved them, their children invited him to Israel for a month. He was a Christian man, knew the chosen people. When you been back to Israel? Christians want you Jews to go there. Turn on your left side.
Feeling moved to speak I say thank you for your grandfather as if American I could boomerang thanks 80 years back. Hell of a thing he decided, risking his own family. I think of people down there for months, full of mud clothes rotting off their bodies. All but dead. Top of the well counting potatoes, crying children. The weight of it. So much lightness now, chasing choices like kids popping bubbles. The days of potential life on one refrigerator shelf of my leftovers, my uneaten curling eggplant. Who has time to cook it. Or keep the commandments. Bad times back then he says. At least here and now is better, I venture. You never know he coldsmiles down. Lie on your back. Glaring fluorescent light a scalpel. Ready for the dissection.
About Israel though I hear my voice, it’s the end of the world. That’s your prophecy. The world ends when all the Jews move to Israel. No hurry for that one. God wants you to do something, he says, you’ll do it. I mean you say you’re not doing it, God makes you do it. You try talking he talks through your mouth. Moves your muscles like a puppet.
Machine clicks, hiss. Moment of silence.
No choice then I respond. No disobedience. So why aren’t we still in the garden?
You and me, which one is God? Or the serpent?
Smile again, amused. Sit up. Put on your shirt. You ask good questions. Maybe we are. Maybe we are both, maybe we are neither. Like facets, this thing. Depends on your perspective. Results to your doctor in five to seven days.
The lobby TV loops before and after photos. Rains of white skin peel, snake shedding inexplicable shadows. My heartbeat goes freeze skip/ restart. Let there be life. Outside the silent grass, the squared-off fence, the wind. Gusts and gusts and gusts rising.
The trees trembling like reluctant prophets.
Ethan Ashkin Stanton is a husband, father, teacher, writer, and Jewish pantheist with a side of skepticism. He lives in San Jose, California, and studies poetry at San Francisco Creative Writing Institute.
