The Woman Behind The Waterfall

by Meriel,Leonora

  “You could almost fly away on this scent,” she says. She closes her eyes.

  I giggle, and make a little hop from one leg to the other.

  “Mama?” She opens her eyes and smiles. She holds out the jar to me.

  “Put them on the table,” she says.

  “Mama? Can I help? Can I do something?”

  She turns and picks up the wooden spoon, which she had put down next to the cooking pot, and she lifts up the lid and there is a rush of steam and the sharp, creamy smell of cooked rabbit pours out into the kitchen.

  “It’s ready,” she says. “Of course you can help. Fetch the forks and glasses and sit down. I can’t remember when we last ate rabbit. Do you remember?”

  “I don’t think I ever have,” I say.

  Mama spoons boiled potatoes onto our chipped plates and then she lays two pieces of rabbit onto each and pours juice over them and brings them to the table.

  “It feels strange, just the two of us, eating such a good meal like this,” she says. “We should be having guests. We should have invited Sveta.”

  “And Taras and Petro! I want to see them again!”

  “We’ll do that,” Mama says. “We’ll go and see them tomorrow. We’ll invite them for dinner. We can have the rest of the rabbit and I’ll fry potatoes. I can make a cake. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, Mama. I’d like that.”

  Mama pushes her chair away from the table and stands up.

  “Wait here. Eat some of that rabbit. I want to give you something.”

  She goes across the kitchen into the bedroom, and I notice how pretty her hair is – the curls pinned up and shining – and how her face seems to have changed and become softer in the last few days. And then she comes back into the room and she is holding a long box and she says, “Look, little one!” And she crouches down next to my chair and opens the box and inside it is a dark-orange amber necklace with a silver clasp.

  “Your grandmother gave this to me. My mother, Zoryana. I think you would look beautiful in it.”

  She takes the necklace out of the box and fixes the clasp around my neck.

  “Go and look,” she says.

  I go to the mirror and see the orange beads glowing against my dark skin, and I think that I must look like some exotic queen, a tsaritsya from far away, and I raise my chin and spread my long, black hair over my shoulders like a tsaritsya would, and then I gather it up and hold it with both hands on the top of my head and picture a golden crown there, set with glowing orange jewels.

  “So?”

  I turn away from the mirror.

  “I love it!” I say, and I skip towards Mama, exotic princess from far away, and put my arms around her neck and kiss her.

  “Thank you, Mamochka!”

  And suddenly, I know where I am going to keep this magical necklace. As soon as Mama won’t notice, I am going to take it to the bottom of the garden, to the far corner across from the lily of the valley where there is a fallen log. This is where I keep my treasures. I will hide my necklace here, safe in its box, along with the turquoise egg, which dropped out of a bird’s nest last year, a thin gold ring, which was buried in the roots of the lilac tree, and a small mirror with a red velvet back.

  “You look perfect in it,” Mama says. She reaches out a hand and takes a strand of my hair and she curls it around her finger, as she loves to do. Then she lets it go and turns back to the table.

  “Now let’s finish this rabbit,” she says. “And tomorrow, we’ll go and see Sveta.”

  I sit back down in my place, opposite her, and I think that Mama has looked so happy tonight, and that it is working, that she is opening up to my world, just as Grandmother said that she might, and this thought makes me feel like running and jumping and flying! Then, I remember how Mama was able to fly today, and I wonder if she was able to do this when she was little, and I turn to her and I want to ask her, although I am not quite sure how to ask, and I see that she is not eating the rabbit and the potatoes, but has been looking at me while I have been thinking and she has such a happy expression on her face that all at once, I want to say absolutely nothing.

  I am safe.

  29

  Lyuda pushes open the blue-painted gate with one hand, and with the other she smooths down her skirt and then her hair. Her lips are drawn in a tight line across her face. She closes the gate behind her and looks up to the window of the house. A figure is watching through a net curtain. She raises her hand and the figure turns and moves away from the window.

