Hair Everywhere

by Istros Books

From the balcony above the polyester handbags, the firefighters lower a burnt mattress down into the street. There is no smoke. The fire engine is parked to one side. A woman with potatoes in a bag and a glint in her eye asks:

  ‘Is anyone dead?’

  Finely-Tuned Daughter

  ‘There are souls detained on this Earth,’ Mum said.

  ‘It’s better not to talk about that!’ Grandma raised her voice.

  ‘Be quiet, it was you who called them!’ Mum shot back, and turned towards me:

  ‘You are one of us, tuned to a fine vibrations.’

  ‘Don’t even think about calling them! That was a mistake!’ Grandma threatened.

  ‘When you two die, don’t come frightening me at night!’ I said, and continued to separate the peas from the mashed potato on my plate, the mashed potato from the meat, the meat from the bones, the bones from the soul, the soul from the peas.

  Room Number 3

  Room Number 3 is on the third floor of the surgical ward. A wide corridor with no pictures leads up to it, and next to it is a spacious bathroom. In Room Number 3 there is a pervasive smell of yeast. Mum’s bed is wound about with tubes. One goes into her nose. Through this goes food. There is no tube for mountain cactus though.

  ‘When will you go to school for Parent’s Evening?’ my sister asks.

  Mum turns her head to the other side.

  I dreamt I was searching for a valuable object. I was running through corridors, and then I broke into someone else’s apartment, and found it. It was a small orange billiard ball, number eight. The numbers confuse me. It should be simple because they are single digits. But it isn’t.

  Heritage

  What is it that makes me you? Tell me, I need to know. Because I don’t want to inherit your feelings.

  Grandma (God won’t Take Her)

  ‘God won’t take me.’

  ‘He would, but you won’t let him.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a burden to anyone.’

  ‘You’re still here for a reason.’

  ‘To help the family.’

  ‘Then, please, get up from the bed by yourself!’

  A Fly on the Steak

  If that fly lands on the steak on my plate, and I don’t see it, it will lay its eggs and then I’ll eat them. I’ll feel nauseous. I’ll vomit. I’ll become dehydrated! The doctor will say:

  ‘You can fix this with tablets.’

  Tablets won’t fix my head, and in a few months I’ll have a high temperature. They’ll examine my throat and lungs. They won’t find anything. I’ll forget about the fever. I’ll lose weight. Put cream and mayonnaise in every meal I make. Weigh myself before lunch, after lunch. With my clogs on and without them. The doctor will say: ‘Take any diet, and wherever it says NO, you say YES.’

  I’ll say YES to ham, custard slices, butter, white flour, bread and fried cheese. Food won’t make my head better, so I’ll drink tea. The diagnosis won’t be theirs; it will be mine.

  I know the snake inside the snake. It can’t be seen in any photograph.

  Nice Things

  The book says nicely – THINK ABOUT NICE THINGS – and I think about nice things. I buy myself a nice dress, I like myself in it, take it off, lie down on the bed and blame myself for buying it in these fucked-up times. Then I think of nothing and, when I leave the house, nothing turns into everything. And everything weighs me down. The book says that when we say No, we actually get Yes. Like when a young man rapes a girl. The universe has arranged it like that, it says.

  Summer Thoughts

  I would never go for summer holidays on a cruise ship. Where thirty people walk around on deck with socks in their sandals. Fifty are hunched over, trying to dance the tango. Eighty learn by heart what to see in which town. A hundred others take on gambling habits. Two hundred of them are unhappy because they brought their children.

  I would go on a paddle boat for my summer holidays. Happy in that small plurality. Mum would sunbathe her small breasts, and I would turn the pedals. That day we would eat sandwiches and ice cream.

  I would never go for summer holidays on a cruise ship. You can’t heal your soul at one of a thousand small windows. You let your soul dip its foot into the sea.

  You let Mum keep your soul.

