We had not seen her in many years. It must have been nearly thirty five. We were very young when we left. I was about ten and my sister fifteen. “Enough,” my sister said one day, and she led me to the bus. We got off only when we arrived in Athens.
Our mother was wild. Full of poison. She would wake us up shouting and put us to bed with blows. Every single day without failure, and until she got tired. Her blows and curses drove my sister to take me with her and disappear. We never sought to see her after our departure and neither did she ever come looking for us.
My sister did not marry. Neither did I. She always worked hard. She never stopped. “To raise you” she would say. She had enrolled me in the nearby elementary school and then in high school. She was elated when I passed the entrance exams for the university. With extreme hardship, she made sure I was able to leave Greece and go to law school in the United States. When I finally returned from Minneapolis, she was already too old for marriage. She had always avoided men. She frequently commented on how awkward she felt in their company. She was not interested in men, she would say. Perhaps it was because she had known our father longer than I. He was an untamed beast. One day, after beating our mother and my sister, he jumped on his motorbike and left for Yugoslavia. For ever. “To the hell’s fiery maw,” our mother yelled after him, raising her arms to the sky. Like an orant. “May the vultures never find a single bone of yours to pick at,” she cried in that extraordinary manner of hers of hurling off her curses. That was the end of her married life. Then all her bitterness would flow out of her like black crows fly out of a dead tree. Landing on us at the least of provocation. “With such experiences, how can one marry…,” my sister would say from time to time.
Lately, my sister got ill. I took her to a number of doctors but no one was able to diagnose what exactly was wrong with her. She lost a great deal of weight turning pale and yellowish as if she had jaundice or mononucleosis. An undefined sickness had taken over her body and no medicine could cure her. She barely ate and was slowly pining away. Wilting by the day. She resembled the women in the famine areas of the globe we sometimes see on television. She could not rise from her bed any more. It appeared to me that her end was coming as she spent most of the time asleep. That is why I decided to write to our mother and invite her to come. I thought that she might want to see my sister one last time.
Today I was waiting for her arrival. Around six o’clock in the afternoon, I heard the intercom ring. I opened the exterior door and waited for her by the lift. A shrunken old lady came out. In her hands she held an ancient small suitcase and several plastic bags stuffed with things. Our eyes met. With obvious interest, she greeted me by nodding her head like nothing had ever happened. She smiled and said, “Let’s go inside, my son.” I took her suitcase and the several plastic bags and led her to the sitting room. Without paying the least attention to me, she walked through the open door to my sister’s room. I did not move fast enough to block her way. I had not said anything to my sister about our mother’s coming because I was afraid she would be angry. And now I was afraid that the pain of suddenly seeing our mother again would most likely finish her on the spot. But my sister was deep in that slumber that had taken over her poor body and did not even stir.
Our mother walked up to her gently. Noiselessly. She looked at her for a while and then walked out of the room. I followed her to the kitchen. “Let’s see what you got here,” she said, opening and closing the cupboards one by one, methodically examining their contents. Since my sister’s illness, our home was messy and in disarray. I was not paying the least attention to it. I would try to clean it a bit only when I could no longer stand it. Minimally. Washing some dishes so that I could eat and feed my sister. Our mother was looking at everything with disgust and her expression was one of bewilderment, like where-have-I-come-to-and-where-do-I-start-first.
She turned to me and said. “If you have something to do, go do it. If not, then go watch television. I need to put things in order. If you go out, and I suggest you do just that, leave me some money. I must go and get some groceries and some spices and herbs I need.”
I did not know what to do. I moved backwards mumbling, “As you wish…but don’t wake her up without me being here. I need to be here when she wakes up….” “She is not waking up any time soon,” she said plainly. “Go get some air,” she ordered. “And don’t forget to leave me some money. I have none.”
I left her keys and money and walked out relieved. What was that? I thought. How can I explain it? More than thirty-five years of absence. I did not even recognize her! Is she the same mother I once knew? I walked on hurriedly like someone was after me. I was thinking of the distant past as if it were fresh, just days old. The merciless beatings, the curses she would hurl at us like small mountains against our tiny souls. I wondered if all of that were not just figments of my imagination, a child’s nightmares. Baseless. “It can’t be true…,” I kept repeating to myself. “How can it be true?” I went to my office to work a bit and forget. But I could not concentrate on anything. All of my childhood was swirling in my mind and I gave up.
I took the way back to our apartment. I was angry with myself, already regretting that I had invited her into our lives again. Why had I done this? What did I expect? Why did I leave her alone with my sick sister? And she? How could she just walk into our house, into our lives, just like that? As if nothing had happened, as if she walked right into her own house? She even dared to order me out! Why did I behave like a sheep? Like when I was still a helpless child. I did not take a taxi back home as I usually do. I walked back pounding on the pavement. I was so angry with myself. Soon my legs started to hurt from walking so furiously. I must have exuded anger because the few passers by I met in the street moved out of my way and stayed at a considerable distance. I had resolved to have it out with this shrew. I would not let go that easy. “The time has come, bitch.” I thought. “I may have brought you here because your daughter is dying…,” I said out loud, “but don’t think I forgive you, witch. You’ll see… you’ll see…” And I climbed the steps to our apartment two, three at a time.
