The Ibbur and the Ibis

THE IBBUR AND THE IBIS

by Amanda Hollander

Content warnings: climate crisis, brief threat with gun, reference to drowning (non-graphic)

By mid-morning, the temperature had already climbed into the upper nineties, and pythons had curled themselves around the suspension cables of the Brooklyn Bridge. I eyed the snakes as I waited on the pier. The recent heatwave had been extreme. Wistful thoughts of when January meant snow and ice briefly flurried through my mind before melting away. A few teenagers had decided to try cooling off in the river, splashing around and occasionally diving underwater to swim above the submerged cobbled streets of what once had been Dumbo. I took out a bag of tangerines and started peeling them. Hadassah was running late, as usual. Though I’d probably run late if I had five kids, too. 

A woman I didn’t recognize looked over the river, her eyes briefly lighting on me. I tightened my grip on the tangerine. When she turned to walk away, I relaxed. Not our passenger, then. Belatedly, I realized that I had crushed the fruit in my hand. Sticky juice ran over my fingertips. Grabbing the dock hose, I rinsed off my hands and plucked out a new tangerine from the bag. 

Footsteps I recognized raced up behind me. I felt a tap on the shoulder. 

Hadassah was sweating bullets from sheitel to sneakers. I returned to peeling the fruit. “Glad you could make it.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Viola. Is she here yet?”

“No.” I didn’t look at her, just handed her the fruit and shoved the peel into my pocket. I unzipped the cooler sitting next to me. “Beer?”

“It’s ten a.m.”

“The ice caps melted, you have five kids, and you live with your mother-in-law.” She was still hesitating. I lifted the bottle so she could see the label. “It’s kosher.”

“Ah, screw it.” Hadassah grabbed a bottle and twisted off the top. Sitting down next to me, she arranged her skirt again to cover her knees. She murmured a prayer in Hebrew and took a deep swig from the frosted bottle, her eyes closing in enjoyment. Some things had changed since she’d become religious, but she still loved cursing and a cold beer. And it was easier if we drank. Then we didn’t need to talk.

She lowered the bottle to her lap and looked over at the bridge. One of the pythons suddenly fell in a long spiraling heap down into the river. Hadassah shuddered. “Man, I hate those snakes.” She looked warily into the water below our swinging legs, but nothing slithered through the gentle wake. 

Splinters from the dock dug into the backs of my thighs. When we were little, our dad used to work in the boat and, at low tide, he would suddenly reach up and grab our ankles. We would scream and yank our legs back onto the dock.

Shit. I took a long drink from my beer. 

The alcohol was weak but went straight to my head in the heat. I jammed a hat over my hair and opened an umbrella over our heads to get some extra shade. Two docks down, Mrs. Jung gave me an approving wave before she went back to untangling her fishing net. She was the one who had given me the hat. Sweat slicked down my back. At least unlike Hadassah I didn’t have to wear a bra. We drank our beers and watched the rafts and boats go by.

Hadassah looked at her watch, but didn’t seem bothered. Picking the tangerine out of her lap, she carefully tucked the rind into her pocket. “Where is she?” She popped a segment of the fruit into her mouth.

“How would I know? You arranged it.” Usually, an ibbur was referred to us through Dr. Kaplan’s network, but I had been dodging calls, so she had worked around me by going to Hadassah instead.

“I’m sorry.” 

“Sure.”

Hadassah tapped her fingernail on the bottle. “Look, I know how you feel about it. But you know the waterways and have the boat…” She stared at her beer. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. The beer was cold and bitter on my tongue. “How are my nieces?”

“Fine. You didn’t RSVP for Rivka’s bat mitzvah.”

“You already know I’m coming.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Not afraid I’ll fuck up and embarrass you in front of your husband?”

“Things were shit, then. Dov gets it. We both want you to come.”

I didn’t answer, but I knew it was true. Dov was a mensch through and through. He’d been the one to bail me out at the police station and arrange for my lawyer. He had never said another word about it, either. I wished he’d at least had the decency to be a jerk about it. 

Hadassah gasped and pointed upriver toward the bank. “Is that an ibis?”

Her hand dropped. She sensed her mistake as soon as she said it.

The glossy ibis had been our dad’s favourite bird. They were a lot more common on the debris-ridden shallows of the upper East River these days, especially around the smaller islands. Mentioning ibises was the closest we ever got to talking about him. Most of them nested further upriver or in Jamaica Bay. A lot of people had let their pets loose after the Melting, transforming parts of the city into nightmarish menagerie. Roosevelt Island had overgrown with kudzu and become so infested with vipers and shrieking parrots that it had warped into a wasteland. The island was also our dad’s favourite place once glossy ibises had started to populate the area. He’d take us up in the boat and point them out, carefully navigating around all the morass of wires and plastic hidden just beneath the water’s surface.

I shook off the memory and focused on the bird, which, sensing eyes on it, took flight. The wings looked similar, but… “Beak shape is wrong,” I said.

Hadassah’s eyes dropped and she looked warily toward Manhattan. She hadn’t been back since Dad’s death. 

We sat there, awkwardly kicking our legs out of sync. My skin started to itch. I wanted to get this over with. Where the hell was this woman?

“Excuse me,” a voice said from behind. 

I spun around so fast the umbrella spokes caught in Hadassah’s sheitel and nearly yanked it off her head. I offered a sheepish grimace of apology as she adjusted the wig and turned to see an older woman standing behind us. She was probably seventy, with a neat bob. I immediately sensed the ibbur whose soul had lodged in her body. 

The first time I saw an ibbur, I was seven years old. We had been at our grandparents’ house for Seder. When Hadassah and I went to open the door for Elijah, a man stood on the step and I thought this year the prophet had actually shown up. My skin prickled as though an electrical current ran through it. Then the man’s dark eyes looked into me while through the same eyes, someone else looked past me. Hadassah, who was standing right behind me, screamed. We both ran to hide under the table amid the tangle of my family members’ legs. My grandfather took the stranger to his study while my grandmother coaxed us out from the dining room into the kitchen. She placed an orange peel in my hand and one in Hadassah’s and kissed the tops of our heads, telling us to smell the citrus until the prickling sensation on our skin stopped.

He has two people in his eyes, I had whispered to her. 

Twiceness of seeing, Grandma had called it. A sign of a spirit possessing the living, she explained. But, she reassured us, seeing Hadassah eyeing the refuge of the tablecloth again, a kind possession, one agreed to by the host, that only lasts long enough to complete a task. 

When does it end?

When the ibbur’s good work is done.

Continued in Augur Magazine Issue 5.2...