Eric Suben

Eric Suben is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist, a prolific children’s-book author, co-author of three writer’s guides, and a journalist whose articles have appeared in periodicals ranging from newspapers to scholarly journals. Also a playwright, Eric's stage works have been produced by theatres in New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. He resides in Westchester County, New York.

Easy read of the story in the images above:

Lamb

TW: non-graphic scenes of male circumcision, a sexual encounter, and masturbation

It was the blood. No, it was the penis. No, it was the penis and the blood and the…knife.

Isaac reeled as he stood up. Later, he could not recollect how the infant had left his lap. Someone must have whisked it away, but he could not be sure who or exactly when. When he looked back, the baby was not tumbled onto the floor, so presumably it was safe somewhere. As Isaac staggered away from the cushioned chair, head spinning, everyone else in the room—everyone but his glaring sister-in-law, Abby, and the bawling baby (oh, there he was!)—was crying mazel tov, and there was a sound of plastic glasses clicking together faintly in toasts.

The sweat beading on his forehead, Isaac loosened his tie as he plunged through the thronged relatives and friends. Reaching for the sliding glass door, he tugged vainly before remembering to undo the latch. He flipped it, slid back the door, then the screen, and was outside on the rough pebbly concrete of the patio.

Isaac unbuttoned his shirt collar. He shivered in the chill air of early November. The sky was overcast, a leaden gray. Most of the leaves had fallen from the backyard trees and lay dry and curled in the grass. He breathed deeply, then retrieved the pack of Parliaments from his suit coat pocket, extracted one from the box, placed the filter between his lips, groped for his matches, struck one, held it to the cigarette’s tip, and inhaled. And exhaled.

As he smoked, Isaac could feel his heart rate slowing. He could also feel the drops of sweat sliding from his armpits down his sides. Looking down, he saw his shirt front was damp, too—he could just glimpse his sparse dark chest hair through the starched (now limp) white shirt and ribbed athletic undershirt. He shivered slightly as the cool air reached the wet spots.

“What kind of people do something like that?” he murmured. “To a baby?”

Reviewing the prior scene in his mind’s eye, Isaac saw the familiar people—his own parents, his brother and sister-in-law, his grandmother, the other assembled parties—and the rabbi!—some beaming, some with foreheads wrinkled in tender concern, at the infant in his lap. All were quiet and intent, and no one made a move—as a baby’s penis was cut! On purpose! With a knife! There was blood! And now they were having a party!

He took another drag on the cigarette and turned to look back through the glass door. The buffet was heaped on his mother’s marble-topped kitchen table. There were chubs. There was chopped liver in the shape of a bundt cake. The people were filling their paper plates—dark blue, with “It’s a Boy” written in white cursive. His mother was holding forth soundlessly. His grandmother was patting someone’s arm.

“Did you ever see Rosemary’s Baby?” he muttered. While he had to admit his people looked more benign than the guests greeting Rosemary in the Castavets’ apartment at the end of the movie, that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding something just as much. They looked familiar and nice, sure. But they liked to cut babies. In their penis.

Shaking his head, Isaac flicked his ashes, turned back around, and looked toward the woods. He thought about Ira Levin being also a Jew, and wondered if the party scene at the end of Rosemary’s Baby was some kind of coded reference to this same ritual.

A gray squirrel ran chattering down a tree, chased by another, its fluffy tail raised like a flag. They ran about the yard a bit, then chased back into the woods.

“I guess they’re getting ready to mate,” Isaac thought, somehow moved by the idea they could do so without, when the babies came, any hoopla or elective surgery.

As he mashed the cigarette butt beneath the toe of his black Oxford wingtip, Isaac heard the glass door slide open behind him, then the screen. His eyes still trained on the woods, he felt a strong clap on his right shoulder. His older brother’s voice boomed in his ear.

“There you are!” Mitchell shouted. “We wondered where you got to.” He had a lit cigar in one hand and a plastic glass of scotch in the other.

“Yeah,” said Isaac weakly. “I just wanted to get some air, and…you know… have a smoke.”

“You did a wonderful job in there!” Mitchell went on. The smoke from his cigar eddied around Isaac’s head. Isaac could smell the scotch fumes on Mitchell’s breath, his lips were so close. “The mohel said he never saw anyone so steady.”

“Oh, that’s nice that he said that,” Isaac muttered. Then, collecting himself, “Oh, and mazel tov, by the way. He’s a beautiful baby.” Isaac flinched inwardly at the “by the way.” Of course, the baby was the main thing. He glanced through the glass door again. The guests had moved away from the buffet table and were standing clumped in small groups and circles farther down the room. Only a single turret of the chopped liver mold was still standing.

