When my mother became a bride, according to her own words, she was the “most beloved bride” in the village. She used to recall this when she had a quarrel with father and used to utter, “My life is like the fate written in the newspapers – it’s ruined”. Mother would not say this just for fun, because everything she wanted in life or nothing at all turned out to be how she wanted. She used to regret recalling her memories of the times when she believed in life the most.
I now don’t even believe that my mother was the most gorgeous bride in the neck of their woods, her life was no different from those of other women over there – bridehood is a time for every girl who enters a new household to get used to that family following the socalled lifechanging wedding, whose euphoria lasts for a while.
Unlike my mother, my granny (my mother’s motherinlaw) never recalled her past life with regret. Her grief was associated with what she would describe as the pending death.
One day it rained hard. It was a fierce shower. We had cattle and livestock. Livestock was the main asset, granny had three goats that used to give birth to twins every spring. She used to look after them herself. My mother had one dairy cow and her calf. Until a certain point, all the cattle belonged to my granny. I don’t remember exactly what we did with all the livestock, whether we sold them out or bought something for the household.
Maybe because my granny had said that both the cattle and the house were all hers, my mother fell into the habit of making a separate fortune for herself by making money from her profession of nurse, from tips paid by patients served by her in their homes in the village. On top of that, mother used to sell medicines at home – albeit illegally. The drugs would be brought from pharmacies in the district center, and not only our fellow villagers, but also people from surrounding settlements would come to buy medicines. Our communities lay far from the district center. There were a few people selling medicines. In the end it became a good source of income that would bring money for my mother and us to study and live on.
It was a spring day when it showered. The grass had turned green and the cattle had just fallen into the blue grass. We would tie up the cattle in the open field. Granny brought her goats left in the field and went to tie them up in the nursery, and when she was returning home, her feet slipped on the mud in front of the gate, and her head and hair were covered in mud as much as the scarf that was always tied around her head.
It hurt my grandmother a lot when she fell in the rain, and worst of all, my mom had spilled a bucket of water in front of that gate, which would insult the granny even more. My mother, of course, did not do it on purpose, and granny knew it, but both of them could not miss any reason to blame and hurt each other. When granny entered the house with anger, hatred and humiliation, she came to me and uttered, “when I die, cry for me saying that it is my nanna who did not enjoy life”. She didn’t say anything else. Even if she said something, it would be not as important as that phrase, so that I can’t really remember. The granny told this phrase in such a way that it was as if she was threatening me by shaking both my shoulders.
Even though she didn’t come and shake me, her words shook my whole body and soul. She might have said something like this before. But she didn’t say it in the same tone as she did that time, when she was void inside and really fed up with everything. To be sure, the pain and suffering in this sentence was meant to hurt my mother and make her feel guilty. My mother pointed to many sons and daughters-in-law out there in our village, disregarding their elderly mothers and leaving them without bread and butter, and said that my father always showed the highest love and respect for his mother (that is, my granny). Although my mother muttered these words with resentment, what I could see in her eyes was that she felt guilty.
Seemed there was no end to their stealthily beating each other, my mom and my nan. My father used to go fishing in the lake in our district, on the border with the neighboring country, which has become a source of livelihood for many people due to the liquidation of state farms and consequent loss of work. And the days when my father was not home, the quarrels escalated, and at those times I understood that when my father was there, neither of them was eager to vent their hatred toward each other.
Nor can I say that I was happy when my father was home. Now, my father and mother were quarreling a lot with each other, and, as my mother tells me with complaint and despair, that at those times my granny would not interfere to reprimand my father, urge him to stop beating his wife, but rather she would just prefer pouring oil into fire. But I never heard my gran say anything to my father about my mother. Usually, they would talk in secret separately. This is exactly what my mother could not accept. Only sometimes when I couldn’t sleep through to midnight because of my thoughts – I would sleep next to my nanna – could I hear her whispering some things to herself.
“It is difficult to live this simple life!”
I would initially not pay much attention to this, but eventually, if I listened carefully, she would talk to herself about what my mother did during the day, and naturally she would be displeased, would think it was wrong and thus she would swear at and curse my mom. Granny used to do this every night. What I tried hard was to go to sleep earlier because I was sick of hearing these words time and again. I had to silently accept the curses directed at my mother as if I didn’t hear them at all, because I knew that I wouldn’t tell anyone about that, and I even gave up the idea of creating a bright life in my thoughts. Nor was my mother, in her turn, reluctant to address the same insults and curses to my granny.
Unlike my granny though, my mother would not whisper those things for herself; she used to do it overtly, and although she would refrain from addressing my granny directly, she would tell it to me in her presence as if she was talking to her. I couldn’t understand at all why my mother hates me so much, curses and abuses me. From my gran’s whispers I came to realize that, in fact, all those words of my mom were directed at the granny. But still, that would have a heavy impact on me, I would feel reluctant to do anything, and I would feel stupid in whatever I did and wherever I was. In fact, it was exactly the way my mother wanted my grandma to feel. But even though I understood this with my child’s mind, I could hardly bear it.
My mom and nan were completely different from each other due to the differing environment in which they had lived and, as a result, their views on life. My mother wouldn’t show her emotions, pain, or laughter to anyone. She always demanded the same from me. To be sure, she never told me to keep my feelings in, but her demands should have led to that. In my opinion, that was in complete contrast to the openness of my grandmother. I am writing, but keep doubting whether I knew my nanny well enough to judge her – so I admit that I’m still wrong in some of my assessments about her.
I believe this closedness in my mother was due to her inability to accept life – I have no other answer for now. To accept a life that failed to give her what she wanted, even worse, that she was an ordinary human being, an ordinary woman in this life... What I saw in my mother was constant suffering, and because of her self-respect, I always thought there was something unusual in my mother, or perhaps this is how all children accept their mothers. Even when I was stuck between my mother and my grandmother, I knew that the latter was an ordinary person, but my mother was not like that in my opinion, and she should behave in accordance with the ideal of her self-dignity. Because of this, we had a lot of fight with my mother, we didn’t understand each other at all, and I struggled for years to accept my mother as just an ordinary woman.
During one of our usual quarrels, when I jerked my mother and tried to explain something, she, now completely calm, said to me, “I am an ordinary woman, I have very little knowledge of anything, I have never left this village, I only know what is within the borders of this village, and so you don’t need to explain that to me, that’s what I am.” I suddenly realized that my mother had already got used to her life (sometimes it is difficult for me to get used to the life my mother is used to). “It's hard to live this simple life!” It is clear that it was not my mother who uttered these words. Probably I said this when I was walking under the influence of what she said, or it was someone else, maybe I overheard someone talking on the street, or maybe it was just a hallucination...
My mother, my grandmother, and I were alone in our simple lives and have had a hard time understanding each other. Every one of us had divinely requests of our own. My mother would pray for some things when pouring oil on the edges of the cauldron on the stove, my granny would do the same while going to bed, whereas I prayed looking at water in the well. The pleas of our souls were the only solace and consolation for my mom and grandmom in the face of their simple and inevitable fate, and for me it was the hope of leaving our neck of the woods for far away.
