El color del agua

Introduction to “The Color of Water”
Dead I´m dead
You want to talk about my family and here I been dead to them for fifty years. Leave me alone. Don’t bother me. They want no parts of me and me I don’t want no parts of them. Hurry up and get this interview over with. i want to watch Dallas. See, my family, if you hand a been part of them, you wouldn’t have time for this foolishness, yourroots, so to speak. You´d be better off watching the three stooges than to interview them, like to go interview my father, forget it. He´d have a heart attack if he saw you, he´s dead now anyway, or if not he´s 150 years old.
I was born an orthodox Jew on April 1, 1921. April fool´s day, in Poland. I don’t remember the name of the town where I was born, but I do remember my Jewish name: RachelDwajra Zylska. My parents got rid of that name when we came to America and changed it to Rachel Deborah Shilsky, and I got rid of that name wnhen I was nineteen and never used it again after I left Virginia for good in 1941. Rachel Shilsky is dead as far as I´m concerned, she had to die in order for me, the rest me, to live.
My family mourned me when I married your father. They said kaddish andsat shiva. That’s how Orthodox Jews mourn their dead. They say prayers, turn their mirrors down, sit on boxes for seven days, and cover their heads. It´s a real workout, which is maybe why I´m not Jew Now. There were too many rules to follow, too many forbidden and “you can’ts” and “you mustn’ts,” but does anybody say they love you? Not in my family we didn´t. we didn´t talk that way. We said thingslike, “ there´s a box in ther for the nails,” or may father would say, “be quiet while I sleep.”
My father´s is name was Fishel Shilsky and he was an orthodox rabbi. He escaped from the Russian army and snuck over the over the polish border and married my mother in an arranged marriage. He used to say he was under fire when he ran off from the army, and his ability to slick himself out ofanything that wasn´t good for him stayed with him for as long as I knew him. Teteh, we called him, that means father in Yiddish. He was fox, especially when it came to money. He was short, dark, hairy, and gruff. He wore a white shirt, black pants, and a tall is on this on his shirtsleeve, and that was like his uniform, he´d wear those black pants till they glazed and shined and were ripe enough tostand in the corner by themselves, but god help you if those pants were coming your way in a hurry, because he was nobody to fool witch, my father. He was hard as a rock.
My mother was named Hudis and she was the exact opposite of him, gentle and meek. She was born in 1896 in the town of Dobryzn, Poland, but if you checked there today, nobody would remember her family because any Jews who didn’tleave before Hitler got through with Poland were wiped out in the Holocaust. She was pretty about the face. Dark Hair, high cheekbones, but she had polio. It paralyzed her left side and left her in overall poor health. Her left hand was useless. It was bent at the wrist and held close to her chest, she was nearly blind in her left eye and walked with a severe limp, dragging her left foot behindher. She was a quiet woman, my sweet Mameh, That´s what we called her, Mameh. She´s an person in this world I didn’t do right by…
Chapter 4
Black Power
When I was a body, I used to wonder where my mother came from, how she got on this earth. When I asked her where she was from, she would say, “God made me,” and change the subject. When I asked her if she was white, she´d say, “No. I´mlight-skinned,” and change the subject again. Answering questions about her personal history did not jibe with Mommy´s view of parenting twelve curious, wild, brown-skinned children. She issued orders and her rule was law. Since she refused to divulge details about herself or her past, and because my stepfather was largely unavailable to deal with questions about himself or Ma, what I learned of Mommy´s...