Down on the floor
"I'll protect you from the fears of the hypochondria, from the disturbances you’ll meet in your life from today, from the injustices and the deceits of your time, from failures."
("La cura", Franco Battiato)
She’s here. I recognized the scent. A distinctive smell, halfway between baby powder and soap. Intoxicating. Chanel No. 5. She used floods of it. She says, "it's my way of being retro". I liked it. She took me in her arms and I smelled it. It seemed to me that mom had just came out of a bath of flowers. When she took me to school she let it into the air. I was proud of her. She was beautiful, with her black hair – cropped short, slipping over her ears – and her easy look. Impressive. I think she intimidated teachers. She always looked down upon them. It was her and no one else. My mother. She came here in my room in the hospital and for the first time, in all these days, I felt my blood stop in the veins. It was funny, as if everything had stopped spinning. Even my head reassembled on my neck, and every corner of my body celebrated the event by remaining vigilant, waiting.
"Silvia", she whispered.
And she stood upright, standing, in front of me. Her breathing a bit laboured. My mother is tall. I feel her presence like that of a giant looming over my bed. Motionless. Her perfume enters my nose and caresses my skin. She does nothing. Says nothing. She looks at me, I know, searches inside of me. I am stiller than usual. I have nothing to move and I can’t wag a tail. My mother is here with me, in a hospital room, and looks at me, after two years of absence. Two years. How has she become? What colour might her hair be? Is she always lean and elegant like I remember her? Who gives a damn, though? I'm excited. And what happens now? She moves a hand, pats my face lightly, as if to make sure I can feel her, as if to tell me she is here, she is back. She’s with me. Our skins melt for a moment, a fleeting moment. I would like to lock her on me. Crush her, eat her. Devour her. Make her mine. Possess her. Definitely kill her. Possess and hurt her at the same time. My mother.
"I only found out yesterday. I don’t read Italian newspapers anymore. Nobody called me, informed me, or told me what had happened. Forgive me honey. I would have come sooner, if only I had known."
There, she took my hand in hers and sat on the edge of the bed. Next to me, like she did when I was a child and she told me a good night story. I feel my body vibrate, crazed. Hers too trembles slightly. Is it possible? Is it possible that she’s here and perceives me like I perceive her?
"You've changed. Even the colour of your hair. You've become very thin, look at that little hands, my child. Little, little Silvia, love. I'd love to see you standing. You must be almost a woman now. I hope you can hear me. What am I saying? You hear me, I'm sure. I am here, honey, and now I will not let you alone again. Never more. You hear me, don’t you Silvia?"
I can lie to everyone but her. We don’t need words. I am her and she is me. Skin of my skin, blood of my blood. I’d like to cry. Hug her. Crush her. Love her.
"I had to talk to you for so long, but I always postponed. For you rather than for me. There are things that a daughter should not know. Forgive me, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I talk too much. Today I feel so desperately guilty. I keep thinking that if we had been together, if I'd brought you away with me, all this would not have happened. But life is made of junctions and intersections. We are the result of our choices. We chose a road and move on. You never know if it is the right one."
She stops, leaves my hand, stands up. Where is she going now? I can’t see her, I can’t see her, I can’t see her. I'd give anything to see her.
She must have approached the window. I hear her elegant steps. She has discreet heels, I perceive by the ticking of the shoes. Dad always begged her not to choose heels too high, otherwise, he said, he would disappear. She teased him and called him "my prince consort", which was nasty by the way, because mom always earned twice as much as him.
"You were born lucky, not me, I made myself from scratch", he shouted when he was infuriated by yet another professional failure.
Then she made herself small and didn’t answer. Just a minute, just long enough to muster forces and thoughts.
"It's not a matter of luck or birth. There are no castes. I'm good, I go on because I work hard, I think, I react, I never give up, I build, I create. I am the best and I never let anyone put me with my back at the wall. I don’t whine like you, who can only blame others for your failure and your incompetence. Things are done, and that’s it. You always think and never act."