  Lyuda walks through the garden towards the front of the house. On each side of the path there are tall sunflowers, as yet unopened, and next to the fence is a cherry tree covered in pale pink blossom. The front door opens and a woman comes out onto the wooden porch. She is wearing a faded work-shirt and a patterned headscarf, knotted at the back of her head.

  “Lyuda?”

  “Sveta. Svetichka.”

  The woman takes a step down onto the path. Her forehead wrinkles.

  “Bozhe miy! My god, has something happened? Is Angela alright?”

  “No, no. Angela’s fine. Nothing’s happened. I—”

  “Lyuda, my god, you haven’t been here for so long. It’s got to be seven years since you last came. Where’s Angela?”

  “She’s fine. She’s at home.”

  “You know she comes here. To play with the boys.”

  “I know. Of course I know.”

  “Are you going to come in? Vasya’s out somewhere. Taras is here. Petro is somewhere with his friends. Are you going to come in? I can’t believe you’re here. I don’t have anything to give you. I could have made a cake. Bozhe miy! No, it doesn’t matter.”

  Sveta stops talking and she goes over to Lyuda and puts her arms around her and holds her. She puts a hand up to the back of Lyuda’s head and touches her hair.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says. “That you’re here.”

  She pulls away from the embrace and looks at Lyuda.

  “You’re not even crying,” she says.

  “Why would I cry?” says Lyuda, with a little smile.

  “Will you come into the house?”

  “I don’t think so. I just came to ask. It sounds silly now. It’s just that Kolya gave us a rabbit.”

  “Kolya next door?”

  “Yes. He gave us a rabbit. And I cooked it and we were eating it. And it was so strange eating it without someone there. Without any guests.”

  “Of course it felt wrong. And you know I like rabbit.” She pauses. “I cook it better than you as well.”

  Lyuda smiles. “You always cooked better than me. I never really learned, did I?”

  The two women pause.

  “Sveta?”

  Lyuda holds out her hands and Sveta looks down and then takes them. “Sveta, it just feels like... I think I could do it. I think maybe I could do it. I came here—”

  Sveta pulls Lyuda’s hand towards the house. “Come on. Come in for a moment.”

  Lyuda shakes her head. “No. I’ll come in next time.”

  Sveta nods. “I still can’t believe you came. After all this time. I’m going to come and see you tomorrow. Can I do that? I’ll bring you something. I’ll make a cake.”

  “Kolya said he’d fix the rabbit hutches. He said it would be easy to keep rabbits again.”

  “Of course it would. If he can’t do it, I’ll get Vasya to do it. Get him to build some new ones for us while he’s at it. Stop him getting drunk for an afternoon.”

  Lyuda looks at her.

  “I’m sorry, Sveta. Are you alright? I didn’t even ask.”

  “Don’t worry. Ask me tomorrow. I won’t tell you without a mouthful of cake anyway. He drinks, I eat. Look at me!”

  Sveta strokes her hands over her hips and stomach and then laughs. Lyuda smiles and touches her hair.

  “Look at us both,” she says.

  Sveta suddenly turns her head to one side.

  “Lyuda, you know what I heard?” s
he says.

  “What?”

  “I heard they need someone in the post office. Tanya left to have a baby and they put a sign outside.”

  “So?”

  “So you could do it. Why not? You could work there. Get some money. Not much, but something. Why not?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, you should think about it. I mean, why not? Angela will be in school. What are you going to do?”

  “Mama would hate it.”

  “Not as much as she’d hate...” Sveta taps the side of her neck with two fingers, “...drinking.”

  Lyuda turns her head away and Sveta quickly reaches for her hands again.

  “Lyudichka, I’m sorry. I didn’t say a thing. God, I’m so sorry. Forget what I said. I didn’t say anything.”

  “It’s fine.” Lyuda pulls her shoulders up. “It’s only the truth.”

  “Listen, let’s go there tomorrow. I’ll go with you. We’ll just walk down there and talk to them.”

  “Do you think I can do it?”

