“Forgive me, forgive me, please. I was off for a few days . . .” She waltzes in and launches into a cascade of words from the threshold in place of her official greeting, instead of her usual glance at my medical chart with my basal temperature, and, spinning on her heel, she addresses me as if I’ve been waiting for her for an hour in the center of town by the clock on the main square in a snowstorm, as if we’re aware, both she and I, that I’m hurrying and haven’t much time. She experiences me as if so much depends on my forgiveness. Could I ever not forgive her? It’s as if I’m not lying here like a bump on a log, used to being forgotten by everyone. “Forgive me” no longer has such a familiar ring. It’s as if we’re friends, when I still had friends, as if she needs me at least as much as I need her. This is how she talks to me. And then: she comes straight over and instead of stopping at least three feet away like all the normal visitors do, she rests her hand on my forehead. I blink once, yes, then I look at her, I’d blink more but then that would be a no, and I don’t want no, it’s just that I want to express something to her. To give her my blink, my utmost. I don’t know how she sees me, when I’ve found it difficult to see myself recently, but whatever it is that she sees, she addresses me as if I’m responding to her with exactly what she needs. “Forgive me, I was moving out of the house, something unplanned came up so I took part of the week off to sort things out.” Then she stops and I blink again. I know, I knew that everything was headed in that direction before you did, and it’s good, it will turn out fine, nothing terrible will happen, believe me, if anything, use what you have: get up, turn and go, that’s rejoicing. They will all be fine, they’re equipped for it, and your sons who walk through life permanently shielded inside the aura of your concern, nobody can touch them, and he will find his feet without a hitch because this world is tailored to his measure, that is why the only thing that matters is that you’re good. Good to yourself. Nobody else will be. I tell her all this with my vertical gaze, and suddenly she shudders, she has remembered our beginnings. My room—her refuge, my consciousness, and her secrets. Then she momentarily slips into confusion, I blink again. “They all hate me,” she says softly. I know, I answer, but it’s not that they hate you, it’s childish frustration because of they can’t reckon with the idea that you’re slipping away, this will be an unforeseen obstacle they will overcome, a lesson that will help them understand something about taking people for granted, a growth opportunity for them. How many insights I have. How far I’ve had to come to find them. How late I’ve come to know my own strength. How I no longer feel afraid. How I’d love it if I’d . . . But along with all this, I can clearly see how the impossibility of emancipation was written into my genetic code, as it probably was in hers.
My DNA is knitted into the little mudbrick house where my great grandmother lived, a twenty-two-year-old widow with four children who earned her living by serving as a maid in other peoples’ homes. The children went around bare-bottomed, just a smock in winter, and sent to school in wooden clogs that Great Grandmother stuffed with paper. That is how the older daughter lost her leg to amputation, rotten from frostbite, and Granny made it through four grades of primary school just so she wouldn’t end up the same. Who would want a girl like that? And then Granny also went into service, as a ten-year-old she looked after children in the finer houses, she’d fix them breakfast every morning: tomato sauce, cream of wheat, and fresh bread. And when something burnt to the bottom of the pan, she’d be rapped on the knuckles with a poker. The war went on and on, they survived on eggs and hootch, forever delousing, waiting to see which army would pillage what was left of the village this time. Then Granddad appeared, he showed up on horseback, he had curly hair, and that was why Granny didn’t ask any questions, she climbed up on the old nag, she didn’t know where it was going, anything was better than the musty cellar, the tiny children and the mattress covered in coarse cloth and stuffed with putrid straw. At the age of nineteen she buried her first son. As the women in the village said, he didn’t quite take hold the right way. Yes, she gave birth to him, but soon after he was lost. Nobody mourned him, she was still young, maybe a little unruly, Granddad watched her out of the corner of his eye, should he have swung her sister up on the mare instead? Well, he didn’t break her after all, my mama came along, she wasn’t particularly happy, but at least she was healthy, at least she wasn’t tainted goods, God willing there’d be a son by the next year. God willing. Husband willing. She just received and accepted what they willed for her or denied her. Mama had grown up in the kitchen among the women, aunts, old women, she was bored and ever since her childhood she had been given menial tasks, sometimes she’d run off when her father came back from work drunk so she wouldn’t have to cover her ears with her hands. The noise level kept rising, Mama was left an only child. They moved to the city, she ventured out on her own to find a school to enroll in, no you don’t, what good will all the book-learning do, hitch yourself up to someone, get yourself in the family way, don’t you go out wiggling your bum around town, but she wasn’t one to give up easily, she loved reading, she liked to sew herself a skirt, she liked going to dances, far away, as far from the crocks of sauerkraut as she could get, from the greasy towel on Granddad’s pillow that Granny changed every two days because his head was so oily, from his stern look that made her wet her pants when she was little. Once