“Just like in real life?”
Özlem Hanım raised her long, thin eyebrows and adjusted her tone of voice. She’d been teaching the lower grades, but that wasn’t necessarily an impediment to her being a decent person. Still, she slid into spitefulness, lashing out with viciousness whenever anyone challenged her. And now it was time for Pembe to be taken down a peg: “No. Completely tasteless and inappropriate.”
She paused, realizing that she’d left herself open. Pembe played her role, as if it were all part of the discussion: “Do you mean the dialogues? That is, the ones in our classmate’s novel . . .”
“No. I mean you.”
Pembe bit her lip. She’d do that when she was trying not to laugh, as she knew that even the wrong facial expression could get her sent off to see the headmaster.
After class, we were talking in the school quad. “Did you hear what she said to me in class today?”
Derin reported on her punishment: “They’re making me help the ninth graders with their study group.”
As the two of them went on chatting and laughing, I stood off to the side, not saying a word. I couldn’t understand why our teacher, who had actually come up with the idea of the writing competition and worked so hard to get the administration to agree to it, was trying so hard to hurt my feelings. The competition itself wasn’t so important to me, but writing most certainly mattered, and that woman had left me feeling crushed.
The other girl—the one who ended up winning—put on airs, being overly considerate in her dealings with me to show that I didn’t represent a threat to her. She wasn’t a loser like me, so everything was a bed of roses, and since the world bowed before her because she was beautiful, she was happy. I, in contrast, was miserable. She was nice to me because I could’ve been in her position but I wasn’t, and the only reason for that, I reasoned, was a small miscalculation, bad luck, a tough break, or some crap like that. She’d taken my place, and I’d been put in my place. Hadn’t it always been like that?
“Lost in your thoughts?” Yunus’s voice was like the breeze rustling the leaves.
“Does that ever happen to you?” I asked. “You’re thinking about something and then suddenly your line of thought pulls you in like a whirlpool. If that happens, you only have two choices: either let yourself plunge into the thought or shut it down completely. Otherwise, you’ll get stuck in the midst of life as if you were sleeping with your eyes wide open.”
Yunus listened intently, his eyes fixed on my own. Me? I’d cut in all the time when people were talking. The reason was simple: loneliness. If I found someone who’d talk to me, I’d prattle on, hardly stopping to take a breath.
The conversations that Derin, Pembe, and I had were the best imaginable. It was as if the three of us were playing tennis. Of course, tennis isn’t played with three people, but my point is this: it’s nearly impossible to strike a balance when there are three of you and even harder to share time equally. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. Our conversations would shuttle back and forth. Sometimes one of us would finish the other’s sentence. Sometimes it was two of us, and sometimes all three. I dreamt about Derin and Pembe twice. Occasionally I go to sleep for the sole reason that I hope I’ll dream of them, but when I open my eyes in the morning, I’m crushed by the realization that a new day is starting and that my dreams have come to an end. I wish that I could dream about my grandma and my aunt—the one who was a journalist—as well.
Yunus left.
When he managed to make the leap from the wall to the fire escape, he said, “I cast off all my fears during the protests.” Granted, it would’ve been better if he hadn’t made such a trite statement, but you have to admit, he had the right to after his demonstration of courage. Without asking for my help, he closed his eyes and reached out, grabbing hold of the railing, and he hung there for a moment before swinging his feet up onto the other side.
The other side.
Warm water, a bed, shampoo, breakfast, hot drinks—those were all opiates used in the name of civilization.
Yunus was proud of himself for having made the jump from the wall to the stairs. He’d been forthright by confessing that he was afraid of heights, and he’d gone a step further by telling me about the serious health issues that had plagued his youth. Life was precious for Yunus. Later, he’d say to me, “I’ve got one foot in the grave,” just like an old-timer.
When his feet hit the stairs of the fire escape with a resounding boom, I caught a whiff of myself and summoned the courage to say, “Sorry I smell like a garbage dump!”
Now that the sun was going down, the doves stopped cooing as they roosted in the eaves of the buildings along the street. His voice was barely louder than a whisper, as though he was saying something of the utmost secrecy: “The rooms on this side of the hotel are going to be empty for a few days. You can use one of them if you’d like, so you can take a shower and get some rest.”
Before I could answer, he turned around and started bounding down the steps. Picking up the fur coat, which for me was like a spoil of my own war, I headed back to my nest. I found a small bottle of water in the coat pocket along with a package of cookies, the kind they serve with coffee at hotels. It was now clear to me that Yunus intended to feed me like I was a bird living in the trees of the park, which may as well have been my cage.
Days later he’d say, “When I started thinking about why you decided to live out your days there, my first thought was, ‘Her feelings have been hurt.’”
He was right. People had hurt me. The world below was a hurtful place indeed.
12
ME
I was determined to stay in the treetops, even if it meant smelling bad, going hungry, shivering in the cold, and getting soaked when rainstorms blew through. However, if we consider the fact that I kept repeating those words to myself like a mantra, it becomes obvious that I wasn’t truly convinced of my commitment or, perhaps, I simply wasn’t ready for such a life. Maybe it would’ve been truer to say that I’d get used to it over time.
