by Inès Cagnati
I hoped very hard that my father would go to bed soon. I have a lot of patience, through force of habit. But it was really cold out. Very, very cold.
To pass the time, I decided to circle the house and see if it looked like everyone was sleeping.
The shutters of my mother’s bedroom were closed. They always are, even in the daytime. Nobody opens them. Light filters in through two crooked slats, and while she waits for my father, my mother reads her romance novels. She loves romance novels. That obnoxious Aunt Gina lends them to her because she loves them too, which is surprising because Aunt Gina is so gaunt and forever dressed in black. She’s an appalling sight. All my aunts are like that, and I happen to have a lot of them. Seeing them all together, you’d think they were an army of candles in mourning. Even the dogs pick up on it. I remember a summer day when all of them came to our house together. It was for a burial. When he saw them, the dog didn’t bark or anything. He threw himself at the front door, and raising his head skyward, his paws stiffly spread, he began howling his head off. He howled nonstop, straining towards the white sky, icy breaths cutting the heavy air. Nobody dared speak. My black aunts stayed there, motionless, amid the silence, the fear, and that barking, facing the crazy dog who was howling his head off.
That’s how they are, my aunts.
I thought my mother must surely be reading her romance novels, and after a while, I contented myself with that thought. She wouldn’t go to sleep, she’d come and open the door for me as soon as she could. It was so dark and so sad. I kept on circling the house. And all at once, amid this silence and this darkness, it felt so odd to be there, circling the house, that I felt like a stranger or a lost animal searching for some hole through which to slip into the house, or a stray animal, circling the house with such patience, circling and circling, hoping to see the doors open.
I asked myself if other unknown people had ever circled the house silently like I was doing. There are so many marshes, streams to cross, sullen waters tangled with tough grasses, through which the old Spaniard endlessly wanders. Nobody can escape.
The shutters of the girls’ bedroom were closed too. No noise came from them. All of them were sleeping. For my sisters, it’s a matter of complete indifference whether I’m there or not. They didn’t know I was there, in front of their window. But if they had known, it wouldn’t have mattered to them. They wouldn’t even have let me in. That’s how it is at home, I’m used to it. Only little Antonnella would have been delighted. She’s three years old. I’m the one who named her, Antonnella. In our house, nobody bothers to think up names when a baby is going to be born. A first name, I think that’s important. The only one they ever looked for was for a boy. Aimé. Now we all know there won’t be a boy, and though we’re used to that, we still don’t talk about it the way we once did. And Maman is going to have another baby in a few months.
Antonnella was very sad that I was going to the high school. I always paid a lot of attention to her. Maman, when she was expecting her, was convinced she was going to die in childbirth. My mother always thinks she’s going to die bringing us into the world. It’s almost a mania. She should have gotten used to it by now. With Antonnella, she thought about her own death even more than with all the others. She talked to me about it endlessly, crying about having to die that way, and abandoning us. She cried and told me she entrusted me with the baby and the other sisters, and her two pigs, the chickens, the pâté ducks, essentially everything. She talked about it so much that in the end I also was certain she would die. And then Antonnella was born; so timid, so minuscule, she couldn’t hurt a fly. She’s so pretty! But I had a lot of trouble with her. She couldn’t tolerate milk, and I didn’t know what to do. In the end, I fed her milk mixed with broth. Now she’s still tiny, but livelier. She wants to go everywhere with me, and when she talks to me her big eyes, blue as wild chicory flowers, open wide, and truly you would think that she sees me. Since I’ve been going to the high school, she’s been sad, she’s wasting away. She doesn’t cry or complain or anything. But her pale little face is becoming transparent. Poor little Antonnella. I know what’s wrong with her. She thought she was part of me, and now that I’ve gone away without her, she realizes she isn’t. That’s not something you ever get over. I know this because I was like that for a long time with my mother. I thought I was her. It’s funny to think about and even a little disgusting. I can’t recall the time when I thought I was part of Maman, but I remember the day when I understood that she and I were two distinct people, and after that the world was never the same. Never again.
