I listen to my mother through the wall. We have never met, but I know it’s her. In the morning, she pushes back her chair at twenty after eight. I listen to melodic clinks as she tidies up. When I am alone, she is there, moving through her apartment as I move through mine.
My mother’s dog paces no more than three rounds twice a day. At six p.m. my mother opens a can while the dogs claws clack on the linoleum. I listen to her chop carrots. I listen to her put on a small pot of rice.
When I need advice, my mother plays jazz on the radio. When I need a friend, she watches a talk show on TV. Once, after I cried myself to sleep, I dreamt of her leaning low to my ear singing “The Sound of Your Cry”. I woke up to Elvis bleeding through the wall. She was playing it for me.
If she is listening, I move with precision, enacting an elaborate composition of kitchen momentum. I stack plates in rhythm, throw cutlery in melody. I want her to know I’m busy, busy trying. I clean the house so she knows I’m not falling apart. I make appointments over the phone so she can hear I have it all together. I start to cook dinner as she puts the rice on. I’m not falling apart, over here on my side of the wall, keeping it together.
When I am home in silence, I get emotional. I put away groceries making noise. When she gets home, I sit very still and listen as she puts down her bags, opens a can for her dog. I analyze every perceptible movement until she is still in bed.
The first time I heard someone enter my mother’s apartment, it was a man. The dog barked slowly a few times in his direction. The man sat on the sofa, accepted tea. They spoke in murmurs for an hour. A couple days later, I heard my mother weeping for her dead dog, then calling to arrange a cremation.
The next time the man came to visit my mother, she left with him. I played the radio and pictured them at a restaurant. I saw them laughing, eating, drinking. Hours went by, I forgot to eat. I was heavy, anxious. I figured if they were drinking, so should I. I danced to jazz while they danced to jazz. I flipped quarters into cups as they flipped quarters into fountains all over town. I didn’t know there were so many fountains in this city. I didn’t know I needed a fountain so bad I woke up in the bath.
In the morning there was a silence only true to mornings. I drank two liters of water naked in my kitchen, returned to my bed. Her apartment was silent. I boiled water for tea as I waited for a sound. I waited a week.
The following Sunday I heard the door of my mother’s apartment open. Multiple men began moving furniture. I was frantic. Do I stop them? Was she dead? I ran to the door. I ran back for my wallet. But I had no proof she was my mother. We had nothing in common. The men moved furniture with heavy pushes, weighty drops. Stacking, shuffling, grunting. I sat down; I stood up. The men took their last load down the stairs.
I heard her come into the apartment alone. I laid my ear on the wall between us. I wanted everything I could get. I wanted her to talk to me with jazz. I wanted her to tell me she’d always be there. I heard her walk to the window and throw it open. I heard the wind blow; I heard the sound of her cry. After a few minutes, she closed the window and left the apartment for the last time.
–
Bára Hladík is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and researcher based in Tio’tiá:ke, Montréal. Her micro-chap Book of Mirrors was recently published by Ghost City Press, and she is the founding editor of Theta Wave. Tweet her @baroslavka.