On the day Aminat told me she wouldn’t love me anymore, I took my boot without a word and left my daughter’s apartment without even saying goodbye. I took the bus home. Aminat’s voice echoed in my ears for the entire ride: “I don’t want to have an evil grandmother, I don’t want to have an evil grandmother.”
Was I an evil grandmother? I looked at my reflection in the dirty window of the bus. Is that what an evil grandmother looked like?
At home I stared at myself closely, this time in the polished full-length mirror.
I didn’t look anything like a grandmother at all. I looked good. I was pretty and young looking. You could see that I had vitality and was intelligent. I often had to mask my expression to keep other people from reading my thoughts and stealing my ideas.
I went into the kitchen, where my husband was eating a vegetable casserole, and asked him whether I was an evil woman.
He choked and began to cough. I waited patiently. He coughed some more. His round eyes were petrified. I waited. He continued to cough and I hit him on the back.
“So,” I insisted, “am I an evil woman?”
He speared a piece of eggplant with his fork. I snatched it away from him before he could stuff his mouth again.
“Am I an evil woman?”
He looked at the floor. The thick black eyelashes I had once so loved fluttered like a little girl’s. My heart warmed; I thought of the hungry years of my youth. Too bad Sulfia hadn’t inherited those lashes, I thought. But at least Aminat had them.
“So,” I said, “am I an evil woman?”
“Why would you think that, sweetie?” stammered my husband. “You’re really, really wonderful. You’re the best. You’re so smart. . so beautiful. . and you cook so well!”
“But none of that has anything to do with whether or not I’m evil,” I insisted. “I could be a terrific cook and still make everyone around me suffer.”
“No, no, my little squirrel,” said my husband, using a term of endearment from our early years. “Nobody suffers. . nobody suffers because of you. You’re so good to all of us.”
“Even Sulfia?”
“Sulfia. .,” My husband thought for a moment.
I waited.
“Sulfia,” said my husband, “is your only daughter. You always wanted the best for her.”
“I still do.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you think Sulfia knows it, too?”
“Of course. Though perhaps she didn’t realize it earlier. It’s normal for children not to value their parents. But now she’s grown up, and I think she knows how much you love her.”
I listened carefully. I was surprised my husband had thought about it so much.
“Are you sure?” I said.
My husband turned and poked at the casserole on his plate, then looked over at me with his eyes narrowed, as if afraid I was about to take away his food.
“Very, very sure,” he said. “You’re the best, the most beautiful. . and you have such a good heart.”
If my husband saw me that way, it couldn’t have escaped Aminat. So she couldn’t have meant what she said. She was just being fresh.
Five days later I came home and found a letter from my husband on the windowsill. In the letter he wrote that he loved another woman and wanted to live with her from now on. He thanked me for our years together and begged me to leave him in peace.
There was nothing more.
Apparently there are women who break into tears at such news. Their legs buckle and they sink to the tiled floor of the kitchen, with its checkerboard pattern, and other people must step over them in order to get to the refrigerator. I wasn’t one of those women.
First I made a cup of tea, following all the rules of the art. I warmed the teapot and then poured boiling water over the tea leaves. If there was one thing I hated, it was poorly made, low-grade tea. I drank my excellent tea in small sips, ate homemade gooseberry jam, and thought things over.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to come through the door and not hear someone noisily chewing in the kitchen. Someone who annoyed me by eating the food — which I made in advance — cold because it was beyond him to warm it up. Food in generaclass="underline" I could almost completely abandon cooking now. I’d have oatmeal in the morning and make a salad in the evening. I’d be able to save so much time! And with that time I could read, watch TV, or do gymnastics.
I continued to think. I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone when I came home from work. I started to count the number of shirts I would no longer have to wash and iron each week — not to mention the socks, pants, and underwear.
Shopping! I wouldn’t have to carry home heavy shopping bags anymore because I’d need so much less food. I would have much less filth to clean up, as I myself didn’t make any. I could talk to God as much as I wanted. I would get upset much less, since there was nobody there I constantly needed to get upset at. And I could meet men. New, younger men who would pay me compliments, then leave to go home to mommy, or to their girlfriend, for all I cared. Men who would make me feel like a woman again. Because I have to admit that it had been a long time since I had liked to be touched by Kalganow. When he accidentally brushed my leg in his sleep, I recoiled in disgust. He hadn’t touched me intentionally in ages.
Of course the letter on the windowsill wasn’t all for the good. Nothing in life came for free. I would have to pay for my freedom. For instance, I was now a woman who had been left. That wasn’t exactly an envious status. I had to live with the fact that people would look at me funny. But, God willing, everything else was in my own hands.
My husband was a coward: he left it to me to tell his daughter and granddaughter that he had left.
I decided not to show my lack of sorrow. I figured this episode would make everyone forget the earlier friction and the boot and the unpleasant words. Before I set out for work, I left a letter for Kalganow on the windowsill. “We should behave civilly with one another. I wish you all the best, and good health to boot. Please leave me your telephone number so we can wrap up everything. Your Rosa.”
I knew he’d come by again to pick up his things, and he’d make sure he did it at a time I wasn’t there. If he avoided me during better times, he certainly wouldn’t risk running into me now.
That evening I took the bus to Sulfia’s. She opened the door and her face looked tired and distant.
“Mother? Come in.”
I hadn’t worn any lipstick, and had only a dusting of powder on my cheeks and forehead. I had on my plainest dress, one I normally wore only when I went to our garden outside of town. I did, however, wear my boots with heels.
“Is everything alright?” asked Sulfia when she finally looked me in the face.
“Don’t you know?”
“Has something happened to Papa?”
“You could say that,” I said.
Now she was frightened. “What’s happened?”
“Your father left me.”
She leaned against the wall. Her face fell.
“What?” she said. “What did you say?”
“YOUR FATHER LEFT ME.”
“No. . He?. . You?. . No.”
“It’s true,” I whispered.
Sulfia sank to her knees.
“Mama,” she said imploringly, “Mama, don’t.”
She must have thought I was crying.
I covered my face with my hands so as not to spoil that impression. She stood up quickly and put her hands on mine. I flinched. It had been a long time since we had had physical contact.
“Mama,” she said helplessly, “please don’t be sad, mama.”
“Leave me alone,” I said. Sulfia’s lips began to quiver as if she, not I, had been left.
“It’s not as if anyone died,” I said, in case she had misunderstood.