C’mon, wakey wakey! Grandma searched the bed for Mom. Mom always pulled the covers up over her head, hiding under the duvet so you really needed to search the bed for her if you wanted to wake her. Mom murmured something, and Grandma beat the white linen with her hand, like a blind person looking for their wallet in the snow. C’mon, wakey wakey, why am I always the youngest here, yelled Grandma, get up, it’s foggy outside, I made it back by memory, so try putting that one about my sclerosis on me now. Mom poked her nose out, as tousled as Mowgli when he was growing up among the animals, who’s been telling you you’re sclerotic?. . I don’t remember right now, I’ve forgotten. Then they started joshing, no harm intended and not really wanting a proper fight, just a little Sunday-morning bicker, because we’re all at home on Sunday mornings and that’s when everyone gets to play their games.
Grandma’s game is called I’m not senile and what happens is that she walks around the house talking about all the things she remembers and has caught Mom forgetting because then she can say and they say I’m senile. Grandma’s other game is called I’m not deaf and is often played at the same time as I’m not senile. Mom invented both games because she’s freaking out that Grandma might stop remembering stuff and go kooky like old people often do, waking up one morning and asking things like who are you and what am I doing here. So Mom checks her sclerosis every day and gets blue and a bit pissed when she notices Grandma has forgotten something. Grandma’s the only one who’s not allowed to forget anything, because then Mom will think her sick and old, and then Mom will walk tall like a national hero, beat her fists on her chest like King Kong, and swear to her colleagues, Uncle, Dad, Grandpa, and other relatives that she’s ready to care for her mother to the death, to bathe and clean her if need be, and that she couldn’t care less if her own mother, having gone totally senile, doesn’t remember her. These stories get on Grandma’s nerves, mainly because she’s the one who looks after Mom and me, makes us lunch, cleans, and irons, while Mom just prepares herself for a heroic age Grandma thinks will come, God willing, the day little green creatures land on earth. Grandma wins the I’m not senile game because she really doesn’t forget anything, or at least she doesn’t forget more than Mom and I forget, but she always loses the I’m not deaf game. It goes like this: Mom says something, and Grandma doesn’t reply; then Mom says the same thing over, and Grandma says sorry? — at which point Mom screeches at the top of her lungs, a screech so loud hikers up on Mount Trebević could hear it, to which Grandma replies quit your bawling, I’m not deaf! Then Mom says why can’t you bloody hear me then? At which point Grandma mutters something and it’s clear to all she’s lost the game. Of course, to make the game work Mom has to screech at the top of her lungs, because if she just raises her voice a little she won’t be able to tell Grandma she’s deaf and can’t hear a thing.
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 Sirotanović 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.