  “Of course you can do it. I’ll come to your house tomorrow at ten. Will you be ready?”

  Lyuda gives a little nod and Sveta lets go of her hand and takes her in her arms.

  “It wasn’t your fault, you know,” she whispers into Lyuda’s ear. “It wasn’t your fault that he left. They all do it. I sometimes wish Vasya would get the hell out, for all the use he is.”

  Lyuda doesn’t speak, but Sveta can feel her head moving forward and back.

  “I still can’t believe you came,” Sveta says. As she pulls away, she catches the scent of vodka on Lyuda’s breath. She takes a step back.

  “Lyudichka. Tomorrow, when we go there, don’t smell of... you know. I mean, don’t drink before we go.”

  Lyuda’s cheeks redden and she struggles to hold Sveta’s eye. She shakes her head.

  “I won’t. I’ll be ready.”

  T

  “Angela, come and help me get the water.”

  Mama is standing on the kitchen step, holding the water pail.

  I skip towards her through the garden, and I feel my plait coming undone and reach behind me to twist the loose ends together.

  Mama goes ahead and waits for me by the gate. I run up to her and stand on tiptoe to unlatch it. Mama strokes her hand over the splintered wood.

  “We need to fix this,” she says. “I’ll ask someone to come and mend it. Maybe Kolya could do it.” She glances over her shoulder to Kolya’s garden, but he isn’t there.

  We leave the gate unlatched behind us and climb the little slope to the village street.

  “Mama, what happened to the gate? Who broke it?”

  Mother stops and looks down at me. She seems to be thinking, and then she turns her head to one side.

  “How do you know someone broke it?”

  “Well then, how is it broken?”

  She looks at me for a few moments more and then she starts walking again. I see her looking around at the village street, which is lined with cherry trees, the bottom of their trunks freshly painted in limewash white. Our shadows are falling across the dusty road, all the way to the other side. Above us, on the tops of the telegraph poles, are the wide twig baskets of storks’ nests. I see that Mama is smiling.

  “Angela, sometimes things just break. They just break. Sometimes nobody has to break them.”

  We have come to the well, and she stops and puts down the bucket. I can’t seem to understand what she is saying.

  “But can we fix it?”

  Mama starts to laugh and I stare at her because it is the strangest sound. I don’t think I have ever heard her laugh like this before. It sounds like a gurgling, or a deep birdcall, or water trying to squeeze through a blocked tap.

  “Sometimes,” she says, still laughing, and I still can’t understand her.

  “Mama?”

  “Yes?”

  She stops laughing and opens the green-painted lid of the well and lifts the bucket off its hook. She starts to turn the metal handle. She winds it easily with one hand, down and down until the bucket hits the bottom and the chain tightens as it fills with water.

  “Mama?”

  She smiles, and then turns and looks at me. Her eyes seem far away.

  “Can I help you pull it?”

  “Yes. Yes, my love,” she says, and I put my hand over hers and together we wind up the heavy bucket and I can hear the slipslop noise of the water tipping over the edge of the bucket and the echoes as it splashes back down to the bottom of the well. We wind the pail right to the top and then Mama lifts it out and pours it into our own bucket. The water is silver inside, with a glistening, mirrored surface. Mama hangs the well bucket back onto its hook and closes the green roof.

  “May I?” I ask, and she nods her head and I reach down and scoop some of the water into my cupped hands, and I bend my head down to drink it from my palms. Cold, cold, cold! I shiver, then giggle, and I reach down and take another mouthful.

  “Mama, it’s the most delicious thing in the world!” I say, and I look at her, and her face changes and she is laughing again and she dips her hands into the bucket and brings them to her mouth, dripping, and bends over to drink, and when she drops her hands I see that her eyes are shining.

  We carry the bucket back to the house, my hand in hers, and she puts it down on the kitchen step and I cover it with the chipped plate.

  “Mama, may I go and pick some more flowers for the kitchen?” I ask her, and she reaches out and touches my head.

