Grandma’s on the phone now. I thought it over as I traipsed past the stone Dalmatian houses. I wasn’t just walking, I was stamping, really getting into it. I wanted to stamp right over the top of whatever was lodged in my head. Mom had gone far away, all the way to Ljubljana, and she was in the hospital, having an operation. You go to the hospital to get well, not to get sick, Dad said when they were going to take my tonsils out. But why do they take your tonsils out in Sarajevo and you have to go to Ljubljana because of a bump? Because a bump is so terrible that you have to go far away, like in a fairy tale where they cross seven mountains and seven seas to get well. But not all long journeys have fairy-tale endings. A fairy tale is a fairy tale because it’s a story with a happy ending, it’s just that happy endings don’t happen very often and people don’t usually live in them. There isn’t enough room for everyone. In fairy tales there’s only enough room for a couple of old kings, for their good, bad, and clever daughters, and for the queen and a few witches, but not for people, the millions of millions of people. There isn’t enough room for my mom either, who isn’t a queen or a princess but just a regular mom who works in accounts, suffers from migraines, and sings on Saturdays, enveloped in steam and water until her hands have finished doing the washing that isn’t allowed to go in the machine. If Mom has gone far away, all the way to Ljubljana, she must be totally lost. She’ll never come back because her life isn’t a fairy tale, she gets two creases between her eyes and thinks bumps can get bigger. My mom isn’t Snow White, Cinderella, or Queen Forgetful. She isn’t coming back from Ljubljana, she’s going to stay there forever and come back to us dead, just like the people who don’t get well at the hospital come back dead, because you can easily lose good health in white corridors and green boiler rooms, in the smells of chloroform, ether, and medicinal alcohol, in places where the air reeks of worry.
That’s what I was thinking as I started following my shadow. It was moving along the asphalt a little behind me. I could see it out of the corner of my eye but didn’t want to turn my head toward it. I wanted to watch it sort of in passing, to not change anything, just to keep seeing it. When I moved along the white stone wall a little, half the shadow disappeared from the asphalt and climbed up the side of the house. Up to my stomach I floated along the asphalt, my chest, neck, and head making their way along the house. My shadow split in two, but I stayed as one. You see, a shadow isn’t actually an image of a person that always follows him, tracing his every move and being just like him. A shadow splits in half. But I wouldn’t have felt or noticed a thing if I hadn’t been looking. It keeps following me; it’s just that its life isn’t mine anymore.
I turned around and marched back the other way. The shadow moved a little out in front of me. Heading home, I stayed close to the wall, my shadow still split in half, Grandma was probably done on the phone. Mom’s woken up from the anesthetic, she said. The bump’s gone?. . Yes, it’s gone, but what do you know about that? Were you eavesdropping again?. . No, I just overheard. . You’re not allowed to listen to your elders’ conversations. . Why? Because they’re sneaky?. . No, because you don’t understand them. . When will I understand them?. . One day, when you grow up. . Are they really that scary?. . Who’s that scary?. . Are all grown-up conversations as scary as yours?. . No, our conversations aren’t scary, you don’t understand them. . A conversation about a bump isn’t scary?. . No, it’s just a conversation about an illness. . Why am I allowed to listen to conversations about my bronchitis but not about a bump?. . Oh boy, no more conversations about bronchitis for you, you little devil, look at the mess you’re in. Go wash your face and hands, and don’t ever let me see you in such a state again. Grandma grabbed the frames of her glasses, just like she always did when she wanted to show me she was angry.
I lay tucked in up to my neck, staring at the ceiling, listening to her voice. She was reading me White Fang. Ten pages every night. We were already halfway through. White Fang is a wolf who thinks and feels, and scary things happen to him just because he thinks and feels. It’s not a fairy tale and that’s why I’m scared there won’t be a happy ending, but today I don’t listen to Grandma’s voice. I don’t remember sentences and I don’t feel like I’m White Fang, because to listen to the story of White Fang I need to feel like White Fang, because when you don’t do that the story doesn’t work. In fairy tales you don’t feel like a prince, princess, old king, brave knight, or Queen Forgetful, just like in fables you don’t feel like a fox or a raven, but in true stories you need to feel like White Fang to understand what happens to him. Fairy tales and fables are made up, but true stories actually happen. If they haven’t happened, then they happen when we listen to them, or when we learn to read one day and we read them. They happen to us when we’re reading the story, and this means we have to have lots of courage because stories don’t always have happy endings, and because you have to kill your fear so you can live in the story. Life in a story is more beautiful than life in real life because in a story only important things happen and because in stories there aren’t any of those days when nothing happens and the world is as empty as the white dates in the wall calendar.
Will Mom be back from Ljubljana before we finish White Fang? I interrupted Grandma as she was reading. I don’t think so, we’ve got eighty pages left, and that’s eight days. Mom will be back in about fifteen days. . Are you allowed to know how a book ends before you’ve read it?. . It’s allowed, but then the book isn’t very interesting. . Have you read White Fang before?. . Yes, at least five times. . And you always forget the end?. . Well, I don’t actually forget it, but it’s as if I don’t know how it’s going to end and the ending might change. . I don’t want anything bad to happen to White Fang before Mom comes back from Ljubljana. . Why do you think something bad’s going to happen to him?. . Because good things only have to happen in fairy tales. Otherwise they don’t. . Who told you that?. . No one told me. I just know. . Well, I didn’t know that. . You’re just pretending you didn’t know. . No, I really didn’t know that. I’ve never thought about it. . Well, have you ever thought about why shadows split in half so half of you is on the asphalt and half of you on the wall? Grandma looked at me, closed the book, and said she was sleepy. That was weird. She had never been sleepy before I fell asleep. I didn’t know about after because I’d already be asleep by the time she went to bed. That night it was different. Grandma was scared Mom was going to die, I knew it. I knew exactly what she was thinking. If Mom dies, we’ll be left alone, her, Grandpa, and me, and they’re old, and old people are scared of being alone with children because they think one day they’ll close their eyes for an afternoon nap and never open them again, and then the children will be left alone, helplessly trying to phone someone, hollering to the neighbors, but always end up waiting there all alone next to their grandpas and grandmas. Children shouldn’t be alone because loneliness is something grown-up; we grow up so that one day we can be completely alone and no one has to worry about it. That’s what Grandma was thinking when she pretended to fall asleep before me.