“Do you think that characters in books should be so outspoken?”
Another piece of criticism. A silent classroom. And me, heaving a sigh.
“Hey, emo girl, maybe you shouldn’t have written that novel.”
My friends’ attempts to console me were failing miserably. I’d learned my lesson: in both real life and fiction, tight-lipped people are the most beloved of all.
“No,” I said, “they shouldn’t. Characters should never speak their minds so openly.” That was the signal flare indicating that I’d given up. Özlem Hanım’s cocky ego was standing fully erect, but it soon softened into a greasy smile that spread across her face. She’d succeeded in quashing my hopes of becoming a writer.
But now she wasn’t up in the treetops—I was. And while I was capable of being just as outspoken as that character of mine who had been riddled with the arrows of critique, there was something that made it impossible for me to descend into the world and pick up my life from where I’d left off, no matter how I’d failed to convince myself that life among the leaves and branches was my destiny. That something was so powerful that it nullified all thoughts of going back home, returning to school, or mingling with society at large. Regardless of the difficulties involved, I had to stay put and become a bird. My determination was as dogged as the kick that sends the stool flying out from under the feet of someone who has tied a noose around their neck. Have you never had such feelings? That you’d fight back tooth and nail, no matter the odds? There are things you feel in life, the causes of which are incomprehensible to everyone but you. Things that are illogical, seemingly empty, opaque to the outside world. Things that cannot be reduced to terms explainable to others. Things that are laden with a significance that no one else can see.
The sun had set.
I folded the fur coat in two and slipped inside. It was quite cozy. I savored the feeling of being in there. My mother was fond of using the word “savor.” E
ven though she was born in 1973, she liked words that had an old-fashioned tinge to them. My mother . . . That sweet, pale, wan light of my life. When the sun set, it would bathe our home in its light. Our apartment was no bigger than a cardboard box. I take that back; your average cardboard box is probably bigger.
My grandma would say, “If an apartment has a big kitchen and bathroom, you get the impression that the whole place is large. But that’s crap. It’s just an illusion.”
The setting sun would paint our place in every shade of red. An apartment no bigger than a cardboard box. My mother would come home in all those reds, stepping through the door into the crimson scene.
“I’m hoo-oome!”
She was so happy in the days when she was in love. During those years when my father was making her life miserable, she wouldn’t say a word when she got home. Nor would we. All you’d hear was the creak of the hinges and the inelegant, earsplitting thud of the featherweight door swinging shut of its own accord.
My father would snarl, “You sluggards, you’re going to break the door off its hinges! Close it yourselves.”
At every opportunity he would hurl insults at my mother. “Sluggards”!
I never understood how they’d fallen in love, married, and brought me into the world.
If my mother was happy, I was happy. I’d look at her, all smiles. All I needed was her happiness, nothing more. My mother’s internal-combustion love affair went on for a long time, coasting in neutral. I don’t think she ever slept with the man with whom she was in love. The doctor, I mean. That’s why their love story was of such epic proportions.
The doctor would show up for his shift at the clinic on certain days of the week. My mother would tell her friends about their affair over the phone and I’d listen, as entranced as if I was listening to a fairy tale. She never read to me or told me stories, so that was all I had. Well, one time she read “Thumbelina” to me when I was sick. In her days of misery, my mother had been a wreck, but love slowly brought her around. Afterward, she managed to show me a little attention.
For the most part, she only took care of my most basic needs. At the age of five I started taking baths by myself, and when it was time to eat, she’d set a plate of food in front of me, expecting me to handle the rest of the dining process. I got dressed and undressed on my own, putting my dirty clothes into the hamper. In a monotone tone of voice my mother would tell me what I needed to do, and then her job was done. She was never endearing at such moments. Just tired and irritable.
Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t a bad mother, and the extent of her faults is open to debate. As she drowned in her sea of unhappiness, she simply was doing the best she could. When she was on the road to becoming a well-known poet, there was a sudden swerve and she found herself working as a dietician. I have always thought, however, that she remained a poet at heart, and she carried within herself the rage of the lines she couldn’t put to paper. Clichéd as that may sound, I’m not going to erase it. She married a man whom she admired and then was subjected to his scorn. Although she had a family of her own now, she was lonely and had no one in her life. The situation with her sister and her mother was different; if there’s time, I’ll talk about that too.
My father’s mother and sister helped her out, but only up to a point, and they never really accepted her as one of their own. My father’s sister always gave her advice, which sometimes bordered on meddling. She would’ve called it “women’s solidarity,” but that wasn’t the case at all, as was made clear by the way she’d criticize my mother behind her back. Her favorite piece of counsel ran along these lines: “I know you love your husband, but try not to love him so much. Be strong. Don’t let him treat you that way.”
It never occurred to my bewildered mother to say, “Why don’t you tell him the same thing? He’s your brother, after all.”
Only once when the situation had gotten out of hand and she couldn’t stop crying did she ask my aunt to talk to my father. The catalyst had been a book that my father threw at my mother as she was walking away. It hit her in the back.
My mother said, “It wouldn’t have hurt so much if he’d stuck a knife into my back.”
