Excerpt from Our Girl
by Hardy Griffin
by Hardy Griffin
My mother is what other women call ‘naturally beautiful.’ I don’t know if it’s because she doesn’t use much makeup that she doesn’t need it or the other way around, but all she puts on is a bit of mascara and lipstick from time to time. Most of my friends’ moms shellac themselves until they have that ‘cellophane mommy’ look. But my mom has managed to avoid that. Other than a few crow’s feet, her pale, olive skin looks good for forty-two.
Talking about mom’s skin isn’t how I wanted to start this notebook, but that’s all that comes to mind as I sit here and watch her sleep, her hair a tangled mess and her mouth slack and open a bit. When I slipped into her bedroom a moment ago with this brand-new notebook and pen, I had some idea I’d see her lying there asleep, both vulnerable and strong as a rock, and I’d be moved to tears, but it’s hard to cry at a healthy adult drooling on their pillow.
She just rolled over. How can she keep sleeping with so much light in the room? I have to have blackout curtains, and even then I never sleep past seven. It’s a nightmare when I stay over at a friend’s house – I’m always the first one to bed. Then I often have to wait for them for hours the next morning.
One time, Aslı and Deniz wrote “Sleepy Dwarf” on my forehead. I had nodded off on the little yellow-striped couch in Aslı’s room, and they grabbed the magic marker off of her desk and scribbled that on there. It took me fifteen minutes to get it off – I had to use nail polish remover. When I finished, I didn’t have any ink on my skin, but my whole forehead was red. Aslı got worried I’d stay that way, but it was basically gone by the time I went home.
I laughed with everyone as the story got re-told at school all the next week. It might have gone on longer but Hülya vomited right at the end of math class on Thursday and we had to leap over it to get out of the classroom. Obviously, that story trumped mine by quite a ways. The next week, Aslı and Deniz only remembered to call me Sleepy a couple of times and pretty soon they had forgotten all about it.
Of course, the three of us came together not long after, this time at my house, and I dozed off early again but only slept well because I had already hidden all my magic markers. When I got up about seven the next morning, I found my friends together on the large fold-out couch in our living room. I went to town, drawing a crescent moon on Aslı’s left cheek, and a star on Deniz’s right. Then I nudged them together and got a picture of the two of them snuggling with the Turkish flag across their faces.
For about an hour after they had woken up and washed it off, we all sat around glaring at each other, their cheeks as bright red as my forehead had been. Then we couldn’t stand it anymore and cracked up. Mom printed out the picture of the two of them and we put it on the refrigerator, but only after we had promised there wouldn’t be any more retribution.
“Mom,” I whisper. How can she sleep with the racket of the birds in the back yard? She doesn’t move. I don’t want to poke the bear, but… “Momma bear,” I say a bit louder.
“Mhmmm,” she grumbles. She cracks one eye and looks at me like I’m furniture.
“Mom, wake up.”
“Okay, I’m up,” she says, pushing herself to a sitting position, her straight black hair hiding her face.
Now, we’re in the living room. The coffee table is loaded with food. Fat black olives and lemon-soaked green ones, two fresh baguettes that I cut into slices, a hunk of white cheese and a wedge of pungent eski kaşar, thin strips of spiced tongue and pastrami. A plate of sweet, stuffed grape leaves in a pyramid. And then there’s the spreads: tomato-walnut-red pepper, and smoked eggplant. The smells alone are overpowering: fresh-hot-bread, smoky peppery salty, and over it all, a hint of lemon.
“You’re writing about the food,” she says.
“I am.”
“Did you get the spiced tongue?” That’s her favorite.
“Yes, I wrote it down, but don’t think you’re getting more than two slices of that solid cholesterol.”
“You know tomorrow morning I can eat all the slices I want.” She starts to reach for a stuffed grape leaf.
“Don’t make me slap that out of your hand, mom.” This brings her up short.
“You just put all this food out to look at?”
“No, of course not. But we’ve got to pace ourselves.”
“Okay,” she says, leaning back in the winged armchair, an amused look on her face but no stuffed grape leaf in her hand.
