З життя
Я з’явилася на світ вже чотирирічною
В мене не залишилося жодного спогаду.
Я не бажаю нічого пам’ятати.
Я прагну забути ті видіння, що іноді з’являються у мене в голові.
Я з’явилася на світ вже чотирирічною. Довго не могла зрозуміти, що зі мною відбувається. Щось сіре огортало і приховувало моє раннє дитинство. Усе здавалось у тумані, похмуре, зле… Це постійна безпорадність і постійний плач мого молодшого братика. Він завжди хотів їсти. І плакав. І плакав. Цей плач переслідує мене й досі.
Дивлюся на плачучу дитину на вулиці, і серце завмирає. Заглядаю в його обличчя — ні, не худий, в руках тримає бублик. Дивлюся на його маму — гарна, молода, добре одягнена… твереза! Так чому ти плачеш?! У тебе все є! Так хочеться крикнути цьому хлопчику — стій, не ридай! Обійми свою маму і не відпускай! Ніколи не відпускай!!!
Найбільше в світі боюся втратити маму. Мою мамусю, у якої я народилася, коли мені було чотири роки.
Пам’ятаю, як чекала свою біомаму, біобабусю в притулку. Пам’ятаю, як бабуся прийшла. Сьогодні я не їла цукерок і віддала їх їй, попросила передати Ванюші. Вона взяла. А через тиждень принесла мені їх як пригощання… тільки половину. Я і цьому була рада. Бабуся сказала: «Чекай на мене», і більше я її не бачила.
«Добрі» люди сказали, що мене навряд чи заберуть. Мама п’є, бабуся п’є, тато сказав, що я не його донька. У прийомну сім’ю мене теж не візьмуть, бо з мною йде «додаток» — Ваня, мій братик, а він хворіє. Хворих дітей нікому не потрібно.
Я відразу все зрозуміла. Я й не чекала, я знала, що нікому не потрібна. Якщо рідні не приходять за мною, значить, я погана. Найгірша дівчина на світі. Це я в усьому винна! Це через те, що я не могла заспокоїти вічно плачучого брата, нас забрали з дому. Я готова до будь-якого покарання.
Коли не чекаєш, не сподіваєшся — стає легше. Усе навколо байдужає. Мені було все одно, що я їм, що п’ю, у що вдягнена, куди нас ведуть, навіщо. Я заснула, навіть не заснула — я померла. Спочатку всередині, а потім моє тіло, підтримуючи мене, не захотіло жити.
Мені було дуже погано. Болісно. Але я це заслужила. Уколы, крапельниці, ліки і тиша… довга виснажлива тиша. Раптом — біля мого вуха чийсь подих. Голос. Неочікувано стало тепло і м’яко. Я відкрила очі. Хтось тримає мене на руках. Без метушні, якось неспішно, ніжно, але дуже міцно. Хтось мене заколисує і шепче на вухо нерозбірливе.
Не можу згадати, чи то пісня, чи молитва. Я швидко закрила очі. Раптом це сон і він піде. Ні-ні! Сон, не йди! Мені так добре зараз!
Це той момент, який я згадую найчастіше. Це була моя перша зустріч з мамусею. Її син хворів. В лікарні Мишкові стало легше, він заснув. Мама вклала його й, обгорнувши мене у свою кофту, качала мене на руках. Пам’ятаю її руки, що глади
ли моє волосся і прибирали його з обличчя. Пам’ятаю її запах, пам’ятаю шепіт біля моєї щоки.
Пам’ятаю, як боялася відкрити очі. Як сльози зрадницьки ли
лися з очей по щоках, як мама витирала їх м’якою долонею. А потім її сльози почали падати на мене. Я пам’ятаю, як завила… не заплакала, а завила, як собачка. Біль, що сиділа у мені, вирвалась назовні у найневідповідніший момент. Не відкриваючи очей, я вила. На всю лікарню.