“Thanks,” Mitchell said, sending a cloud of scotch-tinged cigar smoke in Isaac’s direction. “We’re pretty happy with him.” He paused and removed his arm from Isaac’s shoulder. He took a sip and squinted at Isaac. “So, how are you doing?”

“Oh, uh, fine,” Isaac said. He was getting colder, though his shirt front had dried pretty much. He was starting to want to go inside. He straightened his shoulders and faced Mitchell. He placed his right hand on Mitchell’s left shoulder.

“Mitch,” he began, “thank you for the honor. I mean, I know that’s a big deal, to be the sandak at the bris. I thought you would pick Dad or someone older, but, I mean, thanks.”

“Well, you’re my only brother,” Mitch huffed, “and Abby thought since you were our best man…anyway, we thought it would mean more to you than Dad.”

“Oh, yes, yes.” Isaac patted Mitchell’s shoulder as he spoke. “Yes, it meant a lot. But listen. He’s a beautiful baby, and I wish for you that you would have many more sons.” His hand still now on Mitchell’s shoulder, Isaac paused and looked in his brother’s eyes. “But if you do, please, never ask me to do that again.”

Mitchell started, scowling, then turned to go back inside. Since Isaac was going in that direction, too, he put an arm around Mitchell’s shoulder, and they stepped through the glass door together. So the awkward moment passed away.

Isaac’s stomach was churning, and he couldn’t imagine eating anything now, especially meat. But he paused before the buffet table and took a paper plate, marking time to avoid entering the scene in progress behind him. He took a spoonful of potato salad and a challah roll then stood gaping at the mostly empty platters, feigning consideration of something more to eat.

He felt an arm around his shoulder. “So, how does it feel to be an uncle?” His mother’s cousin Murray, bluff and gray, rasped in his ear.

“Oh, hi, Murray,” Isaac said. He took a forkful of the potato salad. His mouth was dry, and the copious mayonnaise almost made him gag. He swallowed without having chewed fully, the solid bits of potato and carrot marking a rough pathway down his throat. He coughed once. Murray slapped him on the back.

“I’m good, I’m good,” Isaac said. “Oh, yes, it’s great isn’t it. About the baby, I mean.”

“Great, great,” said Murray. “Look at your mother. She’s kvelling.”

Isaac looked at his mother, plump and still pretty, her hair dyed its customary chestnut brown. Though smiling, her eyes looked angry. In a momentary lull of the party chatter, she could clearly be heard saying, “Enough! If one more person calls me Grandma, so help me …” The end of the sentence was drowned in a surge of voices.

Isaac turned back to Murray. “Yes, we’re all very happy.”

“Isaac, darling.” Murray’s wife, Margery, sidled up on Isaac’s other side, her pouf of coppery hair reaching just below his shoulder. “And what about you?”

“What about me?” he asked.

“Are you going to make your mother happy, too?”

“Happy…how?” Isaac looked down at his plate but couldn’t really imagine another attempt at the potato salad. “I…hope I make her happy.”

“You know what Margie means,” Murray said. “When are you going to get married and start making babies, too, like your brother?”

“Listen,” Margie said, “do you even have a girl?”

“Yeah,” said Murray. “Did you even bring a date to the bris? We noticed you didn’t have a plus one at the wedding.”

“That was two years ago!” Isaac protested.

“So, nu, where is she?” Murray went on. “Are you keeping her hidden somewhere?”

Isaac looked at him, a bit wild-eyed. He looked down at the plate in his hand and pushed the potato salad with his fork.

“How’s your grandson?” he asked. “Um, Lance.”

Murray made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Don’t talk.”

“Didn’t he get married last year?”

“Ach!” Murray gestured more forcefully and turned his face aside. Margery moved between them and placed her left hand on Murray’s back, her right on Issac’s forearm.

“Murray doesn’t like to talk about it,” she stage-whispered to Isaac. “She’s not a Jewish girl.”

Murray shook her hand off his back and turned to face Isaac again. “I told him, and I’m telling you. For a Jew to marry a Christian is like for a duck to marry a goose. It can’t be done.”

“Well, anyway,” Isaac said after a pause, “I have no plans like that.”

“Don’t leave it too long!” said Margery. “How old are you now? Twenty-five, twenty-six?”