I’ve been telling her I’m planning this ‘talk-about-dad day’ for some time. But other than saying it, I realize I haven’t actually planned anything. To be honest, I figured mom would take over.
She did make me pack my bags, unpack them to check, and then re-pack them over the last week or so. She’s been working off of multiple lists – she even has a ‘snacks for the plane’ list, complete with Babane’s dried fruit and nut mix.
A week ago, we took in the white mulberries from the massive tree at the end of the little garden behind our apartment. White mulberries are like white sweet raspberries but thinner and longer. They’re delicious but they attract flies and spiders and stuff so when there’s fruit on the tree, we hang fruit nets under the branches and shake them every couple of days. It’s like a fruit rain. Then we put them in bags and give them to friends – after we stuff ourselves full, of course.
And we give them to Babane to dry and mix with nuts for a homemade winter snack. Babane spends half the summer making food for the winter – jars of tomatoes with a touch of garlic and hot green peppers, quince jelly, and of course loads of vegetables pickled in lemon juice and brine. While everyone else is barbecuing and going to the beach, Babane turns both her apartment and ours into a pair of mad drying, bottling, pickling factories.
“Mom?”
“Mmm?”
“Mom, when did I start calling grandma ‘Babane’?”
She swallows. “You couldn’t say ‘babaanne’ or ‘büyükanne,’ and it was so sweet the way you said ‘Babane’.”
“I know that – I meant how old was I?”
“I guess you were about three and a half.”
“But don’t you think it’s weird that what we call her means ‘Dad – what?’ I mean it’s such an odd nickname, especially given the situation.”
“That’s probably why we kept it. You’ve never wanted to talk about him, and when Babane would try and tell you about him, you would scream at the top of your lungs! We didn’t know what the hell to do. So when you said ‘Babane,’ frankly we didn’t have the energy to argue.”
“Thanks, mom, good to know.”
Babane is mom’s mother-in-law. You’d think they would be at each other’s throats all the time. Actually, it’s weird how they get along. I mean, they love each other and can’t bear to stay apart more than two days. But when they’re together, they do disagree on practically everything.
Take the bookshelves here in the living room – they line both walls. Mom told Babane she wanted bookshelves like these in the house, but Babane kept telling the carpenter not to make them, that the dust from all those books would make the child (me) sick. Finally, they were arguing it out with the poor carpenter in the middle when he just said, “enclosed bookcases.” He’s been in some weird accident that kind of messed up his mouth, so he doesn’t speak much, but luckily that was enough to get them both to compromise.
I was only about five at the time, but I can remember sitting on the floor in the dining room, being fascinated that this man could make big, beautiful bookshelves out of a bunch of pieces of wood.
What was I writing about before I got sidetracked with shelves? Oh, right – yes, mom and Babane argue, but they also love each other. Of course, neither of them cleans the glass bookshelf doors – that chore falls to me.
The thing is, mom’s the only one who can argue with Babane – if I argue with her, I never hear the end of it, and on top of that, she doesn’t cook for me for weeks. You’re probably thinking that’s not the end of the earth, but it is. Look, take that smoked eggplant spread thing on our table – besides the eggplant and some special soft cream cheese, it has these fish eggs in it that make it incredible. I know, ‘fish eggs’ sounds gross, but they’re all smooshed up – believe me, one dab on a piece of bread and you’re ready to swim in the stuff.
Now mom is getting up from her armchair, and coming around behind the couch. I can feel her reading what I’ve written above.
“Thank God the carpenter saved us from really tearing into each other,” she says. “And he didn’t even charge extra for the bookshelf doors, you know.”
My mom has that kind of luck – she gets glass bookcase doors for free, and she doesn’t even have to clean them. But not for long, mom – guess you’ll have to clean them yourself soon.
“Ah, yes, the smooshed fish eggs.”
She’s catching up with me fast. I can’t think of what else to write – all the more so because she’s reading as I’m writing.
Now she’s laughing. “Yes, you’ll finally have your revenge when I have to clean the glass bookshelf doors. But you won’t be here to see me do it, will you? Maybe I just won’t clean them.”
It’s like we’ve got some inter-continental lag in the connection here. Which is weird, given that we’re the closest family I know (it helps that there’s just the two of us and Babane).
