Valery Yuabov - Everything Begins In Childhood

Her husband’s illness didn’t allow her to have a normal life. She had to take care of him, to look after him, to feed him. In other words, she had to work from early in the morning till late at night. There was never enough money and she had no help.

It was past midnight. The moon, clear and bright, was high in the sky. All the houses shimmered silvery in its light. Every unevenness, every small detail in the yard was clearly revealed.

It was a splendid night, and it was very, very quiet.

Only Mama broke the silence. The shovel continued its scraping. Chunks of coal rattled as they fell into the pails.

One last batch, and we finished our work. Sweat, thick and fast, was streaming down Mama’s face. Her face, hands, legs, dress, apron – all were coated in a solid, heavy, coarse black armor.

We had to wash ourselves at home. A visit to the bathhouse would come the next day.

Mama began to heat water. She had to do it as fast as possible because tomorrow – actually, it was already tomorrow – early in the morning she would have to go to work, and I to kindergarten.

I think I fell asleep sitting on a chair. I don’t know how my poor mama managed to undress and wash me.

It must have been a holiday, I don’t remember which, but that morning we were all at home – Mama, Emma, and I. All but Father; he was at the hospital again. I was about to play when a singsong call was heard from the yard.

“E-e-e-e-e-s-the-e-e-e-e-r!”

Mama’s name was heard from the yard. It sounded like a song, like a serenade. It sounded so melodious and clear, as if an opera singer were performing an aria consisting of just that one name. I knew that singer very well. His voice could not be confused with anyone else’s. Even though it was a man’s voice, it was amazingly similar to my mama’s.

But of course, it was Grandpa Hanan! He didn’t like to knock on the door. He preferred to announce his arrival by walking between our door and that of Grandma Lisa and singing something.

In his black coat and bright skullcap, with a small bundle in his hands and his face with its greying beard turned up, he was waving the bundle and telling the whole neighborhood about his arrival and his love for his daughter.

“E-e-e-e-e-s-ss-th-e-e-e-r! E-e-e-e-e-s-th-e-e-e-e-e-r! Look who’s here, E-e-e-s-the-e-r!”

When my Grandpa Hanan was singing all by himself or among friends, he didn’t notice anything or anyone around him. He might walk back and forth for a long time.

“Mama! Grandpa Hanan is here!”

Mama was already running to the door. She smiled at me over her shoulder. Oh, what a smile it was! Mama gave us such a smile only in rare moments of happiness. She would put one hand on top of the other and bow her head slightly. The corners of her closed lips would rise, and the line of her mouth would curve. That changed her face in a miraculous way – it looked brighter and younger. Her hazel eyes grew bigger, brighter. A secret light lit them beautifully and reigned above her smile. The sharp arcs of her thick eyebrows, that almost touched over the bridge of her nose, surged like waves, and above them, two little birthmarks went up like little rowboats.

Our mama was a beauty. I think she was the kind of beauty that the great poets of the East extolled. Tall, slender, with a gentle face and thick black hair so long that when it hung loose, it streamed down her back to her thighs like a waterfall. She was definitely the embodiment of Eastern beauty.

I liked to watch Mama comb her hair. Seated at a small round mirror, Mama would slowly comb her hair, one strand after another. It streamed and shone even in the light of the dim bulb that lit Mama’s bedroom. She would stick the comb into her thick hair at the top of her head and drag it slowly down a strand to its very end. She did it over and over again, until the strand became elastic, until every hair separated easily from the next. Only after that did she begin on the next strand.

A small wisp of hair would remain on the comb after she finished with a strand. Mama didn’t throw these away. She neatly wound them up into a ball, a kind of bun, which grew bigger by the year.

At last her hair was combed, and it was time to arrange it. First, Mama placed the bun at the nape of her neck and began to roll the strands around it in amazingly graceful movements. That was how a big springy bun appeared at the back of her head before my very eyes. It was the hairdo that I considered the apex of perfection.

Mama threw the door open, and I rushed toward Grandpa and jumped up into his arms. He lifted me and, pressing me against him, began to turn slowly.

Oh, what fun it was. Everything floated past me – the cherry tree, the apricot tree, the vegetable garden, Jack’s kennel, and Jack himself with his long tongue sticking out. It seemed to me that his tongue was floating after me like a long pink ribbon. How could it possibly fit into his mouth? The walls, the windows, the tulle curtain in Grandma’s bedroom floated past me.

The curtain shifted just a bit. Grandma was at home. The window was her observation slit through which she could see the whole yard. Grandma Lisa was watching us secretly now.

When Grandpa Hanan visited us, she didn’t open her door and didn’t come outside. Grandpa didn’t expect her to for they had nothing to talk about.

We were still turning and turning, and Grandpa was singing. I sang along. How wonderful I felt! Besides, I was the only one he was twirling, for Emma was asleep.

As I flew, I thought – how did the skull cap stay on his head? It must have been glued to it. It never fell off. Grandpa even scratched his head in a special way, without taking it off. He lifted the back of it with one hand, like one valve of a shell. His other hand went under the cap and a rustling sound could be heard. Much as I tried, I never managed to look under the valve of that shell. What if something valuable, unusual, something Grandpa carefully protected and hid from everyone’s eyes was kept in that hiding place?

“All right, that’s enough. Let’s go.”

Grandpa put me down, picked up his bundle, and we went inside.

Mama greeted her father in a restrained manner. It was the custom in Asia. You could hug and kiss your mother, but you had to treat your father with respect and restraint. True feelings could be displayed only when misfortune struck. Mama, for example, took care of Grandpa twenty-four hours a day when he had bad fits of asthma.

Grandpa sat down at the small table in the corner and opened his bundle carefully. It held a small pot of hot food wrapped in a cloth. Oh, how delicious was the smell coming from the pot. We hadn’t had anything to eat today. It was true that the day before I had managed to eat illegally, so to speak.

Yesterday, Grandma Lisa cooked meat dumplings. Their aroma filled the yard. Mama and I were the first people the aroma reached. We were sitting at the table near the cherry tree where Grandma had brought the dumplings. But it didn’t mean that we were invited to have dinner. Father was at the hospital. Daughter-in-law and her children could not expect to be treated to dinner when he was away. If we wanted to sniff how the dumplings smelled, we were welcome to do that.

“Robert, come eat!” Grandma shouted. Robert didn’t answer. Grandma called him another time, then she ran to the house for her son.