TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Catherine the Great and the Small

moves. He taught me. His father won’t let him perform with us.” My father laughs at that, andMomhugsme, wantsme to sit next to her. She’s so happy that I haven’t turned into the child of a sick mother, she tells my father. “We have made a special young lady of her, a strong girl,” she adds and kisses me. She doesn’t know that I am repulsed by her hospital bed, the room full of needles and tubes, rolls of gauze and cotton batting flecked with pus and blood; my nostrils are filled with the sharp smells of the medical border-zone between life and death. I didn’t know I was losing my mother forever, they failed to explain this to me. That summer I caught only snatches of information that directly affected me, like would she still be in the hospital when I packed for my seaside summer camp, because if she would, I’d leave behind the ugly black crocheted button-down granny sweater, the one with the bat sleeves, which my mother said made it a “hippy sweater,” perfect for summer evenings. It took me a long time to forgive myself for those hospital visits, during which I sulked, bragged, kissed her only when she insisted because I was off to a rehearsal or to play outside our building. For her sake, I had to get through seventh grade with excellent marks, my father had told me the year before. “Maybe she won’t make it to your middle-school graduation,” he added, fished a cigarette out of the red-and- white pack in his shirt pocket, lit it, and stared into thedistance. Explain to me, I wanted to yell, what exactly does that “maybe” mean?! What are the odds, I wanted to know. Because, Mom is so young. She’s the youngest and most fun-loving mom of all my friends’ moms. Can’t she just break free from this horrible 57