Free There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Page A

fat Katya with me for God knows how long. Dear Lord, what possessed the feverish brain of this hormonal female? What did she need another baby for? How could she not notice, how could she miss the deadline? Easy. Took notice only when the baby started kicking. When a mother breastfeeds she often misses “the arrival of the Red Army,” as my daughter and her Lenka used to refer to their periods back in the day. Many get caught that way. The dick pushes ahead, the dick doesn’t care about the woman’s safety. And who was this dick? That same peripatetic deputy director? Or the local plumber? Or, worst of all, that landlord of hers? And how long could this go on? Naturally no one would give her a late abortion. That must have been when she started making the rounds with her protein and high blood pressure, begging for a late-term abortion, but they dragged her around for tests and then more tests, until it really became too late. As if they were genuinely committed to not squandering a single life. She should have looked for a nurse, for anyone who’d have given her a shot. Lots of women manage it somehow, some as late as the sixth month. Andrey’s wife, Nina, told us about her neighbor, who missed her deadline, too, and went to a beach resort instead. Came back, sent her kids away for the weekend, gave birth to a six-month-old fetus, a boy, and left him by an open window. It was October. She went to wash off the blood. He whimpered all night, but she never came to him. By morning he stopped. And the doctor wasn’t even there; he’d disappeared right after the shot. But she found someone, a man at that. Why didn’t you take care of this? Why do I have to pay now?
    Our conversation wasn’t about her urine. Our real conversation went like this: Mama, help me, take on one more burden. You have always saved me. Save me this time. But, my dear daughter, I can’t betray the little one; I can’t force myself to love another creature. Mama, what do I do? Nothing, honey—I’ve given you everything, my last penny. Oh Mama, how horrible, I’m going to die! No, no, don’t say that, you must be strong. Look at me; I stay strong for the little one, for all of you—me, your mother, your only one. The other day someone called me “young lady.” Can you imagine? Your mother’s still a woman. So you must be strong. Promise? You can’t move in here, you understand that. Again, distorted faces in the mirror in the hall—that’s where we always fight, only in addition we’ll see him, the innocent lamb, watching his two deities, his mama (me) and his mother (you) hurling obscenities. I live for him, don’t you understand? Do you remember when you told me, better in the street than here with me? That was the truth, alas. Okay, Mom, I’m sorry, I’m being an idiot. I love you.
    The little one came to me: “Grandma, please stop shaking. Why are you hiding your face?” Like a summer rain, tears gushed out of the two dried wells. My love, my angel, my eternal sun. Meekly he let me cover his face with kisses. Translucent skin; enormous eyelashes and eyes. Gray, almost blue, like Grandma Sima’s; mine are like honey. My angel, my gorgeous one.
    “Who were you talking to?”
    “Does it matter, honey?”
    “No, tell me.”
    “I told you: grown-up stuff.”
    “Alena? You were screaming at her?”
    I feel like a pig. Children are the conscience personified. They ask their little questions, and then they grow up and shut up, and live with the belief that there is nothing one can do, there is nothing anyone can do. I can’t do it to the little one.
    “Why did you yell that she must wash herself?”
    “No, my love. I told her that she must wash the floors!”
    “Are you silly?”
    “Oh, my love, I am silly, I’m a regular idiot. I love you.”
    •   •   •
    Countless light kisses on the cheeks and forehead, never on the mouth. One should never kiss a child on the mouth. I saw one such parent on a streetcar—he