“That is weird,” she says.
So, she has finally caught up.
Of course that makes it really impossible to think of what to write.
“Why,” she asks in her public-television, I-already-know-the-answer voice, “do you think there’s a ‘lag’ even for such an abnormally close family?” This voice is what she does when she wants me to read her mind.
“First of all, I think our family is more or less like anyone else’s – we’re as normal as any other family.”
“Don’t be silly. There is no normal.”
This is one of those subjects which we agree to disagree on (or we try to). I think normal is everywhere all at once, that nothing’s not normal.
“Come on, don’t be ridiculous. We’d all be living a hideous life if everything were normal.” At least she’s not using that terrible tone of voice anymore.
“Aha,” she cries. “In other words, ‘Thank God she’s speaking normally again,’ right? But” – I know what’s coming – “if everything’s normal, then why do you hate this public television voice so?”
We’ve been around and around this argument so many times now, I get dizzy right from the beginning. I don’t have to look back at her to know she’s staring out the patio doors at the mulberry tree, probably making some comparison in her mind between me and sticky fruit on the ground.
Mom has just given a snorting laugh (hopefully there’s nothing in my hair). Obviously, she has turned back and is reading this again.
“I knew you’d find a way to give me a dig and get back to the subject at the same time.” She ruffles my hair but continues standing behind me.
“Mom, I want to write something about dad, but I can’t think of anything.”
“Don’t stop, keep writing,” she says.
What can I write? Now it’s out there – that’s what this day’s all about. I finally wanted to speak about dad but it seems there’s nothing to say.
“Well, you could start by saying he’s dead. That’s ‘not nothing’ as you’d put it.”
But that’s the thing, it is nothing – he’s nothing. If I’d known him when he was alive, then there would be something – a hole or pain or anger. Mom wants me to get into it but that’s like asking a bushman what it’s like not having a TV your whole life.
“A father’s not a television.” So, she’s still reading this over my shoulder.
In some ways the second-hand TV in the corner means more to me than my father. (Come on, mom, think of the time we spend with it – it’s important in our lives, it has a weight that a man I never met simply doesn’t.)
“It’s ironic,” my mother sighs, “because that’s exactly what he would have said.”
She shuffles back to the armchair and flops into it. This, too, is a tactic, but it works – takes the fight right out of me.
“So, mom, you tell me: How do I recognize the absence of his presence, or the presence of his absence, or whatever you want to call it? Should I act like I’m all cut up?”
“I’m glad you brought that up again after all this time – I just wasn’t ready when you first said it, so I had to wait two years but now you’ve finally repeated it.” She’s so happy I’ve said this that she actually rubs her hands together. “Yes, you should act like you’re upset.”
I can’t help but snort a laugh myself – the way she said it was so full of conviction, like she’d said something really marvelous.
“And why is that, mom?”
“Look, think of the Weasel.” The Weasel is our neighbor. “Haven’t you ever wondered how this woman who’s so sickeningly nice to us got that nickname?”
“I always assumed it was precisely because she’s so sickeningly sweet. Isn’t it like she’s trying to weasel her way into our hearts or whatever?”
“No, that’s not it. Good guess, but no. Babane gave her the nickname soon after we moved in.” That’s actually fairly hard to believe – mom and I are happy to talk trash behind people’s backs but I can’t really imagine Babane doing that. “Oh she didn’t say it behind her back if that’s what you’re thinking.” (How does she know right what I am thinking?) “She came right out and called her a weasel – Babane had just found out the Weasel was going around to all the neighbors complaining about foreigners moving into the neighborhood when you and I came, but of course she was sweet as pie to my face. So Babane confronted her and said she was no better than a nasty little weasel.”
That actually does sound like Babane – when you get on her bad side.
“The Weasel was incensed, of course,” mom goes on, “but the years went by and then slowly but surely, she didn’t have anything to complain about, so she quit her whining – and now her disgusting niceness is real.”
“So are you saying she’s normal now?”
“Yes, yes, you got me on that one,” mom flashes a quick smile, “but what’s important is how the acting starts to erase the truth it has covered over – sooner or later the disgustingly nice act is all that’s left.”