“Twenty-four,” Isaac said through gritted teeth, staring down at the potato salad lumped on his plate. “Twenty-five next week.”

“Twenty-four!” shouted Murray. “I remember your bris!” He put an arm around Isaac’s shoulder and drew him aside from Margery. “Listen to me,” he said, his voice a fierce whisper in Isaac’s ear. “I remember your bris. You should use it for something. You know what to do with it, right?”

“Murray!” Isaac shook the man’s arm from his shoulder.

Margery had come around his other side again. She touched Isaac’s arm. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said. “You’ll know when it’s time for you. Murray, come.”

She took Murray’s arm and started to lead him away. Isaac looked after him, seeing him shake his head and whispering something to Margery. He thought he heard him saying, “Twenty-four! I bet he’s never even had a girl yet!”

Isaac’s close-shaven cheeks reddened. That was true enough. He couldn’t even pretend to be eating anymore. He put the plate down and started moving among the groups of guests, floating from clump to clump, clapping a shoulder here, kissing a cheek there. He lingered not at all.

“Sweetie-pie!” His mother waved and broke away from the friends she was regaling. She clamped her hands around the back of Isaac’s neck and pulled his head downward. She whispered fiercely in his ear. “You look so handsome! I couldn’t be prouder. But if one more person calls me Grandma, I’m going to scream.”

Isaac pulled his head back.

His mother loosened her grip a little. “Did you get something to eat?”

“I, uh.” Isaac looked back toward the buffet. “Yeah, a little something.”

“I saw you go out for air before,” she said. She placed a hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Mom, come on.” Isaac jerked his head away. “I’m fine.”

“You look upset. Why would you be upset? Look how everyone’s so happy.” She patted his arm and looked into the next room, where Mitchell and Abby were sitting on the sofa, while Abby nursed the baby, a cloth diaper draped over her shoulder to hide her breast. “Ugh, I can’t believe she does that in public. Bottles were good enough for my babies.”

“Times change, Mom,” Isaac said.

His mother turned back around to face him. “Aren’t you happy for your brother?”

“I’m happy for Mitch, okay?”

“Then what?

“Did you see what they did to the baby? While I was holding him…”

“Oh, that,” she said. “That’s nothing. The baby doesn’t feel anything.”

Isaac pictured his cat, alone in his city apartment. The vet had told him the same thing when he brought the cat to be neutered. Isaac had said the same thing then. “How would you know?”

“Oh, come on,” his mother said. “It’s such a little thing.” She stepped back and looked at Isaac appraisingly. “Look at you, a big strapping man. They did it do you. You don’t remember it, do you?”

“Of course not,” he said. “But I—I never pictured it like that—the knife, and blood…so much blood.”

His mother drew him to the doorway and indicated Abby on the sofa, the baby over her shoulder. Mitch had drifted away, and one of Abby’s girlfriends sat beside her now.

“See?” Isaac’s mother said. “The baby ate, and now he’ll fall asleep. He’s fine.”

“Joanie,” his grandmother called. “Where’s the creamer for the coffee?”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Isaac’s mother expostulated, moving away.

Isaac walked into the living room and stood before Abby. “Hi,” he said. “How’re you doing?”

“Good,” Abby said. “Tired.” She was looking a bit sallow, Isaac thought, and not quite deflated after the pregnancy. Her loose paisley print top could still be a maternity blouse.

Abby indicated the friend to her right. “You remember Jodie, right? From the wedding?”

Isaac looked at the woman on the sofa. She was stocky, with short brown hair. All Abby’s bridesmaids had looked like that and all of them had names ending in “ie.” Stacie, Susie, Dorie. Isaac honestly couldn’t remember which was which, He looked around the room and saw the others scattered about as well.

“Sure,” he said, leaning down to shake Jodie’s hand. “Good to see you again.”

Jodie straightened her spine and smiled brightly up at him, showing her teeth.

Abby patted the sofa next to her. “Sit down,” she said. Isaac sat.

Abby turned to her other side. “Jodie, would you mind getting me some water? I’m supposed to drink lots of water while I’m nursing.”

“Sure,” Jodie said. She rose and walked toward the kitchen.

Abby watched her until she was through the doorway. Then she turned to Isaac. Lowering her voice, she said, “Listen, she was just telling me how good you look.”

“Oh, thanks. I mean, that was nice of her.”

“No, listen. I really think she likes you. You should ask her out.”

Isaac sank back into the sofa and looked uncertainly toward the doorway. “You think so?’

“Yes,” Abby said. “Why not? She likes the things you like—concerts, shows. She reads books.”

