There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In (10 page)

From this speech I drew the right conclusion, and for the next several weeks Veronica became my main ally. That was the month when Andrey came home from the interrogations and lay down facing the wall; when my mother sat in her room in the dark and ate almost nothing, and then one time, when I brought her food, she looked at me sideways, and I saw her eyes, bright red. What she knew, what she understood was hard to tell; everything happened quietly; we scurried around like mice, and Andrey disappeared into the maw of the investigation machine without a sound. I flew from the detective to the lawyer to meetings with Veronica, and Alena, now alone in her room, cried softly.

We—Veronica and I—never let the matter reach the Komsomol court. Veronica personally went to the administration to argue that Shura must marry Alena at least temporarily, which suited me just fine, for what use could I have for that bastard. Veronica, meanwhile, enjoyed her new access to that secret idol of every girl in their class, who said little, and whose eyebrows, I must admit, were like a swallow’s wings, and whose cracked mouth . . . Oh, mother’s hatred for a son-in-law, it’s jealousy and nothing more. My mother had always wanted to be the only object of my love and trust, wanted to be my entire family, to replace everything and everyone in my life. I’ve seen such families: mother, daughter, and small child. The daughter goes to work like a man; the mother stays home, nags the daughter that she comes home late, doesn’t spend her money responsibly, doesn’t pay enough attention to the child, and so on. At the same time the mother is insanely jealous of every girlfriend, let alone man, in whom she correctly sees a rival, and the result is one big mess. My own mother had pushed out my poor husband; in a good moment she looked at me slyly and asked, “So, who’s the head of the family?”

On coming home one day I discovered Granny’s door barricaded. When I pushed my way in, my mother was crouching in the dark on her little sofa (now it’s mine). Why did you block the door? Why did you move the desk under the chandelier? Were you going to hang yourself? When the paramedics arrived, she looked at me wildly, threw her head back, and walked out, for good. That night I howled and howled, and I couldn’t stop. Alena shuffled in with some sedatives and doled out two pills, but I grabbed the whole bottle and asked her to bring me water; while she was gone, I stuffed the pills inside my pillow—I knew whom she was saving them for. You are hysterical, stop it, my daughter said, and what could I tell her? That I had come back from the hospital, with its barred windows? That Andrey has also been thrown behind bars? That I was a criminal? Who sends their mother to an institution? The doctors told me it was a very advanced schizophrenia—she herself told them about when the KGB began to follow her. I mentioned her scarlet eyes; they said it happens. She needs treatment, they said. Her life was in danger.

•   •   •

I knew, of course, that I couldn’t bring Mama home—because of Tima: he didn’t deserve that hell—the screams, the arguments, the smell, the feces. No pension would ever make up for all that, especially such a tiny one—she’ll put a kettle on the stove and burn down the house. Tima came to me, and I greeted him with a smile as always, and promised him bread with butter from last night, and tea with candy, and to make him a house from paper. My head ached. I put water on for tea and thought I could just as easily forget to turn off the gas and burn down the house; that it was a miracle that all this time I had managed not to lose keys or money and to answer the letters coherently. But what if it happens before I leave for good—who will save Tima? There must always be other people in the house, but where are they? Where?

At this very moment the doorbell rang. Another friend of Andrey’s? I’ve paid! I’ve paid everything I have, there’s nothing left, leave me alone, you bastards! My hands were shaking: Who is it? I asked. The little one rushed to open the door—he opens to anyone, always.

“It’s me, me.”

“Who’s me?”

“Me, Alena.”

Why was she here? It wasn’t her payment day! “It’s Mommy!” Tima rejoiced for some reason.

I cracked open the door.

“What are you waiting for, Mama?” Her large eyes feigned curiosity. In her arms she was clutching a baby, her third, while her second was clutching at her skirt. My daughter was clad in a jacket two sizes too small, clearly from the trash. She was surrounded by a stroller, a sack, a suitcase. How did she manage to drag it all upstairs?

“We can’t afford to receive you here, you hear me?”

I wanted to shut the door, but the little one wouldn’t let me. His mother was trying to unlock the door with her key; she addressed Tima through the crack: “Please, honey, step aside. She’ll jam your finger with the door!”