  Blushing Aunt

  Blushing Aunt, Mum’s second sister, used to save little kittens with milky eyes from the street. Ones that otherwise would be run over by cars. Or else someone would put lighted firecrackers in their butts. Even the neighbour’s cat used to go to her place to have her kittens. One time when her owner drowned nearly all her kittens, she defected with the only one remaining to Blushing Aunt’s. That happened once when I stayed at her place. Water from the bathroom flooded the apartment during the night, and the two of us watched the cat lying with her kitten on a chair. Happy that life was taking care of a life.

  Blushing Aunt once gave me a basket for fruit. I still have it today. It is full of real lemons, oranges, kiwi fruit and bananas. Blushing Aunt used to sleep with curlers in her hair, and she often complained of headaches. When her blood vessel broke because of a blood clot in her lungs, they put her in a grave with a view of the sea. Grandma said:

  ‘I’ve been left alone.’

  The Neighbourhood

  The ambulance stops next to the red garage. I can see it from the balcony. People in white climb up the steps. Surely it isn’t the old man? The two of us talk about the weather! They are carrying someone. I can’t see. I can’t see! I go down. The other neighbour is there. The ambulance is leaving.

  I ask the neigh­bour:

  ‘What happened to the old man?’

  ‘They came for his wife. He died last year. In July.’

  He’s lying like a dog! The old man told me only last week that it was going to rain.

  And it did. But in the wrong part of town.

  The Dog

  My parents didn’t have to approve of this dog. This dog sleeps, pees, defecates, eats, licks the velvet giraffe, sleeps, pees, defecates, sniffs the tyres of cars, eats, sleeps, farts, dreams.

  Sometimes I pull socks onto his legs, and laugh. This dog does not lick my face. He does not sleep in my bed. He bites my hair and pulls me towards the shore when we are in the sea. But in order to love me he has to eat. He eats everything, unlike the turtles and the ordinary Australian parrots. Even his own pride.

  The Woman I Do Not Know

  An old woman wearing a lot of make-up sat down in my car. She knocked on the window, asked if I was going her way, and sat down. She had been pulling a plaid bag on wheels behind her. The car smelt of cakes. She said:

  ‘God himself sent me to you!’

  She spoke for a little about my ex-fiancé. When she got out of the car, she left a piece of strudel wrapped in a paper serviette on the seat.

  ‘Since you mustn’t eat salty or savoury things, here’s something sweet for you!’

  I came home and ate the strudel. How does she know what I can and can’t eat? Old women with heavy make-up travel by bus. They don’t hitch rides in the street.

  Does she know my friend from the red garage?

  The Birds From Hell

  We find Grandma in a corner of the kitchen. With a plastic rosary around her neck. She says:

  ‘Hell has opened its gates! Things are falling on the floor in the room. They’re rolling around! These flowers are not from the cemetery, I swear!’

  My sister and I go into the room. Two pigeons, breathing hard, are on top of the wardrobe. We shoo them away; they fly into the walls. We summon the tall neighbour to help us, the one who gives us dried meat at Christmas,. He comes in and turns off all the lights. He turns off the television, too. He grabs the birds, one by one, and lets them out through the window. Later, Grandma sleeps with the rosary around her neck. She puts a three-dimensional picture of Jesus on her breast.

  Dad

  ‘That man isn’t normal. He’s destroyed my nose. And my ear! You go to them once in fifty years and what d
o they do?! You work twenty years in the firm and then they kick you out without any severance pay. You baptise all your children in the church, in spite of politics, and then they want you to pay for the mass and the alms and the Holy Water spilt on the floor, the television, the armchair and the fridge! Your wife sits in bed for two hours with clothes soaked in urine, and they run around the corridors like they’re playing hide and seek! And that oncological generation of mine…they’re all dying and their children still haven’t even left home. They haven’t even seen their children grow up!’

  Dad shouts at all of them. He shouts while he fries fish sticks in the frying pan. An apron is stretched over his stomach, with the words “Men Cook Best”.