It was one of those luminous summer days. My mother was selling two baskets of peaches in the village. From the moment she left the house, I began waiting for her. When Maman wasn’t there, I wasn’t even alive. The house was so sad, so sad, and it seemed to me she would never be coming back home. She said she would leave one day and abandon us all. So I believed that she would never return from the village. I would wait for her for a very long time, but she wouldn’t come back. That day, I couldn’t wait any longer.
I went to meet her by the edge of the marshes. I was sitting on the ground, facing the crazy clusters of yellow irises, and running my fingers through the damp earth, which was fun in a small way. I didn’t dare go farther, I didn’t know the way out. So I stayed there all alone, looking at the wild, waterlogged land with its solitary rivulets where taciturn plants grew. I don’t know what happened, or why. I only know that, all of a sudden, I understood that Maman and I were separate. Two people who were completely distinct, forever. An unbearable sorrow gripped me. A sorrow as great as all the loneliness of the earth. From that day on, I could see me. Now that I’m grown, it hardly matters. But that day, I saw me, so small, hardly visible next to all those water-crazed flowers, and Maman so far away, separated from me for always.
So I feel very sorry for Antonnella, Antonnella, she’s such a fragile little flower, and I . . . what can I do to make her stop feeling bad? I feel so bad.
There I was, thinking about those sad things, leaning against the closed outside shutters, when all at once I really wanted to see Antonnella. I knocked on the shutters, softly so nobody else could hear and so she wouldn’t be afraid. Inside, nothing moved. Maybe my mother had taken my little sister into her bed. That happens often, now. I was sorry. I would have liked to tell her I was there, so near to her, that I was going to come and sleep, holding her to me the way she likes, cuddled up into a hot little ball in my arms.
I wondered if anyone had read her the story of The Three Little Pigs that night. I took that book from Prisunic, the first Thursday of the fall. It has pretty pictures. She was so full of joy, Antonnella. Since then, every night when I’m home she sits on my lap and asks me to read the story to her. At these times, she pretends to look at the pictures or the outlines as if she could see. At the moment when the unlucky little pigs are devoured by the wolf, I pretend to weep over the dead little pigs. Then Antonnella puts her arms around my neck, soothes me, and shows me the cover of the book where she knows there’s a picture of the three little pigs. She says, “Don’t cry! They aren’t dead, they’re all there.”
And it’s true. We’re as happy as can be, the two of us. I would like to know if anyone ever reads the story to her when I’m not there. She’s so cute, Antonnella—it’s almost dreadful to think of her.
•
I went halfway around. I stopped again under the window of my mother’s bedroom. I called out quietly, pressing my mouth to the crack between the two crooked slats. Then I called again several times, more loudly. She didn’t answer. She must have fallen asleep over her romance novels. She often rereads the same ones. Evidently, they’re so boring that she falls asleep over them. Oh well. All of a sudden I felt so sad. She was sleeping there, so close, but I couldn’t see her or put my arms around her. I didn’t even want to see her and put my arms around her. I just wanted her to know I was there, in the dark, under the window, looking through this crack of light. I thought ma
ybe my mother didn’t love me as much as she said, since she couldn’t hear me calling, since she was sleeping while I was waiting outdoors.
Immediately, I started reproaching myself for having such thoughts. But it was so cold everywhere outside the locked house and my father didn’t want me to come in. These sorts of suspicions come to me whenever things seem more unbearable than usual. At night everything is unbearable. And also, I love my mother and I told her I wished she wasn’t my mother. I do everything I can for her. I’m not only talking about housework. That’s fair enough, or at least, it would be if everyone worked, in particular that nasty, lazy pest Maria, who thinks she’s the Holy Sacrament because she’s beautiful, and it’s true she’s beautiful, but that’s no reason. I’m talking about other things, like letting myself get beaten in Maman’s place when she does silly things, breaks dishes or the big black umbrella, or loses the keys or something else, and I tell my father it was me. And also, when I come back home to help her with everything, every night, even the day of the village festival. We all go there, to the festival, Maria far ahead with her girlfriends, me and the little ones behind. Maria and her girlfriends laugh like hyenas, looking at boys who are even more idiotic than they are. Maria never wants me with her. She says she’s ashamed of me. I get it. Me too, I’m ashamed of being so badly dressed and dark as a gypsy, as my father says. Only, in the village, everyone knows I’m her sister anyway, even if she tries to go where I’m not. It must be unbearable for her to have me for a sister and not to be able to do anything about it. For me, of course, the festival’s no big deal. The more I listen to the music and the more I watch the others, the more I understand that nobody will want me. So I start thinking about my mother all alone at home. Everything that could happen to her. My father will take advantage of our absence to beat her. In short, sad things. I leave the little ones at the festival and I go back home, running the whole way. At home, nothing has happened to Maman. She reads her novels on Sundays. I throw my arms around her and tell her how much I love her forever and ever.