“That’s right, Timochka,” I told him sweetly. “Let’s close the door, sweetie.” No!

I walked away and locked the door to my room. They scuttled past my door to the kitchen, then to the bathroom. I could hear Tima’s happy voice, the baby singing, their mother cooing. He saved them; he is a member of their family now. For this I went hungry and sleepless, and at the first opportunity he tosses me aside like an old brick. In one brief instant my life has lost its meaning. How well he played his cards. A quick struggle at the door, and he is hers, his biological mother’s. I’ve seen such cuckoo-mothers, who receive their children years later, and how those children adore them, how they instantly forget those who had raised them. I remember a very distant acquaintance, a certain Irina, telling me that now she knew why she could never get along with her mother: her mother wasn’t her real mother! So now this Irina visits the grave of her real mother, which the fake mom had maintained all those years, while the woman who had fed and raised her gets nothing, even though Irina knows she’s been ill and had to retire from her high post. Her husband Irina also kicked out, after a consultation with the grave, because he came from the same privileged milieu. Now she lives alone with a little daughter in a condo her fake mom bought for her. I remember mulling over this story because I also wanted my mother not to be my mother. I didn’t understand then, and my heart went out to the grave of that birth mother, not to the adoptive mom, with her crew cut and ugly business jacket. I could imagine her with red cheeks and shaking hands breaking the news to Irina: she probably hoped for some gratitude at the end of her life, some justification of her sacrifices, and what did she get?

It was my turn to sit on the little sofa behind the locked door, my eyes bloodshot. Alena was going to move in here with her pack of brats. She’d take over the larger room, and Tima would move in with me, with his cot. I would celebrate my solitude at night, in the kitchen. There was no room for me here. When I came out, my eyes were dry.

“Alena, can I talk to you?”

“Wait, Mama. I’m unpacking. Can you feed Tima and Katya?”

Mama. A prick in the heart.

“Are you here for good? Is this it?”

“Tima, can you feed Katya? Grandma won’t feed her.”

“I can!” Tima yelped excitedly, and walked this fat Katya past me without a sign of recognition, as if I were a lamppost.

“There’s nothing to eat, nothing!”

“Mommy,” Tima announced, “we have two slices of bread with butter, and candy. I can put the water on.”

“Alena, stop him, he’ll burn himself and the little one. You’ll have to watch him—I need to leave.”

“You’re leaving?” she said dully. Clearly she’d been hoping to leave me with the brats.

“That’s right. Today I’m bringing home Granny,” I announced.

She froze. “Mama! Why? Why today? Stop your jokes. There are three children here.”

“Otherwise in an hour they’ll transfer her to the facility for the chronically insane.”

“So what?”

“What do you mean, so what? Who’s going to visit her there? Take her food? They’ll hit her over the head with a chair and that’ll be it.”

“You’ll visit. Like you have done all these years. Or haven’t you? You are getting her pension, after all.”

“It’s three hours one way!”

“You’ll manage, for your own mother. You’ll still be getting her pension.”

“What pension? There will be no pension!”

“Ah, now I understand. Because of a few pennies we’ll have to go through the same hell. My whole childhood, all the best years ruined by screaming. Twisted family.”

“Well, so that you can have a normal, untwisted family, Granny has disappeared.”

“I’ve listened to these tales for years.”

“To save you and your family, I sent her away, so your Shura could live with you here. But he couldn’t! No one ever could!”

To my surprise her eyes filled with tears. A vestige of shame still dwelled in her.

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Tima begged her.

“Sonny, where did you leave Katya? She can’t be alone in the kitchen.”

“Our Andrey is being kicked out by his wife, by the way. He drinks, you know.”

Here I lied. One night Andrey pounded on my door screaming murder, and I caved and opened the door. There were three of them standing behind his back, hands in their pockets. I closed the door in their faces. Andrey was pale: he begged me on his knees—he owed eight hundred rubles. Under their watchful gazes I withdrew family savings, plus my mama’s insurance—everything I had. He promised to give up drinking, to find work, to get treatment for his foot, and to register at his wife’s address.

“Family, family,” Alena sighed.

“Granny will sleep in the little room; I’ll move into the kitchen. If Andrey comes home, he’ll sleep with Granny—he’s her darling grandson.”

