TE23 Double Feature

Selim Özdo ğan

52 Factory Lane

mother walks into the room, Ceyda is sitting on the divan, pretending she’s been reading a book. She gives a start when the phone rings. Gül seems a little surprised but reaches for the receiver. The voice at the other end is so loud that Ceyda can hear it. ‘Hello, I’m calling from the Post Office,’ a woman’s voice says. ‘Have you just tried to reach us?’ ‘No,’ says Gül, ‘we haven’t.’ ‘But it rang on our end.’ ‘Must be a mistake,’ Gül says. ‘We don’t want to make any calls at the moment, thank you.’ ‘A good day to you, then.’ Gül hangs up and looks at Ceyda. ‘Did you use the phone?’ ‘No.’ ‘No,’ Gül repeats. She sits down next to her, takes the book from Ceyda’s hand and looks at it before setting it aside. 212

‘When Ceren was little but big enough not to poo her pants, we went for a picnic. You might remember. One weekend, with Saniye and Yılmaz – I don’t know if Sevgi had been born yet – we drove out into the countryside. And at some point Ceren stopped playing and sat next to me but said nothing. And then I smelled this horrible stench. Worse than in the stable. My father had a cow once, you could tell which one it was from the smell of its dung, he always said. It stank, and I asked Ceren if she might have gone to the toilet in her trousers. I whispered it in her ear so she wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of the others, but she just shook her head. And she sat there so awkwardly, on one side of her bottom. She didn’t understand that she couldn’t hide it.’ Ceyda fixes her mother with a look that resonates with the word Mummy , the word which has hurt Gül so deeply. The word her daughter had crammed all her pain into, the word which could never carry as much despair on paper. But it could do on the phone. Ceyda’s look seems to say: What is it you want to tell me, what is it you want to teach me? You left me all on my own. More than once. ‘I’m not saying you’re lying,’ Gül says, trying to keep her voice soft and gentle, trying to 213