Soviet Milk

by Nora Ikstena

She left the three of us alone. We hugged each other and cried. It couldn’t be helped.

And I wasn’t afraid of my mother, only terribly worried about her. And I knew it would be like this until death separated us.

The usual hamster’s wheel of the ambulatory centre began again.

Lunch passed quietly. My daughter talked about school and her achievements in chemistry and literature. My mother and stepfather now and then cast affectionate looks my way. I sat at the beautifully laid table. They all loved me, but I wasn’t there.

‘Are you even aware,’ Jesse said, ‘that she’ll never be with you in the way she is now? She’ll move on into her own life. She’s an intelligent and good-natured girl – she’s a blessing. What are these devils tormenting you?’ Jesse spoke as if delivering a sermon.

Jesse talked for about twenty minutes. But to me it felt like twenty years of talking, and those years went by right here in our kitchen, where outside the dandelions were already blooming in the yard and soon the lilacs would join them. My grandparents would sit beneath those lilacs, happy once more to feel the first spring warmth. And toddlers might play in a sandpit at their feet, and the birds would take sand baths. But I had no time for that spring. I had to grow up fast, faster than the words flowing from Jesse’s mouth. And I had to be brave to hear out her story.

It seemed to me that since I was born I’d been trying to get my mother to connect to life. As a helpless infant, as a child of limited understanding, as a fearful teenager, as a young woman. And she always seemed to be striving to turn out her life’s light. So we struggled – always ending in stalemate. Although one day the light would be extinguished for ever.