Mama Leone (6 page)

That's what I was thinking as I started following my shadow. It was moving along the asphalt a little behind me. I could see it out of the corner of my eye but didn't want to turn my head toward it. I wanted to watch it sort of in passing, to not change anything, just to keep seeing it. When I moved along the white stone wall a little, half the shadow disappeared from the asphalt and climbed up the side of the house. Up to my stomach I floated along the asphalt, my chest, neck, and head making their way along the house. My shadow split in two, but I stayed as one. You see, a shadow isn't actually an image of a person that always follows him, tracing his every move and being just like him. A shadow splits in half. But I wouldn't have felt or noticed a thing if I hadn't been looking. It keeps following me; it's just that its life isn't mine anymore.

I turned around and marched back the other way. The shadow moved a little out in front of me. Heading home, I stayed close to the wall, my shadow still split in half, Grandma was probably done on the phone.
Mom's woken up from the anesthetic
, she said.
The bump's gone? . . . Yes, it's gone, but what do you know about that? Were you eavesdropping again? . . . No, I just overheard . . . You're not allowed to listen to your elders' conversations . . . Why? Because they're sneaky? . . . No, because you don't understand them . . . When will I understand them? . . . One day, when you grow up . . . Are they really that scary? . . . Who's that scary? . . . Are all grown-up conversations as scary as yours? . . . No, our conversations aren't
scary, you don't understand them . . . A conversation about a bump isn't scary?. . . No, it's just a conversation about an illness . . . Why am I allowed to listen to conversations about my bronchitis but not about a bump? . . . Oh boy, no more conversations about bronchitis for you, you little devil, look at the mess you're in. Go wash your face and hands, and don't ever let me see you in such a state again
. Grandma grabbed the frames of her glasses, just like she always did when she wanted to show me she was angry.

I lay tucked in up to my neck, staring at the ceiling, listening to her voice. She was reading me
White Fang
. Ten pages every night. We were already halfway through. White Fang is a wolf who thinks and feels, and scary things happen to him just because he thinks and feels. It's not a fairy tale and that's why I'm scared there won't be a happy ending, but today I don't listen to Grandma's voice. I don't remember sentences and I don't feel like I'm White Fang, because to listen to the story of White Fang I need to feel like White Fang, because when you don't do that the story doesn't work. In fairy tales you don't feel like a prince, princess, old king, brave knight, or Queen Forgetful, just like in fables you don't feel like a fox or a raven, but in true stories you need to feel like White Fang to understand what happens to him. Fairy tales and fables are made up, but true stories actually happen. If they haven't happened, then they happen when we listen to them, or when we learn to read one day and we read them. They happen to us when we're reading the story, and this means we have to have lots of courage because stories don't always have happy endings, and because you have to kill
your fear so you can live in the story. Life in a story is more beautiful than life in real life because in a story only important things happen and because in stories there aren't any of those days when nothing happens and the world is as empty as the white dates in the wall calendar.

Will Mom be back from Ljubljana before we finish
White Fang
?
I interrupted Grandma as she was reading.
I don't think so, we've got eighty pages left, and that's eight days. Mom will be back in about fifteen days . . . Are you allowed to know how a book ends before you've read it? . . . It's allowed, but then the book isn't very interesting . . . Have you read
White Fang
before? . . . Yes, at least five times . . . And you always forget the end? . . . Well, I don't actually forget it, but it's as if I don't know how it's going to end and the ending might change . . . I don't want anything bad to happen to White Fang before Mom comes back from Ljubljana . . . Why do you think something bad's going to happen to him? . . . Because good things only have to happen in fairy tales. Otherwise they don't . . . Who told you that? . . . No one told me. I just know . . . Well, I didn't know that . . . You're just pretending you didn't know . . . No, I really didn't know that. I've never thought about it . . . Well, have you ever thought about why shadows split in half so half of you is on the asphalt and half of you on the wall?
Grandma looked at me, closed the book, and said she was sleepy. That was weird. She had never been sleepy before I fell asleep. I didn't know about after because I'd already be asleep by the time she went to bed. That night it was different. Grandma was scared Mom was going to die, I knew it. I knew exactly what she was thinking. If Mom dies, we'll be left alone, her, Grandpa, and me, and they're old,
and old people are scared of being alone with children because they think one day they'll close their eyes for an afternoon nap and never open them again, and then the children will be left alone, helplessly trying to phone someone, hollering to the neighbors, but always end up waiting there all alone next to their grandpas and grandmas. Children shouldn't be alone because loneliness is something grown-up; we grow up so that one day we can be completely alone and no one has to worry about it. That's what Grandma was thinking when she pretended to fall asleep before me.

