“Her parents don’t take very good care of her.”
“Where’s her grandma?”
“Living on the islands now.”
“She’ll take care of her when she comes back.”
“The least they could do is brush the poor girl’s hair.”
One of the teachers leaned in close to me. The one with the olive skin and the beautiful face I couldn’t get enough of looking at because I imagined that her thin-plucked eyebrows were the wings of birds arching across on her smooth, broad forehead. She was the one who said to me, “Tell your mother that you need a haircut.”
I didn’t tell her.
But when my grandma got back and saw the state of my hair, she went after the tangles with a pair of scissors. My mother didn’t even notice.
The next day my grandma said, “Your hair looks like hell!”
She took me to the barber to get it fixed.
As we were sitting there, an old woman walked in. So old she looked even older than my grandma. She said something in a strange language. Greek, perhaps? And she was from a different city. Athens? The old woman and my grandma hugged. Maybe they were neighbors once upon a time?
“This is my granddaughter,” my grandma said, pointing to me.
I swung my feet as I sat on the barber’s chair. Now that the haircut was done, the barber started running a horsehair brush through my hair, which tickled the back of my neck. I could smell something like powder.
Squinting at my grandma, the old woman said, “Efrosa and I cut your hair once. Remember? You had a case of lice.” Her glasses, which had gleaming thin chains hanging down from each side, were quite thick and made her eyes look larger than they actually were. I noticed that she walked with a cane, which seemed to be the only thing keeping her on her feet. As she leaned on the cane with all her weight, it looked like a nail that had been driven into the earth.
That was the first time I saw my grandma in a new light. What I’m trying to say is that, when you’re a child, sometimes you can tell that something is amiss but it doesn’t really make sense to you, and then years later as you think over it—like I’m doing now—you pick up on something. That is, of course, if you believe that intuition is more important than logic. Otherwise, logic will have driven it from your thoughts long ago.
I got the impression that my grandma wanted to avoid that old woman, as if she stirred up bad memories. If so, what were those memories? My grandma looked defeated, even overwhelmed. Taking me by the arm, she started pulling me out of the shop, and I remember bumping against a few things on the way out because my little legs couldn’t keep up. As we walked away, the old woman said, “Efrosa couldn’t get through it like you. She hung herself. Did you hear about that?”
She must have heard about it. The look in my grandma’s eyes said, “Yes, I heard about it. I know what happened.”
If the old woman wasn’t a bad person, why did she look so angry?
“Forty-eight years after it happened, I went back to the place. I’m eighty-eight years old now, and I wanted to see it one last time before I die.”
“What could be left to see, madam?”
My grandma was a changed person. Beaten. Hurt. Frail. Her question—so cordial, courteous, and innocent—wasn’t even peppered with swear words.
“I think, madam, that you are overtaxing your strength.”
“What strength? I have none left. This city took what strength I had. And my daughter.”
“Why are you so angry with me?”
“Because you got over it. You’re still alive. My Efrosa is gone forever.”
“Would it have been better if I’d killed myself too?”
I couldn’t understand why my grandma was talking so bizarrely.
“Peri, how did you manage to live with that pain? How could you get through life?”
At that point, Barber Ali said to her, “Ah, Perihan Hanım, is that what people call you for short? Peri?”
My grandma promptly swung her alligator-skin purse at his head.
Ha! My grandma was herself again!
Barber Ali threw up his hands to ward off the unexpected blow. He had a tattoo of a girl on his arm that looked like one of Amy’s tattoos. I suppose he hadn’t been able to come up with anything else to get tattooed there, and I also wonder why Amy got the sort of tattoo a guy would choose. As Barber Ali tried to dodge the purse, the round hairbrush in his back pocket fell to the ground, and the can of hair spray that he used to fix his handiwork in place toppled down as well. A container of combs took part in the chaos too when Barber Ali’s big ass swung around, knocking it over along with a tuft of hair which, dutifully following the rules of nature, drifted to the floor.
Everyone in the barbershop, and everything as well, was thrown into bewilderment: the manicurist, the real estate agent getting a manicure, the assistant sweeping the floor, the models in the framed photographs with immaculate hair, the hair dye catalog, the smell of ammonia in the air, the old hair curlers that Barber Ali couldn’t bring himself to throw out, the blow-dryers with diffusers, the glinting scissors, the towels washed without fabric softener, the blue light of the sterilizer used for the manicure set, and the moth flittering around above our heads.
At the time, I couldn’t figure out why my grandma had acted that way with the old woman.
Upon our return to the building, she sent me home, watching from behind as I reached up to ring our doorbell and then making sure my mother opened the door before she turned to go into her own place. I heard my grandma close her door, not slamming it out of anger but something else, something strange. I even saw it. Those were the days when I started getting the feeling that I could see things that I couldn’t actually see with my eyes—meaning that this ability of mine hadn’t really begun as I sat on that mustard-yellow sofa the night Amy died.
“It’s all just a figment of your imagination . . .” That’s what Pembe would say to me.
