There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In

by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

  January 18. I’m in bed, pretending to study. Am recording Mama’s conversation with Granny in the kitchen. It’s teatime.

  Mama: You! You’ve broken all the dishes!

  Granny: Me? Me? God help me! What dishes? When?

  Mama: Here, look! This cup’s missing its handle! There is a plate missing! Where will I buy new ones?

  Granny: It wasn’t me! Help! Somebody help! Here, I swear on my knees I didn’t break anything. (Slowly gets down on her knees.) Here. I swear!

  Mama: Oh, stop it, will you. Get up, come on now, get up. It’s not a big deal, after all; it’s just a plate.

  Granny: Help me! (Long moan.) What have I ever broken? (Gets up huffing and puffing, then continues tearfully.) When you broke my blue cup—

  Mama: Here we go. Try to remember your difficult childhood, too.

  Granny: The only thing I ever broke is the spout on the teapot. (The chair squeaks—she sits down to finish her tea.) That was me, I admit it, but it can be glued! I saved the spout.

  Mama: What? What teapot?

  Granny: The blue one. We’ll glue it on. . . .

  Mama: What? The blue teapot? The best teapot in the house? How can we ever use it again?

  Granny: You broke my cup, I broke your teapot.

  Mama: Alena! Come here.

  Me: Mom, I’m studying for the exam. . . .

  To confuse Alena further I brought up the subject of pimples. “You see, if you don’t wash yourself there and under your armpits, you are bound to get pimples. At the very least you could wash your own underwear. I do the wash after both of you, but Granny has lost her marbles!”

  “And I’ve lost mine,” said this pale, slightly pimply young heroine. Everyone is expected to kneel at her feet. But for that she must at least bathe regularly.

  “At the very least, you should shower and wash your hair. And use contraception! Use contraception, since you are sleeping with them.”

  Ah, the power of insults. She was crying now, but for herself, not her crazy grandmother.

  That was seven years ago, a lifetime.

  • • •

  The time is night. Today there was a knock on the door. Who is it? Personal business. Great. What business?

  Then: “Does such and such live here?” Naming my dear son. Southern accent.

  “No, no, and no.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He is renting.”

  “Give us the address.”

  Right.

  “Then open the door.”

  “I don’t have to open my door without a warrant.”

  Pause.

  “You tell your son, woman, to be very careful.”

  “Why? Are you a criminal?”

  “He’s the criminal. We’ll find him.” Then they kicked the door a few times and scurried away. I counted at least six feet.

  I didn’t leave the house that day and called Andrey, who was out of sorts and spoke to me in monosyllables.

  “Morning!”

  “. . .”

  “How’s your heel?”

  “Mm.”

  “Are you looking for work?”

  “Mm.”

  “Why not?”

  “. . .”

  “Come on, stop it. Smile, will you? Why so down? What happened?”

  “Mm.”

  “You absolutely must get a job.”

  “. . .”

  “By the way, someone’s looking for you. Again.”

  “Who? My friends?”

  “That’s right. Your friends. Said they’d find you sooner or later.”

  “Who did?”

  “Your so-called friends. I told them to go away, that they were criminals.”

  “And?”

  “They answered that it’s unclear which of you is a criminal. Andrey! What have you done this time?”

  “Me? You nuts? Why me?”

  Something had clearly happened.

  “Well. They are looking for you. There were six feet in all. Approximately.”

  “You mean there were three of them?”

  “They could be amputees. In any case, you mustn’t come around.”

  “I was about to come for my money.”

  “Money—from me?”

  “Mom, you’ve made this all up, right?”

  “You’re funny,” and I hung up.

  The monthly tribute, which he imagines I owe him, has been paid twice. Now I’m a pauper! The first time he stole my precious childhood book Little Lord Fauntleroy. I was saving it for Tima, for when he’ll be able to accept the heartbreaking news that the little lord will get nothing. Just once I was able to read to him up to that point, just once. Then the book disappeared. Tima and I waited outside the hospital for Nina to come out after her shift. When she did, she was grumpy. She complained about Andrey, said she couldn’t put up with him any longer, that he had to go. It turned out they hadn’t paid their utilities for six months. Nina managed to keep the phone working, but their electricity had been shut off. In despair, Andrey came to rob me. Nina agreed to exchange the book for forty rubles. Forty rubles! I always suspected that Nina was one of those two sluts in sunglasses.

  That was the last time Andrey visited our nest in my absence. With the last of my money I installed a new lock, which involved chasing down our district plumber, who finally came with a colleague, took a look at the walls and floor in my hall, and drew the right conclusion about my affairs. The door, he declared, was wrong, the lock didn’t fit, the ceiling was too low, but I implored them, telling the truth: that we needed protection from a former convict who was registered here. I didn’t cry, just trembled. They quickly lost interest in me; their standard game of claiming the job was impossible without extra pay lost its thrill in the face of my genuine misery. I collapsed behind my new lock, but it didn’t prevent Andrey from robbing me once more—he got a taste for milking my miserable ass.

