Only now did she move the fallen chair aside and pull the old suitcase from underneath her bed.
It wasn’t locked properly; one of the two small locks was broken.
That loose lock told her a great deal, and she opened the suitcase hopelessly, with unfeeling hands.
The wool sock was in its place, under all the clothing, but it was empty.
That sock was her last hope. She had made all sorts of plans, whether to buy a television, or to bribe someone to allow her son to take his high school exams (he’d dropped out in the middle of his senior year).
Other times she dreamed of moving to a bigger apartment, with two rooms. She’d have to scrimp and save, but she could do it, and her boy could have his own room. It wasn’t easy living with him, it was true, but he was her only remaining family. The others had died, all her relatives-her parents, aunts, uncles, and husband had died young; an evil fate seemed to trail them all.
And now her boy wanted to leave her, too.
In truth he’d been talking about this for a long time. His army service was approaching inexorably, and he’d always been a quiet, gentle boy. He didn’t like fighting-he always said he couldn’t hurt another human being, and because of this he was often beaten up at school. There were three boys in particular who liked to pick on him. They’d laugh and say he never fought back, and they’d take everything he had in his pockets, right down to his handkerchief.
Which, incidentally, didn’t mean he was above threatening his own mother when he was drunk. In fact he’d changed a great deal since he’d started hanging out with some older kids who lived in their building.
They’d taken him under their protection. He told his mother so himself, he came home one day and said, That’s it, no one’s going to bother me anymore. And from then on he would walk around strangely exhilarated.
That was a few years ago, when he was fourteen. That’s when he began asking his mother for a tape player. The other boys would give him tapes to copy, and he couldn’t admit to them that he didn’t have a tape recorder of his own, so he just sat there miserably, staring at the tapes.
He’d bragged to his friends-apparently-about his tape player and now couldn’t take it back. He knew his mother had some money-she was always working several jobs, saving, scrimping-but she told him pocket money would spoil him, he might even, she said, start drinking and smoking, as if they didn’t already have enough problems.
He did in fact start drinking and smoking-the older kids must have paid. He also knew his mother’s hiding places and would steal from her a little at a time. She was disorganized and never remembered exactly how much money she had in her stash.
One time he wouldn’t stop screaming about how much he needed a tape recorder. He kept at it until he actually became ill-he had a fever, and he refused medication. He said he wanted to die.
His fever grew worse, he refused all food, and finally his mother broke down-she went out and bought him a tape recorder, the cheapest one, though it still cost a fortune.
Her son woke up right away, and he looked wide-eyed at the tape recorder. The mother was crying tears of joy, seeing how shocked he was, but then just as suddenly he lay down again, turned his back to her, and said it was the wrong model. It wasn’t what he needed at all.
The next morning they crawled together to the cheap little kiosk to exchange the tape recorder for a better one. They had to pay a ton of money, again, for the upgrade-and clearly the people at the kiosk tricked them, seeing the condition the mother was in, that she was ready for anything.
After that he truly went out of control. He listened to the tape recorder day and night without a break, dubbed cassettes (which also cost money), and then soon there was the problem of a new leather jacket, designer jeans, and American sneakers.
Here the mother finally said no. After all, where would it end?
Since you’re not going to school anymore, she told him, why don’t you go to work like me? I’m ready for any kind of work for your sake.
He replied that he would never slave for pennies the way she did.
He refused to do what other boys in his situation did-sell newspapers or wash windshields at traffic lights. Maybe he was afraid of getting beaten up again-his mother, too, was afraid of everything, and maybe he’d grown up that way also, not having a father to set an example.
But things soon got to the point where he refused to go out in his shapeless pants and jacket, became depressed, didn’t do his homework, rendering his attendance at school senseless-why show up just to be embarrassed by his teachers? He hated being lectured, couldn’t stand it.
He spent more and more of his time with the neighborhood kids, his protectors, and they-thought the mother, sitting before her violated suitcase-must have drank, and smoked, and he alongside them, at their expense.
And now the time must have come when they’d reminded him of this, of their long-standing hospitality, and decided it was time to get their money back.
That must have been why he wanted to throw a going-away party, for his induction into the army. And she kept putting it off, saying there were still two months to go, they’d have time, it was early.
Of course all children know the secret places in the house where their parents hide the money.
Whereas the mother might forget. There was even a time when this Nadya, the mother, couldn’t find her money sock, when she needed to buy her Vova new shoes. He was eight years old, and he pointed beneath the wardrobe-that’s where she’d hidden her sock. Now he was seventeen.
The mother sat there, in shock, before this bankruptcy, this humiliation-someone had also scrawled obscenities on the bathroom walls, and the jars in the kitchen had been emptied of all their grains, as if the partiers were searching for something-she sat there and thought that this was the end, and there was nothing else she could do.
In the calm of the waiting room, the doctor had told her that her boy was alive and well, that they were putting him in intensive care only as a formality, but that soon he’d be transferred to the psychiatric ward.
If the psych ward declared him clinically insane, that would be his worst nightmare-because he’d secretly hoped he would someday get a car, but you can’t get a license with a record of mental illness.
And in that case, too, the army wouldn’t have him, and he’d continue living off of her and just tumbling further and further into the abyss.
On the other hand, if they didn’t declare him insane-also quite likely, since he would fight against the diagnosis and insist he was just trying to scare his mother-then he’d be drafted, and that would be the end of him. He’d told her himself: I won’t accept humiliations. You’ll have me back in a casket soon enough. Please bury me next to Dad.
There was nothing else she could do. Nadya got through the evening, night, and morning, and then staggered over to the hospital. There she was met by the head of the psychiatric ward, a cheerful woman who told her the boy had only pretended to commit suicide, his friends were in on it too, he’d told the doctor so himself.
“But there are marks on his neck!” Nadya cried out.
“It was a very flimsy rope,” answered the doctor. “He did that on purpose. He said if he’d wanted to kill himself he’d have used a thicker rope, a cord-he said you have one in the house. He remembered everything you said to the paramedics and what they looked like. He was just pretending to be unconscious.”
“And the bloody foam on his mouth?” Nadya protested, but the doctor was no longer listening. She said the boy was still very upset and didn’t want to face his mother after the joke he’d pulled.