That day when I came home from the barber, my mother was happier than I’d ever seen her. She even greeted me with a smile and noticed that I’d had my hair cut. Needless to say, she was like a completely new woman. She had fallen in love.
“To hell with that—everyone falls in love!”
That’s what Derin said. We’d crossed over Unkapanı Bridge, and seeing as we drank some bosa at Vefa Café, it must have been winter. We wandered the streets of that run-down neighborhood, sometimes in silence.
“You know what you should do? Write a novel about our girls’ gang.”
“Maybe you should,” Pembe added.
“To hell with writing!”
“Language, please.”
“Fuck writing. Is that better?”
That’s how I swore for the first time, the words taking flight from my lips.
“As easy as unraveling a sock, right? As if!” I said.
“They asked what that expression meant on the end-of-year exam. I didn’t know the answer.”
“Pathetic!”
So, what were we doing there? Now I can see that we were in the grips of tedium. But the future was going to bring something entirely different to our lives, so different that we wouldn’t even be able to recognize ourselves anymore. In those days, when we didn’t know what fate had in store for us, we were preoccupied with winding up the springs of our souls. Perhaps it would be better to say that we weren’t doing that to ourselves but the world around us was doing it. In short, the system. It did whatever it wanted, and it did it for us. Supposedly.
Love exploded into my mother’s life like a bomb, bringing with it all sorts of new wonders. For example, she’d cook up diced beef for dinner along with something she threw together, like a pot of mushy rice or a salad of tomatoes and cucumbers. And I, looking as adorable and well behaved as a five- or six-year-old girl can be, gobbled it all down with a grin. No one could outdo me in putting on acts, and there was a reason for everything.
Mother, love me.
She would look at me and smile.
The truth of the matter, however, is that she was smiling at the thoughts of love swirling through her mind, at the feeling of being filled with love. Allow me to go on: Around six months earlier, she’d started working for a well-known dietician. The weight-loss clinic was in the neighborhood of Nişantaşı, and according to the company’s website, their office was “right across the street from the Toothsome Diner.” Everyone in Istanbul who loves gorging themselves knows the place, and the location was ideal for anyone ready to break their diet. My mother was feeling better because she was finally working again. This all happened before the days when she couldn’t land a job no matter how hard she tried, back when she didn’t truly appreciate the value of the work she had. But now, making money brought back her self-confidence, and at the very least she was able to toss out her broken-down Adidas sneakers and buy a new pair of flats. After putting on a pair of black trousers and one of three blouses—all the same cut but different colors—she’d stride off to work, her old deerskin purse slung over her shoulder and her hair pulled into a swinging ponytail. That alone was a miracle for my mother because it meant she’d been saved from those dreary days of not being able to afford to go to the salon for a manicure. There was an odd new elegance about her, a glow you might say. Regardless of how dispirited, disappointed, and worn out my mother may have been, cut off from her own femininity to the extent that she would use scented pads instead of going to the trouble to change her panties when she was having her period, there was a glimmer inside her. The look in her eye was that of a woman harried by years of unhappiness but still hopeful, and soon enough, love would transform her life.
One day, the famous dietician she worked for called her into her office.
“How about getting a cup of coffee after work?”
At first my mother had thought she was going to get fired. That was her greatest fear, and for good reason: all the other places where she’d worked had let her go. I think the problem was this: my mother was rebellious at heart. I’ve never understood why she was so passive with my father, when without exception she got fired from or quit all the jobs she’d had in her younger days. And there was something else about my mother as well, an innate resistance to the work involved in food service. She had worked for a number of companies as a food engineer and dietitian for their cafeterias. When her employers wanted her to come up with the cheapest solutions, she’d say things like, “We’d be better off serving motor oil than the stuff you’ve given me, and those rotten vegetables aren’t fit for human consumption.” Needless to say, they wouldn’t keep her for long. Rumor has it that some of those shameless bosses and their co-conspirators have tried to find ways to feed their workers seagull meat instead of chicken. Such dishonesty has worked its way into their DNA. And each and every time my mother was confronted with it, she’d end up losing her job and coming home with tears in her eyes.
One time my father said to her, “It’s because of you. You keep getting yourself fired.”
Before I was born, while she was working at the cafeteria of a publishing house, she managed to get a book of poems published. Yes, my mother wrote a book of poetry. She was a poet. Her book even did quite well, selling so many copies that in 1994 she had the means to buy a leather jacket and knee-length boots, as well as countless other things from the fashion outlet Beymen. That’s considerable for a book of poetry.
Enchantress of the Kitchen.
That was the title of her book.
My mother was interviewed time and time again about pieces with titles like “The Kitchen Poetess.” With her flowing hair, piercing gaze, and striking beauty, she proved to be a fascinating young woman in the world of literature.
“She could’ve gone on with it.”
That’s what my aunt—my father’s sister—would say when she was talking about my mother or critiquing her choices.
But she married my father, and I came along.
One of her poems was put to music. It may come as a surprise, but every time the song played, a few kuruş would be deposited in her account thanks to the copyright laws of the day. But I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do the next part justice as it always breaks my heart when women’s lives are brought to ruin.