Then there was the problem of money: my father wouldn’t give her any. She had a credit card that she used to buy things for our household, and when the bill came, my father would pore over every single item. If he saw something that seemed suspicious, he’d get in her face and say, “What is this?”
It was a clinical case of psychological violence.
My mother quickly stopped buying things for herself with the card. That’s how frightened she was of him. In fact, she stopped buying anything except for household things like coffee, rice, and laundry detergent, and whatever they needed for me. Without any money, she couldn’t go to the salon or do her own shopping, or even go out to eat by herself. All because “we didn’t have any money.” The irony was that my father had plenty of cash in those days, as he was working for that rich art collector. There wasn’t a single country in Europe that he hadn’t visited, and with the exception of two short trips to Paris and London, he didn’t take my mother on any of his travels, purportedly because they were solely focused on going to museums. Business matters. He’d go on and on about how he spent a small fortune on Armani suits, Tommy Hilfiger neckties, George Hogg shoes, a Seiko watch that cost $1,250, and a two-year membership to the Swissôtel fitness and spa center. During that period of luxury and worldly pleasures, which could be aptly termed my father’s own personal Tulip Era, it seems that he never had an affair with another woman, or if he did, my mother hadn’t intuited it.
I heard about all these things as my mother poured out her troubles over the phone in tears, tears, and more tears. My father’s sister once told me about those trials and travails, saying, “Don’t ever let anyone walk all over you like that.”
My mother never realized the severity of the psychological abuse to which she was being subjected. But it wasn’t physical. Not once did my father raise his voice or hit her; there was just that one incident with the throwing of the book. He would still, however, have his way with her, but without talking to her or even looking at her face. Male violence is like smoke—it seeps in everywhere. And society and the state make it possible for that violence to sink its roots into every home, slowly poisoning women to the point that they are reduced to little more than walking corpses.
As the two of us were walking down the road one day, a beautiful woman stopped my mother and asked, “I couldn’t help but notice, is your little girl sick or something? What’s wrong with her?” But that beauty was all in her outfit. The woman’s high-heeled Campers made up for the squatness of her legs, her fancy dress concealed her shapeless ass, and her rings distracted your attention from the fact that she had sausage fingers. To top it all off, even through her sunglasses, which my mother didn’t have because she’d lost hers and couldn’t afford to buy a new pair, I could see that her eyes bulged like a toad’s. I stood there staring at her, mouth agape. All the same, she seemed to be a happy woman who took pleasure in looking after herself, and she spoke with a confidence that hinted at a lust for life. My mother, on the other hand, was as silent as a mouse cowering in a corner. My mother was unhappy. And unhappy people wear their misery on their sleeves. Everyone sees it, but pretends that they don’t. You can tell if a woman is unhappy by the look in her eyes.
That outspoken, well-dressed woman and my mother were about the same age. It was for the best that she said exactly what was on her mind without hiding behind social niceties: “I’ve seen your daughter walking around all hunched over, shuffling her feet. Look at her: she’s got bags under her eyes. I remember when she was such a pretty little girl.”
For the next few days my mother looked like she was in a trance. I know that she was thinking a lot about what the woman had said. And about her own situation. I think that was when she started to realize that she’d been deprived of so much in the latter years of her life. I’
ve been told that, when I was a baby, she’d go around wearing ratty Adidas sneakers and canvas trousers with a busted zipper, even attending dinner parties dressed that way, and not once did my father say to her, “Where do you think you’re going dressed like that?” Because he didn’t really see her. It was as if he was taking a ghost wife out—a woman who’d risen from the grave, a wife whom he’d murdered through disinterest and a sharp tongue.
At one such dinner party, my mother had been enthralled by the female host’s shoes, so much so that she couldn’t take her eyes off them all night. But not once did she lament her own situation or ask, “Why have I been brought to this state? Why am I at this dinner wearing worn-out tennis shoes?”
An unhappy woman. A pale, drained, ignored woman. A bone-weary woman.
I still think, however, that despite everything, my mother was a strong person. She persevered and then slowly reinvented herself. Although she wanted to divorce my father, she couldn’t because she had nowhere to go. Now, as she looks back on her past, she probably sees that she didn’t really want to get divorced at the time. People create their own suffering. If a separation is what she’d really wanted, she would’ve found a way and started working again, like she’d end up doing a few years later. And while she and her family may have had different outlooks on life, her mother and sister would’ve helped her out.
Take, for example, the fact that she never even considered accepting child support from my father. It was a matter of pride for her. Not that it was unwarranted; my father was trying to break her heart and chisel away at her dignity. In the same way that she was incapable of standing up to his abuse, she was incapable of leaving him.
I have vague memories of my mother wearing tight red corduroy trousers and a black turtleneck sweater, oblivious to her own beauty and grace as she went through life mired in despondency. Then again, it is possible that my recollections are merely the product of what her friends told me when I got older, of what my father’s sister explained to me about the days of my youth. I can’t be sure. The only thing I know for certain is that I was a silent witness to her misery, which I saw through a child’s eyes. That is the role that children play: they document the lives of their parents through what they remember about them.
The Girl in the Tree Page 13
