TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Birke

Her mother was never a mother to her. She was not like the other mothers her friends had who made them eat salad and watched over them to make sure that they took off their shoes as they emerged through the front door. Mothers were supposed to relentlessly offer guests beverages and interrogate boyfriends if they were hungry and make sure their daughter learned how to put on make up. Mothers grew fatter and their hips got wider. Mothers took up new pastimes: like yoga. Mothers served beer at the Gasthaus . Mothers bitched at their teenage daughters; teenage daughters fought their menopausal mothers. Birke watched mothers. She wrote down what they said. She memorized phrases they repeated and recited them in her room, in her father’s apartment, across from Klagenfurt’s train station. SO! What shall we eat tonight? / Are you girls going out?/ Come back before dark? / Croatia is perfect at this time of year. / We would love you to join us!

She hummed like Kathi’s mother always did while she picked fresh lettuce and mint and rosemary from the garden.

She sighed just like Anna’s mother did when her father burped at the dinner table.

She forced her eyes to open up as wide as Erika’s mother’s eyes when they came home from Markus’s house too late.

In Birke’s room— The Theater on the Train Tracks , as she liked to call it—she performed. She wrote the scenes herself!

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