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Mother’s Day - Song of a Sad Mother - Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Mother’s Day

Song of a Sad Mother

Translated from the German
by Zoe-Annamaria Hawkins
edited by Catharine J. Nicely

The author’s work on this book was funded by the Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung, Berlin and the Rutgers University Craig-Kade Writer in Residence Program, New Jersey.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://www.d-nb.de abrufbar.

Print ISBN: 978-3-941524-47-7

E-Book ISBN: 978-3-941524-46-0

Original deutsche Ausgabe: ISBN 978-3-86789-009-0

First Edition in English, August 2015

www.palmartpress.com

Publisher: Catharine J. Nicely

Cover photo: Marijuana Gheorghiu

Ink brush drawings on cardboard: Meda Gheorghiu-Banciu

Printed in Germany

To my children Marijuana, Cantemir and Meda

Because I’m the first and the last

I am the one, who is venerated and disdained,

I am the whore and the saint,

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am the mother and the daughter,

I am the barren one and my sons are numerous.

I am the bride and the groom,

The one who created my husband.

I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband.
Who is my progeny.

I am the silence, which is incomprehensible…

I am the utterance of my name.

I am the judgment and the acquittal…

Honor me!

Nag-Hammadi – Writings (2nd/3rd Century)

I am everything that has been, was and will be,
no mortal has lifted my veil,
the fruit that I have birthed is the sun.

Inscription of an Isis-Column

Flowers for Mother

I brought flowers. But Mother wasn’t used to flowers. I am not dead yet, she said. I didn’t know what to do with them. The fleshy roses suddenly seemed obscene. She said: Throw them away if you can’t think of anything better to do with them.

Nothing came to me. It was as if I was paralyzed.

You need to come, Father said on the phone. It was important.

He didn’t say whether it was important for him.

Or for whom. And why.

I should come immediately!

And I took the first flight.

Did she want to see me?

And did I want to see her?

An odor of burnt dolls mixed with the fragrance of chrysanthemum floated in the air.

But chrysanthemum was only in my head.

And that with the dolls was a long time ago.

I brought Mother roses.

Mother lay in bed. She said that I should pray for her.

Mother said: Pray as if it were the same as washing hands. I had only been taught to wash hands.

I can’t pray. Mother never told me about praying. So that I would never depend on anyone. You can only depend on yourself, she said. And I memorized this lesson very well. I memorized this lesson and at the same time forgot it instantly.

Can you imagine? I memorized this lesson forever and forgot it at the same time.

Do you know how it is, to know something and not know? When one is able to do something and is not able? Then one senses that one exists. One is. And one is not. And longs for one’s own being.

You will think I’m crazy. I am not crazy. I am and am not. But is it different with you?

I am not talking to you. I’m talking to me. With the part of me that knows. And is able. And with the part of me that does not know. And is unable. I am in the process of learning how to bring these parts together. Reconcile. Unite them.

And what should come from all this? Not half nor whole. No. A whole being. A balanced being.

And what is balance? Do you know what balance is?

I am also not sure. Even though I sense it on some days. I feel my feet. As they stroke the asphalt. I sense how the foot lifts itself with momentum and positions itself anew. And it is like a dance. Like a chain. Time and time again. As if I were floating. But one does not float. One walks. Walks with oneself. No. One simply walks. And one is not. Rather senses. I am.

Sometimes one walks beside oneself. Sometimes with oneself. In oneself. And sometimes one just walks.

What does she want to hear from me, this young woman? She sat down with me at the table. Without asking for permission. We only know each other by sight. She comes to the café every day to read or to watch the people in the café as she sips endlessly on her small Turkish coffee. Today she looks agitated. She speaks. As if driven by something. Without awaiting an answer.

Balance. What is balance? And who’s balanced, the young woman says. She looks not at me when saying this. She looks out the window. Into the distance. Into a kind of distance that makes time and space disappear.

Balance, she repeats. Is the President of the Republic balanced? What about the Pope? The Mother of God?

She pauses only briefly and looks into her cup, as if there she had, deep inside the cup, discovered a world. Then she continues.

She’s balanced. The Mother of God.

She can balance out the pain of the loss of her son with love. Neutralize it.

She can love the world unconditionally.

And Mother? My Mother. Whom did she love?

Did she love me?

She often claimed to. Always when I wasn’t allowed something that I really wanted. She forbade everything for my own sake. Because she worried about me. Because she was afraid for me. Because she loved me.

Mother loved me and Father. But Father was allowed everything. He was allowed to stay out all night. Even though she worried about him. Father didn’t come home, because he had to do things for our society.