So, how had she started working as a dietician?
Okay, here goes. Both of them were interested in the arts. I mean, my mother and her sister. My aunt studied at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University’s Department of Traditional Turkish Art. Her real interests, however, lay in graphic design, painting, sculpture, and photography, so even though she got the highest score on the entrance exam, which required that the students submit drawings of the handrail designs on the burned-out Galata Bridge, everyone was surprised when she enrolled in the program for Turkish arts. The reason turned out to be simple: my grandfather had asked a friend of his for advice and that friend said, “If she studies traditional arts, we can get her a job at the Paşabahçe glassworks.” So young women are dependent on the guidance of others despite the fires of creativity burning within them. In other words, they are poor passive creatures despite the fact that they carry within them a gem of artistic skill. Pathetic. Right? Of course, those girls are intelligent and realize what’s going on—that’s why my aunt went on to become a number one floozy at her school. Blow jobs under desks, flickings of the tongue while tracing the finest calligraphic sweeps, swallowing, sucking, and who knows what else. My aunt ended up getting pregnant by a finely sculpted, strapping young man—let’s say a student from the sculpture department. She wound up having a miscarriage, her mother fainted when she heard, her father never found out, my aunt was terrified, the young man ran off, and posthaste she married the son of the owner of an appliance store.
“I said to myself, ‘Save yourself, girl: get married.’” That’s what my aunt said as she was telling the story, but naturally she didn’t describe everything in such graphic detail.
They got her husband smashed the night of the wedding.
Later, they said to him, “I’m telling you! You shouldn’t have had that last glass!”
The hapless groom passed out, and after stripping him, the women of the bride’s family put him into the nuptial bed, the satin sheets of which my aunt had dyed to look bloodied. Her finest work. Because I was so young, the women spoke of it in whispers. The sound of their voices, like a breath of wind, had frightened me.
“I’d always imagined what it would be like the first time. Of course there’d be some rubbing, so the blood wouldn’t really flow but would be more of a smear akin to a paintbrush stroke. Like the art of paper marbling, that’s how I imagined it.”
My aunt’s name was Hülya, meaning “dream” or “fantasy.” They couldn’t have picked a better name for the woman she’d become: imaginative, cheerful, filled with exuberance, sharp witted in the face of life’s unexpected twists. Sadly, she was unaware of the fact that she could’ve become a famous artist with those sheets she’d dyed. That was her story. So that’s how my mother and aunt just missed the boat of art, that second life after death, and the chance for Hülya to become an artist, a new Tracey Emin. If you don’t know who Tracey Emin is, you can Google it. Those women never really came into their own, partly because of their families and partly because of their tendency to bow under pressure, as well as their proclivity for giving up at the drop of a hat. It’s a tragedy that a woman could be held back like that when she carries within herself all those feelings of rebellion, freedom, and the strength to stand on her own two feet. Rise up against everything, resist, shout . . . And just when you have the chance to be a poet or an artist in your grasp, cave to the pressure! Self-betrayal at its finest.
My aunt’s marriage, established on bedsheets dyed with “virginal blood” as a symbol of her supposed virginity, was all she had to cling to in life. But my mother’s book of poetry, written so many years earlier, was about to transform her world.
So, where were we in my mother’s story? In the office of her boss, the high-society dietician, and now that
they had finished work for the day, it was time to have that cup of coffee together. The dietician was famous for her candidness with her patients as well as her employees, and she displayed it now: “For the love of God, what’ve you come to?”
My mother later confessed to a friend that she was embarrassed when she heard those words. In those days, she always had her phone at hand, and she had just finished another free yet useless telephone therapy session with a woman in desperate need of help. My mother’s three friends, to whom she would bare her heart, sat there looking at her expectantly. And bare her heart she did.
“I just love listening to you,” one of them said. “It’s like listening to radio drama.”
Unruffled by the comment, my mother went on, speaking as if she was reading a fairy tale for adults, throwing in a dash of humor at times and breaking into a dramatic flourish at others. One thing is certain, however: her dramatic flourishes fell flat. What her friends wanted to hear were stories of love, passion, and sex steeped in hope.
When my mother’s boss said, “You need to pull yourself together,” something changed.
My mother started to change, all because of the personal attentions that queen of dieticians lavished on her, such as taking her shopping—and then withholding what she spent from my mother’s paychecks. But the thing is, she had no need for such “pampering.” She could clean up quite nicely, when she wanted to. But it was the prospect of love that set off a spark within her.
So, who did my mother fall in love with?
Yes, we’re coming to that blazing point. She heard the footsteps of love, as soft and gentle as a fairy’s.
The path of that doctor who had once caught my mother’s eye, inspired admiration in her heart, and made her swoon at first sight led directly toward the clinic where she worked. He was a cardiologist, you see, and he was going into business with them.
Love never loses its way.
The first time my mother saw the doctor, she’d been so taken by him that she couldn’t sleep a wink that night.
And where had she seen him? At a hotel where we, as a family, were vacationing.
The Girl in the Tree Page 6