Of the two of them Mom has always been the resolute one, the one making radical choices. White or black, she never knew gray. Even now, she doesn’t stop in front of me, dying. She goes for the solo and looks for forgiveness. She presses, between a whisper and another. I’d just want a kiss, a real kiss.
"I live in London, you know. I never invited you nor come to visit in these two years because... because... it's hard to say, Silvia."
Hard Mom? Think how hard it was for me. Seeing you disappear one morning, without even a word. Only two lines to say goodbye in the letter you left to Dad. I've always wondered whether you had left because of me. Whether I had done something devastating, whether I had been an enemy to you, or too friendly, whether with my requests I had become an unmanageable burden for you and your damn commitments. I've always felt guilty for your leaving Mom. And that silence, all that silence. Where were you when I watched the mothers of my classmates and those of the neighbourhood with children in their arms, and those at the park playing and smiling? Where were you when I needed a word to go on? When I wanted to learn to apply makeup or lose weight? When my breast was bursting, coming out from every side, and I didn’t know how to hide it? When I needed a friend to talk to? When I failed at school? Where were you? There, I know, you were never there. Do you remember that song, mom? Battiato's song, "... I'll protect you from the fears of the hypochondria, from the disturbances you’ll meet in your life from today, from the injustices and the deceits of your time, from the failures that you’ll meet due to your nature. I’ll relieve you from your pain and mood swings ..." It's called "La cura", Mom, "The Cure". This is how a parent should behave. Just like that.
Help, my head is starting to falter again. Something devours me from the inside and I can’t stop it.
"I have another partner and a ten-months-old child, I'm sure you know. It’s not that I chose them and forgot you. I wish you would understand, have it very clear. It is life, my life. I had to do so, abandon you to detach myself, disconnect the umbilical cord. Forget your father, the woman I was with him. A woman I don’t like, who doesn’t belong to me, a woman who is not me. I had to leave you too, you know, I deleted you only because you reminded me of him and my mistakes. All the mistakes I keep making. It's hard to go on, make the right choice, Silvia."
She’s crying, I hear her sobbing, and I don’t feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for myself, because I was alone, I was deleted, I am the one who was sacrificed by her so-hard choices. Dad and I.
"I'm afraid Silvia. Afraid that now you might die without knowing how much I love you, how much I wanted you, how much I thought about you. Every now and then – you know? – I looked at the phone and wanted to call you, but I kept saying, "If get back in her life for a few minutes and then say goodbye and disappear again won’t this make things worse? Won’t I hurt her even more? Won’t she find it absurd, a mother that calls her from London and doesn’t visit her?"
No, no, what are you saying? I'd have given my life to hear that phone call, to know that every now and then you thought about me. You thought about me. I looked at the phone, the first day, the first few weeks after you left, and I was sure that it would ring, that you would invite me in your new home, show me where you lived, your new friends, your new job. I was sure that you would call, that you would send me a plane ticket or at least a note to say a few words, from mother to daughter, from woman to woman. Then at some point I stopped waiting, but I didn’t stop feeling guilty, didn’t stop loving y
ou, hating you, wanting to see you dead before me.
"I thought, now she goes to school. I wonder how big she has become. If she has a boyfriend, if someone gives her the right advice to grow. I thought that one day I would take the plane and come to get you at the exit of the school. And maybe you would avoid me and hold a grudge for a while, but then you would throw your arms around my neck, like you did when you were a little girl, and we would make peace. I have always been about to do it. And don’t blame him, my partner. It was my only choice. Andrew, the man with whom I live, never said a word. He is jealous of my past, that’s true. He wanted me to break all contacts, to be only his, but he would never forbid me to see you, to bring you with me if I had deemed it necessary... I confided in your love and the blood we share... I hoped you would understand. But I was wrong. You are here and you cannot hug me, forgive me. Tell me that you still love me, that I’m still your mom."