Прийшли лікарі і забрали мене у мами. Я не могла пробачити собі, що не стрималася, бо якщо б я мовчала, обійми тривали б вічно.
Наступного разу я побачила маму вже в «Авісі». Час, коли вона мене відвідувала, був дуже важким. Я зі всіх сил намагалась не вірити, не чекати її. А може, просто нічого не розуміла. Зараз важко сказати.
Якось вранці мама забрала мене додому. Такою красивою я ще ніколи не була. На мені було все нове. Сукня, колгoтки, туфлі, кофтина і навіть спідня білизна. Того дня ми назавжди залишили минуле.
У новому житті у мене було все. Ліжко і стіл, подушки і іграшки, повна шафа гарного одягу і чарівні книги. Були Мишко і Ліля. Не було лише Ванюшки…
Перший час я боялась рухатись. Намагалася менше говорити і їсти. Хотіла сподобатися мамі і татові, або хоча б не заважати їм. Я не знала, як треба поводитися. І все чекала, коли ж буде погано. Коли покарання знайде мене. Усе змінилося, коли мама сказала, що ніколи і ні за що не віддасть мене нікому!
Що б я не зробила. Сказала, що я її дитина, а вона моя мама. І це вирішено не нами, а долею. А доля знає краще. Отже, сказала мама, давай пошкодуємо! Скільки осінніх листків ми розкидали того дня! Батьки закопували нас із Мишком в листя. Мама сплела яскраві віночки на голови, і ми стали схожі один на одного.
Ваня з’явився в домі зовсім несподівано. Я його не впізнала і довго не вірила, що це мій брат. Коли я зрозуміла, кого мама привела додому, жах наповнив мене. А раптом він буде плакати, пустувати, шуміти?! Нас заберуть з дому. Я благала Ваню вести себе тихіше, не відходила від нього, щоб він нічого не зіпсував. А якщо б зіпсував, мама цього би не помітила. А траплялося з Ванею щось постійно. Братик погано ходив, тягнув ніжку, і ручка не працювала зовсім. Він усе випускав і розбивав, а мама тільки сміялася і обіймала його. Незабаром я зрозуміла, що Вані також не загрожує вигнання, і я перестала хвилюватися.
Кожну вільну хвилинку я намагаюся проводити з мамою. Ми годинами сидимо і розмовляємо про різне. Пам’ятаю, як у великій компанії мамині подружки згадували, з якою вагою і зростом народилися їхні діти. Як вони вперше побачили своїх малюків. У мене земля з-під ніг пішла. Я не могла дихати.
Мама усміхнулася і сказала, що Мишко народився вагою 3800 і 52 см, Машенька вагою 3200 і 47 см зростом, а Ванюшка 2700 і 45 см, а Ліличка 2100 і 44 см, і розповіла, як вперше нас побачила, які ми були хороші і рідні, що вона відчула. Я так мріяла, щоб це було правдою, що незабаром повірила в цю прекрасну казку і замінювала нею свої важкі спогади.
Мама часто колисала мене, загортаючи, як малюка. Обожнюю ці моменти. І навіть зараз, коли мене щось тривожить, сідаю поруч з мамою, беру її за руку і розумію, що немає нічого ріднішого, ніж цей запах, добра усмішка, турботливий погляд. Дивно, але де б я не була, чим би не займалася, перед очима завжди мамині очі. Вони можуть бути веселими, сумними, радісними або тривожними, втомленими або сяючими. І завжди люблячими! Мама дивиться на мене з гордістю або тривогою… але ніколи з байдужістю або докором. Я, точніше, ми всі, намагаємося бути схожими на нашу маму. І бажаємо всім дітям на землі бачити такі мамині очі.
Автор: Маша Афоніна.