And it’s true. It’s also true that I wish she weren’t my mother. I could have gone to the high school in peace, without abandoning anyone, and someday later, leave home without looking back. That’s what I dream. But I can’t.
I left the window and went to the barn, taking care to keep my feet out of the muddy water so I wouldn’t make noise. My father didn’t seem in any hurry to go to bed. He didn’t come out into the dark and cold. I wondered what to do while I waited, and then I decided to stay with Daisy again. I went near and called her. She woke up at once and came to me wriggling with frenzied joy. I said to her, “Make room for me, Daisy.”
She waited until I was well settled in her bed with the puppy and then she stretched herself out against me. She’s always gentle and warm, Daisy. I was fine.
4
I GOT UP abruptly, jolts of pain shooting through my body. It took me a while to understand where I was. It was the first time in my life that I’d slept in the straw with the dog. I wasn’t used to that. Of course, I’d slept in the straw before, at my godmother’s house, in summertime, when my mother sent me there to work, because that way I got meals for free. But there the straw had been laid out in a corner of the granary especially for me. It wasn’t the same thing at all. This time I was in the shed, in the straw with the dog. I wasn’t at all used to that.
I heard Daisy’s barking, coming from behind the barn. She must have been gone a long time, because I was very cold. I was irritated, even though I knew very well that Daisy’s job was to watch the house, not to keep me warm. Still, nobody was threatening the house or my bicycle. Daisy probably had to do her business, as was natural, and because she’s very clean, she goes far off in the fields to relieve herself, then she barks a little for form. She’s not at all like the town dogs. In town, the sidewalks on the streets that lead to the high school are covered in dog droppings. It’s completely disgusting. This when there are gutters with flowing water. But no. People let their dogs relieve themselves on the sidewalks, or against car tires. Clean, rich people; and yet, in the streets that belong to everybody, they behave disgustingly. When I see that, I tell myself that people wouldn’t dare to drop their drawers there and do what they have their dogs do. Then I tell myself, too, that all those clean people are more disgusted by themselves than by their dogs, and that—that’s really terrible. Anyway, the richest neighborhoods have the dirtiest sidewalks because of the great number of dogs. You could even identify those neighborhoods by their dirty sidewalks, without taking the houses into consideration. It makes me laugh to think about it. But in reality, it’s pretty troubling. Because even the yard of our house, with all the animals and us girls, who are all very dirty, isn’t as repulsive as these sidewalks of the rich. Still, we can’t take the cows someplace far away to do their business. A cow isn’t a dog. Truly, these town people are filthy creatures. Nothing less. You can tell because of their dogs. To them it doesn’t matter. They imagine that they and their dogs are not the same thing. But it’s just the same.
I would have liked to know what time it was. I don’t have a watch. Like everyone else, I had my First Communion, but even so, I don’t have a watch. My godmother didn’t give me one, or anything else, for that matter. At home, only Maria has one. She has a nice godmother. She died this summer. She was also my aunt, because each of us has an aunt for a godmother. That might be fun if my aunts hadn’t all been dressed in black ever since I’d known them, and if they didn’t give a person the impression of being accompanied by black ghosts. I think it’s very sad to have been baptized that way. My mother says it couldn’t have been any other way, that all our aunts are like that, and there’s nothing to be done, and that’s true. Now we only have a few aunts left for any little ones still at risk of being born, I know my mother. If too many are born, I don’t know how we’ll find godmothers. Really, it makes no difference, since our godmothers never give us anything. Except, of course, for that great big pest Maria, but hers died this summer. It serves her right, Maria.
