A Story
Sidorela stuck the “knock before you enter” sign on her bedroom door, smiled at her mother, and vanished into the depths behind the doorframe. She took it with her like the cover of an enormous book, where the lives of characters created by a writer’s imagination are hidden.
To Zhaneta, her mother, this closing of the door felt like closing the past in her relationship with her daughter. Knocking on the door felt like opening a new chapter. It showed that to enter her heart or her bedroom, you had to knock, you had to ask for permission. Zhaneta had been unable to sleep for days. It was not that little sign; the mother had been carefully following her life for months. The girl seemed more grown-up now; she had shot up, her chest had sprung and rounded out, above her hips her body had taken on a gentle curve that descended and narrowed near the waist, only to widen gracefully over her thighs and end at her full, straight legs. Her eyes had taken on a full gleam, an undefined gleam, sometimes deep and sometimes shallow. In their depths, her mother understood and read the gentle babble of springs, flowing from her maidenly soul, sometimes sad and sometimes filled with roars of joy. She had started locking herself in her room for long periods, in that world where Zhaneta no longer had the right to enter. Joy and sadness had mingled in her soul when her daughter had asked her... for the special days of the month, for underwear and two or three pairs of bras in a larger size than the ones she had bought her four months ago on her fourteenth birthday. She spoke freely, laughed at everything and nothing. On her reading desk sat a beautiful diary with a blue ribbon, locked with a tiny miniature key. The room was kept extremely clean, everything carefully organized; she changed her clothes often and spent hours in the bathroom. One evening, Zhaneta had even found a razor blade placed somewhere in a corner.
Her worry kept growing, like a riverbed from constant rainfall in the mountains. The book of the girl’s secrets had to be read at all costs; otherwise, being far from her life, she thought her daughter might make a mistake and end up heartbroken. Many times, when her daughter spoke on the phone for a long time in the evenings, she would put out her eavesdropping antennas to catch a word, which could later be connected to her movements, to solve the enigma of the hieroglyphs of her daughter’s intimate life. The mother saw no change in her actions; her daughter kissed her when she left for and returned from school. To bring her even closer, Zhaneta would hug her and look deep into her eyes.
“Mom, why are you staring at me so intently?”
“You’ve grown up,” she whispered. “In your eyes I see joy, I see myself when I was your age. You have become like a rose to me, spreading the scent of your age and the flowers of beauty everywhere; I am afraid the storms might blow and knock down the petals of your smiles and the waterfalls of your joys.”
Her daughter, who did not understand much, would kiss her again and, skipping along, run down the stairs two at a time to go outside where her friends were waiting.
“Careful, careful, don’t rush or you’ll fall, my dear.” In fact, with these words, deep in her soul, she did not mean falling down the stairs; that was why she tried so hard and followed her carefully, to protect her from the storms of life. She thought a mother should be an angel, staying close to her daughter until she could fly on her own wings. Zhani had woven and continued to weave great dreams for her; she only had one daughter, didn’t she have the right?
There were days when the girl stayed silent; she wanted to go out often, she could not concentrate.
She would come in, go out, eat very little, and sleep restlessly. She stood at the window for a long time in the evenings, gazing far out into the depths of the sea, as if waiting for peace to come to her from there. Zhani would go out on the balcony and watch her when she talked with her friends through the windows of their houses, with Vjollca, Vera, Liria. They spoke in low voices, as if afraid someone might hear them. The night covered the trees, the apartment buildings, and finally the whole horizon with its dark veil. Then it cast the veil of worry over the broad sky of the mother’s soul. The girls closed their windows, but the lights in their rooms stayed on. Zhani fought with herself; the light of her love wanted to enter, to illuminate the uncertainty and worry everywhere.
Her hands trembled when she knocked on her door and called out to her:
“Come eat, my sweetheart, it’s getting late!”
“Mom, don’t talk to me like you used to when I was little,” the girl coaxed. “Mom’s sweetheart, mom’s apple of her eye, I’m grown up now. Just calling me by my name is enough.”
A cold storm swept through the tree of Zhani’s body and knocked down all the fruits of her hope, but she did not let it show; she spoke to her sweetly, like she used to when she sang lullabies to put her to sleep. But now those lullabies belonged to the past. Her words ruined the smile of her thoughts, but she squeezed the strength of her feelings so they would not leave the nest of her soul.
“My daughter! No matter how big you get, even as big as the tree in front of the house, to me you still
remain that sapling bending in the wind. In my eyes you are the light,” the words came out on their own.
Sidorela ate hurriedly and left.
Zhani drowned her loneliness with a chamomile tea to help her fall asleep.
Lately, the girls had been gathering in each other’s rooms and talking for a long time. Streams of laughter filled the house. They came and went like bees in a hive, buzzing and leaving, leaving the hive of the house empty. After them, the buzzing belonged to Zhani. She stood silent. The hive of her soul was empty, without the honey of their buzzing.
