“What do you want?” she asked very rudely and mistrustfully.
“Sorry, it must be a mistake,” you mumbled contritely.
We will never recognize our real mother! We rushed away and were already going downstairs not even daring to look back when we heard a loud “wait”. Jumping down steps, the woman hurried after us. The expression on her face had drastically changed. Annoyance was replaced by excitement; her manner became more serious and almost ingratiating. Probably, not knowing the best way to start, she rumpled and crumpled her fingers, cracking their joints for a while before opening with:
“So, you are my…?” her face reddened, but her voice was unnaturally calm, almost indifferent.
“My… who?” you reacted severely.
“My… my… daughters,” she said in a trembling voice and tears welled up in her eyes. She was just like the Bollywood actresses on old posters we used to see every so often.
“Yes, we are,” I heard your strangled voice; however, your lips were squeezed tightly together, and your answer sounded a little unnatural, as if you spoke through a keyhole, but the woman for some reason peered into my face insinuatingly. I grew cold. I had to answer; that “yes” was mine!
“Come into my place,” she said with a shade of solemnity, and not waiting for our reply, she went forward.
We obediently followed her into the depths of an endless corridor which looked like a very narrow tunnel. I believe that you cried. As for our mother, we didn’t surprise her or frighten her; she was self-possessed and calm, as if she had been preparing for this moment all her life. I must admit, I expected something more from that first meeting… and while we were walking, I kept my eyes down, trying not to think a lot, and not to fall, but once we had entered a spacious, clean, almost sterile room, the scene of our family reunion began.
“My girls, I am so glad that you are alive, so happy I found you,” our mother started lamenting. In her voice, grief mixed with overwhelming joy and appeasement. “How long has your journey been?”
I wanted to jump up and say: “Twenty years, even more!” but I contained myself. You were speechless with excitement, and mother continued speaking to both of us:
“You must be scared of me.”
We shook our heads immediately.
“Maybe you think I am a madwoman? Just look how many mentally unstable people are around us these days and then you will understand who is normal. A woman living next door to my bathroom always pries into other people’s affairs and obviously mine, pins her ear to my wall, and wants to oust me and take my room. Why did you say hello to her?” She addressed me with the look of a person tired of injustice.
I had only said “hello” to some woman, gray and dried up like a mummy, as we passed by the kitchen, so I didn’t know how to react to mother’s remark. Probably, that mummy-neighbor, by chance, had become a witness to our long-awaited meeting. We probably looked completely dejected. Though it was true that our mother was there, in front of us, we still didn’t know how to react. At last she hugged and kissed us, but, as if startled, immediately went into a corner of the room and started setting up a large extension table. She turned away and spoke over her shoulder, grunting:
“The first day after the delivery they said you were dead, but I didn’t believe them and started searching for you, but wherever I went, I faced the same dreadful situation: everybody was silent; nobody said anything. Nevertheless, I had a feeling that you were alive. And I kept searching on and on. I waited for you every day. So many tears I shed at night. Oh, so many. Because of it, my hair turned gray before its time and I lost my good looks. Who is going to take interest in me now? That’s why your father left me; he’s a rascal, if ever I saw one. Is there anybody on earth who can love him more than I did? What a fool he was; he made it worse for himself. After all, it was him who signed the surrender.”
She kept on talking and talking, halting and contradicting her own words, and we stood there riveted to the spot, listening and not knowing what to say, or do. Should we help her lay out the cups or find a suitable way to step aside and not get in her way?
We might have stood there forever but suddenly mother stopped talking. Not finishing her sentence, she turned away to the window and started crying quietly.
As time went on, I began to be gnawed by doubts. Was she just acting, or was I suspicious of her for no good reason?
“Last night I had a nightmare that I was dying,” Mother started talking again, in a voice full of drama. “Air, I need air, I am suffocating,” and she squeezed her neck with her hand as if it was occurring there and then. “I’m trying to shout but I can’t make a sound. I’m trying to move but I can’t budge. I want to call for help, but there is nobody around. I am all alone. My God, how horrible it was! I was so frightened, terrified! So what would happen if I really died? I can’t imagine what you would do without your poor mother who loves you so much.”
“Well, sure, we couldn’t do without her,” I quipped in my mind. “We would be dead for another twenty-something years!”
“Don’t worry, now we are going to take care of you,” you tried to calm her down and make her listen. Your voice was trembling; I couldn’t believe my ears. Where did all your anger go to?
“I can’t tell you how glad I am you came,” our mother almost sang out, and, like a conjurer, produced an old watch literally out of nowhere.
“Here! This is your father’s watch. For merits,” she said with anguish, putting it on your wrist. “You know who granted it to him? This… well… what was that villain’s name… he honored him!”
The more I listened, the less I believed a single word, a single teardrop flowing down her face, her face powdered so heavily it looked like an abstract mask. She doesn’t love us and she never did. She abandoned us because she wanted to. It was her choice. But you, you gave credence to her and thereby suffered together with her; you were so glad to meet Mother! And all this incongruity between your great expectations and reality probably seemed to you a small fee for the long-awaited happiness.
Instead of celebrating and rejoicing at our family reunion – telling stories, sharing impressions, laughing – we were sitting at a laid table, having tea, with terrifying composure. Just imagine, after so many years of separation, we were simply drinking tea as if we had been doing this daily for hundreds of years, having long ago exhausted all subjects of conversation, except one, obviously our mother’s favorite. At great length, exhaustively, Mother enjoyed telling us about herself, rarely asking questions and answering them by herself. She believed that all people were rascals and swindlers. In her hatred she had neither pity nor mercy, and a large number of her curses and unflattering reviews were dedicated to her feckless neighbors and to our father who had dared to offend her and then abandon her. She ignored our questions, withdrawing into herself or looking for an imaginary spoon fallen under the table.
After asking our names, she nearly had a heart attack, reminding me of a stranded fish intermittently opening and closing its mouth. By a miraculous coincidence, Hope and Faith were the names she had dreamt of giving her daughters if ever she’d had normal ones.
“Just think of it, I’ve never had any serious diseases. Why were you born that way?” and she immediately started answering herself. “There is no answer. Congenital deformity is one of life’s deepest mysteries.”
But I knew the answer. A person like her could only produce freaks. Nothing normal could grow in her womb. We are the reflections of her human nature, symbols, deformed symbols, of her view of life.