I got up gently to avoid waking Daisy’s puppy. The kitchen light wasn’t on anymore. My mother must have opened the door, looked for me, maybe. And me, I was asleep. I’m unforgivable. Totally unforgivable. I felt again how much I hated myself. It was very cold.
I tried to open the door of the house. It was locked. I tried again many times, to double-check. No doubt about it: the door was locked. This puzzled me. I hadn’t expected this at all. My mother had never left me shut outside the house. The only possible explanation was that my mother didn’t know I’d come back. She and my father never talk about me.
All at once, I began to get angry. Enormously angry, uncontrollably angry, as I’d never been before. Because nobody has the right to treat her daughter that way, however bad she is. Even animals love their offspring and take care of them. And me? What had I done to make nobody want me? I wanted, all of a sudden, to rise up all alone against the world and demand at last: What had I done, that nobody wanted me?
There I was, filled with that terrible energy, when Daisy came up to me. I wasn’t thinking about her anymore at all. She panted in the dark, her muzzle pressed against me, all happy that I was there. I petted her narrow foxy head and she shook herself. I said to her, “Blast it Daisy, go away!” because I was lucky enough to have her. Surely there are people in the world who don’t even have a dog or a goat they can calmly go to sleep with.
I went back to Daisy’s bed and she followed me. What confidence she has! The puppy was still asleep. It’s such a tender thing, a sleeping puppy, like a baby. I took it in my arms and settled myself in the bed. Daisy arranged herself against me. She understands everything. I put the puppy in the hollow of her belly. They fell asleep almost at once. In sum, if I’d been a puppy I would have been loved. Daisy spends her time looking out for her little one, licking him, letting him nurse even when he hurts her with his sharp little teeth. And me, I’ve always been deprived of everything. Me, I’ve
never been able to love anything, because nobody wanted me. I know that my mother didn’t have time to look after me, what with the field work, the livestock, my father, Maria and the other babies that never stopped coming, and after that, Aunt Gina’s romance novels. I don’t miss the caresses I never had. They horrify me. Even right now, if someone brought a damp mouth to me for a kiss I would slap them hard, I’d be so horrified. Except for my mother. She’s my mother. And Fanny. She has smooth, freckled cheeks, like warm bread. She’s so pretty. Fanny, you could never imagine slapping her. If I’d been loved, I’d be pretty, too. It would have been enough for me to be a puppy or any kind of domestic animal. My father and mother take good care of animals. As for me, when I was little, I would have liked to be a little calf. I would have been loved, like everybody.
•
I was hot; I wanted to move, but didn’t dare, afraid of waking the dog, who might go off again to the stream and the marshes to bark at the wind and the moon, and the birds that call in the night. I tried not to move, but it was hard. Because I knew that I must not move, I felt like I absolutely had to, and the feeling was so strong that it made my legs and everything else ache. That’s how I am.
I tried to distract myself by thinking of other things, as I often do. I tried to come up with a topic of conversation as if I were two people, though I had to be extra careful since for the most part the things I talk to myself about are sad things. The only happy thought in my life is Fanny, and all that sunshine she carries inside herself. But when I think of her, there’s nothing to say except that I’m so happy, and I’m longing to see her. It’s sad. She’s so marvelous, Fanny, so beautiful, that she likes everyone, even long-legged Lydia. Me, I don’t like anyone. When I think of Lydia, her wickedness makes me angry, or her ugliness makes me sad, and I wonder: Do her parents love her, ugly and wicked as she is? Fanny says yes, that parents are parents. Me, I don’t believe it. They must see her giant crowded teeth and her lashless eyelids. And then, even if her parents do love her, no man ever will. It’s terrible, really. Because she makes so many plans. When she’s going to get married, what kind of house she’ll have, the kids, the friends, all of that. Me, I tell myself that her life is not going to turn out like that, and that it’s not fair to be so ugly that nothing is possible.