  That month we were in a craze: I beat forty more letters out of Burkin, telling him that I owed money, which he understood. Anything else—childbirth, illness, jail—failed to move him. Only booze and money for booze touched his sympathy; my life tragedies only made him uncomfortable. And how lightly I danced around his office! I fluttered from desk to desk, showering everyone with compliments; my face tightened into a youthful smile; my washerwoman hands, calloused like hooves, had been groomed and the nails trimmed. The little one waited downstairs, with the guard—children were not allowed upstairs. There, on the third floor, I was an unrecognized poet, and the alcoholic Burkin a stern but fair patron of the arts. He ignored my groveling, my “you are my savior” blandishments; he opened and closed his desk drawers, where empty bottles rolled around—a useless hint, since I don’t give bribes; I simply can’t afford them. He chatted on the phone, stepped out, came back; his beautiful young assistants dropped in one by one and almost flopped on his lap; men from other departments also dropped in to wait for someone to take them to the bar next door, while downstairs Tima was stewing, running out of patience, and I had only one thing on my mind: Letters! Give me letters!

  Who knows, maybe those girls were unrecognized poets, too, maybe they too needed letters, but Burkin couldn’t support everyone—besides me, the letters fed a widow of one of his friends who had drowned but whose body had never been found, so his two children couldn’t get a pension. Burkin taught her how to write five types of answers. The widow wrote: “Dear Comrade: Unfortunately the subject of your poem (novel, short story, novella) doesn’t fit our publication.” That was answer one. If, miraculously, the subject did fit, “The style leaves room for improvement. Very best.”

  What kind of letters did I write? I wrote epic poems. My nights were filled with conversations with the invisible authors—all those retirees, sailors, accountants, students, construction workers, in
mates, night watchmen. I quoted, advised, praised, criticized extremely sympathetically. When I submitted my letters to Burkin, he looked as if someone had died. But how could I write differently? Behind each manuscript I saw a living person, some of them ill and bedridden, like Nikolai Ostrovski. Sometimes they wrote again, addressing their manuscripts personally to me, but those Burkin firmly set aside for the “Dear Comrade.” New authors scared him like fire.

  • • •

  Not long ago I wrote a vignette in prose, surprising myself. It was nighttime, and I was keeping vigil in the kitchen. I wrote in my daughter’s voice.

  • • •

  Better like this, in the street. The landlord came to inspect his property, found the toilet seat cracked. He had been working in the Far North making big bucks; now he’s back and wants to bring women here, he tells me. You may step out with the baby, or stick around if you want; we’ll have a threesome.

  • • •

  (Horrible things come to mind when you imagine your daughter completely helpless! Unfortunately, most of this is true. She herself told me about her landlord and her life in general.)

  • • •

  I was staying over with Katya at Mama’s. In the middle of the night Mama got up, turned on all the lights everywhere, and noisily led the boy to the bathroom: pee, baby, pee, since you’ve already peed yourself. Then opened the wardrobe in our room, looking for dry underwear. Katya woke up in her stroller; the boy stood shivering, all wet, holding onto her elbow. Skinny bottom, thin legs, a mass of entangled curls—angel. Not a glance in our direction. Katya squeaked. I knew I’d have to get up, so I said, Mama, let me help you find underpants. What can you find here? she screamed back. Bastards, bastards! Told them not to give him water before bed, told them to have some shame and not stuff themselves at our expense, so he has to drink water to fill his belly. Still a beautiful woman, tall, in a torn nightshirt, she yanked her elbow from the boy’s fingers, and suddenly he started sobbing, covering his face. Here! she screamed, like a Greek goddess of terror. Here, put these on! Come, sweetie, I’ll help you, I mumbled, unable to lift my behind.

  Oh no, let him do everything himself, he must learn, I’ll be gone soon. Who am I going to leave him with? Then he fell to the floor, sobbing. Katya’s squawking intensified, and then off she went with her siren.

  • • •

  That’s the sketch; I portray myself with complete objectivity. The reason behind it was the annual call from my daughter, who, as I’ve said, lives in some distant outskirt with an illegitimate child by her imaginary lover. So the phone rang, and the boy and I both raced to answer, as usual. I won.

  “Mama, it’s me.”

  “Hello, you.”

  “Right. Mama, my urine test shows protein.”

  “How many times did I tell you you need to wash regularly? Go take a shower; that will take care of your protein.”

  Choked laughter. She always laughs like this when she wants to die. Just wait awhile, I’ll be laughing, too.

  “Mama.”

  “Talk. I’m listening.”

  “They want to put me in a hospital.”

  “What hospital? You have a small child! Go clean yourself up and take the test again.”

  “Okay, okay. But what if my blood’s really bad? What do I do? Lie down and die?”

  “Whose blood is good these days? Your own son’s hemoglobin is half the norm.”

  More choked laughter. “Mine’s half that.”

  “What does it matter? We are talking about your son’s health! He’s undernourished; he needs liver, he needs walnuts. Stop laughing, you.”

  “Right. So you think there’s nothing to be afraid of?”

  “Why are you crying? Stop right now.”

  “Listen to me.” Voice trembling. “I’m due in two weeks. They want to keep me in the hospital until then.”