I can actually kind of see the truth in what she’s saying there – I myself have never heard the Weasel complain about us. Almost as if it got boring because we didn’t blow up or get into it with her.
“So you see how acting on purpose is ‘not nothing’ – it’s something.”
This is classic mom – big jump with no warning.
“Mom, now you’ve lost me.”
“You know: It’s a double negative. We’re all acting to greater or lesser degrees and this covers over what we really want to do – and, depending on how regularly and seriously we get roped into this acting, that’s how much our real selves are erased. But if you consciously act over these unconscious acts, you’re really negating the act.”
I wasn’t actually dizzy when I wrote that part about being dizzy a couple of pages ago, but now I am.
“So you want me to pretend to miss a man I never met?”
“Yes. I think if you did, you’d give your emotions a space they could fill.”
“So, hair pulling? Wailing? What would you like?”
“Let’s start with me telling you about your father and you writing it down.”
This is the horribly disconcerting thing about my mother – you think you’re the one to set up a day to talk about dad but then she says something like this and you begin to wonder whether it wasn’t all her idea. It’s like she’s going fishing and you are both the bait and the fish. Makes it hard to get away.
“Mom—”
“Why don’t you have a bite to eat before we get down to it?”
* * *
Fourteen hours have passed. Where are this mother and daughter now?
One must be lying awake in the guest bed next door at her mother-in-law’s. And the girl is somewhere over Greenland in an airplane.
The living room is still full of the smell of their last Turkish coffee. The moon shines through the glass door, illuminates the writing in this notebook.
She has only written on one side of every page, leaving the left page blank.
Why are you writing in that very space now? you may well ask.
I don’t know. There’s more to be said.
Who will open this notebook again? And when?
This, too, I don’t know. But I’m certain someone will. The girl knows there are blanks in the story, empty pages that must be filled in.
At three a.m., like a burglar in the night?
Yes.
It seems too little too late.
When she was four or five years old, I remember this girl would scream at the top of her lungs if the word ‘father’ was even said. What could her mother and grandmother do? They closed the subject up as tight as a jar of pickles.
But now she has opened that jar.
Yes, they have spent the day prying it open together. Yet there are blank pages left. Holes. Who else will fill these holes if not me?
Talking about mom’s skin isn’t how I wanted to start this notebook, but that’s all that comes to mind as I sit here and watch her sleep, her hair a tangled mess and her mouth slack and open a bit. When I slipped into her bedroom a moment ago with this brand-new notebook and pen, I had some idea I’d see her lying there asleep, both vulnerable and strong as a rock, and I’d be moved to tears, but it’s hard to cry at a healthy adult drooling on their pillow.
She just rolled over. How can she keep sleeping with so much light in the room? I have to have blackout curtains, and even then I never sleep past seven. It’s a nightmare when I stay over at a friend’s house – I’m always the first one to bed. Then I often have to wait for them for hours the next morning.
One time, Aslı and Deniz wrote “Sleepy Dwarf” on my forehead. I had nodded off on the little yellow-striped couch in Aslı’s room, and they grabbed the magic marker off of her desk and scribbled that on there. It took me fifteen minutes to get it off – I had to use nail polish remover. When I finished, I didn’t have any ink on my skin, but my whole forehead was red. Aslı got worried I’d stay that way, but it was basically gone by the time I went home.
I laughed with everyone as the story got re-told at school all the next week. It might have gone on longer but Hülya vomited right at the end of math class on Thursday and we had to leap over it to get out of the classroom. Obviously, that story trumped mine by quite a ways. The next week, Aslı and Deniz only remembered to call me Sleepy a couple of times and pretty soon they had forgotten all about it.
Of course, the three of us came together not long after, this time at my house, and I dozed off early again but only slept well because I had already hidden all my magic markers. When I got up about seven the next morning, I found my friends together on the large fold-out couch in our living room. I went to town, drawing a crescent moon on Aslı’s left cheek, and a star on Deniz’s right. Then I nudged them together and got a picture of the two of them snuggling with the Turkish flag across their faces.