“Yeah, I do that, too,” Isaac said, rubbing his brow.

“So why not ask her out?”

“I don’t know,” Isaac replied, “I live in the city, she lives here…”

The baby stirred on Abby’s shoulder, and she shifted position.

“What if she doesn’t like cats?” Isaac went on.

“She has a cat,” Abby said. “What is it, you have something better going on in the city?” Isaac was silent, looking straight ahead.

“What is it, still with Hinda?”

“No…no. We hardly see each other.” Isaac pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. No text from Hinda. “It isn’t that.”

“You know what your mother says about her.”

“She’s not for me.”

Abby arched an eyebrow. Isaac looked down.

“But why not?” he asked.

Abby shrugged her free shoulder. “Does she give you what you want?”

Isaac’s shoulders slumped further, as though pulled by gravity. “She’s Jewish,” he muttered.

In his peripheral vision, he could see Jodie was coming back from the kitchen with a plastic cup of water. He straightened up as she handed it to Abby and sat at her right.

“Oh, thanks,” Abby said. Isaac stood.

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, I just need to, uh, you know, excuse myself.” He reached down to shake Jodie’s hand again. “Nice to see you, Jodie. I hope it won’t be another two years.”

Moving toward the stairs that led to the second-floor bedrooms, Isaac glanced back. Abby’s and Jodie’s heads were close together, and they appeared to be speaking quickly. Jodie caught Isaac’s eye and nodded slightly. Isaac started up the wooden steps.

It was quieter upstairs. The downstairs noise came up as a steady hum, punctuated with the occasional shout of laughter or chinking of crockery. Isaac stood on the landing, facing the doorway of his boyhood bedroom, the one he’d shared with Mitchell. The door was half closed, and the light was off.

Isaac pushed in. There were coats heaped on the neatly made twin beds. Otherwise, the room was as it had ever been. The painted cast-metal race car and biplane on the wall next to Mitchell’s bed. The schematic of the U.S.S. France over the maple dresser. No sports trophies, but Isaac’s certificate of trusteeship in the International Thespian Society was in a picture frame on the dresser.

Isaac pushed aside some coats and perched uncomfortably on the very edge of the bed. He was finding it hard to think about anything, though he was conscious of pitying the baby.

“Oh!”

The startled voice startled Isaac. He turned his head to look over his shoulder toward the door. There was Jodie.

“Oh,” she said, “I was looking for the bathroom. The one downstairs is, um, occupied.”

“It’s right next door,” Isaac said, pointing vaguely.

“Thanks,” she said, and paused. “See you.”

“Yeah, see you around,” Isaac replied. He turned back to gaze into the gloom. He heard Jodie’s steps down the hall and the click of the bathroom door closing, the whir of the fan as the light switch was turned on.

Isaac rose and took a few steps toward the dresser. On top was the dark-stained oak casket his mother used to keep historic family photos, the sepia-toned ones of unknown relatives in the Old Country, and the black-and-whites of his parents’ parents and their siblings and friends in the Bronx. He remembered something in this box, and his hands riffled through the tattered snapshots and cardboard-mounted portraits, searching.

At the bottom of the piled pictures, he found them. Six oblong photos in black and white, professionally posed and taken. Here was a white-uniformed nurse holding an infant, also swaddled in white, on her knees. A younger version of Isaac’s father stood to one side, and his grandparents on the other—his mother’s parents, and his father’s mother who died young. The other photos in the series were variations on the theme—some with his two wealthy great-uncles and their wives, some showing the banquet table in the ballroom of the Esplanade Hotel on the Upper West Side.

Years before, when Isaac’s mother had first shown him these photos, he wondered why there were no pictures of her or Mitchell.

“Mitch was too little to go to a bris,” she said.

“And what about you?”

Mom sighed. “I didn’t want to go. At Mitch’s bris, Aunt Rose came up to me and said, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll look better soon.’ And I thought I looked great for a woman who’d just given birth! I didn’t want to give her the chance to say anything like that again. So, I stayed home with Mitch.”

In the last picture in the sequence, the swaddled infant was lying in the lap of a gaunt, dark-suited man, flanked by standing relatives on either side, the nurse at the back. This picture was Isaac’s only image of the man holding him, whom he could never remember having met.

“That’s Avrum Itzik,” his mother had told him when he asked. “He held you for the bris. He was married to my Aunt Dora.” In a harsh whisper, she added, “A survivor.”

