Free Baltimore by Jelena Lengold Page A

documents grandfather refused to throw out. My mother is brushing her hair in front of a mirror. Her underskirt, showing a little under her dress because that was the fashion. The two of us are watering flowers. We’re adding a little ink to the water to make the hydrangea blue. We’re shaking a tree and apricots are falling down on us. They’re very ripe and unbelievably sweet.
    “…now, out of all the images, try singling out only one and then focus on it.”
    For no apparent reason, the image that wasn’t important at all kept coming back to me.
    “If one of the images keeps popping up persistently while you’re chasing it away, then maybe you need to devote your attention to it….”
    How the hell does she know exactly what’s happening? Where did she learn to do this?
    I gave in. All the other images were disappearing anyway, like in a whirlwind, before this one image. Small, meaningless, insignificant.
    “When the image becomes clear and when you come to see yourself in it, along with all the other important elements, you may slowly open your eyes. When you’re ready….”
    I’m not ready. But, sooner or later, I have to open my eyes. That’s when I’ll start crying. This was becoming increasingly absurd.
    “Welcome,” she said with a little smile when I opened my eyes and looked at her.
    And then she gave me some paper and coloring pencils, just like she would a child. So, we’re going to draw again. I was long pass the tolerable limit of self-humiliation, and so I simply began to draw the scene, as my tears fell on the paper and turned my drawing into some sort of an infantile aquarelle.
    “All right,” she said when I completed my idiotic drawing. “Give the picture a name. And take a good look at it. Go inside of it.”
    I’m in the picture, damn it. What else do you want from me? She didn’t have any tissues. She brought me a roll of toilet paper. So, there I was, sitting, with a roll of toilet paper in one hand and the drawing in the other. Can a grown person be in a more humiliating position?
    “Tell me what’s in the drawing.”
    “This is our hallway. There’s only one suitcase in it. Here, on the right, is the door. That’s it.”
    “Where are you in the drawing?”
    “I’m not in it. I’m everywhere and nowhere. I’m like some kind of a ghost.”
    “Draw it.”
    I drew myself in a cloud, like in one of those comic strips.
    “Whose suitcase is it?”
    “My mother packed the suitcase, she’s a school teacher and she has to take her students on a field trip. I’m six or seven years old and I’m devastated because she’s leaving.”
    “What’s the small red thing on the suitcase?”
    “It’s a poem I wrote. I put it on my mother’s suitcase and I’m hoping she’ll notice it when she goes to leave.”
    “What’s the poem about?”
    “Some sad children,” I said.
    But I lied. I remember only too well that the poem was about some dead children. I couldn’t say it out loud. I thought it would sound too insane.
    “So, you’re in this house like some ghost and you’re looking at the suitcase which is making it very clear what is to follow.”
    “Yes, the suitcase doesn’t leave any room for hope. There’s nothing to be done.”
    “There’s nothing to be done,” she repeated after me, nodding her head.
    As if she wanted me to hear some of my sentences again. As if sometimes she wanted to make sure she heard me right.
    “So, you’re looking at the suitcase and… What does it look like? If it could talk, what would it say?”
    Whatever, if the elephants and the membrane around the baby could talk, why wouldn’t the suitcase? Nothing seemed strange to me anymore.
    “The suitcase is a bit uneasy and annoyed, and it says: ‘Why is this kid circling around me? I’m here on a sacred mission to protect the ironed dresses. I can’t be a responsible suitcase while kids stomp on me. There’s no way. You can’t expect that much from a suitcase, even if it is the