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The Manor Smelled of French Perfume and Lovelessness. Little Lizzie Knew Only One Pair of Warm Hands—Those of the Housekeeper, Nora. But One Day Money Disappeared from the Safe, and Those Hands Were Gone Forever. Twenty Years Passed. Now Lizzie Stands on a Doorstep, Her Child in Her Arms and a Truth Burning in Her Throat… *** The Dough Smelled Like Home. Not the home with a marble staircase and three-tiered crystal chandelier where Lizzie grew up, but a real home—the kind she invented for herself, sitting on a kitchen stool, watching Nora’s hands, red from washing, knead springy dough. “Mum, why is dough alive?” she would ask at five years old. “Because it breathes,” Nora replied without looking up. “See how it bubbles? It’s happy—it knows it’ll soon be in the oven. Strange, isn’t it? To rejoice at fire.” Lizzie didn’t understand then. Now—she got it. She stood by the side of a battered country lane, clutching four-year-old Micky to her chest. The bus had spat them out into the grey February dusk; all around, just silence—the singular village quiet where you can hear snow creak under a stranger’s boots three houses away. Micky didn’t cry. He had almost stopped crying altogether in the last six months—he’d learned. He just looked at her with dark, uncannily grave eyes, and every time Lizzie flinched: her ex’s eyes. His chin. His silences—the kind that always hid something. Don’t think of him. Not now. “Mum, I’m cold.” “I know, sweetheart. We’ll find it soon.” She didn’t know the address. Didn’t even know if Nora was alive—twenty years had passed, a lifetime. All she remembered: “Pinewood, Oxfordshire.” And the scent of dough. The warmth of those hands—the only ones in that whole big house that ever stroked her hair just because. The lane led them past tilting fences; in some windows, lights glowed—dull yellow, but alive. Lizzie stopped at the last cottage, simply because her legs would go no further and Micky had grown too heavy. The gate creaked. Two snow-covered steps up to the porch. A weathered, peeling door. She knocked. Silence. Then—shuffling footsteps. The sound of a bolt dragging. And a voice—hoarse, aged, yet so unmistakable that Lizzie’s breath caught— “Who’s out in this darkness?” The door swung open. On the threshold was a tiny old lady in a knitted cardigan over her nightie. Her face—like a baked apple, a thousand wrinkles. But the eyes—the same. Faded, blue, still full of life. “Nora…” The old woman froze. Then slowly lifted the very same hand—knotted and work-worn—and touched Lizzie’s cheek. “Merciful heavens… Lissie?” Lizzie’s knees buckled. She stood there, clutching her son, unable to speak, tears streaming hot down her frozen cheeks. Nora asked nothing. Not “where from?” Not “why?” Not “what’s happened?” She simply unhooked her old wool coat and threw it round Lizzie’s shoulders. Then gently lifted Micky—he didn’t even flinch, only watched with those solemn eyes—and pulled him close. “Well, you’re home now, my darling,” Nora said. “Come in. Come in, love.” *** Twenty years. It’s enough time to build an empire and lose it. To forget your native tongue. To bury your parents—though Lizzie’s were still alive, just as distant as hired furniture. As a child, she thought their house was the whole world. Four storeys of happiness: a lounge with a fireplace, her father’s wood-panelled study, which smelled of cigars and sternness, her mother’s plush bedroom with velvet drapes, and—down in the basement—the kitchen. Nora’s kingdom. “Lizzie, don’t be in here,” nannies and tutors would chide. “You should be upstairs, with Mummy.” But Mummy was always on the phone. Always. With friends, with business partners, with lovers—Lizzie didn’t understand, but she sensed: something was wrong. Something not right in the way her mother laughed into the phone and how her face changed when Dad walked in. But in the kitchen, things were right. Nora taught her to pinch pierogis—crooked, lumpy, ragged seams. They watched the dough rise together—“Hush, Lizzie, don’t make a sound or you’ll upset it.” When shouts started upstairs, Nora would sit her on her knee and sing—something simple, wordless, just