“Andrey’s no one’s darling grandson, not anymore. I went to see him last night, with the children, and he threw a drunken fit in the middle of the night. They had a fight, turned on the lights—that was his way of telling us to get out.”

“But he has promised to quit!”

“He’s been drinking nonstop for a week—he found money somewhere. The house is full of his buddies. Well, at least this room is mine. Ours.”

I’m choking on my tears. Andrey, Andrey. How could you? The decision came suddenly. Freedom! Wasn’t it absurd to imagine freedom in such a space? Alena wouldn’t be heartbroken. What abyss did she emerge from that a single room for four people she considered a refuge?

She read my mind. “I request political asylum. Mama! If you only knew how I lived!”

One moment of closeness between us in three years.

“Then why did you have another one? Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

“Get rid—of Nikolai? Mama! How can you say that?”

“Everyone does it up until the last moment. Big deal. You pay money and have it done.”

“Money? What money, Mama?” she mumbled.

“
Their
money. From
them
. The ones you spread your legs for. And you were taking from
us
! Whore.”

I needed to hurry—they take them away early. They had already wrapped her in two robes, towel for a hat, rubber boots—in this cold! That’s how they dressed her once for the X-rays—the machine is in a different building; I came to see her, saw an empty cot. What a scare I had! Why did they let me see it? Right now my mother’s the last one left on the floor, her neighbor Krasnova’s gone, everybody’s gone, Mama receives special treatment as their only patient, and she greedily swallows additional food, her face contracting like a sponge. I won’t survive, she whispers. Of course you will! the nurse tells her. What do you have to worry about, Granny? We’ll take you to a new hospital; our beloved state won’t abandon you—you’ll always have your bowl of mush. Look at this sleeping beauty. Let’s go, Granny, I’ll rinse you off. Look at you—just skin and bones. The other day we lifted her neighbor, and she left her womb behind on the bed. Eighty-seven years old, they took her to the Fifth; the Fifth is much worse. You, Granny, they’ll take to another dump; it’s a bit cleaner. Who can find enough sheets and diapers for you, eh? Look at her, just like a baby. What is she saying? What are you saying, Granny? They should give them a shot and be done with it. Come, up you go.

But I must bring her some clothes. She’s thin, she can wear mine. But mine are all unwashed or full of holes. At least she doesn’t need a bra, and here’s a pair of underpants saved for a doctor’s visit, oh, happiness. Now. A slip. Nothing but holes. I mend now and again but not enough—no one sees me anyway. But what is this? Aha. An undershirt left by my former son-in-law, Shura. Thanks, Shura honey. I don’t have tights for her, but here’s a pair of sweatpants. Now I need socks without holes, but what’s this? A pair of unworn cotton stockings. I’ll roll them down, and she’ll wear them like socks with her shoes.

God help me, what am I talking about? What shoes? It’s winter, she’ll need felt boots. I keep my pile of felt boots in storage. Oh, what a mess; how will I find anything in here? Idiot, lazy cow, all you care about is your stupid poetry, and now you are late and they are taking her away.

“Mama, don’t make dust, for God’s sake!” my daughter announces in passing.

I’m late, oh dear. Now her dress: thank God she’s shorter than I am. I didn’t touch anything, despite my intention to make something for myself out of different dresses. In the end I saved everything for Alena—she is the same height as my mother, has the same temper, too. Alena the Troglodyte, I called her to myself the last time she was here, when she shoveled two helpings of everything, but that was because she was heavily pregnant—I didn’t know. Aha, here’s something—a lovely tailored dress. Mama was an elegant young lady in a cutthroat all-female office, had lovers among the highest management, the bastards. The hat. The main thing is to cover your ears, I’ve been telling the little one. I was his doormat; he wiped off his silky feet and marched on—don’t think, don’t cry, he is fine, he is with his family, his mother, his brother and sister. The mother will shear his curls and put him up at a boarding preschool, like army service. A single mother is entitled to the state day care—prison for the children. She’ll warehouse them all and go to work. But how is he going to sleep there alone? How? As your own mother has slept for almost seven years, that’s how, but let’s not think about that; let’s think about finding a scarf for her. That would be with Tima’s things; he wears it when his ears hurt, but it’s covered with stains, with camphor oil—I can’t put it on my mother’s head!