Free Her Father's Daughter by Marie Sizun Page B

behind him.
    â€˜I’ll be off, I’ll be off,’ the grandmother says quickly. ‘I’ll just say hello to Li, I’m not having lunch with you…’
    The father’s already left, without responding to her words. But where’s the mother?
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    The grandmother calls in vain. The child finds no one in the kitchen. The grandmother opens the bedroom door: Li is lying down, asleep. Curtains drawn. On the bedside table there are pills.
    â€˜Is she ill?’ asks the child, who’s come over and is gazing in awe at her mother’s face, unreadable in sleep, at her pallor, her mess of hair.
    The grandmother wakes her daughter and she opens her eyes at last. She looks so peculiar, so befuddled, that the child instinctively backs away. She doesn’t want her mother to touch her. To kiss her.
    But no. Nothing like that happens. The mother just says – but in a strange, thick, lazy voice – it would be better if the grandmother left, that it’ll be OK now.
    â€˜Are you sure?’ the old lady asks.
    â€˜Absolutely. What’s the time? Anyway, the child can help me…’
    She gets out of bed, puts on a dressing gown and sees the grandmother to the door. The old lady very swiftly slips away.
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    The child and her mother are left alone. The child frozen in a sort of dread that her mother might want to kiss her. But nothing happens.
    The mother, still in her dressing gown, an old pink dressing gown that the child doesn’t like, drifts about theplace, puts a few things away. The child notices that the apartment’s very untidy, with clothes on the furniture, the kitchen in a mess, full of dirty dishes.
    â€˜We’re going to have lunch,’ says the mother. ‘I’m bound to find something.’
    Outside in the street they can hear a band playing. A woman singing. People join in the chorus.
    The child goes off to play under the dining-room table, reunited with her old doll.
    Her suitcase, which the grandmother left in the hall by the door, is still there; but perhaps her father will put it away when he comes home.

 
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    Of the weeks, the few months that come next, what will one day be left in the child’s memory? A few images, a few snatches of meaning taken from an obscure, muddled, mysterious continuum?
    Since she came home everything’s been so strange, her parents’ behaviour so peculiar. The child doesn’t understand any of it. Not lovey-dovey any more, the parents aren’t. Don’t talk to each other now, or look at each other, and suddenly start arguing. About everything and nothing: Li’s untidiness, her lethargy, which ‘goes with all the rest of it’, her inability to run a household, and then there’s the way she dresses, the money she spends. The same old criticisms, but more needling now, spiteful. The father shouts. The mother cries. And then she shouts too. Sometimes they go and shut themselves in the bedroom or the kitchen to shout louder. The child can’t hear the words then, but she understands the tone of voice.
    Sometimes the grandmother comes over and it’s worse; the three of them shut themselves in the kitchen and thenthey talk so loudly, the grandmother’s voice is so squeaky, the father’s so violent, that the child only clutches at words in passing, strange words: Too young. Your fault. Indulgent. Lies. Shameful. Why? Disgusting . Then she hears her mother crying, uncontrollably, like a child.
    The child can’t believe it. Grown-ups and their mad goings-on. But she continues playing under the table. She’s perfectly all right under the table, with her old doll. She brushes the doll’s hair for ages and ages, waiting for it to be over, this performance in the kitchen, waiting for the door to open and for them to come out, with the funny faces they have then. After these arguments the grandmother usually picks up her coat in a dignified way and leaves.
    And