Chapter 3
I pulled the string that hung out of the letterbox and opened the door, that afternoon of realising.
Daddy lay on the beige couch. He listlessly smoked a cigar, his sleeve was rolled up, his hand buried in his armpit.
I laid my hand on his crown.
'Mama will not come back, will she?'
He looked at me, tried to smile, but above all gazed sadly.
And he nodded.
I felt the moist of approaching crying in my lungs.
He extended his arm to me, shifted aside. I crawled next to him, buried myself in his arms. He smelt of tobacco and cold coffee.
'Doesn't she love me?'
'She loves all of us.'
'Then why did she leave?'
He kissed my hair, his cigar between his fingers.
'Why do you continue to whine?'
'Because I want to know where she is.'
He drew from his cigar, he also sucked in his cheeks.
'You nag so much.'
'I nag so much?'
'Yes.'
I picked the skin next to my nail's cuticle. The tears stung my throat.
'People find that difficult.'
'Is that why she left, because I nagged so much?'
'Some women prefer to live without children. That is one of those modern absurdities. In my youth women didn't choose, they were just there. But nowadays women want to choose for themselves and Lisa chose a life without you and your brother.'
My tear duct overflowed.
'Sorry for saying it so bluntly, I can be clumsy with words.'
His hand pushed against the couch, his body was upright. I crawled onto his lap, so that he could cuddle away my tears.
One can do so when one is eight.
If only one can when one is 21.
From that moment on I imagined my mother as a woman without children. I didn't know what that was like, I only knew my mother, until recently a woman with children.
And so for weeks I observed the women without children, when I sat against the rough bark of the school tree, waiting for dad who was late, or when we were on the bus to sea, or when I looked out from our balcony to the square at which we lived, then for hours I observed the women without children.
They laughed, the women, they wore short summer dresses, their loose hairs shone, they carried thatched shoulder bags from which a rolled-up towel and a bottle of suncream stretched out, they wore large sunglasses which made their smile even more alluring, they put up their hair and when they laughed, they threw their closed eyes towards the sky. Their skin was even, their bossom resilient, their teeth uncracked. Men stared at them, women smiled or frowned. Sometimes they held hands, sometimes they cuddled for a while, sometimes they kissed in the evening sun, sometimes they sighed with it. They talked for hours in the freshness of a summer breeze. Sometimes a gust of wind brushed from their body to mine, and I smelt a bar of soap, herbs, and spring. When they talked, their voice sparkled, like a rippling brook from which you drink, like I would later discover one in Spain. They read for hours on a bench in sunlight, lay sprawled, closed their eyes, and in the sun their faces were even prettier, their wrinkles even more refined, their freckles even more contrasting, their hairs even more lush, exactly like my mother had still been in my first memories. And if they opened their eyes, stared into the distance, then I saw the spark in their eyes that I felt in my body when I thought of mama, and I realised some people warm to different things than I.
After a few afternoons I diverted my attention to the women with children. Their forehead was frowned, their facial skin greasy, their back crooked, their belly vaulted, their neck hung loose, their teeth were ashen and slanting. The hands onto which their children hung were knuckled and full of white stains. They always carried something, a grocery bag, a scooter, a pram full of nappies and toys, but never a book, a beach bag, a bottle of wine. Their eyes had the dullness one can see in the old copper of a lamp, or in the beady eyes of stuffed animal. When they spoke, then commands. Come, let go, don't do that, stop it, we're going, eat, drink, what are you doing, will you stop it. It always sounded shrill, and they were almost always words to children. And if they did speak to an adult, then it was the bus driver to which they handed their multi-ride ticket, the greengrocer who handed them a kilo of french beans, the homeless man who held up his hand for some guilders. They only spoke as part of a transaction, never a thought coming from themselves, never a joke, and never with the smile of the women without children. Sometimes two mothers would talk to each other, and I went to stand close to them, then they smelt of processed meat, buttermilk, or so much laundry powder that you feel it on your tongue, then they talked of children, worried or complaining, but never with the voice of rippling brook.
After I had also extensively studied the mothers, of every woman in the street I could determine whether she had children or not. Three times I walked to them, 'madam, do you have children?'
They would laugh in surprise, no, or snap, yes, and I was always right. I knew then that there are three sexes: male, female, and mother.
A woman who has children turns into a mother, and most women find that inevitable, don't feel the pain under their skin, which is hidden behind the stories we tell of motherhood.
But my mother dug a path back to the time of the women, and she inspired me. We forget how finite life is, that one can't do all one wants to do. Of course a woman her age dies when she's 77, but it doesn't feel like that. Later we can do what we don't dare do now, don't want to do now, so we postpone it, so that only later we have to grow, to hurt, to suffer. But one day, always unexpectedly, you are threatened by the horizontal farewell and you curse yourself retroactively. The internet is full of what dying people regret: thoughtlessly picking a partner, not making up a family fight, burying your feelings, not disclosing a truth.
My mother did not wait until she would regret motherhood and I was endlessly proud of her daring, of her strength, and exactly that strength turned my childhood life into a shipwreck. It was exactly like the Spanish philosopher Ortega wrote. My attempts to stay afloat were my culture: that which wasn't natural to me, but which I taught myself so as not to drown.
I missed mama enormously, but if she strived for the free life even at the cost of her family, it had to be an amazing place, and then and there, squatting against the bark of the school tree, after class, in the shade of its lush crown, amidst mothers and girls, I decided I would never have children, that I would discover how she lived. 'Lisa, show me your new world.' I would say Lisa, not mama, to recognise that she was once again a woman, my ex-mother, that I respected her step, so as to restore our contact. But I didn't know how to find her, I was only eight and not allowed to travel by train on my own, you had dial-in to the internet and you couldn't find people on it, and no one I knew, knew where she'd gone to.
It took forever before I found her, and when I finally saw her again, she had changed beyond recognition.
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