So in the end it’s for this. You sacrificed me for another man. You didn’t give a damn about my pain. You're just selfish, a dirty, vile, selfish woman. I thought, I assumed, that dad – for some absurd reason, a secret maybe – had forbidden you to see me and call me. I hoped it was his fault. I made up in my mind a nineteenth century story with you, the cheater driven away with the brand of sin, forced to wander the world, without permission to call me and meet me even for a few minutes. Sometimes I looked around when I left the school and I thought, "Mom must be hidden behind a lamppost or a tree to watch me, to see how I am growing up, whether I am as beautiful as her, whether I still dress well like when she chose for me the more expensive clothes". But no, you were in London, having Andrew fucking make you pregnant, and becoming a woman with no past and no daughter. With no ties. Another woman. You are pathetic! That sucks, God how it sucks.
"I don’t know why you became like this. I don’t know why you started shooting. You were the most altruist girl in the world. You were cheerful, lively, affectionate. Abundant, exuberant, optimistic and always happy. God, don’t tell me it was my fault. I had to leave, do you understand that? With your father it was a living hell, we did nothing but fight, we didn’t understand each other, we had no esteem for each other, we had no longer been in love for so long. When I met Andrew it seemed to me the only real chance of escaping. I could start living again. I felt like a woman again. I found love, comfort and hope. A new world, the chance to exist. I know, I could have taken you with me. But you had to start high school, you had your friends, your world. Could I, should I take you with me in London? It wouldn’t have been easy. You'd have needed a year just to learn the language. Maybe you would have hated me, you would have hated Andrew, we would have ruined our lives again. You could become a loose cannon in my new home. And then I was immediately pregnant. I had to think about the baby..."
Damn, you could at least have mentioned this to me Mom, you could at least have asked me to choose between you and Dad, between Rome and London, between a house where pain and apathy lived, and one in which there was a strong love and a new life was coming. You could have given me this chance, damned woman, let me know that, even just for a moment, you really thought about me, as a result of your actions. I don’t know if I would have said no. I just know that I would have had a hope.
"Try to live, Silvia. Get well, come back to me now that we found each other again. I swear I will never leave you again, I will pay the best lawyer around, I'll pull you out of this mess, I’ll help you. You are still underage, you can get by more easily. Some years in prison, they will send you to reformatory, then some recovery course, a family home. Maybe we can prove that you were of unsound mind that day. Maybe I can make you escape somehow. I have to think. You know I never give up, I'll find a way to bring you away with me. In Italy if you pay you get everything. Justice is a thing for the poor. There are many roads to follow, that your father doesn’t even remotely imagine. We will use political friendships. I’ll pull you out. I’ll do everything I can for you, love. Try to live, try to come out of it. My child."
She cries. She has thrown herself on me, her arms around my body. She is kneeling on the floor beside the bed. She cries wildly, like a flooding river, a tsunami with wobbling motions, shaking my body, shaking it as if it were homemade pasta. As if I were hers. A property she leaves and takes when she wants.
"Silvia, Silvia. A doctor, quick, a doctor. She is dying, help, somebody give her oxygen, do something, quick. Help me, Help me."
Hey, step aside, I would like to tell her, you choke me this way. You're scaring me. Who are you? A silly little woman. Dad was right. You’re worth less than zero. You can only talk about money. You want to buy, buy, buy even me. You no longer emotion me, even the scent of that one-hundred-euro-per-bottle perfume bothers me, it makes me want to sneeze. Do you want to pay for my acquittal? Would you want me to live, to resurrect, only to appease your guilt? I won’t give you this satisfaction, ugly witch. If I had my gun I'd shoot you too. You don’t exist. You don’t exist for me. Not anymore. Go away, go away or I will.
"Don’t die Silvia, Mom’s love, please. Forgive me. Don’t leave me."
This time it's my turn, dear Mom, to leave without a word. So maybe you’ll understand. You’ll know what it means to be rejected, abandoned, branded as the daughter of no one. I go, old witch. I leave you and all of these assholes. It's my turn in the circle. All fall down. I get high at the computer, here it is back in my hands. I don’t hear you anymore. In my mind there’s only pictures of frogs and cowboys. I go, I leave. And please step aside. You're too tall to play with me.