In the end she really did fall asleep. In her sleep she wheezed like a big mouse. She breathed in through her nose, and then puffed out through her mouth. You could really hear a puff. Only she slept like this. I know because I'd already slept in the same room as all of them, lying awake as they slept. Mom was a quiet sleeper, but once she said a word in her sleep. I asked her
what did you say last night?
and she looked at me like she'd brought an F home from some school of hers. But even she didn't remember her dreams because the little creature of the darkness came to visit her too. Dad slept smacking his lips and grinding his teeth. His sleeping was funny. It was like he was trying to make someone laugh with his sleeping, or like someone wouldn't let him go to sleep unless he first made them laugh. Uncle snored horribly, and for a whole night I was seething.

But none of them slept puffing, not even Grandpa and he'd lived with Grandma for more than fifty years and he even said that in fifty
years two people become very alike. But he coughed in his sleep because of his asthma.

I heard a last puff. A lot of time went by and I was waiting for a new puff, but it never came. I wasn't really scared, but I was starting to get a little bit worried. I mean, Grandma was still breathing and she was still alive, but I didn't think this was enough. I was worried something wasn't right. I sat on my bed and wanted to wake her up, but for some reason didn't dare. You need to be tough because only when you're tough does everything work out. You're not allowed to panic –
oh boy, she's not breathing, or maybe you just can't see it 'cause it's dark
– I don't know what's going on, but somehow she's not moving anymore.
That's it, here we go, I'm going to scream
, but I'm not allowed to scream. If I scream, Mom won't come back from Ljubljana, and I'll be left on my own before I grow up, but that's not allowed because children aren't allowed to be left alone, just like they're not allowed to kill ants, and they're not allowed to cross the street without looking left and right. They're not allowed to scream, that's panicking, and I don't get panicky,
the kid never panics
, my mom tells her work colleagues, and when she says it, she's all aglow, my mom who's in Ljubljana at the moment.
The kid never panics
is the nicest thing she ever says about me and if I scream now she'll never say it again, and I'll just be a regular kid, a kid you can't say anything about, and I'll spoil that story from Dubrovnik from when I was two and a half when Nano lost me at the Pile Gate and I calmly made my way to Auntie Lola's place, the length of the
Corso and around behind St. Blaise's. I'd knocked on the door and Grandpa had opened it and asked
where's Nano?
And I said
Nano got lost
and quickly got it in that it wasn't my fault he got lost. They were all proud of me then, and Mom said
the kid never panics
for the first time, and when we got back from Sarajevo she told Dad how Nano got lost, and then Dad said
my big boy
and that's how the legend began, the one they still tell to this very night when I'd rather howl, but I'm not allowed, or this whole world made up of Mom in Ljubljana and Grandma who's not breathing in the dark will be destroyed, just like I destroy Queen Forgetful's castle when I'm bored.

That time in Dubrovnik I did something bad. I didn't burst out crying in the middle of the Pile Gate like other children, and I didn't because I was scared of crying in front of so many strangers and I was ashamed about being left alone. Others would have cried and they wouldn't have been scared or ashamed. Being scared and ashamed is no good and it's better to burst out crying. It's definitely braver. I couldn't because I'm a coward and that's why I went to Auntie Lola's and gave it my all to remember the way, even though I'd always walked it with someone else. But I remembered. It was the longest journey I ever made in my life. When I'm a thousand years old like an old king, even then I'll never go on such a long journey because when you're two and a half there isn't a longer journey than the one from the Pile Gate to St. Blaise's.