he thrashed her so hard she didn’t go to school for a week, she’d been hopping around the yard while bringing a bottle of rakija up from the cellar and it dropped from her hands and smashed. She barely managed to get away. My father was not, perhaps, the best choice, but he was the first to offer her a way out without cursing or swinging a cane. The only thing was how quiet he was a lot of the time and that he didn’t ask for much. So she, hemmed in as she had always been by abuse, didn’t know what to do with him except to belittle him. But he didn’t give her enough reasons for that. How could she deal with good after a whole life of bad, except to turn him into what she knew best. Luckily, Granddad’s ornery character lived on in my mother’s mind so in my brother she created a little tyrant who’d give substance to her suffering. All the cringes that had stayed with her from Granddad’s creaking incursions into the house came back to her through her son. All the cringes from the little mudbrick house, the constant fear and shame also fashioned the links of my chain. How to shrug them off? How to be free of myself? And how to bear all this when, having come to know you, I was able to see it all? Your kiss was a little like breaking a spell, but it also had the opposite effect. First it freed me, then it trapped me by showing me the unimaginable dimensions of a world I had never known, which hardly anybody knows. A kiss so enchanting that with it came both exhilaration and a curse. We just wanted to be free. I dragged you down, I know. I was scared my mother or brother would see me on television as I marched by your side in the Pride parade. You talked for days beforehand about what an exhilarating feeling it was to march in the parade, my love, it let you forget those who wanted to pelt you with stones from the sidelines, this is the day when you walk with head raised and are borne along by a marvelous river of people, one day each year when you feel normal, love is love, people are people, and you are thrilled at how everybody looks at you so nicely, the way we all need to be seen, it’s colorful and alive, you can hold hands with anyone you like, it’s liberating, just imagine. I moped all morning, I was as gloomy as a January afternoon though it was June outside, smelling sweetly. A thousand times, what’s wrong, love, a thousand times, nothing. We got into the car, we listened to the radio announcing the lead-up to the parade and the route it would take through the city. This year there would be more police than in past years, this year my brother would be standing behind the police cordon brandishing his rosary. Maybe he’d be shouting. We drove in silence, my strength was draining away, and then suddenly I realized we were on the entrance ramp to the highway. I looked over at you, puzzled, you said nothing but gripped the steering wheel, we drove right out of town, I didn’t dare ask where we were going, but I saw that we were on our way to the Mrežnica River, to our refuge, nature, cascades, and the wild river. All in silence. There was hardly a soul there, this early in the summer. The rivers are still icy cold. You took a blanket out of the trunk, there was no anger in your eyes, I walked behind you. We came into a place that was like paradise, sprouting river reeds bent over the path we took, the reflection of the sun on the river painted the air with shine, water murmured in the background like life’s soundtrack. You found a spot on the shore, soft with ferns and hidden by bushes at the water’s very edge. We sat down, I looked over at you, I was ashamed, leave me, go back to town, to the other river you’d hoped to join, leave me. You hugged me, too bad we don’t have a frisbee, you said.
“Is this too cold?” I blink twice while she wipes me down with a cold towel. I enjoy feeling something, I enjoy the coldness on my forehead, though the day is not hot, but I don’t know why she is doing this, I don’t which part hurts me more. The part of me that wants to hope there is something more, or the part of me, starting the car three months ago, that decided I’d had it with pain. And she still surprises me, this doctor, this source of impartial goodness I never entirely believe. What will I do with this now, she keeps drawing me out from my thoughts. “Hey, I have an inkling of a plan in the works, would you like me to lay it out for you?” She asks warmly, with enthusiasm. I blink, yes, let’s have a look. Boy, do I miss sarcasm, I’d give my right leg for a single eye roll or to cock a brow at just the right moment, the look that hits the spot, but still clearly includes a ray of belief and benevolence. Fine, I don’t need my right leg or my left, give me the plan. “So, we can run this as an experimental treatment protocol because of your age and the rare diagnosis. Otherwise, we’d never get approval for the spa in your condition, but since I will take responsibility for keeping track and putting together a study, in quotes, I’ll get the green light, I’ve checked. And some funding to boot, and a few more doctors and experts who’ll join us in making progress. So I can get you out of here for a spell. I’ll explain everything later, if you agree. You’d stay here a little longer, enter into a much more intense phase of therapy, and if there are at least a few results, minimal improvements in communication, muscle tone and your general condition we can take it further. You’ll go to the spa for a stay, that could really begin to help you, but till then there’s a lot to do. And of course, I’ll take care to respect your wishes. Tomorrow the speech therapist will come, and after that she’ll be here every day. Come on, now, blink for me just once.” She laughs, she’s onto me. I wait, I wait for the tension to rise, I’m teasing her a little, and then I blink, nice and big, like I’ve never done before.