a melody. “Nora, are you my mother?” she once asked at six. “Of course not, miss. I’m just the help.” “Then why do I love you more than Mummy?” Nora fell silent, stroking Lizzie’s hair. Then she whispered, “Love doesn’t ask, see. It just comes, and that’s it. You love your mum, too—just different.” But Lizzie didn’t. She knew it, even then—with a child’s forbidden clarity. Mum was beautiful, Mum was important, Mum bought her dresses and took her to Paris. But Mum never sat up when Lizzie was ill. That was Nora—nights on end, her cool hand on Lizzie’s brow. Then came that night. *** “Eighty thousand,” Lizzie overheard from behind a half-closed door. “From the safe. I know I put it there.” “Maybe you spent it and forgot?” “Edward!” Her father’s voice was tired, flat, like everything about him in those years. “All right, all right. Who had access?” “Nora cleaned the study. She knows the code—I told her to dust.” A pause. Lizzie pressed herself to the wall, feeling something vital tear inside. “Her mother has cancer,” Dad said. “Treatment’s expensive. She asked for an advance last month.” “I didn’t give it.” “Why?” “Because she’s staff, Edward. If staff gets handouts for every mum, dad, brother—” “Harriet.” “What, Harriet? You can see for yourself. She needed the money. She had access—” “We don’t know for sure.” “Do you want the police? A scandal? For everyone to know we have thieves in our house?” More silence. Lizzie closed her eyes. She was nine—old enough to understand, too young to change a thing. Next morning, Nora packed her things. Lizzie watched from behind a door—a small girl in teddy bear pyjamas, barefoot on the cold floor. Nora folded her few possessions: a robe, slippers, a worn Saint Nicholas icon from her bedside. “Nora…” Nora turned. Calm face, just puffy, reddened eyes. “Lissie. Why aren’t you asleep?” “You’re leaving?” “I am, love. To my mother—she’s not well.” “What about me?” Nora knelt—so their eyes were level. She always smelled of dough—even when she hadn’t baked. “You’ll grow up, Lizzie. Grow into a good person. Maybe one day you’ll visit me in Pinewood. Remember?” “Pinewood.” “Good girl.” She kissed Lizzie’s forehead—quick, secretive—and left. The door closed. The lock clicked. That smell—the dough, the warmth, home—vanished forever. *** The cottage was tiny. One room, a stove in the corner, a table with an oilcloth, two beds behind a faded floral curtain. On the wall, that familiar Saint Nicholas icon, blackened by time and candle smoke. Nora bustled—putting the kettle on, fetching jam from the larder, making up the bed for Micky. “Sit, sit, Lissie. There’s no truth in tired feet. Warm up, we’ll talk after.” But Lizzie couldn’t sit. She stood in this poor, shabby hut—she, whose parents once owned a four-storey mansion—and felt something strange. Peace. For the first time in years—real, solid peace. As if something pulled tight within her had finally gone slack. “Nora,” she managed, voice cracking, “Nora, I’m sorry.” “For what, love?” “For not protecting you. For saying nothing for all these years. For…” She faltered. How to say it? How to explain? Micky was already asleep—gone the instant his head hit the pillow. Nora sat opposite her, tea cup in gnarled hands, waiting. So Lizzie told her. How after Nora left, the house became utterly foreign. Her parents divorced two years later—her father’s empire was a house of cards, lost in the crash, their flat, their cars, their country cottage vanished. Her mother fled to Germany with a new husband; her father drank himself to death in a bedsit when Lizzie was twenty-three. She was all alone. “Then there was Tom,” she said, staring at the table. “We knew each other since school. He used to visit us—you remember? Skinny, messy, always stealing sweets from the bowl.” Nora nodded. “I thought—this is it. Family, at last. Mine. But… he was a gambler, Nora. Cards, slots, you name it. I never knew. He hid it. By the time I found out—it was too late. Debts. Lenders. Micky…” She trailed off. Logs crackled in the stove. The candle-mote flickered against the icon, its shadow trembling up the wall. “When I said I was filing for divorce, he… he thought a confession would save him. That