When I stopped being ill

Present

The diary lies on the kitchen counter with a note from my mother.

“Here you’ll find the answer to the question you never dared to ask.”

I pick up the dog-eared diary. It has been used often. The pages are yellowed, some of them coming loose. Many are creased where corners have been folded down.

Her death is so recent my grief hasn’t yet had a chance to begin. Or perhaps I already went through that process while she was still alive.

It’s the first time I’ve entered her house when she isn’t here. In fact, it’s been years since we last had any contact at all.

The house feels welcoming and warm. As if it’s still lived in. Clean, orderly, freshly aired. Just like she was. For a moment I think I smell espresso. That can’t be right, I tell myself. Still, it gives me the idea to make one. The tomcat, Louis, winds around my legs. He wants food, of course. That’s why I’m here.

I fill Louis’s bowl, then take my espresso and the diary out onto the veranda.

I turn it over in my hands. I smell it. I grip the edge and let the pages flick past under my thumb. In a flash I catch sight of notes in the margins. Sections crossed out. I want to read it, but something holds me back. Diaries can contain the most intimate details of a person’s life, and that is precisely the information I do not want to discover about my mother now that she is gone.

As firm as the note beside the book is, the diary itself feels uncertain — likely her last jottings. The woman who wasn’t there when I needed her most.

I don’t turn another page. My thumb rests on one that feels thinner than the rest, as though it has been handled more often. The edge is soft, almost velvety, worn smooth by repetition. I wonder how many times my mother sat here like this, with the same cup of espresso, the same conviction that everything she did was necessary.

Past

With my short little legs I can barely keep up with mamma.

We’re going to the hospital again. Because I’m sick. Like always. I don’t really know what sick is, but I seem to be it a lot.

Mamma talks to the man in white. He says many words in a row. They sound hard and soft all mixed together. I hear my name. I also hear the word serious. I don’t know what that means. It sounds like syrup, but it isn’t syrup.

I look at mamma. Her mouth is tight. That’s not good.

I understand a few words the man in the white coat says.

“…twice a month in the ER. Always a different complaint.”

My mother gets angry. Like always.

“You’re not taking me seriously.”

I don’t know what seriously means. I do know that I’m almost never at school and I miss my friends.

Mamma snaps when I say that.

“You should be grateful to have a mother who takes such good care of you.”

Then I’m quiet.

Sometimes she makes delicious chicken soup. But in one bowl she puts in a spoonful of powder. Never in both. An hour later I feel bad.

Present

My mother didn’t like to talk about my childhood. There are hardly any family photographs. Maybe that’s because we weren’t much of a family. My father died when I was seven. After that, my mother became overprotective. We almost never went outside. We didn’t see other relatives, no friends, no hobbies, no sports. Mamma was far too afraid something might happen to me.

Looking back, she was almost obsessive.

There is one photo where I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt in the middle of summer. I don’t know why, but it feels as though something had to be hidden.

I asked my mother about it once. She gave me an evasive answer.

“So you wouldn’t get sunburned.”

But in the photo, the weather is anything but sunny.

“You had bruises because you’d been fighting. I didn’t want anyone to see what a little troublemaker you were.”

But I was shy and hardly ever at school. Who would I have been fighting with?

I used to keep my arms under the table. Not because anyone told me to, but because it was easier. Fewer questions. Fewer looks. My mother always had an explanation ready. She spoke quickly, with conviction. Her words reached people before mine did. Sometimes she would glance at me, as if checking whether I still knew the right version of the story.

The sun moves on. The shadow of the veranda creeps across my feet. I draw my legs in slightly, a reflex older than my memories. Louis jumps onto the table and taps the book with his paw, as if urging me on. I push it a little farther away. The paper rustles softly.

The diary lies closed beside me. I know I could open it and read what she wrote while I slept, while I was supposedly recovering, while I once again “had something.” Maybe there are charts. Dates. Symptoms. Maybe sentences about me — how fragile I was, how special. How much I needed her.

My memories of childhood are wrapped in a light mist. Sometimes an image surfaces — vague, almost fluid. White coats everywhere. Powders and pills. Sick from the soup and so alone.

Past

School has only been going for three weeks and I’ve already been sick for five days. Mamma is caring and does what she can. During the holidays I stayed with my aunt for two weeks. There, I wasn’t sick.

I told my aunt about it. How often I’d been in the hospital. She said I was exaggerating. That I was making it up.

I didn’t understand. Didn’t she believe me? Was it not true?

I went quiet. Again.

My mother was angry about what I’d told my aunt. Why had I said that? I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. It was true, wasn’t it?

That same evening I was sick again. Once more, just one bowl of soup with a spoonful of powder.

I’m lying on the couch under the brown blanket. It scratches a little at my chin. Mamma says I have to lie still. That’s better for me. She draws the curtains halfway, even though it’s still light outside. The room turns dim.

She sets a glass of water on the table and watches until I drink. I sip slowly because I’m afraid I might spill. If I spill, she gets angry. Her hand rests on my forehead. It’s warm. She says I have a fever, but I don’t feel it.

Outside I hear children laughing. I don’t know who they are, but I imagine them running. I try to hear how loudly they’re laughing. I don’t laugh along. That would be strange.

Mamma says I’m a special girl. That not everyone is this sensitive. She says she’s proud of me. I don’t know exactly why, but I nod.

Present

It feels as though the diary is burning in my hands. Reflexively, I throw it aside.

All at once, I remember. The ailments stopped when I moved out. At the time I didn’t fully grasp it, didn’t see the connection. Mostly, I was relieved that my overprotective mother was no longer occupied every moment of the day with taking care of me.

What the book describes is no longer relevant. What’s written there may not even be true. Just as my mother so often wasn’t.

I walk down the path without looking back. With every step away from the house, my breathing grows calmer, as if my body only now understands it no longer needs to anticipate.

On the street I pause. My arms hang loosely at my sides. No sleeves to hide in. No reason to cover myself.

I didn’t take the diary with me. I left it on the counter.

Without the need to be ill in order to be seen.