Empty interval

I hadn't seen her for a few weeks, and I was glad she finally showed up again. It didn't seem to bother her that I was a little late. She gave me the impression of not being fully present, as if her mind was floating somewhere far outside the window she was staring through.

-"I missed you for a few weeks." I started by way of greeting.

She was wrapping a lock of her hair around a finger. She reminded me of a little girl.

-"My father did summon me." she answered dryly.

-"Summoned?" I asked surprised.

She shrugged indifferently.

-"What was the ground for this - uh, invitation?" I informed.

She didn't answer me.

-"How long has it been since you visited your parents?" I tried.

-"A lifetime." she replied even drier than before. "He wants to get rid of my mother."

-"Divorce?" I asked.

She shook her head again.

-"He's sick of wedlock. He wants to be free. He kept asking me how much longer she has." She turned her head towards me, and I frowned inquiringly.

-"My mother has dementia." she stated, "Now my father is the nun who holds her rosary to keep her upright." The contempt in her voice was cutting. "Perhaps it is he who needs something to cling to. He got it into his mind that my brother and I might predict how that dreadful beast that has invaded my mother's mind unsolicited and unexpectedly would turn out. “Just like you predict the weather."

-"I'm so sorry about your mother's sickness." I said. She shrugged briefly:

-"My father never understood why I left home."

-"He can't dot the I`s?" I asked.

She took a deep breath and looked straight at me:

-"I wanted to tell him that I was writing. And what I am writing."

-"You didn't?" I interrupted her briefly.

She smiled contemptuously: "I was afraid to break his heart."

"Was it hard for you to see your mother like this?" I wanted to know. I saw her think for a moment, but she did not answer me. She let her eyes wander through the room:

"I think it bothers my father that he can't reminisce with her." she says with disgust on her face, "He can´t whitewash the past anymore." She let out a deep sigh. "The strange thing is my mother has lost her spines. She has become gentle."

She glanced through the window: "I forgot how ugly it is there." she continued, "It's springtime, but everything was gray and wet, and the wind was cold. Arable land devoid of character as far as the eye can see. I've always found the trees there to be anorexic, stark, and always barren. As a teenager, I always walked around in an overcoat with a collar that I could pull up.

The house was almost invisible: completely overgrown. The lawn was completely devoured. My mother never believed in pulling weeds or removing dead branches and pruning the hedge. All the other houses had beautiful flowers or plants in the garden, except ours."

-"Was that big overcoat a way to hide?" I asked.

She made a face as if I had asked a stupid question.

-"My parents looked like two ghostly apparitions barricading themselves in the house for the twentieth century. My father never even said hello when I came in.” she continued. “He never did. He didn't even greet me when I happened to meet him on the street.

 Now he shuffles around with a stick. Any slower and he´d be asleep." she chuckled. "My mother was the one who opened the door. She did not recognize me and called to my father that there was a woman at the door. Her hair has gone completely white." she said, running her fingers through her hair.

-" You didn´t expect her to have changed a lot?" I asked.

-" She wears her greasy hair on her shoulders. She never had long hair. She looked so vulnerable. She used to be fierce and stubborn, and belligerent. Now she reminded me of a garden gnome." She giggled and I laughed with her.

-"What did you talk about?" I wanted to know. She stuck out her tongue and made an ugly face.

-"After a period of awkward silence, during which I could barely breathe, my father launched a series of updates. He wanted to know if I would stay in "his house" during my stay. He was worried about my brother's arrival. "

She let out a deep sigh and bent over. She massaged her ankles. She seemed so far away.

-"How was your trip? I asked - but he didn't get the joke." she sat up again and looked at me as if she needed an ally.

-"My mother always thought there were strange people in her house, and that children were hiding in the rooms above." she continued

-"Did she see in those kids younger versions of you and your brother?" I asked.

-"Who knows. She also thought that her own mother, who has been dead for a long time, was lurking around the neighborhood." a smile appeared on her lips, "That made my father nervous. My mother was telling her life to an invisible visitor; like a Broadway musical, in which she was the shining star. My father remarked that the only benefit to those shitty stories was that at least he didn't have to listen to the same old stories all the time." She raised her head and looked at me with a sad look.

"Imagine that: my mother has friends, and those new friends seem to love her and never tire of her babbling."

She got up and went to the window: "I wonder what it would be like if the old version of my mother could see her new one."

-"What do you think?" I asked curiously. She turned and laughed, "She would be furious." She sat down again in her seat opposite me:

-"Then suddenly my father said that I should wash my mother, or rather bathe her. She absolutely did not feel like it. But my father insisted. He said she stank." she swallowed as she rolled her eyes: "You should have seen that bathroom... One of the first things he asked me to do was to clean the toilet, I'm not going to defy polite descriptions- but I keep gagging when I think about that dysfunctional toilet. I tried to explain that he needed to buy a new toilet. He didn't see the point in that. I was just an outlet for his frustrations."

She sat staring straight ahead, looking at me as if waiting for a hint to keep talking. 

-"Continue." I tried to motivate her

-"The house was always Mother's territory. He paid the bills, she..." she hesitated.

-"Ruled the roost." I added.

-"My father complained the whole time that he was hungry. He had to live on a diet of coffee, eggs bread, and the occasional can of soup. He fed my mother oatmeal. She didn't show too much interest in food. She always used to make his food. Not that she ever had particularly good kitchen skills, and sometimes they even bordered on manslaughter." she hid her laugh behind her hand. 

- “Not a healthy diet for older people." I said, but she didn't seem to hear me.

-"Yes," she sighed, "She never really cooked for us. Always for him."

-"How long did been stay?" I asked.

