TE23 Double Feature

The President Shop

Vesna Mari ć

Chapter 2

sweet breast milk and embraced by Rosa into a softness and fluidity that closed around her like tulip petals. People came to see Mona. They put their faces into the cot, made noises. The first people, the ones whose sounds she rec-ognized, their voices vibrating to her through the walls of the womb by months before, were those of Rosa, Ruben, Diogen, and, of course, the President. Ruben was a boom. Her father’s voice made the air shake, but when he held Mona he trembled with ten-derness. Diogen always sang. Rosa spoke softly and laughed like a storm. When Ruben spoke of the President his voice became something of a whisper. The newborn Mona could fit inside the palm of his hand, and sometimes he carried her around like a loaf of bread, to soothe her wailing. The President’s voice mostly came from the radio or off a vinyl record, when Ruben would play one of the President’s speeches. He had a clipped way of speaking, a soft accent, and 287

Mona could not have taken in the details of the President Shop on the day of her birth that if she had, she would have seen a display of the President’s portrait from all sides. Profile, semi-profile, front facing; young, middle-aged, old; wartime, post war; military clothing—fatigues and dress uniforms—and crisp civilian suits. There were pictures of the President driv-ing one of his limousines in a white suit, decorated with military honors, his hands gloved in white silk; the President’s wife be-side him, wearing a bouffant hairstyle like a dark medieval crown. But Mona, her newborn soul still mindless and full of stars, grasped that birth was suffering and love, and that the outside world was filled with odors and sensations she could not resist or pull away from. She discovered that she could cry, and that most of the time, if she cried, she would be filled with

286