Mama Leone (17 page)

Mom's Sunday games are
I've got a migraine
or
look at the state of the place, we're cleaning under the rugs today
. I like the first game better because then Mom spends the whole day lying in bed whining, sighing, and grasping for the barf bowl. As long as she keeps it up, I can go about my business building a castle for Queen Forgetful and flicking through the encyclopedia, I'm just not allowed to shout, but that's it, everything else is okay. In our family migraines are passed from generation to generation, from head to head in actual fact, so we can't remember an ancestor who didn't get migraines. Mom says our ancestors who didn't get migraines were actually monkeys, and that their heads started hurting the moment they became human. Grandma says that if she got a migraine, she'd lock herself in the bedroom, put earplugs in, draw the shades, and let the kids smash the place up, just so long as they leave her in peace. I can't figure why I'm not allowed to smash stuff up when my mom has a migraine.
You'll see what it's like
, Mom would say,
the joke isn't going to pass you by, and after you've had your first migraine you'll understand everything your mother has suffered in life
.

Mom's other game
look at the state of the place, we're cleaning under the rugs today
is a pure catastrophe. The game involves shunting wardrobes around the house, taking the rugs out into the yard, cleaning floors and windows, Radojka the cleaning lady coming over and my mom playing Alija Sirotanovi
ć
until Radojka goes home and Mom gets tired – which is when the game is called off. But this doesn't mean the rugs are put back on the floor and wardrobes shunted back in place. No way! The mess lasts at least another ten days, and then we live in a state of emergency, sleeping in our beds in the middle of the room, not watching television because we don't have anything to sit on and because the screen is covered in curtains taken down to be cleaned. Mom gets really uptight when we play this game and no one's allowed to say anything to her because then she just starts screaming and crying and talking about the past. In the past everyone maltreated Mom. I don't know a single member of our close or extended family who hasn't maltreated Mom and who she doesn't rail about because of that. Only I never maltreated her in the past because in the past I wasn't even born, but apparently I'm making up for that now.

Today isn't a day for Mom's migraines. Today we're going to Pioneer Valley. Dad's coming for us around noon, lunch has been put back to four, which means we'll have a whole three and a half hours for looking at the animals.
God, father, look at the fog
, Mom said, almost pressing her nose up against the windowpane trying to see out. But there was nothing out there, just fog and milk and the boughs of the cherry tree
beneath the window disappearing into the milk rather than growing from the trunk.
What did I tell you?
Grandma replied.
What did you tell me? . . . That it's foggy out . . . I don't know, I don't remember, I was still asleep. . . Fine, play the smarty-pants then . . . I'm not playing the smarty-pants, I was asleep and didn't hear you
, Mom was getting snippy, and that was always dangerous because her snippiness could finish with us not going to Pioneer Valley. But luckily Grandma bit her lip. Grandma always bites her lip when a ring girl starts strolling around the apartment with a sign saying “Fight Time, Round One,” because she doesn't have the strength for a fight of fifteen rounds. She's mature and experienced, but Mom is young and up-and-coming and would knock her out by the third round.

Maybe you should give Pioneer Valley a miss after all
, Grandma stared at the foggy whiteout outside the window.
I don't know, I really don't know
, Mom drank her coffee and lit her first cigarette.
Here we go, you're going to back out on me again
, I put the last block on the top of the tower where Queen Forgetful was holding her parents prisoner.
No one's backing out on you, be reasonable, take a look at the weather
, Grandma wasn't falling for it.
What do you care, you're not going to Pioneer Valley, it's all the same to you what the weather's like . . . Yes, yes, it'll be all quite the same to me when you come down with bronchitis and I have to look after you
.

Dad arrived fifteen minutes before noon.
We're going to Pioneer Valley, right
, I got it in before Mom and Grandpa could open their mouths.
If that was the deal, let's go
, he replied. The two of them looked at
each other. Mom sighed like our national hero Marija Bursa
ć
when she was injured in the village of Prkosi and headed off to play the martyr. Outside there was either a light rain falling or it was the fog turning into drops of water, I don't know, but the whole thing looked like a ginormous cloud had come down on the city, covering the roofs of the houses and the streets as if we'd ordered a giant duvet for Sarajevo so we wouldn't have to climb out of bed.

There was no one at Pioneer Valley. The ticket seller in the entrance kiosk was dozing, and some young guy puttered by on a two-wheeled cart loaded to the brim with bluish-looking meat, singing
seaman sons are always so late ashore, and poor mothers weep forever more
. As he passed by he said
good day, folks, make yourselves at home
. Dad turned after him like he was about to cuss, and Mom gripped her handbag and said
Christ, do they have to hassle me when I'm at the zoo too
. Then they both shut up, and I shut up too because I already felt a little guilty.

The monkeys were surprised to see us. They scratched their heads and looked at Dad as if seeing him for the first time.
Looks like they're into you
, Mom teased.
And why wouldn't they be?
Dad made like he was lost in thought. The guy on the cart came by again:
it's strictly forbidden to feed the animals
, he shouted, and then continued on with his singing.
Oh get lost, bully boy!
Dad yelled after him.
He's just doing his job
, said Mom. The guy turned his cart around and came back.
Who are you telling to get lost, huh?
His light-blue eyes looked like they'd been found at the bottom of an Olympic swimming pool and he seemed really
dangerous.
Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?
Dad took Mom and me by the hand and led us off toward the lion cage, but the guy caught up to us, cutting us off with his cart.
I can throw you out of here, you know, I could punch your lights out too
, he shouted.
Get out of my way or I'll call your boss! . . . You know what, old fella, the boss can kiss my ass
. His eyes were popping out of his head at Dad like he'd seen a heap of shit. Then not waiting for a reply he took off.

