The Time Of Women

To my grandmothersMy first memory: snow…. A gate, and a haggard white horse. My grandmothers and I are plodding along after the cart, and the horse is big, but dirty for some reason. And there are also long shafts dragging in the snow. There is something dark lying in the cart. My grannies say it’s a coffin. I know this word, but I’m still surprised, because a coffin should be made of glass. Then everybody would see that Mama is asleep, but will wake up soon. I know this, but I can’t tell anyone … When I was little I couldn’t talk. Mama would take me to all sorts of doctors, and showed me to various specialists, but to no avail: they never found the cause of it. I didn’t talk until I was seven, and then I started to, although I don’t remember it myself. My grannies didn’t remember either – not even the first words. I asked them, of course, and they’d say that I had always understood everything and drawn pictures – and to them it was as if I’d been talking. They got used to answering for me …They’d ask, and then they would answer…. My drawings used to be kept in a box. It’s a pity that they weren’t preserved: then I’d remember everything. Because without them I don’t, I don’t remember anything. Not even my Mama’s face. Grandma Glikeria said we used to have a photo, a small passport-sized photo, and it got lost when they ordered the portrait. A metal one, for the cemetery. It got lost too. Maybe my stepfather never got around to going there, and Zinaida threw it away — along with my drawings. I didn’t like winter for a long time after that: I’d get anxious when it snowed. I thought about Mama… I worried that she’d get cold — in her summer dress… Later I got over this, but the anxiety remained, as though in my childhood, which was erased from my memory, something horrible had happened, and I would never find out what it was…