Mrs. Squarzetti tells us the story of a box that has all the evils of the world inside. If you open it, they all get out.
When she passes between the rows of desks, she fluffs my hair.
She’s never done that before.
I’m bored. It’s a sneaky kind of boredom, with an aftertaste of orange jam, the kind that seems sweet but then has bitter peels inside.
The box with Mama’s documents, the one where she kept her secret code for the bank machine, is still on the sofa.
Sometimes Mama asks:
“Will you bring me the box with the papers?”
It’s a shoe box with one side slightly crushed in, held shut with an old rubber band.
I want to open it and I don’t want to open it, like when you’re at the movies and you put your hands over your eyes at a scary part, but then you spread your fingers to peek anyway. I found the secret code for the cash machine, but I didn’t search for anything else.
Now I wonder if the box might hold some other secret. I find old bills, letters from the bank, a paper clip that gets under my nail and stabs me, pages full of figures in columns, but nothing to figure out, not even a reason why. Maybe that’s hidden somewhere else.
Sucking my finger, I wonder where.
There’s a little picture of Mama copied four times in a square, one of those taken in a booth at the train station and then stuck onto documents. The picture didn’t come out so well because it’s in black and white and because Mama’s missing a piece of her head; it’s hard to adjust the stool to the right height.
Davide and I also had our picture taken together last year and our heads ended up half outside the frame, in our case from the nose down.
I take it anyway and before falling asleep I put it under my pillow, next to a Madonna album cover. I always put something under my pillow. Usually I choose the things I’d like to dream about.
This time I put Mama times four.