It Was Best Like This by Margarida Chagas

They’re talking about me. I can’t hear the exact words, but I know it. Their eyes carefully shoot glances from time to time while their mouths move fast with worry and sympathy. I need someone to tell the doctor tomorrow that I don’t like this new medication. It makes my thoughts dizzy and my legs slower.

They choose what I eat, what I drink, when I drink, what I wear. Year after year, I watch them sing “happy birthday”, when they wish me another year, I hope God isn’t listening. I still have things I want to tell you and only for you to hear, I don’t like this new medication, they won’t listen and I’m not sure I’m talking.

I always knew my grandmother to be a very sick woman who couldn’t leave her room on the first floor. When I was young, I used to visit her and ran errands if needed. Not as many times as she would like, she once told me, “you’re always passing by and never stepping in, always running away from me” I am almost her age now, and every time I tell someone “you’ll appreciate me when I’m gone” my throat bloats with regret. I think about it often and with sorrow for not spending more time with her, but I came to the realization that guilt is a common slow torture when it comes to families. By the time we realize we miss someone it’s already too late, oldest story in the book.  

In addition to be a very sick woman, and because I don’t want you to think that this is the only memory of her that I carry, she was also a seamstress. She was sweet and liked to spoil me. My grandfather was a rude man, but I like to believe life made him that way. He was a miller, turned cereal into flour, he had a watermill to grind wheat and corn. I don’t have anything else to tell you about him.

My mother was born in 1914. She was very active, straight to the point, always ready to help, she was also extremely crafty with a sewing machine and took care of the house and her family. She lived through difficult times, times of war, and because her mother was a very sick woman and her father drank, my mother’s childhood was spent working.

I don’t recall any of the songs, but I remember that she sang a lot, especially church chants. She had a strong will to live and work so nothing would lack for her family. She was extremely sincere and opinionated, always fixing her wavy hair.

I was born in the house where I’ve always lived, but we only lived on the ground floor because the first floor was spacious enough for the church choir to rehearse, so that’s how a part of our house was encroached. I slept in my mother’s sewing room.

I’ve always lived with my parents, even though I was already married, I simply stayed in the same house after they died. I hate when you go away, but I too should have left.

Initially, the kitchen floor was made of dirt and there was a hole that filled with water during the winter storms. We didn’t have a bathroom; we had a pit in the backyard and the baths were taken in a basin with heated water. My favorite toy was a rock, I drew a face on it and made exceptionally tiny dresses for it to wear.

At home, I was the one who did the cleaning.  To wash the clothes, we had to go to the river, a task that I enjoyed and now deeply miss. There was a sense of peace in being there washing my mother’s clothes with the clean running water as my background noise. We had to go to a well to get water, and most of the time, we had to wait for the water to come up so we could fill the pitcher. It was also the only time we got to see, and potentially talk, with boys.

At school, I never had a preference for any boy. We didn’t have much contact because the schools were separated and divided by railings, and we were punished if the teachers caught us interacting.

I can’t remember exactly the first time I saw him.

My favorite outfit was a dress that my mother made in just one night. I was supposed to attend a party the next day and she wanted me to wear something new, so she tore apart one of her skirts, washed the fabric, dried it with a standing iron, and sat down to make me a new dress. It was the first and only time he called me beautiful, while I wore that dress.

Your grandfather was a very friendly person, always in a good mood, hard worker, he was an electrician but there was no job he didn’t know how to do. But I’m not talking about him.

I remember when I saw him in France, but I don’t think that was the first time. My mother gave me that trip as a gift and as an apology, it would probably be the first and last time I would be out of the country, my final chance to experience something new. I stayed with my mother’s cousin who moved there with her family with simply a car and a suitcase in hopes of having a better life, she cleaned the Louvre at night and early in the mornings. Her daughter was two years younger than me and had a tremendous desire to show me that she was superior for living close to Paris. I never protested because she was funny looking, her face never quite grew into her nose, teeth and ears, so I thought she already had a pretty hard time as it was. During the day, I would go with her and we would stroll around Paris as I tried to drink in every possible sight, smell, taste, knowing my sentence awaited me back home.

It was the hottest of the summer days, so suffocating we were obligated to stop at a fountain to freshen up. My mother’s cousin’s daughter spotted her friends and didn’t want me to tag along, I wouldn’t understand a thing. I waited for her, seated on the cold stone of the fountain, when I saw him.

We started talking but I had to come back to the house I’ve always lived in, so we wrote. I went through countless sleepless nights dreaming about what he was going to say next in his letters, he remembered the details I thought no one noticed, said my hands were tiny at that fountain in France and that I was too curious about other people’s lives, especially lives better than mine. He was a poet, or at least tried to be one, only wrote about angels and God, I’ve never seen anything like that at home. The problem with writing about angels and God is that one can read about a such repeated and grand subject one too many times. His letters got sadder, he had trouble with publishing. One day, I got his last words without previous notice that it would be a goodbye. I waited until I couldn’t, I waited until I was old enough to receive side glances for not being married. I waited until a film of dust began to collect on my shoes. I spent a lifetime waiting.

My mother’s cousin’s daughter wrote me of his suicide, jumped in front of a train, four bags were needed to cover the dismemberment. I wouldn’t move to France and he wouldn’t be saved by his angels and God, so I guess it was best like this.

I am still eagerly waiting, and if they’re not listening, and if I’m not talking, then I hope it takes me soon.

Margarida Chagas

Image: Pixabay.com – A wide view of Paris by night with a Sinistre in the foreground nad the Eiffel Tower in the distance.