  “Nonsense. What did you say?”

  “I said I’m high-risk, with high blood pressure plus bad kidneys; what if I croak on the table? What’s going to happen to Katya?”

  “Huh, big deal! Women in our family aren’t easily scared. They tried to scare me, too. I was pregnant with you, and there was little Andrey. So what? Even though I had my mother and your so-called father to take care of him, I refused to be hospitalized and only went when contractions began, at six thirty in the morning. I tried to wake up that father of yours . . .”

  “Right. Enough.”

  “. . . he wouldn’t get up. Don’t go there at all, you hear me? They’ll put you on the table to examine you, then poke you for tests and damage the placenta. They want you to give birth earlier; this way they’ll pay you less for maternity leave.”

  “Fine, all right. I’ll do as you say. You see, I’ve arranged for a neighbor to watch Katya for five days. Longer than that she refuses.”

  “Hang in there, just hang in there. Keep hiding from them; they can’t force you.”

  “Okay then. Bye.”

  “Okay. Kisses.”

  Laughter. “How’s the boy?”

  “What do you care?” And I hung up.

  • • •

  Only then did the horror of what I’d just heard sink in. First, she was pregnant again.

  Second, what she really wanted was to leave her fat Katya with me for God knows how long. Dear Lord, what possessed the feverish brain of this hormonal female? What did she need another baby for? How could she not notice, how could she miss the deadline? Easy. Took notice only when the baby started kicking. When a mother breastfeeds she often misses “the arrival of the Red Army,” as my daughter and her Lenka used to refer to their periods back in the day. Many get caught that way. The dick pushes ahead, the dick doesn’t care about the woman’s safety. And who was this dick? That same peripatetic deputy director? Or the local plumber? Or, worst of all, that landlord of hers? And how long could this go on? Naturally no one would give her a late abortion. That must have been when she started making the rounds with her protein and high blood pressure, begging for a late-term abortion, but they dragged her around for tests and then more tests, until it really became too late. As if they were genuinely committed to not squandering a single life. She should have looked for a nurse, for anyone who’d have given her a shot. Lots of women manage it somehow, some as late as the sixth month. Andrey’s wife, Nina, told us about her neighbor, who missed her deadline, too, and went to a beach resort instead. Came back, sent her kids away for the weekend, gave birth to a six-month-old fetus, a boy, and left him by an open window. It was October. She went to wash off the blood. He whimpered all night, but she never came to him. By morning he stopped. And the doctor wasn’t even there; he’d disappeared right after the shot. But she found someone, a man at that. Why didn’t you take care of this? Why do I have to pay now?

  Our conversation wasn’t about her urine. Our real conversation went like this: Mama, help me, take on one more burden. You have always saved me. Save me this time. But, my dear daughter, I can’t betray the little one; I can’t force myself to love another creature. Mama, what do I do? Nothing, honey—I’ve given you everything, my last penny. Oh Mama, how horrible, I’m going to die! No, no, don’t say that, you must be strong. Look at me; I stay strong for the little one, for all of you—me, your mother, your only one. The other day someone called me “young lady.” Can you imagine? Your mother’s still a woman. So you must be strong. Promise? You can’t move in here, you understand that. Again, distorted faces in the mirror in the hall—that’s where we always fight, only in addition we’ll see him, the innocent lamb, watching his two deities, his mama (me) and his mother (you) hurling obscenities. I live for him, don’t you understand? Do you remember when you told me, better in the street than here with me? That was the truth, alas. Okay, Mom, I’m sorry, I’m being an idiot. I love you.

  The little one came to me: “Grandma, please stop shaking. Why
are you hiding your face?” Like a summer rain, tears gushed out of the two dried wells. My love, my angel, my eternal sun. Meekly he let me cover his face with kisses. Translucent skin; enormous eyelashes and eyes. Gray, almost blue, like Grandma Sima’s; mine are like honey. My angel, my gorgeous one.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “Does it matter, honey?”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I told you: grown-up stuff.”

  “Alena? You were screaming at her?”

  I feel like a pig. Children are the conscience personified. They ask their little questions, and then they grow up and shut up, and live with the belief that there is nothing one can do, there is nothing anyone can do. I can’t do it to the little one.

  “Why did you yell that she must wash herself?”

  “No, my love. I told her that she must wash the floors!”

  “Are you silly?”

  “Oh, my love, I am silly, I’m a regular idiot. I love you.”

  • • •

  Countless light kisses on the cheeks and forehead, never on the mouth. One should never kiss a child on the mouth. I saw one such parent on a streetcar—he must have been taking his daughter, a girl of five, home from kindergarten. He simply tormented her with kisses! I told him off. He snapped out of it, as did his daughter, who couldn’t catch her breath from all the tickling and kissing. He redirected his attention to me and showered me with curses. “Stay out of it, you old bitch; mind your own goddamn business; shut your smelly trap.” But I wouldn’t stay quiet. “Look what you’ve done to the child! I can imagine what you do to her at home. Criminal!” The passengers were full of indignation—at me. “What do you care, you old slut! Look at yourself—you are old, old!”