-"I was supposed to stay for twelve days, but after nine I couldn't take it anymore. It was like pulling a plaster over a crumbled wound. I tried to look my mother in the eye a few times. Occasionally It seemed like she was back on board. But... unspoken prohibitions hung in the air at all times, no matter her state. And if there is one thing I've learned well in my childhood, it is how to sweep things under the rug. We were all good at that, in our family. I kept tripping over it."

Sometimes I got really angry." She blinked at the memory. I looked at her questioningly:

-"What if she was just kidding me? And then she was gone again." she made a wing movement with her fingers. "She started talking about her sister. A real tapestry of incoherence. I never knew she had a sister.

When I came down the third or fourth day in the morning, she was sitting on the doorstep, she said she was waiting for a man she met. Her boy she called him. My father was still sleeping.

My mother always wore the same clothes for weeks: always the same sweatpants and sweaters. She reminded me of a homeless person at times. And she smelled so bad. When something was said about it, she got angry and always said that her clothes had already been washed a few days ago. I only got around to washing her hair once. She was like a three-year-old child. Although, a three-year-old can perform simple chores. She peed herself all the time… I got tired of it.

It took me two days to tidy up her bedroom. Bags full of sweaters and shirts. Overflowing drawers, groaning from the papers, and crammed letters. I sorted some clothes. Older stuff that's not really in style anymore, but so what. If she feels like wearing those things, at her age she has the damn right to do so, doesn't she?"

I nodded in agreement.

-"My brother arrived a few days later than me. He didn't want to spend the night in the house either. That house never was a happy place for both of us. It was always cold there, and all we dreamed about was leaving We were both lonely but too miserable to see each other's loneliness What could we have done?

My brother told me he had been angry, but above all jealous of me for being brave enough to escape. He was furious at the evil hole I left behind. On the second day of his arrival, my brother got a migraine. He walked around with some kind of hat that our mother had made for him in the past. He claimed that helped. I was stunned to learn that he had suffered from debilitating headaches before since he was a very small child."

-"Did you at least have a few good talks with your brother?" I wanted to know.

She ran her hands through her hair and closed her eyes:

-"We were inspired by each other. Connected in our history, or rather, the rediscovery of what we still can't talk about." She shook her head for a moment as if this could shake off all the terrible things.

-"My father thought I was ruthless in cleaning up. This comment made me shiver. It felt good to hear him say that. I wanted to be ruthless. I had to, otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to stay there. Yes, it's safe to say I enjoyed being ruthless."

-"A compensation for the years they were ruthless with you?" I asked her.

-" My brother told me, that my parents wiped out every trace of their daughter when I ran away." She began to smile as if she was enjoying a guilty pleasure:

-"I wondered what my mother did after her family had fallen apart. She has been hoarding, sending my father over and over to buy more of the same groceries, which she then crammed into all kinds of corners. 

My father wanted to give me a painting that hung in the same place for fifty years. He was disappointed that I respectfully declined.

I considered taking some things home with me, but in terms of nostalgia, it would have only reminded me of my mother's perversities. And his of course.

I found a few more boxes of "sentimental" items: certificates, photo albums, and the like. I browsed through it. Perhaps I was hoping that I would be able to see things in a new light. Take another look at it." She looked at me helplessly.

--"Were you looking for a justification?" I asked. "Did you think a new truth would speak?"

-"I was too busy worrying." she replied casually.

-"On good days I think of my childhood as a gap in my personal history; an interval that I can't share with anyone and must remain empty, like a space in a house that you never use."

She got up and walked to the window again. This time she stood with her back to me as she continued to speak:

"My mother's laughter bothered me. She never smiled before. And when she did, it was a fake smile, the kind of laugh that tries to prove something."

-"Like what?" I insisted

-"Forced happiness." she said dryly.

When she turned around, I saw tears running down her cheeks. She assumed a menacing pose, and spoke in a deep voice:

-"I´ll slam you, you fucking bitch!" I was startled by this sudden outburst, but didn't interrupt her and let her go on:

-"On the one hand, I feared he was going to do it, but then again, if he hits me, he won't come and press himself on top of me at night until the mattress opens and swallows me up."

She wiped her tears with her hands.

-"Come sit please." I requested. Reluctantly, she sank back into the chair.

-"The first time was in his truck. He parked by the lake. The sky was cold and gray. He put his hand on the inside of my thigh. I wanted to go home, but he did not. Not for another long unbearable hour." She took a tissue from the box on the table and blew her nose.

-"This is between you and me, he said. Not your mother!" she continued, "His fingers were worms. I felt so dirty."

-"Have you ever talked to your mother about it?" I asked. She gave me an angry look:

- When we got home and sat at the table, I told my mother that he pinched my ass and..." she let her tears flow freely now,

-"I wanted to tell the rest, but the look in her eyes silenced me. Suddenly it became so quiet at that table in that ghastly kitchen. So quiet. But it was not a peaceful silence like you were in a shrine Or some cursed place in this case The silence sounded like an egg falling from a bird's nest in the spring and you know the bird chick in it just died. "

She took a deep breath and continued:

-"Good girls don't say such things, is all she said. Good girls don't say such things."

-"One day I came back from school, and she handed me a box she had made for me. A gift she said."

-"A gift." I repeated.

-"You know, to keep secrets. All the things we would never say to each other."

She raised her face, looked at me, and said:

-"You know, I'm amazed at my ability to adapt to the unbearable. Almost anything can seem normal if it's done to us long enough, right?" she took a long breath, "I'm glad I left when I did before the despair no longer seemed dangerous and I started to feel normal about it."

She looked at her watch and stood up:

- “Time is up, right?” 

- “We still have a few minutes.” I replied

She shrugged: "It was tornado season. It was cold and rain was falling from a dark sky. I was glad the wind was blowing when I left. I let the wind blow me back into my own life.

It was the perfect time to leave."