1
At the age of twenty two, I made myself the solemn oath not to kiss my mother again until she kissed me first, until the impulse of kissing her own daughter, came to her without my help. A little bit of occasional tenderness was all I asked for and all I needed.
Now I am forty eight, and my mother and myself still haven't kissed properly. In the span of twenty six years, many things have happened in my life: I got a husband, refused to have a child, lost the husband; got a career as an interpreter, lost the ability to concentrate for ten consecutive minutes, lost the career; wrote four novels that no one agreed to publish, and then one night, after getting half drunk, and removing every last trace of them from my computer, I burnt the only four existing manuscripts to ashes.
To make it short, after twenty six years, the circle had come full. I was exactly like I had been at the age of twenty two, except for the youth and the hope for an affectionate motherly kiss.
It is thus, moneyless and depressed, that I was packing my remaining belongings to go back to my parents' house, and to stay there till I found a new job, got married again, won the lottery, or died.
2
Upon my arrival, my mother asked me to clean my room, which had remained closed for months, or maybe years, judging by the layers of dust over the furniture and the old books. But they live in a dusty neighbourhood in a dusty country so you cannot really tell. Then she asked me if I had eaten yet. I said no so she told me to cook for myself, herself, and my father. My mother, just like me, hated to cook.
I died within the year that followed. My humiliation was too great for my pride to bear. I died of gas, while my parents were at my brother's for the night. They said I committed suicide, by letting the gas tap open, but I didn't, I was just sick of cooking. But of this later.
So my mother hated to cook, but that was not the only thing she hated. She hated my husband, or ex-husband, for marrying me. Then she hated him for leaving me. She hated the beach. She hated to receive guests, especially when they were either my friends, or my father's relatives. But most of all, she hated my father.
Sometimes, when I try to analyse her in order to understand the reasons behind her constant recoiling from me, her own daughter, I often end up thinking about her feelings towards my father. She hated me because first, I was a reminder of that fatal usurping, that later gave birth to me. And second, because I was the offspring of the man she abhorred and had to endure all her life. But that wasn't really convincing to me.
I would then remember how so like my father she always accused me of being. It is true that I was my father woman version. I talked, walked, thought, acted, spoke, and even looked like him. I had so much admiration for him, and so much gratefulness to his occasional tenderness towards me. I adored him. But my mother felt differently. She had married him against her will.
3
Mother grew up in a very poor family. She had three brothers and no sisters. And her parents, like all honest and hard working people, couldn't even cover the expenses of her education, and thus, very young, she had to drop out from school in order to support her family by any means she could. One of those means was to marry Father, an honest young man at the time, not very rich, but comfortable, and most of all, madly in love with her.
It is true that my mother was a beauty, in her time, but there was something about her even more attractive than her beauty. She was frail and thus looked -and was- somehow vulnerable. Some men need a vulnerable woman to protect in order to feel powerful, manly. Father was such a man. And that was the main reason why it didn't work out so well between us, in spite of my high feelings toward him.
The poor man loved her all their life. He was a committed husband, though a less committed father. He loved her dearly and in spite of her hatred of him, that ended up manifesting itself without restrictions, he always cherished her and never even thought of another woman. He was her little pet in a way, her faithful little pet, while I, her first child, was the fruit and reminder of her misfortune.
4
My husband, unlike my father, was neither faithful, nor madly in love with his wife. He cheated on me. I went through all the usual and unusual stages of such experiences. The false blonde hairs on the jacket, the mysterious phone calls of so-called colleagues, the nights out, and finally, the actual lady herself, a ridiculously blonde, over breasted duck ten years my junior.
By the time the affair was too obvious and my silence became too humiliating, I was so deeply wounded, disgusted, and yet still in love --and because of that even more disgusted-- that I didn't claim anything at the divorce. I didn't even hire a lawyer. As a result, I was left with no home.
I put my two suitcases on the back seat of my car, my hand bag on the seat next to me, and drove off. I went to stay at a friend's. In four days, I used all her tissues, which urged her to find me a lovely small flat. Grateful, I put my two suitcases on the back seat of my car, my handbag on the seat next to me, and once again drove off.
The flat was decent, the neighbourhood much less so. I was scared for my car and constantly looking for a garage to rent. I took a few days off to settle down and buy a few things for my new home. After some sleepless nights and more tissues, the flat looked nice, homey.
I was starting to feel better. I called my parents. Mother answered, as usual. I told her that the divorce was now official, and that I had found myself a nice place. That she'd certainly like it. She never came though. I lived on the fifth floor, and she hated stairs, just like me.