Isaac stacked the bris photos and placed them back in the bottom of the casket, burying them under the other forgotten images. He shuddered a little. They had a professional photographer!

“At least there are no pictures of the thing itself,” he thought. He closed the top of the casket.

Just then, he heard a flushing sound from next door, then the tap water running. He was wanting to use the bathroom, but he did not want to risk running into Jodie again in the hallway. He waited behind the half-closed door.

Isaac heard the bathroom door opening and carpet-muffled steps toward his bedroom doorway. The steps paused, then moved off, and in a moment, he heard them sharper on the wooden stairs, and fading as they went down.

He swung open his bedroom door, scooted to the bathroom, shut the door and pushed in the doorknob lock. He switched on the light, and the fan began to whir. The powder blue tile and fixtures were as they had always been. Some gold-edged paper guest towels were stacked neatly by the sink, and a small shell-shaped dish held colored rosettes of heavily scented soap.

Isaac stood before the toilet, legs apart. He lifted the toilet seat and unzipped his trousers, feeling in the gap of his boxers. He pulled out his penis and let it dangle over the water in the bowl, waiting for the urine to come. He kept his hands at his sides and looked straight at the blue-tiled wall behind the tank. The truth was, he didn’t really have to pee that much. It was something to do.

The stream, when it came, was not strong and ran out quickly. He glanced down to make sure nothing more was coming, took his penis in his right hand, and shook it over the bowl. He tore a square of toilet paper from the roll and wiped, just to make sure there were no drops.

He didn’t zip up his trousers right away. He let his penis hang out the front and considered it from above. “Yes,” he thought, “there it is. They did that to me, too.”

He moved to the sink to wash his hands, still in the same state of undress. He turned on the tap and looked into the mirror. It was hung too high on the wall to see all of himself, unless he stood on tiptoes. He tried it, then shook his head.

He turned off the tap, undid his belt and let his trousers fall to his ankles. He yanked down his boxers. Standing on his toes and looking downward into the mirror, he could see himself reflected. From this angle, he had a pretty good view. Yes, definitely circumcised. Yes, a Jew.

He held his penis up to see the full organ better. As he did so, it began to swell, and Isaac began to rub it in a desultory way. He felt a buzzing near his right hip. His phone. Shifting his penis to his left hand, he extracted the phone from his jacket pocket and checked the screen. Hinda was texting. “Not now,” Isaac thought, feeling the tension in his groin grow stronger. He switched hands again and placed the phone next to the sink.

If he stepped back a bit, he could watch himself. As he did so, he thought of the first time Hinda had done this, back in high school. It had been late, and the house was dark. His parents were asleep, and Mitchell was most likely off somewhere getting laid.

Isaac and Hinda watched TV for a while, kissing a bit. Eventually, they went upstairs and lay down on Isaac’s fully made bed. They kissed some more. After a while, Isaac took off his shirt, and Hinda took off hers and unclasped her bra. He tentatively groped her compact breasts.

He managed to get his hand past the waistband of her jeans and inside her panties. She opened her legs a bit then.

In the meantime, Hinda’s hand had followed suit and was inside his briefs. He rolled onto his back, undid his belt, and pulled down his jeans and briefs. Hinda continued till he came.

But nothing was happening now, standing before the mirror in his boyhood bathroom. His erection was wilting. In his mind’s eye, he saw another Saturday night, again with the TV playing silently as he and Hinda writhed on the couch, their jeans and underwear around their ankles. Isaac was on top of Hinda and moved his right hand to open her legs. She placed her right hand on his chest.

“No,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t.”

Isaac reared back and flopped into a sitting position. “Why not?” he asked.

“I have to wait till I’m married,” she said. “My mother says all men are waiting for the girl who says no.” She sat up, too, and starting pulling up her panties and jeans. “Besides, she says the minute a girl does it, her body changes, and everyone can tell.”

Isaac yanked up his pants, too. “Changes how?”

“How do I know? Her hips get wider or something.”

As that scene faded out in Isaac’s mind, he started to feel silly, holding himself in front of the bathroom mirror, otherwise fully dressed in suit and tie. Limp now anyway, he pulled up his boxers and trousers, tucked in his shirttails, and buckled his belt. He washed his hands with one of the little soaps, dried them on one of the fancy paper towels, and dropped it in the blue wastebasket. He picked up his phone and clicked on the text from Hinda.

He read, “Did they cut it off yet?”

He stood staring at the screen for a long moment then began to type.

“Do you want to get married?” he texted back.

And, “Yes,” she replied.