I’d forgive. Appreciate his honesty.” “Confess what, love?” Lizzie met her eyes. “He took the money. All those years ago. From the safe. Saw the code—peeked when visiting. He needed… I can’t even remember why. But yes—for his debts. And you were blamed.” Silence. Nora sat motionless. Her face unreadable. Only her hands around the mug whitened at the knuckles. “Nora, I’m sorry. I only found out last week. I didn’t know, I—” “Hush now.” Nora got up, slowly knelt—creaking with age—as she had twenty years before, meeting Lizzie eye to eye. “My darling. What are you guilty of?” “But your mother… You needed money for her treatment—” “She passed a year later, poor soul.” Nora crossed herself. “What of it? I live. Veg patch, goats. Good neighbours. I never needed much.” “They shoved you out—like a thief!” “Doesn’t life sometimes take us to the truth through a lie?” Nora whispered. “If I’d stayed, I’d have missed my mother’s last year. Being with her then—that was worth everything.” Lizzie was quiet. Her chest burned—shame, sorrow, relief, gratitude—all in a tangle. “I was angry,” said Nora. “Of course I was. I’d never so much as scuffed a penny in my life. Yet there I was—a common thief. But after a while… the anger faded. Not right away. Took years. But it did. Because if you carry bitterness, it eats you alive. I wanted to live.” She took Lizzie’s hands—cold, rough, knotted. “And here you are now. With your boy. At my old door. That means you remembered. Means you loved. And that’s worth more than any safeful of cash.” Lizzie cried. Not like adults do—quietly, to themselves. Like children. Sobbing, face pressed to Nora’s thin shoulder. *** In the morning, Lizzie woke to a smell. Dough. She opened her eyes. Micky snored beside her on the pillow. Behind the curtain, Nora clattered softly. “Nora?” “You’re up, sweetheart? Come, the pies will go cold.” Pies. Lizzie got up and, dream-like, stepped into the kitchen. On yesterday’s newspaper sat a tray of golden, misshapen pies, crimped at the edges just like when she was small. And they smelled—like home. “I was thinking,” said Nora, pouring tea into a chipped mug, “they need help at the village library. Pays little, but you don’t need much here. We’ll get Micky into nursery—Val’s in charge, she’s lovely. After that—we’ll see.” She said this so simply, as though everything was settled, everything perfectly natural. “Nora,” Lizzie faltered, “I’m… I’m nobody to you. All these years. Why did you—?” “Why what?” “Why take me in? No questions? Just like that?” Nora looked at her—that same childhood gaze. Clear, wise, kind. “Remember asking why dough is alive?” “Because it breathes.” “Exactly, love. And so does love. You can’t fire it, can’t dismiss it. If it settles in, it stays. Twenty years, thirty—you only have to wait.” She set a pie before Lizzie—warm, soft, filled with apple. “Come on. You’re skin and bone, dear.” Lizzie took a bite. For the first time in years—she smiled. The sky lightened. Snow shimmered under the first rays, and the world—vast, unfair, complicated—seemed briefly simple and kind. Like Nora’s pies. Like her hands. Like the quiet, steadfast love that cannot be sacked. Micky tumbled out, rubbing his eyes. “Mum, it smells yummy.” “Grandma Nora baked for us.” “Grand-ma?” He mouthed the word, studying Nora. She smiled—crinkles scattering, her eyes lighting up. “That’s right, love. Come eat.” And he joined them. For the first time in months, he laughed—when Nora showed him how to shape silly dough men. Lizzie watched—her son and the woman she once called mother—and understood: here was home. Not walls, marble, chandeliers. Just warm hands. Just the smell of dough. Just love—plain, earthy, unspoken. Love that can’t be bought or sold, that just is—while ever a single heart still beats. Funny thing, the memory of the heart. We forget dates, faces, whole eras, yet the aroma of mum’s pies lingers to our last breath. Maybe because love doesn’t live in the mind. It’s somewhere deeper, where neither hurt nor years can reach it. And sometimes you have to lose everything—status, money, pride—just to remember the way home. To the hands that wait.
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