That evening would remain one of the rarest in her life.
“Mom,” the girl spoke to her without looking her in the eye.
“Yes, my darling.”
“When do the migratory birds return?”
Zhani stood as if frozen. In her eyes, the striking force of the storm was clear:
“A few more days and they’ll come. Once the clouds, the wind, and the lightning go away. Once the sun comes out and the leaves fully bloom.”
The girl smiled and walked away.
“Maybe she’s talking to some sailor on the phone,” she thought. “Ah, their age! They leaf out and rustle, while this premature leafing out terrifies me.
I am afraid that premature springs deceive their blooming.” She did not sleep a wink that night. She wanted to know more, but who could she beg, who could she ask? Besides, she felt ashamed. Was she perhaps worrying for nothing? She lay in bed, but it felt like the crater of a volcano burning her alive. It was a feeling she had never experienced in her life.
The next day she met one of the girls’ mothers. She and Eleni had gone to high school together, and then Eleni had graduated in Psychology. Now she was a teacher at the elementary school.
“How are you, Eleni?” They hugged.
“Good, and you?”
They talked for a long time, but Zhaneta was not catching any fish from the sea of her thoughts. Even though, during the conversation, she cast the hook of her questions a few times.
“How is your daughter?”
“They’ve grown up,” Eleni told her. “Lately I see my daughter lacks concentration. Sometimes happy and sometimes upset. Her age is doing its thing. Margarita told me the same; her daughter is in the same class as our kids. They have their own world; it’s best we leave them in that world, which we didn’t manage to enjoy properly, depending on the conditions and circumstances.”
“Come over for a coffee, we’ve completely lost touch. I’ll expect you tomorrow afternoon.” After hugging, they parted. Zhani ran up the stairs in one breath; her daughter should have been back from school.
In the evening, a strong wind began to blow. The clouds raced like black caravans loaded with bad news. The rain tapped on the keyboards of the windowpanes with a
sad rhythm. The symphony of the wind came deafening and heavy. In the distance, the axes of lightning tore through the darkness with a deep howl and hid far away.
Zhaneta opened the curtain and cast her gaze outside. Pitch black. This year’s spring was running late. In the surrounding apartment buildings, the lights were off. Only at Eli’s, Lili’s, and Meri’s were they on. The girls were Sidorela’s classmates. She looked at her daughter’s window; her light was on. It had been raining for days. A wind like the neighing of horses roamed the city streets. Zhaneta closed the door of her thoughts and went inside. Before she had properly closed the thick curtains, a bolt of lightning wove like a fiery hieroglyph across the wet sky, and instantly, a powerful crack was heard right nearby. After it, the power went out.
“Mom!”
“Sidorela, I’m here, don’t be afraid!”
The girl ran out of her room. Another, weaker bolt of lightning lit up the place for a moment. The girl saw her mother and threw herself onto her chest.
Zhaneta held her tight against her chest. In those moments she wanted it to lightning, to thunder, so the girl would stay glued to her heart.
“Mom, I’m scared.”
“Don’t be scared, I’m here.”
“I’m not scared for myself,” the girl sobbed.
Zhaneta thought she was scared for her, so she held her even tighter. She needed this embrace. This was how she wanted to keep her daughter, close, far from the blinding lightning, far from any danger, any darkness.
“Tonight we’ll sleep together, like we used to when you were little.”
The girl did not speak. They lay down in bed.
“Put your head here,” Zhani whispered, and placed it on her chest. She stroked her hair and her neck for a long time. In the pitch dark she listened to her heartbeat, she saw the color of her eyes, her prominent lips and their thin skin, shining with the beauty of her age. She listened to the breathing coming from the depths of her chest.
She could not fall asleep that night; she dreamed. She dreamed of a blue path, where seagulls flew over a sea of joy.
When she woke up, daylight had broken. The sky had cleared. Its blueness was deep. On the horizon, the sun brought a brushstroke of reddish rays. It was the last Sunday of April.
“Sidorela, Sidorela!”
Zhaneta was startled; her daughter was sleeping. The voices were coming from outside. She opened the balcony window. Her daughter’s peers were shouting and cheering.
“They’re here, they’re here!”
Zhaneta did not understand. She ran to her bedroom. Sidorela was not there.
“Sidorela, Sidorela!”
“I’m here, Mom.”
The girl was cheering at her bedroom window. Zhaneta opened the door, and the girl threw herself into her arms.
“They’re here, Mom, they’re here!”
“Who’s here?”
“The migratory birds, there they are!”
Her mother went to the window. On the tall electric pole, two large white storks stood in their nest of twigs. They looked like two snow-covered strategists after the previous night’s storm. For Zhaneta, the rainfall of feelings burst forth in the clear sky of her soul. Spring had just knocked on the small coastal town.