For Communism.

He always had to do something somewhere. Only at home he had nothing to do. Because his duties were best carried out elsewhere. He came home to please us. Even though it wasn’t a pleasure to have him at home and not have him.

To have him at home always meant to take into consideration that he was home, although he should be somewhere else.

When were fathers supposed to be at home?

Fathers were never supposed to be at home.

Because fathers earn money and earning money doesn’t happen at home. But mothers also earn money. And that also doesn’t happen at home. And yet they have to be at home.

Mother was also not at home. And when she was there, in reality she was not there. Because she had to do her housework. So that one admired her housewife qualities. Or at least didn’t claim that she isn’t a good housewife.

Mother was good at everything. She was also good at being a housewife.

I don’t know if she was good at motherhood. But may one ask mothers something like this?

May one question something like this?

Mother lay in bed. I see her before my eyes as if it were today. Mother was depleted. Crushed by life. The strength was pushed out of her. I’m searching for the right words to describe what happened to Mother, the woman says.

The woman’s name is Maria-Maria.

She came from Bucharest to Berlin. After the revolution. She came to find out whether she could depend on herself.

To throw everything away and start over. From scratch. Out of nothing make something. And how is that best accomplished?

One leaves everything behind and goes away. To another world. Where one has to learn everything anew. The language. How one presses down on a door handle. Flushes a toilet. How to open a window. How one gets money out of an ATM. If one has any.

Maria-Maria says: I came, because I didn’t want to go to Mother’s grave. I never wanted to go there. Because Mother’s not in the cemetery. She’s elsewhere. Where she is, I don’t know. Sometimes she’s around me. Sometimes she’s within me. And sometimes she’s gone. Sometimes she’s in my fears. I have many fears. They are Mother’s fears. But I am learning to conquer them. I am learning to cast Mother out.

Mother burned my dolls. So that I would never depend on anybody. As soon as I started going to school.

My bed was encircled by dolls. I had my own room from very early on. So that I would learn to organize my room. So that I would learn to be responsible for my own space. And at the same time my life. Mother never had time. She had only enough time for me in order to organize my life. But no time to live it with me. Experience it. Mother never experienced.

Mother had duties. From morning till evening. And also at night. But her nightly duties she could rarely fulfill. Father was seldom at home. Mother carried out her headache duties. The duty of her daily headaches.

In my memory, Mother always had a headache. As if she had been born with them. As if Mother and headaches were one and the same.

I was also familiar with pain. It accompanied me for a long time. Until I slowly learned to strip it off. To dissolve it. To free myself from it.

Mother had taught me to love pain.

I loved my dolls. I was able to tell them things. I wasn’t able to tell Mother anything. Mother never listened. I talked to the dolls, but Mother said: Don’t talk to yourself. That’s what crazy people do, and your grandmother.

For Mother, grandmother was the worst role model.

The first day of school was a special day. And not only because of the carefully packaged set of newly printed books sitting on every bench in our classroom.

I was already familiar with books. I could already read, write and do arithmetic. Mother had taught me all of that. I had to learn fast. Because Mother didn’t have patience to explain anything twice. And definitely not time.

Already seven, Mother said, and you’re already going to school. Now you’re big. You need to depend on yourself. Dolls are of no use to you for that.

On my first day of school, Mother burned my dolls.

I should read. I should learn. I should make use of knowledge.

Knowledge was for Mother like nourishment.

And yet, Mother condemned the knowledge of others. You should know what all there is.

Not truly everything. Mother did not want me to know about happiness. One can not depend on happiness. If happiness even exists, Mother said, it comes seldom and disappears quickly. And then you fall into the void that it leaves behind. And suffocate. And drown. And never come out again.

Mother also never came out. Mother never found a way out. Even though she didn’t believe in happiness.

What did Mother believe in?

You need to depend on yourself. Read. Learn. Know. Depend only on the things that you have achieved yourself. Depend on your strength. Your virtues.

Mother was virtuous. Now she lay in bed with her virtues and said: Pray for me.

* * * * * * *

On that morning I visited her in the hospital, Maria-Maria says. Father had called. And said that I should come. I was afraid of seeing Mother. But now Mother wasn’t able to hit me. And burn my dolls. Now she wasn’t able to do anything. Only lie in bed. With her head on three pillows. And it still wasn’t high enough. Sit more than lay. Otherwise the water from the lungs would have flown into the throat. And she could have asphyxiated.