For about an hour after they had woken up and washed it off, we all sat around glaring at each other, their cheeks as bright red as my forehead had been. Then we couldn’t stand it anymore and cracked up. Mom printed out the picture of the two of them and we put it on the refrigerator, but only after we had promised there wouldn’t be any more retribution.
“Mom,” I whisper. How can she sleep with the racket of the birds in the back yard? She doesn’t move. I don’t want to poke the bear, but… “Momma bear,” I say a bit louder.
“Mhmmm,” she grumbles. She cracks one eye and looks at me like I’m furniture.
“Mom, wake up.”
“Okay, I’m up,” she says, pushing herself to a sitting position, her straight black hair hiding her face.
Now, we’re in the living room. The coffee table is loaded with food. Fat black olives and lemon-soaked green ones, two fresh baguettes that I cut into slices, a hunk of white cheese and a wedge of pungent eski kaşar, thin strips of spiced tongue and pastrami. A plate of sweet, stuffed grape leaves in a pyramid. And then there’s the spreads: tomato-walnut-red pepper, and smoked eggplant. The smells alone are overpowering: fresh-hot-bread, smoky peppery salty, and over it all, a hint of lemon.
“You’re writing about the food,” she says.
“I am.”
“Did you get the spiced tongue?” That’s her favorite.
“Yes, I wrote it down, but don’t think you’re getting more than two slices of that solid cholesterol.”
“You know tomorrow morning I can eat all the slices I want.” She starts to reach for a stuffed grape leaf.
“Don’t make me slap that out of your hand, mom.” This brings her up short.
“You just put all this food out to look at?”
“No, of course not. But we’ve got to pace ourselves.”
“Okay,” she says, leaning back in the winged armchair, an amused look on her face but no stuffed grape leaf in her hand.
I’ve been telling her I’m planning this ‘talk-about-dad day’ for some time. But other than saying it, I realize I haven’t actually planned anything. To be honest, I figured mom would take over.
She did make me pack my bags, unpack them to check, and then re-pack them over the last week or so. She’s been working off of multiple lists – she even has a ‘snacks for the plane’ list, complete with Babane’s dried fruit and nut mix.
A week ago, we took in the white mulberries from the massive tree at the end of the little garden behind our apartment. White mulberries are like white sweet raspberries but thinner and longer. They’re delicious but they attract flies and spiders and stuff so when there’s fruit on the tree, we hang fruit nets under the branches and shake them every couple of days. It’s like a fruit rain. Then we put them in bags and give them to friends – after we stuff ourselves full, of course.
And we give them to Babane to dry and mix with nuts for a homemade winter snack. Babane spends half the summer making food for the winter – jars of tomatoes with a touch of garlic and hot green peppers, quince jelly, and of course loads of vegetables pickled in lemon juice and brine. While everyone else is barbecuing and going to the beach, Babane turns both her apartment and ours into a pair of mad drying, bottling, pickling factories.
“Mom?”
“Mmm?”
“Mom, when did I start calling grandma ‘Babane’?”
She swallows. “You couldn’t say ‘babaanne’ or ‘büyükanne,’ and it was so sweet the way you said ‘Babane’.”
“I know that – I meant how old was I?”
“I guess you were about three and a half.”
“But don’t you think it’s weird that what we call her means ‘Dad – what?’ I mean it’s such an odd nickname, especially given the situation.”
“That’s probably why we kept it. You’ve never wanted to talk about him, and when Babane would try and tell you about him, you would scream at the top of your lungs! We didn’t know what the hell to do. So when you said ‘Babane,’ frankly we didn’t have the energy to argue.”
“Thanks, mom, good to know.”
Babane is mom’s mother-in-law. You’d think they would be at each other’s throats all the time. Actually, it’s weird how they get along. I mean, they love each other and can’t bear to stay apart more than two days. But when they’re together, they do disagree on practically everything.
Take the bookshelves here in the living room – they line both walls. Mom told Babane she wanted bookshelves like these in the house, but Babane kept telling the carpenter not to make them, that the dust from all those books would make the child (me) sick. Finally, they were arguing it out with the poor carpenter in the middle when he just said, “enclosed bookcases.” He’s been in some weird accident that kind of messed up his mouth, so he doesn’t speak much, but luckily that was enough to get them both to compromise.
