The Desertion
Photo Source: Personal, photographed on October 3rd
Under a dark sky, full of grey clouds, a young woman and a little girl were standing quietly near each other, scrutinizing the road. The air was quite heavy, charged with tension and time seemed to have stopped in anticipation of the impending storm. They were waiting in the bus station, the little girl on the bench, the mother standing, impatiently scanning the road where, occasionally, an old car seldom passes.
They had gone out after eating dinner and were currently waiting for the buses from the city. Aura both wanted and didn’t want the bus to arrive, instinctively knowing that that bus might bring a resolution she wouldn’t wish for her mother’s latest predicament. Just past 30, the mother was beautiful, but her face was cold and serious, somehow frowning, perhaps because she kept her lips tight and tense. When she smiled, her hazel eyes, shadowed by dark circles, didn’t light up, instead, they kept a deep sadness in them as if she had seen many not-so-great things in her life.
They sat in silence. Aura sensed that her mother was tense and did not know what to say to her, out of fear of saying the wrong thing. As usual, she was unsure what to talk to her mother about. When she was telling her about school or friends, her mother looked bored. Aura thought, disappointed in herself, that she was not interesting enough and then asked about her instead. It did not seem to be working better to stir a conversation, as these attempts either made her mother sad or angry.
They had been waiting for weeks now, every evening, for Marcel to come. Today mom didn’t talk to her at all. Aura thought maybe she was angry with herself; she just got a B in school. The silence made her feel invisible and she thought she preferred anger to complete ignorance.
Fearfully, as she usually began conversations with her mother, she said:
“Mommy; what if Marcel doesn’t come tonight either?”
Instead of an answer, she only got a sharp look.
Marcel appeared in my mother’s life about a year ago. Aura had the first contact not with him, but with his parents and sister. She remembered that one evening, on the road, a car had stopped near them and some smiling faces had exchanged greetings with her mother, and then turned their attention to the little girl and asked her how she was.
“Okay, I’m back from the playground!”; came her excited reply.
Aura had felt her mother frown, but she didn’t know what she had said wrong. After the car had disappeared at the first turn of the road, she had started scolding her, right there on the street.
“Why didn’t you say hello?”, the mother had turned to her angrily. “Is this how we raised you? So uneducated? You don’t even know how to greet people? They’ll say you’re a savage. Maybe they don’t even visit on Sunday anymore because of you.”
However, Marcel and his parents had come to visit the following Sunday, a Sunday preceded by long preparations in which the whole house had been turned upside down and the cooking of what seemed to Aura to be tons of food. However, the mother was not content with how things turned out. They were unable to serve on the five types of cakes they prepared because the ants had invaded one in the pantry.
The engagement party had gone well, however, for the wedding had taken place on a summer’s day, in the city, not long after the Sunday visit. Mom and Marcel had promised Aura that they would take her to live with them when their house would be ready. For the next few months, Aura heard little of her mother and saw her even less. She was doing a lot of work building the house and going to her daily job, and she had little time left to go visit the little girl, too, she said.
However, not long after the wedding, Aura started to catch worried whispers being exchanged by their grandparents. Marcel had spent the night of the wedding crying that he did not raise enough money to buy a new car. Her mother had lost weight while managing the building of the house and she started to look unhealthy, thin, and overly tired. She no longer contributed to the upbringing of her little girl, because she spent all her money on the construction of the new house.
One spring evening, they received a surprise visit from her mother. Thin, drawn in the face, sad, and with labored hands. Aura didn’t care, she was glad to have her mother back, and jumped into her arms.
Later in the evening of her return, hidden in the hallway, Aura had listened curiously to what she was talking to her grandmother. It was not just a simple visit it seemed, her mother came to stay this time.
“Come on, don’t cry because you broke up with him. You have us, you have your daughter, the world doesn’t begin and end with this man”, grandma told her.
“He has to come and take me back. I am divorced, and I have a child, who will marry me now after 2 divorces and a child? It’s hard without a man”, she lamented.
“And what are you doing with your daughter? He specifically said he does not want anymore for her to come live with you once the house is completed”.
“Aura is still small, she can continue to live here, as she did so far”.
“So you will just leave her here for good? Would you leave your daughter for a man?”
A long silence followed afterward.
And so began their night after night waiting at the bus stop, mother and daughter, 2 silent shadows in the evening darkness, each waiting for something else.
“He will come eventually”, said the mother with unwavering determination, nervously lighting a cigarette.
“You promised me you’d quit smoking”, answered Aura pleadingly.
“I have only one pleasure left in life, should I give it up too?”, came the hoarse reply.
“I was hoping that I would bring you pleasure in life”, said Aura innocently.
The mother suddenly turned to her, as if something hit her overhead, and looked at her piercingly. It was as if she was seeing her for the first time. A head-to-toe measurement, seeing a thin and tall girl, almost nothing but bones. Aura felt ashamed, her clothes were small and stained with food. Also, her curly hair looked tangled no matter how much it was brushed.
She had tried to hold her gaze, but it seemed to burn her, those penetrating and cold eyes seemed to search through her soul. She felt like her mom was looking for something, and it seemed like whatever she was looking for, she wasn’t going to find it. Not at her.
“You look exactly like your father”, her mother said dryly at last. She looked deeply displeased.
Aura felt as if she had been punched in the chest. For the first time, she had been seen, indeed seen, but she felt within herself that she had disappointed and failed to live up to expectations.
She had gone to bed sobbing, while outside the sky had crashed down on the earth and the rain was beating furiously on the windows. The storm outside mirrored the one inside.
When she woke up, something was different in the air. There was a silence in the house that did not bode well. An empty house, devoid of feelings. She had understood then that a decision had been made the previous evening and she expected the worst.
She had jumped out of bed and ran through the rain to the bus stop, straight into her pajamas, tears streaming down her face. She had arrived at the station just as the bus was coming.
“Mommy, don’t go away”, she threw herself into his arms, clinging to her.
Gently but firmly, the mother pushed her away until she let go of everything. She spoke coldly as if she were buying bread, without looking her in the eye.
“I decided to go back to Marcel. Be good and listen to grandma.”
She kissed her forehead and got on the bus.
At the station, a little girl stood in the rain long after the bus disappeared, tears streaming down her face.
