As soon as they showed up, she gathered them together around the table, setting forth the reason for one more quarrel and distorting the facts without any pangs of conscience.
Grandma understood perfectly well that her stories added fuel to the fire and made the atmosphere of our community, which was far from friendly, explosive. But that was exactly what she delighted in.
Grandma Lisa was a virtuoso of squabbling. After stirring up trouble, she would step aside to watch innocently as the uproar developed. After enjoying it, she would take on the role of peacemaker and act as if she had nothing to do with it. In other words, she also somehow attempted to ennoble herself.
For precisely that purpose, she brought dinner for Papa to our place only two days after she had quarreled with him.
Mama understood perfectly well what fuss Father would raise on seeing the plate. That was why she put it at Grandma Lisa’s window.
Retribution followed right away.
“Mama!” Father’s younger brother Robert yelled. “This swine has brought the dinner back!”
“Where is this bitch?!” Father’s sister Tamara yelled as soon as she entered the yard. She had already been informed about Mama’s “crime.” “Where is she? I’ll…” And obscene cursing followed.
Aunt Tamara loved to use foul language. She kicked up a row with someone almost every day.
“Hey, you ignoramus!” Uncle Misha called to Mama with disdain.
He was a schoolteacher. He taught physics, while Mama was a common factory seamstress.
They all quarreled with Father, but it was impossible to understand why all the hatred was vented at my mama. She had no place to hide from them.
Even during the hardest times, she didn’t egg my father on. She didn’t influence him against his mother, brothers or sister. She kept silent when she found herself between the devil and the deep blue sea. She was quiet and patient.
That’s how she had been raised. She was calm and reserved by nature, even withdrawn. She was not in the habit of and didn’t care to interfere in the private lives of those around her, to denounce anyone, to gossip. She didn’t find it interesting. Besides, she had no free time.
Her husband’s illness didn’t allow her to have a normal life. She had to take care of him, to look after him, to feed him. In other words, she had to work from early in the morning till late at night. There was never enough money and she had no help.
It was past midnight. The moon, clear and bright, was high in the sky. All the houses shimmered silvery in its light. Every unevenness, every small detail in the yard was clearly revealed.
It was a splendid night, and it was very, very quiet.
Only Mama broke the silence. The shovel continued its scraping. Chunks of coal rattled as they fell into the pails.
One last batch, and we finished our work. Sweat, thick and fast, was streaming down Mama’s face. Her face, hands, legs, dress, apron – all were coated in a solid, heavy, coarse black armor.
We had to wash ourselves at home. A visit to the bathhouse would come the next day.
Mama began to heat water. She had to do it as fast as possible because tomorrow – actually, it was already tomorrow – early in the morning she would have to go to work, and I to kindergarten.
I think I fell asleep sitting on a chair. I don’t know how my poor mama managed to undress and wash me.
Chapter 8. A Very Good Day
It must have been a holiday, I don’t remember which, but that morning we were all at home – Mama, Emma, and I. All but Father; he was at the hospital again. I was about to play when a singsong call was heard from the yard.
“E-e-e-e-e-s-the-e-e-e-e-r!”
Mama’s name was heard from the yard. It sounded like a song, like a serenade. It sounded so melodious and clear, as if an opera singer were performing an aria consisting of just that one name. I knew that singer very well. His voice could not be confused with anyone else’s. Even though it was a man’s voice, it was amazingly similar to my mama’s.
But of course, it was Grandpa Hanan! He didn’t like to knock on the door. He preferred to announce his arrival by walking between our door and that of Grandma Lisa and singing something.
In his black coat and bright skullcap, with a small bundle in his hands and his face with its greying beard turned up, he was waving the bundle and telling the whole neighborhood about his arrival and his love for his daughter.
“E-e-e-e-e-s-ss-th-e-e-e-r! E-e-e-e-e-s-th-e-e-e-e-e-r! Look who’s here, E-e-e-s-the-e-r!”
When my Grandpa Hanan was singing all by himself or among friends, he didn’t notice anything or anyone around him. He might walk back and forth for a long time.
“Mama! Grandpa Hanan is here!”
Mama was already running to the door. She smiled at me over her shoulder. Oh, what a smile it was! Mama gave us such a smile only in rare moments of happiness. She would put one hand on top of the other and bow her head slightly. The corners of her closed lips would rise, and the line of her mouth would curve. That changed her face in a miraculous way – it looked brighter and younger. Her hazel eyes grew bigger, brighter. A secret light lit them beautifully and reigned above her smile. The sharp arcs of her thick eyebrows, that almost touched over the bridge of her nose, surged like waves, and above them, two little birthmarks went up like little rowboats.
Our mama was a beauty. I think she was the kind of beauty that the great poets of the East extolled. Tall, slender, with a gentle face and thick black hair so long that when it hung loose, it streamed down her back to her thighs like a waterfall. She was definitely the embodiment of Eastern beauty.
I liked to watch Mama comb her hair. Seated at a small round mirror, Mama would slowly comb her hair, one strand after another. It streamed and shone even in the light of the dim bulb that lit Mama’s bedroom. She would stick the comb into her thick hair at the top of her head and drag it slowly down a strand to its very end. She did it over and over again, until the strand became elastic, until every hair separated easily from the next. Only after that did she begin on the next strand.
A small wisp of hair would remain on the comb after she finished with a strand. Mama didn’t throw these away. She neatly wound them up into a ball, a kind of bun, which grew bigger by the year.
At last her hair was combed, and it was time to arrange it. First, Mama placed the bun at the nape of her neck and began to roll the strands around it in amazingly graceful movements. That was how a big springy bun appeared at the back of her head before my very eyes. It was the hairdo that I considered the apex of perfection.
Mama threw the door open, and I rushed toward Grandpa and jumped up into his arms. He lifted me and, pressing me against him, began to turn slowly.
Oh, what fun it was. Everything floated past me – the cherry tree, the apricot tree, the vegetable garden, Jack’s kennel, and Jack himself with his long tongue sticking out. It seemed to me that his tongue was floating after me like a long pink ribbon. How could it possibly fit into his mouth? The walls, the windows, the tulle curtain in Grandma’s