I was only about five at the time, but I can remember sitting on the floor in the dining room, being fascinated that this man could make big, beautiful bookshelves out of a bunch of pieces of wood.
What was I writing about before I got sidetracked with shelves? Oh, right – yes, mom and Babane argue, but they also love each other. Of course, neither of them cleans the glass bookshelf doors – that chore falls to me.
The thing is, mom’s the only one who can argue with Babane – if I argue with her, I never hear the end of it, and on top of that, she doesn’t cook for me for weeks. You’re probably thinking that’s not the end of the earth, but it is. Look, take that smoked eggplant spread thing on our table – besides the eggplant and some special soft cream cheese, it has these fish eggs in it that make it incredible. I know, ‘fish eggs’ sounds gross, but they’re all smooshed up – believe me, one dab on a piece of bread and you’re ready to swim in the stuff.
Now mom is getting up from her armchair, and coming around behind the couch. I can feel her reading what I’ve written above.
“Thank God the carpenter saved us from really tearing into each other,” she says. “And he didn’t even charge extra for the bookshelf doors, you know.”
My mom has that kind of luck – she gets glass bookcase doors for free, and she doesn’t even have to clean them. But not for long, mom – guess you’ll have to clean them yourself soon.
“Ah, yes, the smooshed fish eggs.”
She’s catching up with me fast. I can’t think of what else to write – all the more so because she’s reading as I’m writing.
Now she’s laughing. “Yes, you’ll finally have your revenge when I have to clean the glass bookshelf doors. But you won’t be here to see me do it, will you? Maybe I just won’t clean them.”
It’s like we’ve got some inter-continental lag in the connection here. Which is weird, given that we’re the closest family I know (it helps that there’s just the two of us and Babane).
“That is weird,” she says.
So, she has finally caught up.
Of course that makes it really impossible to think of what to write.
“Why,” she asks in her public-television, I-already-know-the-answer voice, “do you think there’s a ‘lag’ even for such an abnormally close family?” This voice is what she does when she wants me to read her mind.
“First of all, I think our family is more or less like anyone else’s – we’re as normal as any other family.”
“Don’t be silly. There is no normal.”
This is one of those subjects which we agree to disagree on (or we try to). I think normal is everywhere all at once, that nothing’s not normal.
“Come on, don’t be ridiculous. We’d all be living a hideous life if everything were normal.” At least she’s not using that terrible tone of voice anymore.
“Aha,” she cries. “In other words, ‘Thank God she’s speaking normally again,’ right? But” – I know what’s coming – “if everything’s normal, then why do you hate this public television voice so?”
We’ve been around and around this argument so many times now, I get dizzy right from the beginning. I don’t have to look back at her to know she’s staring out the patio doors at the mulberry tree, probably making some comparison in her mind between me and sticky fruit on the ground.
Mom has just given a snorting laugh (hopefully there’s nothing in my hair). Obviously, she has turned back and is reading this again.
“I knew you’d find a way to give me a dig and get back to the subject at the same time.” She ruffles my hair but continues standing behind me.
“Mom, I want to write something about dad, but I can’t think of anything.”
“Don’t stop, keep writing,” she says.
What can I write? Now it’s out there – that’s what this day’s all about. I finally wanted to speak about dad but it seems there’s nothing to say.
“Well, you could start by saying he’s dead. That’s ‘not nothing’ as you’d put it.”
But that’s the thing, it is nothing – he’s nothing. If I’d known him when he was alive, then there would be something – a hole or pain or anger. Mom wants me to get into it but that’s like asking a bushman what it’s like not having a TV your whole life.
“A father’s not a television.” So, she’s still reading this over my shoulder.
In some ways the second-hand TV in the corner means more to me than my father. (Come on, mom, think of the time we spend with it – it’s important in our lives, it has a weight that a man I never met simply doesn’t.)
“It’s ironic,” my mother sighs, “because that’s exactly what he would have said.”