5
Nine months later, my boss called me to his office. He was a nice man. Strongly built, with broad shoulders, and the kindest eyes. The sort of men you would instantly feel at ease with. Since the fake blonde hair on my husband's jacket, I felt sudden surges of tenderness towards him. I wanted to hug him and cry.
I was having one of these surges, when he called me back to reality, saying that my performance at work was being affected by my condition. He called my misery a condition. He talked about the time where I had to invent a fifteen minutes' speech because I got carried away with my thoughts instead of listening carefully and taking notes, while doing consecutive interpreting at an international summit somewhere in the world. A colleague had told on me.
I was no longer listening to him. I was staring at the patterns in his tie. I was fantasising about an interview with a publisher that would eventually see my immense talent when my boss concluded his apology and the ending of my contract saying that I could always count on him as a friend if ever I needed help with anything but interpreting.
Ironically, I still wanted to hug him and cry.
6
Another nine months went by before I woke up from my stupor to realise that when you're jobless, nothing can be worse than rent. In spite of the ten kilos I had gained, I tried to seduce my landlord, but he was happily married and almost as faithful as my father. I though about dying my hair. I sold my car instead.
I called home. My mother told me that my brother had had his second child, a little girl. I said I wanted to talk to my father, she said he wasn't home. I said I'd call back later. She hung up.
I sold my TV set, my washing machine, my rings, my necklaces, my carpets, mainly to my landlord. I lost those ten kilos along with my only friend, the one that had helped me find the flat.
7
Three year went by and I was in a state of wretched poverty. My landlord was threatening to put me out of the flat and confiscate the furniture. That was one of the rare things that could make me laugh: confiscate the furniture. The hell did I care about the furniture, having lost almost everything apart from this hateful heap of cheap wood and glass! The insane laugh transformed into a knot that fastened itself inside my throat and called for a release. I refused to cry. It would finish me.
I called my landlord. He came quickly, as his habit when he sniffs an opportunity. I traded my computer, the support of my artwork, my important ideas, my last solace in my plight, for two months' rent and half a bottle of whisky.
I drank on an empty stomach on purpose. Feeling depressed was something, vomiting was another. The box where I left my manuscripts was covered with dust. I took the precious sets of paper out and put them one next to the other on the floor in front of me. I spent hours thus, drinking and reading my favourite passages. By the time the bottle was empty, I was seeing double.
I took most of my papers in my arms and stumbled my way to the kitchen. I put most of them in the sink, poured some frying oil over them, and lit a candle. For some reason, probably because I was drunk, the whole situation looked funny. I laughed my head off and then went on four all over the house to gather the papers that had fallen about.
The fire was grandiose. The oil made the smoke black and suffocating. I burnt my only and last source of pride to ashes, dancing the whole time through. Some kind of apish dance made awkward by my drunkenness.
I put in it the rage that has been seething in me for years. I did it for the bastard I once married and still loved, for the kind eyes that deprived me of my rent without blinking, for the happy husband that wanted to take away my furniture, for the friend that couldn't do with my sadness, for my mother that wouldn't kiss me.
I vomited, in spite of my empty stomach.
I thought of suicide, then of starvation, then of prostitution, then of calling my ex-husband to beg for help, but finally decided to go back to my parents', the tail between the legs. This time I took only my hand-bag. My landlord gave me some change to take the bus. I burst out crying. He hugged me, and then by the way he was trying to avoid eye contact with me, I knew he was crying too.
8
I must have arrived in an awful state to my new old home. My mother treated me as a stranger. My father wasn't there. I cleaned my room, then cooked. From then on I became the cook. Apparently they liked my cooking because nobody complained, not even my father. I didn't complain either.
They avoided me. They were ill at ease in my presence. They didn't know what to say, so I kept to my room and the kitchen, mainly to spare them the trouble. It was as if I died that nigh in the fire and this was hell. I could stand my miseries when there were no eyes to judge what I had become, but now, my life, my failures, myself were exposed to the world. Even in my sleep I was ashamed, and my dreams prolonged my torments.
I barely talked, barely ate, barely moved. When I wasn't cooking or cleaning, I was either sleeping or staring at the roof of my cell, open mouthed, empty minded. I was no longer able to recognize myself in the mirror from the first glance. I had to look carefully for a few seconds to make out the big black eyes and the thin white lips out of the skin covered bones that were now my face. I didn't care to look either. Nobody did anyway. Nobody really cared.
Nobody even cared when I died of gas within the year that followed, while they were at my brother's for the night to celebrate his little girl's birthday, I left the gas tap open. When they came back home, they found me lying on the kitchen floor, lifeless. They said that I had killed myself, but you see... I didn't. I was just sick of cooking.