  “Pick any that you like,” she says, and I think that I will go and find her the most beautiful flowers in the entire world, because I suddenly feel that if there is anything I can do to make Mama happy, anything at all, then right now, I have to do it.

  30

  There is a tap at the door. Lyuda looks at herself in the mirror one last time and pats the back of her head, where a neat bun is secured with metal hairpins. She is wearing a tight, grey skirt and a white blouse with lace panels. Her lips are dark purple.

  She walks across the kitchen and opens the door. Sveta is standing on the doorstep, holding a cake. Lyuda smiles nervously at her.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” she says.

  “I can’t believe I’m here,” says Sveta. She steps into the house and pushes off her shoes. She looks around for a pair of slippers, but there aren’t any, and she stands in her bare feet on the stone floor.

  “What kind of cake is it?” asks Lyuda.

  “Prune and walnut,” says Sveta. “It’s all I had. I’d have made honey cake but I didn’t have that black honey.”

  “I like it with prunes. I can’t remember when I last tasted it. Let’s eat it when we get back.”

  “I’ll put it over here.”

  Sveta lays the brown cake in the middle of the kitchen table and looks around for something to cover it with. Lyuda opens a drawer, takes out a clean dishcloth and hands it to her.

  “Keep the flies off,” she says.

  “Are you ready to go?”

  “Do I look ready?”

  Sveta runs her eyes up and down her friend’s figure. “You look great. You look really good. I’d forgotten how blond your hair is. I thought it’d gone darker.”

  Lyuda touches her hair and Sveta glances around the kitchen.

  “It doesn’t look so different here,” she says. “Where’s that wicker chair your tato used to sit in? It was in that corner wasn’t it? He used to sit there all the time.”

  “I threw it out,” says Lyuda. They both look into the empty corner. “After Tato died, Mama started to sit there. And then she died and—”

  “Of course you threw it out,” says Sveta. “Good thing, too.”

  “It felt like they were all sitting there. Watching me. Watching my life.”

  Sveta turns around, taking in the familiar room.

  “It looks just the same,” she says. She walks over to the window and peers out through the net curtains at the lilac tree
and the high grasses and the bench.

  “Lyuda,” she says, turning round, “these curtains are filthy. They’d look much better if you washed them. I could wash them for you. Or get new ones. They’re torn, too.”

  She reaches out a hand and pulls at the material, where there is a fraying hole in the grey net. A spray of dust rises up around her fingers.

  Lyuda hears her words, and she feels a pressure pushing inside her head, and a dizziness. She reaches for the back of a chair to hold onto, and closes her eyes. She can hear herself breathing through her mouth. In and out.

  “Lyuda, are you alright?”

  Lyuda opens her eyes. Sveta has let go of the curtains and is staring at her. Lyuda touches her forehead.

  “Everything’s dirty,” she says at last, breathing heavily. “Everything’s got holes. It’s all filthy. Really. Go and look. See the bedroom, full of dust, filthy. Go and look!”

  “Bozhe, Lyuda. I’m sorry.” Sveta shakes her head. She crosses the kitchen to Lyuda and puts her arms around her. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Lyuda takes a long breath and the dizziness passes. She lets go of the chair.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  She walks around Sveta to the doorway and pushes her feet into a pair of black high-heeled shoes, which are laid out by the entrance. She waits for Sveta to go into the garden and then pulls the front door shut behind her and walks down the path, balancing unsteadily in the shoes. At the bottom of the slope, she pauses, and Sveta starts to laugh.

  “Come on, take my hand,” she says, and she reaches out to Lyuda and pulls her up the slope to the dusty street.

  “I can’t believe you’ve forgotten how to walk in those shoes,” she says. “Do you remember when...”

  She stops, and sees that Lyuda is distracted.

  “Come on. It’s going to be fine. It’s not like they don’t know you.”

  She takes Lyuda’s hand and they walk together down the road. Lyuda glances around her to the windows of the passing houses, to see if the neighbours are watching, but she doesn’t see any faces behind the curtains.