  Room Number 4

  Mum has lost her tears. They remain hidden inside her. The tube between her thighs is not hidden. It is full of yellow drops. There are four women spending their days in Room Number 4. They are lying on beds pushed close together. They look at us obliquely. And in our thoughts, while outside the first real snow falls, we quietly answer their questions about Mum’s illness and our family. From the window of this room you can look at the wall of the other building.

  The Director of the ward has not resigned.

  Troubles

  I’m all carcinogenic. I don’t sunbathe so I don’t get enough vitamin D. I don’t eat celery. I don’t sleep. I keep my mobile phone in my handbag that hangs from my shoulder, opposite my ovaries. I smoke tar and carbon monoxide. Tobacco least of all. I float on artificially created electromagnetic meadows. I’m crumbling antibiotics in my mouth because my tooth is crumbling. I’m stacking thick emotional sediment onto my organs. A woman with no skin lives in my pleura. A man covered in needles is rummaging in my womb. I carry a piece of green paper towel in my bag, full of Mum’s loins.

  I’m all carcinogenic while I place crabs into their rooms made of sand. While I bang on stones with my hoofs and aim my arrow up there towards God. Angry that he is denying all responsibility for my life. Leaving me to myself, and not to the masses.

  Reserves in gold: that’s the price of this knowledge.

  I don’t sleep. I’m collapsing into myself. I don’t sleep.

  Grandma (Won’t Tell the Neighbours)

  ‘Grandma, we have to tell the neighbours.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve already heard.’

  ‘I’ll call the one downstairs.’

  ‘Don’t! She hasn’t come to visit me even once in the last two years.’

  ‘Why are you so vindictive?’

  ‘That’s vindictiveness?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then do call her.’

  Barefoot

  They say that when people jump from their own – or someone else’s – windows and balconies, they first take off their socks, shoes, trainers, slippers. They jump barefoot. With their hangnails, corns and hard heels. They go to join their barefoot ancestors. Some leave behind clogs with holes in them, some patent leather shoes. Bare feet are free. They draw letters in the sand. They go to get a scoop of vanilla in a cone. They walk the paths of sea urchins. They destroy the rooms for crabs. But from these rooms, they leave in socks.

  There is no fall. No thump.

  Purple Shoes

  I bought new shoes for Mum. Purple, without heels. Seemingly French. Before I bought them, the saleswoman asked me:

  ‘Do you want to try them on? What number do you need?’

  ‘Thirty-seven. They’re not for me. They’re for my Mum.’

  ‘Then let Mum try them on. If she is not happy with them come back with the receipt. We’ll replace them.’

  ‘They are for the funeral.’

  ‘Let her try them on before.’

  ‘I bought Mum new socks too. I didn’t buy the warm ones.’

  The Little Pillow

  ‘Sweetheart, do you like the way I’ve fixed up your Mum?’

  ‘Eyeshadow looks good on her.’

  ‘See, I put powder and blusher too.’

  ‘Her mouth is open.’

  ‘They didn’t tie it up in time. Will the coffin be open for the farewell ceremony?’

  ‘Yes, it will.’

  ‘Then Honey, you should put a little pillow under her head, and when her head is raised a bit her mouth will come together. Do you see how she looks when I lift her head up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the shoes suit her.’

  ‘They do.’

  Am I Crying for You or for Myself?

  While they are putting her in the hole, I become a three-year-old child and three-year-old thoughts sink onto my shoulders. The pearl rosary is going with her. Grandma took it out of her handbag for the funeral. While she did that, my sister asked me:

  ‘Why is everyone crying, and not me?’

  Mum was sitting in the light of the corridor on a bench between two hospital wings. I went to Room Number 3 to pick up her things, but they were not there. I came back and asked her if anything had remained in Room Number 4. She smiled and shook her head. Her head was full of hair, and her eye was uncovered. I asked her:

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Of course I love you,’ she said.

  The day after the funeral this dream dreamed me. I sat down on the bed, felt the emptiness in my stomach and said:

  ‘I’ve been left all alone.’