What kind of impressions does one have of asphyxiation. As a child, I believed that you could strangle someone just by constricting their wrists. Or their waists. There are many types of strangulation. By constricting someone’s thoughts, you can strangle them.

Thoughts are free. Nobody can control them. This is the only freedom that exists without restraint. Mother believed differently. She believed it was her duty to check my school notebooks. To search through my bags and backpack. She believed a mother was responsible for everything. For casting out bold and undesirable thoughts. All thoughts that put Mother in a state of agitation.

Most of what I thought agitated Mother.

When Mother became agitated, she got a headache.

Whenever Mother had a headache, one couldn’t speak to her.

I didn’t want to speak to her. I stayed out of her way. Most of the time I stayed out of Mother’s way.

Mother didn’t believe that one had a right to unspoken thoughts. A mother had to know everything. But even in one’s own mother one can’t confide everything.

I was careful about confiding anything to Mother. It had been like this for a long time. Ever since Mother had burned my dolls. And I wasn’t allowed to cry. Because with seven, one is already big. And goes to school. And it’s not appropriate to cry.

Because one expected something different from me, Maria-Maria says.

She looks into her cup with the coffee grinds.

She swivels it around. Miniature autumn landscapes appear in her cup. Brown and white.

Maria-Maria destroys them with her index finger.

Maria-Maria says: I came with the first flight.

Mother lay in bed and didn’t know that I would come.

The day seemed like a painful shade of reddish gray.

A day in the life of my Mother. An ordinary day. Except, it was Mother’s last day.

She woke up with an agitation in her throat. The agitation increased and spread. It took over the throat and moved to the mouth. Her mouth was full of stones. The agitation moved to her lungs and further down to her stomach like a fungus. Sticky growth.

I still have a lot of time. Mother says. Go. Do your things. I don’t need you. And if so, then I will have you called.

Mother didn’t want me at her deathbed.

Later, Father said that he could understand.

On the radio, there was a broadcast about the first day of school–my first day of school. I had written the text myself. Spoken it myself.

But Mother couldn’t bear it. Not even my voice.

Mother looks at the flowers. These flowers are dying before my very eyes. Mother thinks. I can hear her thoughts. She looks at me and signals with her hand. No words manage to come out of her mouth. Her gaze is dark. Mother is a hunted animal. She can only signal with her hand. Get rid of them. They stink.

I see the words in her eyes. I can read them. Wherever I look, I only see Mother’s eyes. And in her eyes lie her fears. The fear of not being able to see me again. And the fear of having to bear with me. To bear with me being there. Now that she wants to go.

Mother wanted. No, now she had to go.

Now, as I was there, she was supposed to go. Mother couldn’t bear that. Mother couldn’t bear my voice. She couldn’t bear anything about me. For this reason she sent me home.

Father said that it was important for me to come.

But Mother was horrified when I came.

Has the time come. Yes, the time has come.

She knew it, and she didn’t know it. She had decided.

Or how is it, when one dies. Somehow one always decides. Somewhere deep inside. At some point one decides. It’s a fleeting thought. Like lightning. One lets it flash quickly. The head then forgets it. Only the cells don’t forget it. They prepare themselves for the long journey.

Mother’s cells gave up a long time ago. I only know Mother as an old being. For me, it is not worth it anymore, she used to say. For herself, it was never worth it. Always only for others. Life should be lived for others. And Mother no longer knew, why she should live for me. For Father, she had stopped living long ago. That’s not entirely true. She would have most loved to live for Father. But Father lived for others. Or he lived for himself.

Or did he even live?

And Mother. Had Mother ever really lived?

Even Mother lived for the society. For our society. For Communism. Everyone should live for it, she said. And especially Father said that.

Maria-Maria says: Mother trapped the air in her stomach. The air that she would have needed for breathing. And she only breathed shallowly. And that wasn’t enough to truly live.

The café is deserted at this time of day. Even the wait staff has disappeared into the kitchen. Maria-Maria looked out the window and from there into the distance. Into the room of her thoughts. She looks into the room where her Mother lay.

I look at Maria-Maria. I see Maria-Maria with the bouquet of flowers in her hand before the mother’s bed. The flowers tremble. First, Maria-Maria looks at the flowers. Then she looks around. She wants the flowers to disappear. She’s held captive by her mother’s eyes. Captive of the leaden bouquet. The bouquet grows bigger and bigger. Maria-Maria is a child with an over-sized bouquet at her mother’s bed.