Mom sighed and shook her head, Dad breathed through his nose, snorting mad. We stopped next to each cage, but I didn't feel much like looking at animals anymore. It occurred to me that none of us knew why we were here. Mom and Dad didn't even look at the animals. Dad just stood in front of the cages, stared at the bars, and shut and squeezed his eyes together like he was going to fire a bullet from each, or maybe a thunderbolt, and Mom just looked up in the air, high above the lions and tigers, all in the hope someone might finally notice her sacrifice, or someone would attack her so she'd at last be able to defend herself. The fact was, she was itching for a fight. I wanted to say I felt like going home but didn't know how to begin. I'd spent seven days laying the groundwork for our visit to Pioneer Valley, how was I now supposed to say I didn't want to look at the animals anymore?

As we crossed the bridge, a little stream flowing underneath where ducks swim in the summer, Mom tried to take Dad's hand, but he made a quick long stride and got away from her. That was the sum of his courage. She wasn't his wife and he had every right to let her fall into
the stream, and he wasn't her husband and she had every right to hate him for bringing her to Pioneer Valley in such fog. I didn't want to get mixed up in their relationship; as a matter of fact I wasn't interested in their relationship, though it felt a little weird when I thought about the fact that I was the child of two people at opposite ends of the earth who are completely different and total strangers to each other. If we each have our own star like it says in “Cinderella,” then their stars are so many light-years from each other that no one could even be bothered counting them.

Dobro
, she said quietly, taking me by the hand. He turned around unsure what she meant, whether that
dobro
meant
fine
or whether she meant his name, which was also
Dobro
. The accents had gotten lost in the fog, so you only heard how estranged they'd become from each other, and I knew they'd rather go home, each their own way, if only I wasn't there between them, silent, prolonging their horror. But they have to stick one beside the other until the very end, until we've been around all the cages and done all the things that this Sunday, the last day of fall, has in store. Even if they don't have anything in common anymore, they still can't run away from each other because I'm here as a memento of a time when they still had things in common. I won't let them forget this because I'm here, in this fog, in Pioneer Valley, as a guarantee the two of them will never go senile and never forget what they meant to each other, why they separated, and how estranged they seem to everyone who sees them together.

We got to the cage with the llama, my favorite animal and the main
reason I wanted to go to Pioneer Valley. I love the llama because he spits at his visitors. Running away from his spit is the best time you can have in the whole zoo. After he spat at me for the first time in my life, I wanted to be a llama. Instead of growing up and becoming a doctor like Dad or an accountant like Mom, I wanted to turn into a llama and spit on people I didn't know from morning to night, and for this to make them laugh and make them happy.

The llama stood in mud to his knees and stared at us.
Hey, llama
, I shouted.
Hey, llama, spit! Spit, llama, spit!
He didn't move, didn't gather a ball of spit in his mouth, he looked like someone who'd never spat at anyone because tears were running down his snout, real big tears, like the tears of a grown-up kid.
The llama's crying . . . He's probably crying because of the mud
, Mom said. Dad didn't say anything.

We headed for the exit. I turned to look back at the llama, hoping he'd be watching us. He wasn't watching; he was just staring at the spot where we'd been standing and was crying. You could see his tears from ten meters away. You could see them for as long as you could see the llama. I didn't know whether to believe the llama was crying because he was standing in the mud. Maybe he was crying because of something else. I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know something like that even if I saw my mom or dad crying. People are alone when they cry and no one knows anything about them. Only when I cry everyone knows why I'm crying because I always tell them. When I grow up, I'm not telling them anymore. That's the rules.

My shift starts soon
, Dad said and headed off toward the hospital.
Mom nodded, and that's how it ended. We got home and there was a plate too many set at the table.
Dobro didn't come
, said Grandma, even though she could see Dad wasn't there. Maybe that's what being senile is: saying things that are obvious but which you should keep to yourself.
He had to go to work
, Mom made a martyr of herself for our senile Grandma.
How was it at Pioneer Valley? . . . It was nice. The llama didn't spit, he just cried, but we still tried to have a nice time
.

A big bone lay between me and my other grandma, my dad's mother. Under other circumstances it would have just been a regular beef bone, gnawed clean, yet no one who heard the story ever forgot it, they took the memory to their graves. Though it was no big thing for me, I remember the bone too. I got it when I was turning three, and at that stage in life you don't really care about the kind of bones people give you.

That grandma of mine, I won't mention her name, wasn't happy when Dad married Mom. She wouldn't have been any happier had he married some other woman; she wanted Dad to stay on his own, that she, his mother, be the only woman in his life. She despised happy and joyous women, women's frivolity she just couldn't take, she spent
her days pressed up against the window of her room watching them flitting about in the breeze, unharried women who would live and die happy. For her, happiness wasn't a woman's word. But the other kind of women, ugly mousy little women, the ones who hid their every curve and would never catch a single male eye, these women were saints, condemned to suffer until death as a consequence. On Judgment Day they will win God's mercy, be blessed with forgiveness for their sins and those of their drunken roughneck husbands. She thought herself a saint because her husband had abandoned her with a newborn child, my father, for whom she would care a lifetime long, and for his brother and sisters too. They all lived in Nemanja Street in a tiny one-room apartment, half of which was taken up by a piano, the other half by beds. The piano served no practical purpose because no one knew how to play, it was just a symbol that they had once been wealthy, though no one remembered when that was – probably so long ago that every key had long since forgotten its tone. It was an apartment bare of beauty or generosity of spirit. Under the piano was a repository for winter provisions, jars of pickled paprikas, sacks of potatoes, cabbage, all the things other people kept in pantries and cellars.