Mother finally remembers—she remembers. There were female voices back then, too!
Like a garment cut from nothingness with magic scissors, like a paper crane made of light—she draws closer to the memory—the warm nose of a foal nuzzles her, its breath hot—she has to get a bridle on it!
Mother leans toward the memory, avoiding the invasive spoon, her toothless mouth now and then gulping the cottage cheese. Her bony fingers tear at the blanket corner in her lap, and she remembers…
. . . The voices are coming from the kitchen. She is still in part a child, but also in part a woman, on that border when time ties the first rosy knots at the tips of a girl’s chest. She’s at her mother’s house in the country. There’s a celebration tomorrow. The spring weather is hot, and the cherries, hackberries, and lilacs are blooming. The kitchen door is open and almost every woman from the seaside town is in there baking, cooking, slicing meat, and grinding onions.
The thick, juicy grass lies flat in the garden like a green, hairy beast, and the leafy branches of the apple trees spill in through open windows. The screams of animals being slaughtered for food has stopped and their rolled-up hides lay haphazardly next to the barn, because the tanner is drunk on beer and sound asleep next to the doghouse. The boys are tickling his mustache with a reed, and he smiles in his sleep. Everything smells of sweat and music. Striped cats purr and wind around the porch pillars.
Steam rises above the pots on the stove, rattling the tin covers like bells. Laughing children dart around the grownups with the neighborhood dogs, stealing slices of smoked bacon meant for tomorrow’s bacon rolls. The women scold them and wipe their own sweaty foreheads and flushed necks with white handkerchiefs. They pass around a bottle of lingonberry brew, which you can only have a little bit of at a time, because it’s quite strong, quite sacred, quite devilish!
Uncle Jānis blows a horn on the roof of the shed—the song is “The Sea Needs a Fine-Spun Net”—he doesn’t know that in a few days the sea will take him in place of the net, and then the women will be cooking for his funeral instead.
Uncle Jānis plays his horn, then comes inside, sits at the end of the table, chats with the women and manages to get a few sips of brew. The women swat him with their handkerchiefs and blush when he pinches one of them in the thigh. His voice is pure, unfiltered fire, strong like the lingonberry brew. The children eye the trumpet on the corner of the table, poke at its yellow, brassy shine, breathe in its metallic scent.
Mother goes outside. It’s hard for her to hold herself straight against this bold thundering of life that tears through the air and slams against her little body like the waves crashing against the breakwater. For the first time in her life, she simultaneously feels deep pain and joy. The sweltering happiness in the kitchen and the passionless existence of the blue skies over the sea, with the fragrant clusters of white flowers in the twilight—
—it’s hard for her to be outside for long, her heart is being torn to bits by the cold and lonely wind. She wants to go inside, closer to the fire. Rather, she wants it all together, to pour these two worlds into one cup and drink it. To see: is it really like oil and water, can they never mix? To bring the cold inside, or to bring the heat outside.
Soon enough both worlds melt into one, because something happens that night, something secretive. She is recruited—
—because on her way inside she almost runs into a woman. There, in the front hall, is their neighbor, Maija. Maija’s right hand holds a bundle of onions and is pressed to her chest, but her left hand is balled up by her mouth—her white teeth biting into her thumb. She is listening from the other side of the kitchen door to what Jānis is saying to the other women. The adults have said more than once that Maija is crazy about Jānis.
Maija looks at her with dark eyes. At the motionless, angular silhouette of a teenager in the doorway against the blue-green horizon over the sea. It’s bad to eavesdrop, they both know that. But the woman at the kitchen door burns like a fire, even though her frame is small and her hair is soft and long. Voices can be heard from the kitchen—
“Child,” Maija says and puts a finger up to her lips. Her eyes gleam like a cat’s.
“No, no!” the child cries out, burned by this fervor.
Then the door opens and someone comes out. Maija lets her into the kitchen ahead of her, into the thicket of steam and life. They cut onions, laugh, cry and never again mention what happened. All she does is now and again steal a glance at Maija. Maija is a woman. She, too, is now a woman. A bowl of fire. A tiny, bright flame, until the Star comes—The One That Brings the Rain—
Mother speaks:
“Sweetheart.”
Silence.
She opens her one good eye. She is welcomed by the white square of the window and the black fog the Dark One pulls over her vision.
All that’s left in the empty room is the dream called her life. Voices can be heard from the kitchen.
Daughter
In the darkness of midnight, Lūcija turns on the lamp and looks to see if her mother is still breathing. She’s so shriveled. Lūcija is now her mother’s mother.
The mother is her daughter’s little child.
Her mother’s mouth is opened slightly, her eyes closed.
All the witnesses to this horror gleam at her from the dresser top—diapers, sippy-cups, mugs, wet wipes. Creams for rashes and sores. Things for a child. A newborn child. Only this birth is happening backwards—from the light into the darkness.
And then the child becomes strangely still.
Daughter looks at mother. She’d give up everything for her to keep on living. But over the course of their time together all they mostly did was argue.
Daughter looks at mother. Places a hand on her. Her head is still warm, her arm still warm. The last bit of heat.
Leaving is so difficult and drawn-out.
And how this excruciating period of time finally brought them together.
All of Them
Gran’s soul is fighting its hardest to get out, fluttering in her head. Her mouth gasps for air. Her relatives take turns wetting her lips with water.
When her light is about to give out, Pāvils jumps to his feet, wails and grabs his grandmother by the shoulders.
He cries:
“Don’t fall asleep! Wake up!”
Gran comes to and asks:
“What did you do that for? All of them were coming to greet me.”
Gran dies the next day, when all her relatives have stepped out for just a moment.
But how beautiful she looks.
Granddaughter
Ieva crouches in the middle of the field and watches two giant tree stumps burn among the pile of branches. The wind has picked up and sparks fly through the air. Gran’s things are among the kindling.
Not diaries, letters, or notes—just things. Things from her final months.
The black plastic trash bags melt, split open like blistering skin, and drip into the fire. The flames lick at the dingy shoes, the warped sleeves, lace pillowcases. A mug shatters with a bang, the plastic bottles melt into puddles.
Ieva watches on as if made of stone. The fire melts her down and pours her into a different mold.
There will be nothing left when the fire burns out. Only memories.
Andrejs’s Religion
Outside