The mother lies on a catafalque and looks like a hunted animal. And the mother has blue lips. Her lips are dry and stick together. Her mother’s teeth are dead. Deadly yellow. I see Maria-Maria trembling. And as soon as Maria-Maria had left the hospital room, she throws up in front of the hospital. It erupts from inside of her. The fear. The disgust. She doesn’t know what it is. It’s something that causes her stomach to rage. She calls it a captive boxer.

Maria-Maria sits across from me and tells me about it.

* * * * * * *

I stood there with the bouquet of flowers in my hand and didn’t know what to do with it. I was supposed to hug Mother. She lay on several pillows, bolstered up. Her lips were blue, parched and stuck to the gums. The gums were a shade of blue-gray-red. The hair on her head fell in strands and had suddenly turned gray. She was all at once old. Very old. Before my eyes she transformed. Beneath her skin I saw my great grandmother. She lay on several pillows. Mother was getting older and older. Until I could no longer recognize her. Her temples were made of parchment, and the skin above her cheekbones was so stretched out that it threatened to rip apart. I was afraid of great grandmother. Who suddenly lay in bed, and said: Go, I’ll have you called if I need you. Great grandmother spoke with Mother’s voice.

Mother had never needed me.

Mother had never asked me for anything.

She had commanded me. Commanding was Mother’s way of communicating with me.

Sometimes Mother commanded: Bring me the strap.

And I brought her the strap.

And she struck me with it.

She struck her rage out with it.

I held the flowers in my hand and had no idea what to do with them. Who had ever given Mother flowers.

I had never given Mother flowers. Except for Mothers’ Day. Mothers’ Day was on the 8th of March. It was international. And one honored all mothers of the world by honoring one’s own mother.

We honored our mothers in school. The honorees were at their workplace. Fulfilling their duties. For them we sang songs. And we recited poems. The mothers had already ironed our uniforms so that we appeared honorable on the stage, honoring them.

Mother never noticed any of this. But the honor was in the air, and perhaps it reached her in mysterious ways. Only Mother never said anything about it.

It was always so. One honored all the children of the world by celebrating Children’s Day. Even on Children’s Day we were on the stage. And sang and recited to honor childhood. Being a child. And the children of the world. And mourned for the children who had no idea that they were children. Because these children had to work. Submitted to exploitation. Or shot with the rifle. At other people. And never had a chance, like we did, to celebrate childhood.

I had never given Mother flowers. Except for International Women’s Day. On March 8th. Mother received the flowers symbolically. Actually, the comrade-teacher, who was also a mother, received them on behalf of all the mothers of the world.

Nobody had given Mother flowers. Father didn’t even know that flowers existed. At home we had plastic roses. Roses that last a lifetime. That last longer than a life. And that one can pass on to the next generation.

Vanity, squandered money. And roses. Mother would have no part of it.

A day in the life of my Mother, says Maria-Maria. On any given day, I gladly would have been there. I’d like to have known what Mother thinks. Who Mother is.

Once we were made to write an essay for Mothers’ Day. Everyone wrote one about their mother.

About the role they played in our society.

Who Is My Mother?

My mother is the most wonderful mother in the world. My mother is a tractor driver. She works for the LPG agricultural production cooperative, and with the tractor makes furrows in the soil. There she lets seeds fall into the furrows with the seeding machine. The seeds germinate and grow. In summer mother comes with the harvester and reaps the grain. From the grain bread is made. For the world. Mother can also bake bread. The bread is fresh and tastes good. My mother is the most wonderful mother in the world.

That wasn’t my essay. It was Dorin’s essay. And we all envied him. Because he received that year the first prize in school. Whoever received the first prize was very much loved by their mother. Because she was proud. She was proud to show the other mothers on Mothers’ Day how well she fulfilled her duties as a mother and how useful she was to society.

Every mother that was useful to society was a happy mother. Was taught to us in school. We only have happy mothers in our society.

Mother was useful, and yet one could see that she wasn’t one of the happy mothers.

In the first years of school I tried really hard. I received the first prize. But mother’s face did not light up with pride. This warming, all-encompassing smile, I wasn’t able to evoke with her.

Mother didn’t know the word happiness. It wasn’t a part of her vocabulary. It wasn’t a part of her life.

And Father said: We expected nothing else from you.

Mother’s Day

I waited the whole day. Says Maria-Maria.

Father appears around midnight. In the right corner of his mouth he conceals a half smile. I’m not supposed to see it. Father is relaxed like I have never experienced him before. He won’t look at me. He gazes far away into space. There where he sees something that remains hidden to me.