Furiously I opened the door. An exquisite scent of spices and food cooking invaded my nostrils halting me at the entrance. I backtracked thinking I had entered someone else’s apartment. I looked at the number above the door. No, it was ours. It was clean now and in order. Everything in its place. The smell of food raised an immense hunger in me. Blindly I staggered into the kitchen. I opened the oven door and inside, in a pan, there was an entire fish swimming in olive oil and lemon juice and spices. Finely chopped fresh dill covered its skin, bright green. Next to it a whole loaf of bread was warming up like a relaxed cat. I broke a large piece and dipped it in the sauce bringing it up to my mouth with affection. Oh gods! How delectable! Cries of pleasure were escaping my lips along with droplets from the exquisite sauce. I moaned like a dog that hadn’t eaten since Christmas as I stuffed my mouth with fish chunks I had nudged with the bread. On the top of the stove I found a pot with string beans. Their sauce, red with chunks of tomatoes, was staring me in the face, beckoning to me. There is no shame, it was saying, you are in your own home. Come dip your bread in me. I grabbed the entire loaf and dipped it in, sucking the sauce like milk from a mother’s breast. And I purred. I looked to the right, and on the kitchen table spread out were all the goodies our mother had brought from the village in those plastic bags she was carrying. All kinds of delicacies and sweets. Spinach and cheese pie made with hand-formed dough and baked in a clay oven, paté, homemade pickles of all sorts, manouri cheese and myzithra, some that I recognized and others I had no idea what they were. But they all looked deliciously inviting. Purple retseli in molasses inside a jar, homemade baklava with ground walnuts and almonds and honey, blond quince preserve, dried figs stuffed with walnuts, luminously green and beautiful fig preserve, and many other things.
“Hey glutton,” I heard her behind me, “you are going to wake her with all your noises. I will set the table and you can eat properly.” I must confess I was unapologetic for my manners. Stuffing myself, I gestured to her to hurry up and shortly I sat down and ate as if I was feeding myself for the first and the last time.
When she was well, my sister was scrimpy, spare about everything. Sparer about her cooking. A monk would have been jealous of the way we ate. Even the salt and pepper we would sprinkle after the food was cooked and on the plates. Spices and fresh herbs existed only in cookbooks, and even these were absent from our home. And now, in this orgy of smells and tastes, my anger disappeared into thin air. Everything passed. And in my mind I knew quite well that the past would never come back again, never.
In the days that followed, our mother turned all her attention to my sister, who was practically in a coma. She would sit on my sister’s bed, lift her thin body in her arms, and feed her like a baby. She boiled spices and wild herbs with flower honey and royal jelly and little by little, patiently, spoon-fed my sister with that concoction. Every day, without losing her rhythm, or making any mistakes in the recipe, the amounts, or the timing of the feeding. And, miraculously, my sister’s color began to return. Once yellow and anemic, some pink started to appear, first in her cheeks, and then in the rest of her body. She started to return to life. Our mother bathed her and changed her daily. She changed her bedding practically every day. And at the same time she looked after me and the house. She prepared the most elaborate lunches and dinners just for me. It was as if I was transported into some paradise where food was the basis of all salvation.
Some time later my sister’s eyes were capable of focusing. She was coming out of that fog she had been enveloped in during her illness. She appeared curious when she realized that an old lady was in the house and was taking care of her, but she let herself be cared after and evidently enjoyed our mother’s affectionate nursing. Our mother continued tirelessly to fuss over her and now she started to comb my sister’s hair and even to put some make up on her. I had never seen my sister with make up. She was Spartan in everything and refused every attempt to alter her severe appearance. “My, my,” I told our mother one day, “you made her look like a doll. Someone will break in and abscond with her.” “What of it,” our mother said, “it’s just about time. Don’t fret though. You now have me.” We all laughed. I could not remember the last time I had laughed. It must have been some time long ago. I embraced our mother and perhaps this was the very first time in my life I had done so. I could remember no other. My heart flooded with a newly felt sweet emotion and my eyes began to fill with tears. “Yes mother…,” I managed to say, and tried to leave the room so that they should not see me melting down like that.
My sister’s eyes clouded at once. She looked over in the direction of our mother examining her thoroughly. She gestured to me impatiently that we needed to talk. She asked our mother to bring her a glass of hot chocolate and when she left my sister said to me severely, “Mother?” she asked incredulously, “What in the world are you jabbering about?” “I am sorry,” I apologized, “you were so very sick that I began to believe you were going to die. I thought that I would bring our mother here to see you for the last time. I saw no harm in it.” “You must have lost you senses,” she said. “No way is this woman our mother. Not in any way, manner, or shape. She reminds me a bit of kyra-Evdoxia who lived a few houses up the street from ours in the village. You remember. We used to run and hide there when mother was after us. But I am not absolutely sure of this either, after so many years…” “What are you talking about?” I said, “You must be out of your mind. I think you are still under the influence of your illness and your mind is fogged up. This woman that you see here is our mother. I was the one who wrote the letter inviting her to come. Don’t I know to whom I wrote my letter? I know you never wanted to see her again and understand your reluctance. I apologize for taking such an initiative without asking you. But she is our mother whether you want it to or not. And if you do not want her to be our mother say then that she is my mother and let’s get done with it. You hear? I don’t ever want to be apart from her again. End of discussion.” “OK, OK. I haven’t thrown her out yet, you know. Let it be as you say.”
V. E.
I wrote to our mother is the best story yet. BEautifullly written for a macho man!