She shuffles back to the armchair and flops into it. This, too, is a tactic, but it works – takes the fight right out of me.
“So, mom, you tell me: How do I recognize the absence of his presence, or the presence of his absence, or whatever you want to call it? Should I act like I’m all cut up?”
“I’m glad you brought that up again after all this time – I just wasn’t ready when you first said it, so I had to wait two years but now you’ve finally repeated it.” She’s so happy I’ve said this that she actually rubs her hands together. “Yes, you should act like you’re upset.”
I can’t help but snort a laugh myself – the way she said it was so full of conviction, like she’d said something really marvelous.
“And why is that, mom?”
“Look, think of the Weasel.” The Weasel is our neighbor. “Haven’t you ever wondered how this woman who’s so sickeningly nice to us got that nickname?”
“I always assumed it was precisely because she’s so sickeningly sweet. Isn’t it like she’s trying to weasel her way into our hearts or whatever?”
“No, that’s not it. Good guess, but no. Babane gave her the nickname soon after we moved in.” That’s actually fairly hard to believe – mom and I are happy to talk trash behind people’s backs but I can’t really imagine Babane doing that. “Oh she didn’t say it behind her back if that’s what you’re thinking.” (How does she know right what I am thinking?) “She came right out and called her a weasel – Babane had just found out the Weasel was going around to all the neighbors complaining about foreigners moving into the neighborhood when you and I came, but of course she was sweet as pie to my face. So Babane confronted her and said she was no better than a nasty little weasel.”
That actually does sound like Babane – when you get on her bad side.
“The Weasel was incensed, of course,” mom goes on, “but the years went by and then slowly but surely, she didn’t have anything to complain about, so she quit her whining – and now her disgusting niceness is real.”
“So are you saying she’s normal now?”
“Yes, yes, you got me on that one,” mom flashes a quick smile, “but what’s important is how the acting starts to erase the truth it has covered over – sooner or later the disgustingly nice act is all that’s left.”
I can actually kind of see the truth in what she’s saying there – I myself have never heard the Weasel complain about us. Almost as if it got boring because we didn’t blow up or get into it with her.
“So you see how acting on purpose is ‘not nothing’ – it’s something.”
This is classic mom – big jump with no warning.
“Mom, now you’ve lost me.”
“You know: It’s a double negative. We’re all acting to greater or lesser degrees and this covers over what we really want to do – and, depending on how regularly and seriously we get roped into this acting, that’s how much our real selves are erased. But if you consciously act over these unconscious acts, you’re really negating the act.”
I wasn’t actually dizzy when I wrote that part about being dizzy a couple of pages ago, but now I am.
“So you want me to pretend to miss a man I never met?”
“Yes. I think if you did, you’d give your emotions a space they could fill.”
“So, hair pulling? Wailing? What would you like?”
“Let’s start with me telling you about your father and you writing it down.”
This is the horribly disconcerting thing about my mother – you think you’re the one to set up a day to talk about dad but then she says something like this and you begin to wonder whether it wasn’t all her idea. It’s like she’s going fishing and you are both the bait and the fish. Makes it hard to get away.
“Mom—”
“Why don’t you have a bite to eat before we get down to it?”
* * *
Fourteen hours have passed. Where are this mother and daughter now?
One must be lying awake in the guest bed next door at her mother-in-law’s. And the girl is somewhere over Greenland in an airplane.
The living room is still full of the smell of their last Turkish coffee. The moon shines through the glass door, illuminates the writing in this notebook.
She has only written on one side of every page, leaving the left page blank.
Why are you writing in that very space now? you may well ask.
I don’t know. There’s more to be said.
Who will open this notebook again? And when?
This, too, I don’t know. But I’m certain someone will. The girl knows there are blanks in the story, empty pages that must be filled in.
At three a.m., like a burglar in the night?
Yes.
It seems too little too late.
When she was four or five years old, I remember this girl would scream at the top of her lungs if the word ‘father’ was even said. What could her mother and grandmother do? They closed the subject up as tight as a jar of pickles.
But now she has opened that jar.
Yes, they have spent the day prying it open together. Yet there are blank pages left. Holes. Who else will fill these holes if not me?