From the bag he takes out pillows and a small bag. From the small bag slips a comb. On the comb there hangs hair. The hair shines in the light from the ceiling lamps. Father lays the comb on the table and says that I have to clear the room. You can throw it away. She still had her hair combed shortly before. Your mother. I am supposed to cry now. He expects that of me. I think of his smile and don’t cry.

Father goes with the bag into the bathroom, takes out pajamas and throws it in the laundry. It’s mother’s pajamas. I ask myself why he still wants to have it washed. I withdraw into my room.

The whole long day I had waited. I didn’t eat anything. I didn’t drink anything. I sat on the couch. By the telephone. And knitted.

I hate knitting. But now it felt good. One knits and sees how something grows. And doesn’t know what will become of it. And what it is good for. It is good for the nerves.

I hate knitting.

Once, she tried to teach me knitting. Two to the right. Two to the left. Her hand watched over me. I sat tensed up under her hand and knew that I wasn’t allowed to make a mistake. I had to quickly memorize. Mother’s hand twitched. For this reason I couldn’t memorize anything. What is left. And what is right. Why don’t you get it? Mother’s eyes flashed. And her hand. When nothing else helped, she said: Let it be. It’s not for you. You’ll never get it. Go back to your books.

I knitted something out of red wool. It could have turned into a scarf. If I would had made an effort. I didn’t want to make an effort. I wanted to collect my thoughts. So that they wouldn’t get tangled up like a knot of snakes inside my head.

I waited the whole day. She told me she will have me called. She will have me called if she needs me. I sat the whole day by the telephone. Not one single time did it ring.

I sat on my bed in my room. My childhood room. My girl’s room, one could say if that wouldn’t sound mawkish. And yet, I have to say it like that. Being a child, I can’t remember. I was always a girl.

I listened for Mother’s voice, which was supposed to reach me through the telephone receiver. I listened, the way I used to listen to Mother’s outbursts in the evening when she came home. Devastated from headaches. Exhausted from the day. From carrying the enormous bags.

Now Mother doesn’t have the strength to yell at me. Mother doesn’t have a voice anymore. She can only whisper. She points to her legs. It won’t take much longer, she says. The legs are swollen. Mother’s beautiful legs are no longer recognizable. The legs are full of water, mother says.

The water had flooded the lungs. She doesn’t say anything about that. Because nobody can see the lungs. Mother’s lungs won’t let any air in. They let water in.

And the doctors pump the water out. Everyday Mother produces water. Enough to bring oases to bloom.

The doctors pump the water out. But nobody can make use it. Nothing can grow with this water. Everyday Mother’s breath becomes thinner. The lungs fuller and fuller. Mother is in danger of suffocating from the overfill.

Father doesn’t cry. Because Father has always been a real man. And who expects men to cry?

I was supposed to cry.

I am the child. I don’t cry. I was always an orphan. Accustomed to pain.

Father doesn’t cry. I only see his blue eyes. His bright gaze. A gaze that I don’t know.

I don’t know Mother either. Mother’s gaze doesn’t exist anymore.

Does Mother still exist?

Father wanders around the apartment and straightens up. In the kitchen I hear him clanking the dishes.

Ever since Mother was sick, Father had learned to buy bread. Cook milk. Wash underpants. He had learned to carry things other than just his briefcase, with dignity. Everyday he brought Mother food. But Mother hardly ever wanted to swallow anything down. This had been going on for weeks. He had gotten her this and that. Although getting things wasn’t that easy. But he knew what doors to knock on to get things. Sometimes Mother wanted meat. And Father would get her a slice. And Mother couldn’t eat it. I made such an effort, Father said. But Father’s effort wasn’t worth anything to Mother anymore.

He should have made an effort earlier on. No, Mother didn’t say that. Father thought that perhaps. Or didn’t think that at all. And maybe he was only mad that he had to ask the Party chairman for a favor. He, who never wanted to ask for favors: It’s for my wife. She’s in the hospital and is asking for pork liver. Liver contains iron. The doctor says that it would be good for her. The next day Mother didn’t want liver anymore. She had lost her appetite. Mother’s appetite was very short-lived. She uttered her wish, and then soon after it disappeared. And Father’s effort landed in the can. Father couldn’t eat the liver himself. No. No way. He couldn’t eat anything inside the hospital. It made his stomach turn upside down. Just by the thought of it. Father was disgusted by the hospital door handles. By the toilets. By the edge of the bed that he sometimes had to touch.

I don’t know what else disgusted Father.

Death, says Father. I can’t grasp it. When my mother died, I was still a child.

Father doesn’t fear death. Because Father is still young and healthy and believes that death is unable to harm him. Your mother, he says, she was always sick, ever since I had known her.