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

must have been taking his daughter, a girl of five, home from kindergarten. He simply tormented her with kisses! I told him off. He snapped out of it, as did his daughter, who couldn’t catch her breath from all the tickling and kissing. He redirected his attention to me and showered me with curses. “Stay out of it, you old bitch; mind your own goddamn business; shut your smelly trap.” But I wouldn’t stay quiet. “Look what you’ve done to the child! I can imagine what you do to her at home. Criminal!” The passengers were full of indignation—at me. “What do you care, you old slut! Look at yourself—you are old, old!”
    “I only wish her well, this child of yours. People go to jail for this, inappropriate behavior with a minor. Child rape!”
    “Stay out of it, old fool!”
    “And then you’ll be surprised when she gives birth at twelve—and you won’t be the father.”
    I won, I distracted him; now he brims with a new desire: to punch my insolent mug. From now on, every time he wants to lay a hand on his daughter, he’ll remember me, and his desire will turn to hatred. Again I’ve saved a child! I always save someone. In our neighborhood I alone keep vigil at night. One summer night I heard a woman’s half-choked “Oh God, someone help!” My hour had come: I stuck my head out the window and announced loudly, “What’s going on here? I’m calling the police!” Our local cops, by the way, respond promptly to such calls, when the criminal is still there. Two more windows opened, another voice yelled, and I saw a couple men running in this direction. “Right here, Comrades, you are almost there,” I directed them, even though they were at least a hundred yards away. But my goal was to scare the rapist, to make him let go of her. And he jumped out of the shrubs and ran off. The woman burst into tears. Imagine her terror when he started choking her and banging her head against the wall of our building.
    And so we win. I bring knowledge to the ignorant masses, I give voice to their conscience, I orate like a Pythia at schools, camps, clubs. And how they tremble! But they listen, and they’ll never forget. My eternal misery, my Tima, always sits next to me when I perform, never leaves me alone, and the children receive us as an indivisible entity. Seven rubles with kopecks is my fee—three or four readings a month plus submissions, and one can live, almost. Who can stop a woman trying to feed her child?
    •   •   •
    This week I’m giving a reading at a children’s winter camp outside the city, thanks as always to the wonderful Nadya B., who has arranged it for me. We are being picked up at the propaganda office. They promised us that at the camp we’d be fed, hurray. And then the horror begins. Not the horror itself but the prelude to the horror. The phone rings, and the little one grabs the receiver. “Hullo, hullo. . . . You want Anna who?” Pause. The phone goes dead. I pounce on the boy: Never, do you hear me, never again . . . Phone rings; I grab the receiver and get a painful kick in the shin. The boy flops onto the floor and turns on his siren. My children never allowed themselves such tantrums, but the little one has the nerves of a hysterical woman.
    In the meantime a sweet provincial voice informs me that my mother, Serafima Georgievna, will be transferred from the hospital to a facility for the chronically insane.
    That’s it. That’s the end of the line. What I’ve been too terrified even to imagine has come true.
    “How can I address you, dear?”
    “Valya.”
    “Dear Valechka, what happened? Has she been difficult? Where is Deza Abramovna?”
    “Deza’s on vacation; we are all on vacation starting next month. They are renovating the clinic; all the patients are being moved. Some will go to another hospital, some will go home, the rest will go to a facility for the chronically insane. But your . . . your mom, your auntie—”
    “Does it matter? She’s