  Eight

  I look at him, he looks through the window. There is a calendar on the wall. Soon it will be spring. He asks what is wrong with me. I tell him I am afraid to fall asleep. I tell him that my women are dying. He asks me if I am married, if I have children, what my father does. He doesn’t say where the anxiety comes from and why it makes my organs painful. Why there are buds growing in my buttocks like brooches (happy and unhappy). He writes something on a piece of paper. Something I later won’t be able to read. I ask him:

  ‘Will these medications only work temporarily?’

  ‘No, they will help,’ he says and continues to look through the window. Under the window is the street. Sunny and full of cars. Eight metres away, my father sits in the kitchen, without a job, throwing Mum’s medications into the rubbish bin.

  Eight minutes. That’s how long it takes to smoke a cigarette. And to get a prescription for antidepressants.

  Once a Year

  ‘We want to pay for Mass on Sunday.’

  ‘You can, but on Sunday we don’t mention the names of the departed.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Lots of people pay for Mass on Sunday; we can’t read out all those names!’

  ‘But you take the money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Revision

  ‘That’s the key to my room, that’s the one for the cash-box. There’s enough money inside to buy a burial vault,’ she says and rolls up her sleeves. The wart on her chin is bigger. Her ears are so big, she could soon fly away from this world.

  ‘There is a lot of new linen in the wardrobe, from when I got married. Don’t throw that away!’ she drags her walking stick and her leg across the floor. Her hair has grown quite a bit. Black clips hold onto her grey strands.

  ‘Look at my lovely nightdresses! Why don’t you and your sister wear them?’ Her hand shakes, hardly noticeably. She looks at me with her blue eyes. She has never used make-up. She has never seen Canada.

  ‘There, now I need only to pay off the apartment, and then I can die in peace.’

  She sits back in the armchair and makes sure she stays awake. There is still daylight outside, still more days to come.

  People I Will Meet

  There is a boy who plays piano symphonies. He collects cigarette boxes, coins, war medals. He grows flowers on the window sill, listens to rock, and, it seems to me that there is an ant walking in his hair.

  There is a girl who flies across the living room; she says: ‘Boo!’ and disappears into the corridor. Here she is again, coming back in five minutes; she puts peanuts into the aquarium, bumps into the cake with her head. And just a little while ago she bit the t
urtle!

  These children carry beautiful names. And they laugh even when they cry. I make them go early to bed. They object. I kiss them. After ten o’clock at night all the women in my family are sleeping. Some under the pine trees, some under lamps. Barefoot or with shoes on their feet. They are sleeping, and sometimes they touch one another.

  In the morning these children push their hair into my nose.

  There is no softness in

  a word woven only of consonants.

  The Translator

  Coral Petkovich was born in Perth, Western Australia to third generation Australians of English/Scottish heritage. She was educated at Perth Modern School and the University of WA. She met her future husband in Sydney while on a working holiday and lived with him in Croatia, where she learnt the language. Her book, Ivan – From the Adriatic to the Pacific, is a family saga based on her husband’s true story. She has worked as an interpreter for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and a translator from Croatian to English. She has also translated Seven Terrors by Selvedin Avdić for Istros Books.

  The Author

  Tea Tulić was born in Rijeka (Croatia) in 1978. Her work has been published in various Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian and Slovenian literature and cultural magazines, including McSweeney’s from San Francisco. In 2011, she won Prozak, a national literary award for best young author, which resulted in the publication of her first book, a fragmentary novel Kosa posvuda (Hair Everywhere). The novel received numerous positive reviews and was included in the top five prose books of the 2011 by Vjesnik daily newspaper, The Croatian Ministry of Culture awarded it as one of the best prose books in 2011. Hair Everywhere is also translated and published in Italy, Macedonia and Serbia. In 2014. in cooperation with the musical collective Japanski Premijeri, she published spoken word album Albumče on Bandcamp. She is a jury member of international short prose competition Lapis Histriae and a member of RiLit, a non-formal group of writers from Rijeka. She is currently finishing her new prose manuscript.