But, I possessed even more courage, one day, to inquire her escort of his identity. You wouldn’t make believe what he said. “I’m Laszlo, who are you?” I almost jumped atop of him. “Uncle Lanci?” I pondered. And he smiled so at large and thundered, “Yes!” I readily explained who I was, indicating my code name. He mentioned that he failed to recall me (were you hoarding my letters to yourself?), but if I so envisioned, I could make a stop at the radio station to greet him there. I will do that soon!
I did not inquire about her or inform him of our relationship. I am still scared to talk to her, but, Anika, please, can this find comfort for you? It has to, because you envision I can’t even speak to her. I want to, but every time I venture close to her, I hear the screaming internally within me. I promise one thing—I am going to further follow her so that I consistently possess knowledge of where she is. When you come to me here (you will, yes?) I will be aware of exactly how to take you toward her.
As for me, I finally did it. I found my mom. It didn’t consume a long time as I originally pondered it would. There are only so many Marikas here, and she has not strove to conceal her identity. I simply discovered her listed in the magnificent German record books. Before I absconded to see her, I made sure to find a shower and a suit. Thank God, because as I fled to my mom’s apartment, I realized I had entranced the most richly part of town. I endeavored to imagine my mom, with her spindles of arms and blond hair, fitting in amongst the Germans. She must have felt more at home here, I promised myself. I possessed no ideas what I would say to her. That part I hadn’t practiced. As I went to knock on her door, panic had swamped my brain, making me feel like I sauntered through a maze.
I knocked three times before someone answered. A petite girl who wore blond hair split in half answered the door. Her lower lip jostled outward as she took in me standing there. She said hello gently and I asked her for my mom. She ran back into the house and I heard a person trot to the door.
She stood before me. Yes, it was her, can you make believe it? Wrinkles made crowds around her eyes, her blond hair was pricked with gray, her skin bore more veins, but it was her. I knew because her cheeks still tightened ferociously at the cheekbones, and her eyes still curved oddly upward as if she was physically incapable of looking down. I halted breathing completely. We both said nothing. She stared onto me. I stared onto her. Our eyes combed each other’s features for minutes, but I swear it was hours. Turning to mush, my mind slopped around in my head and failed to produce any words.
“I came to see you,” is what eventually shambled out of my mouth and then lumped into the space between us.
I thought she was about to close the door on me right there, but she bent down and made herself busy with picking up the petite toys scattered atop her floor.
“It’s so dirty in here,” she said.
I really reached confusion why my mom regarded the floor with so much concern when I stood before her. Well, I couldn’t ponder how to react toward her, so I simply lowered beside her and contributed to her efforts. It was similar as if I intruded her area because she instantaneously sat upward and touched my head. I fail to understand it, but I had desired to just slap her hand away. She didn’t earn the right yet to act affectionately. I had questions, and I would demand answers. Except she wouldn’t stop even when I winced. She brought her fingers together on my arm, held it firm, and gravitated me inward to her. We hugged. I started crying when I understood she remained smelling like green tea. I had forgotten that was her normal smell. When we finally made our way upward, she herded me to the kitchen. I was a stranger to this house ruled by a little girl and my mom.
“Is she your own?” I asked as I pointed toward the girl latched on to my mom’s legs.
My mom nodded. “She’s your partial sister.”
A joy broke atop of me as I saw this petite girl before me. Younger than Adrienne by many years, she still possessed the same defying look on her face, like she would soon take charge of me. I succumbed to laugh only a bit.
My mom told me when she fled Hungary, she became abused on the way. I will not indulge the details now. It’s too much for this letter. She lived atop the streets for a time when she came into Munich. With no food and no money, she pursued as a homeless person for nearly five months until an artist took a liking to her balloon belly. He never once asked that she share with him her history. His concerns remained that she simply be there. She birthed my second petite sister, and they lived together, like a tricycle. The old man lived for five more years, but then his age took him. When he died, he left his apartment and his everything to my mom. She has been living there ever since.
When she finished her story, I understood this man gave her what my father never would. He was not terrified of kindness. It was not a thing embarrassing for him. It wasn’t a thing that you declined to exhibit because then someone would not be learning a thing or because then maybe they would view a part of you that is asking for love back. But for this old man, kindness was everything he was composed of and he gave it to my mom one hundred percent. I loved the old man in that instance for loving my mom in that way. My thoughts reversed to selfishness then and I thought—Can she love me now? Has he shown her how?
When I inquired of my mom why she didn’t return after he died she said not much. At initial she grinned, the embarrassment sending shockwaves around her lips. I am not sure what she said next, but I burst up from where I sat, making attempts to harpoon the anger gurgling atop my lips. I demanded to learn why, you envision.
“Tell me now!”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“You have to.”
“I do?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but you will not enjoy it.”
“I know.”
She performed an elongated sigh, and requested I perch next to her. A vacuum sucked her eyes away from me as the instances occurring inside her mind prepared themselves for viewing. She placed her head atop my shoulder like a petite Adrienne begging for forgiveness.
She told me something that I knew, but it finally became a real thing. She always had it, a depression that originated from childhood and was her bedside enemy her entire life. She had enough with it. When I was petite, she tried to kill herself, but suffered a lack of bravery. She said she would make an attempt every day, in the after time when I went to school. We had a clock that tocked atop a shelf, and it sounded admist our apartment. She would count one thousand tocks of it, and on that one thousand she would try to kill herself again. Sometimes the most she would do was tie a sewing string across her neck. Sometimes she utilized a larger rope. Sometimes she placed a bag surrounding her neck and waited until something in her maneuvered it off.
I wished I had the knowledge of this—I would have declined to go to school. I would have remained next to her so she could absorb my child happiness. But the other fold of me knows that it was prime that I did not know. That I could at least remain a child for a little longer (unlike Adrienne, who never got to be a child), and maybe this childness has made it so I still believe in something perfect transpiring. I still possess hope that I can make the world I want, like when you’re petite and you think you can do anything.
My mom decided to leave because she couldn’t hold up her end as a mom or as a wife. Also because she thought she would die in her escape. If someone else killed her then she would be handed the fate she pined toward. I do not possess memory of this, but she swores she kissed me goodbye before she left. She swores she kissed me one thousand times to erase all the one thousand times she counted on the clock.