to take the wig home (Take it home so it won’t be stolen). When they removed the tube, I took her bridge from the plastic bag with her name and surname on it and washed it. Every day after that I washed her false teeth, until she was able to care for them herself.
‘I washed your wig at home.’
‘Did it shrink?’
‘No.’
‘Did you set it on the, you know… so it wouldn’t lose shape?’
‘Yes, on the dummy.’
My attention to her, to her intimate affairs, meant, I figured, far more to her than physical contact. I asked the hospital hairdresser to come and cut her hair short, and she liked that. The hospital pedicurist trimmed her toenails, and I tended to her hands. I brought her face creams to hospital. Her lipstick was her signal that she was still among the living. For the same reason she stubbornly refused to wear the hospital nightgown and insisted that I bring her own pyjamas.
We went to a café near her flat for her eightieth birthday. She went through her customary routine: she got carefully dressed, put on shoes with heels, her wig, her lipstick.
‘Is it on right?’
‘Terrific.’
‘Should I pull it down a little more over my forehead?’
‘No, it’s better as it is.’
‘No one could tell it is a wig.’
‘Never.’
‘So, how do I look?’
‘Great.’
We sat in the café, outdoors, until a summer rain shower sent us inside.
‘How could it rain on today of all days! My eightieth!’ she complained.
‘It’ll pass in a minute,’ I said.
‘I get rained on for my eightieth birthday,’ she protested.
We sat in the café for a long time, but the rain did not let up.
‘We’ll take a cab! I cannot allow myself to get wet!’ she complained, though the chance that there would be a taxi willing to drive us 150 metres was slim. She was anxious about the wig. I protested that the wig would be fine.
‘I could catch my death!’
We called a cab. Her inner panic burned down like the candles on the birthday cake, which she blew out several hours later, in the company of her friends.
For the last thirty years, since my father died, she has withdrawn into her home. She was left standing there, caught off guard by the fact that he was gone, at a loss for what to do with herself. Time passed, and she continued to stand there, like a forgotten traffic warden, chatting with neighbours, while with us, her children, and later, her grandchildren, she complained about the monotony of her life. She despaired, often her life seemed a living hell to her, but she didn’t know how to help herself. She blamed us for a long time, her children: we had pulled away from her, we had left home, we no longer cared about her the way we used to, we had alienated ourselves (her phrase). Her list of refusals grew from one day to the next: she refused to live with my brother and his family (Why? So I can serve them, do all the cooking and washing?!), or to trade her flat for one in their neighbourhood (I’d be doing nothing but babysitting every day!), or travel with me while she still could (I’ve seen it all on television!), or on her own (I’m not setting out, alone like a sore thumb,with everyone watching!); she often refused to join us on short family get-togethers and excursions (You go ahead, it is too much for me!), spend significant time with her grandchildren (I’m old and sick, I’d do anything for them, but they tire me out!), with people her own age (What am I supposed to do with those old biddies!); she refused to talk to a psychologist (I’m not crazy, I don’t need a shrink!), pursue a hobby (What is the point? Consolation for dimwits!), revive neglected friendships (How can I socialise with them, with your father gone?), until finally she made her peace. She settled into the house, venturing forth only to take walks around the neighbourhood, go to the market, the doctor’s, a friend’s for coffee. Ultimately she went out only for a brief stroll to a little café at the nearby open market. Her firmly held opinions on small matters (Too sweet for my taste! I suppose I was raised to love spicy food!), her pugnacity (I will never wear those pads, I’d rather die. I am not some helpless little old lady!), her demands (Today we wash the curtains!), her candour (In hospital they were all so old and ugly!), her lack of tact (This coffee of yours smells awful!) – all were signals of an underlying anguish that had been smouldering in her for years, an ever-present sense that no one noticed her, that she was invisible. She did her level best to fend off this frightening invisibility with all the means to hand.
Once, during a family Sunday afternoon, I took some pictures of all of us in relaxed poses. I photographed her, my brother, my brother’s wife, the children, all of us together. And then I thought I’d take one of my brother’s family, just the four of them. They lined up, and at the last moment, with breathtaking agility, Mum shouldered her way in.
‘Me too!’
Every time I happened across that picture, it took my breath away. Her face, thrust into the frame, and her grin, both victorious and apologetic, melted away the heavy doors of my forbidden inner sanctum, and I would dissolve, if the verb ‘dissolve’ can describe what happened inside me at those moments. And when all my strength, the strength of my every nerve, was spent in sobs, I would spit out a tiny breathing body, five or six inches across, no larger than the smallest toy doll, with a shapely skull planted on the spinal column, a slight forward stoop, eyelids lowered as if asleep and, hovering on her lips, the hint of a smile. I’d study the fragile tiny body in the palm of my hand, all wet from tears and saliva, from some vast distance, with no fear, as if it were my own small baby.
The Cupboard
The first thing that caught my eye was the cupboard. I had picked it up by chance, during a previous visit, at a Sunday antiques fair. An old piece of homely, country furniture, with one of its sides fashioned at an angle. The old paint had been stripped, and in that lay its only value, in the old wood, stripped of paint. The cupboard had now been painted clumsily in off-white oil paint, and it stood there in the room like an admonishment.
‘This is the little surprise I told you about.’
She had mentioned in several phone calls that a little surprise was waiting for me at home, but I had paid no attention. This was a ploy of hers, she often used little secrets and little surprises as a lure, so I generally assumed that there was not much behind these promises.
‘Who painted it?’
‘Ala.’
‘Ala who?’
‘The young Bulgarian woman you sent me.’
‘As I remember, her name is Aba?’
‘Like I said, Ala.’
‘Not Ala, Aba!’
‘Fine,