You know, I'd never even thought about it before. I liked them thinking I was a kid who never panics, but the truth is I really am a scaredy
pants and I get ashamed, and when this happens I make journeys that kids who cry in front of a crowd of strangers would never make. But my mom doesn't cry either and she isn't that big. She's smaller than Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad, and she gets ashamed and is always scared of this or that. She takes her fears out on all of us, on me most of all, and we all love her when she's ashamed. Shame is something worse than fear, but it's nice to watch. Mom would have found her way home like me if Nano had lost her at the Pile Gate, she would have found her way back no matter how far it was, I know that for sure because you can spot fear and shame really easily, much more easily than courage, and that's why I know Mom better than anyone else and that's why I always know what she's capable of. So anyway, if she knows how to get back from the Pile Gate on her own, she'll find her way back from Ljubljana. Ljubljana is much closer because Mom is much older than me and she'll make it back easily. She's scared and ashamed and that's why she can't stay in Ljubljana, she can't die, the bump can't hurt her, the rules for big people don't apply to her. Fairy tales exist for the scared and ashamed because in them people cross seven mountains and seven seas just so they won't be scared and ashamed.

I breathed a sigh of relief. My face is wet, my back and stomach too. If I've cried, I didn't cry down my back, everyone has to believe I'm telling the truth there. Grandma has to believe me too. Is she breathing? I can't see anything, but if she's breathing I'll tell her in the morning that everything is fine with Mom. Actually, I won't tell her anything because
I don't think she'll understand, just like she didn't understand the thing about split shadows. But I'll show her that tomorrow, and she'll just have to wait for Mom, she'll have to worry for the whole fifteen days until Mom comes back from Ljubljana, and then I'll tell her I knew the whole time. I'll tell them all, Dad and Uncle and all those worriers on the phone who call when I'm not around, and I'll tell Grandma, and Mom, I'll tell them that only I knew, only I knew she had to come back. Tomorrow we'll keep reading
White Fang
. I'm brave enough for any sad ending.

If only Grandma would let out a little puff, then I'd fall asleep, my first time after her.

We lived from one special occasion to the next in a happy and ordered world, sometimes sick with feverish kids' sicknesses and sometimes with serious grown-up ones, in a world in which everything had its place and moment in time.
Don't run before you can walk
, Grandma used to say. We didn't know what she meant, or maybe some did, but they weren't saying, so I kept running because time passed by so slowly. I couldn't wait for it, I had to hurry, get out ahead, skip the good-for-nothing days because they weren't special occasions.

You couldn't buy ice cream in the winter back then. It disappeared from the confectionaries in the first thick November fog and only showed up again in April. Why don't people eat ice cream in winter too? Because ice cream gives you a sore throat. They were looking out
for us, making sure we didn't get sick for no reason, and that every day had its place in the calendar and time in the seasons, that we would never think that we were alone and abandoned, forsaken like the faraway countries we heard about on the radio. Young slant-eyed soldiers were dying in those countries, a little machine gun in one hand and a tiny baby in the other. That's how they died, leaving behind little slant-eyed wives to hold their heads in their hands and grieve in their funny incomprehensible language.

I laugh whenever I see little slant-eyed mothers next to their little dead husbands on the TV. Saigon and Hanoi are the names of the first comedies in my life. I spell them out loud, letter by letter, laughing my head off. Those people don't look like us, and I don't believe they're in pain or that they're really sad. Words of sadness have to sound sad, and tears have to be like raindrops, small and brilliant. Their words aren't sad, and the tears on their faces are too big and look funny, like the fake tears of the clowns I saw at the circus. I'm just waiting for Mom and Grandma to leave the room so I can watch Saigon and Hanoi and have a laugh. When they're there I'm not allowed to laugh because Mom will think I'm crazy, and Grandma that I'm malicious. Craziness and malice are strictly forbidden in our house. Great unhappiness is born from malice; malicious children put their parents in old folks' homes, never thinking that they themselves will one day get old and that their children might bundle them off to old folks' homes too; Grandma and Mom were scared of malice and craziness because they were born old
and with fears I don't understand, but I knew one day I'd have my turn; it'll happen the day they say I'm a grown-up, the day I run when I first meet someone who's crazy, because craziness is infectious, just like all the sicknesses and misfortune in this city.
When you grow up and have your own house and your own children, then you can do whatever you like. But in my house you won't
. Grandma loved the little slant-eyed mothers and pretended she understood them.