My mother was born one Saturday in September. She grew up an only child in a village far away from my father's. She was the pride of her village. They loved her because they couldn't love anything else. She was the youth they desired to recapture. Her name was Darya Movitz.
She was the place where everything came together for them.
THIS IS HOW MUCH THEY LOVED HER:
The priest would step down from his place above the congregation and take her by the hand and lead her up for Communion. He would cross her and bless her. She would kiss him where his bearded cheek met his jaw. He would whisper in her ear, "Thank you little czarina." Darya would skip back down the aisle past the smiling villagers (who whispered loud enough so she COULD hear "She is so beautiful") to her seat next to her silent mother.
Yitzak, who ran the village flower stand would sing to her as she walked by.
"A peony for your thoughts,
Those special things that can't be bought.
A jasmine necklace to match your dress,
You know you're a beautiful mess.
I'd grow a field of golden sunflowers,
Just to bask in the glow of your smile for an hour."
Young boys cat-called from wrought iron balconies as she walked below, ever louder when she dared to bestow on them, a delicious wink.
Young girls clung to her, only wanting her for her secrets. They asked her questions.
"How do you turn your eyes that particular shade of blue?"
"Should my hair be pinned back, like this?"
"I apply my blush in round strokes with a big brush, right?"
But most notably-"What does it feel like to be loved for exactly who you are?"
THIS IS HOW MUCH HER FATHER LOVED HER:
Her father would take her with him to the city. He would hold her hand in the Red Square and tell her, "Pomni, ya vsgda ryadom." Remember, I am always next to you. Little Darya would run a few steps away. She would call to her father, "How about now?"
He would run to her and scoop her up, "Yes! Even now!"
The birds the square would scatter as my mother would sprint from place to place. Her navy wool coat flying out at the edges, where the buttons couldn't hold it together. Her hair slipping through the confines of her cream beret.
"EVEN HERE?!" She was on the stairs of Saint Basil's.
"Especially there."
"HOW ABOUT HERE?" She was by the Kremlin.
"Of course."
"HERE?" Next to a man selling newspapers whose front page said, "THE SECOND GREAT WAR BEGINS."
"Yes. I said always, Darya."
"Promise?" Yelled at the top of her adolescent lungs from Kazan Cathedral.
"Promise."
My mother ran to her father, Daniil, and he wrapped his only child into him. This is where she belonged; the only place in the world that was ever right for her was in her father's arms, against his chest, wrapped inside his coat. Daniil sat down on the site of a future mausoleum in which the most powerful man would lie in and he held her until she fell asleep. Then he walked to the center of the square. He whispered into the crown of her head, "Did you know that we are in the center of Russia? Which is like being in the center of everything. Right now you are the center of the universe, Darya Movitz." He didn't say this just to say it, he said it because it was true. Because how could something so beautiful not be the center of life as we know it?
THIS IS HOW MUCH HER MOTHER (LOVED?) HER:
However, Darya's mother was different than Daniil. She always wore a silk scarf around her thick, auburn hair and she never smiled with her teeth. She did not love her husband. She did not love her daughter. This was not because she hadn't tried or didn't want to. The fact was she simply couldn't love them.
All her life, Zoya had been in love with another man. His name was Domovi and he filled the space in between her girlhood and her life as a mother. When they were young, he was handsome and she was beautiful and when they danced the world swayed in rhythm with their bodies. He was a good man just like Daniil was a good man. He had eyes the color of blue smoke and thick black hair. His laugh was deep and rolling. He smoked too much but Zoya found she loved the haze too. He used to tell her, "Mne by khotelos uznat o tebe pobolshe." I would like to know more about you.
"But you already know so much."
"Just tell me one more thing."
"Tell me what you already know first."
"Okay. I know that you prefer omelets for breakfast. Your hair is almost red in the afternoon sun. You smile like you've got something to hide. You collect your tears in thimbles. You look best in blue. Your eyes are the color of the irises in the garden behind Kazimir's house. Your favorite reading spot is underneath the dead maple near the river. You find front porches inviting. You pray loudly. You think that carriages are overrated. You'd like to play piano. You purse your lips when you are unhappy. You relish being tickled. You father's name is Lev and your mother's name is Masha. You have a sister, Rada. Laughing is your only vice. Oh, and you are in love."
"Who am I in love with?"
"Well I'm not sure if you know you are yet."
"Oh, really? Here's one thing you don't know about me. I know I am in love and I know I am in love with you Domovi Wolowitz. It has always been you. Even before time began it was you."
"Ne boysa," He told her. Do not be afraid. Which meant something along the lines of, "We will be together, I do not care that you are rich and fine and that I am low and shameless. I do not care if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone. I just want you, for as long as I can possibly have you. You are quite simply my best time."
What Zoya Trubachev and Domovi Wolowitz failed to realize on that fateful day when he told her all her knew about her is: things change.
Zoya's father would not tolerate her marrying anything less than himself. They lived in a house with electric lights and plum colored damask drapes. He was rich and fine.
Domovi was low and shameless. He brought her a piece of string and said, "You'll have to use this for your ring. It's all I've got." His eyes were at the ground.
She loved him just the same. "Look me in the eyes," her hands gripping the sides of his face, "You're wrong; you've got me."
She wore the string around her finger even after she married Daniil. Domovi's tattered band pushing up against Daniil's gold one. She worshipped that string and mended it faithfully every time it frayed in the slightest. She stroked it when she was remembering Domovi and she when made love to Daniil (which were feelings that went together). She stoked the string and closed her eyes as she brought Darya in the world. She thought, the three D's of my life and I only love one of them. Zoya Trubachev Movitz was low and shameless. She was no mother. She was no wife. She went out of her way to drag her gilded left hand against rough surfaces. Perhaps, if scratches can appear on this band it will prove that this life I live is not real. Perhaps if this piece of rope can outlast this heavy burden, it will prove that Domovi is more than Daniil can ever be.
She knew that she should love the little sculpture of her daughter but she couldn't. When Darya was born she reached for Daniil. She looked like him. Her hair was inky and her eyes were the color of cornflower drenched in beams of sunlight. Her skin was alabaster and she cried like a songbird. She had ten perfect toes and ten perfect fingers. Daniil called her his Bluejay. His daughter was his jewel; Zoya was only Zoya.
Zoya knew that mothers were supposed to tell their children bedtime stories. My grandmother held onto this scrap of information and she desired to become the most wonderful story teller but she found her imagination no longer worked. She was uninspired. She was as far from love as you can be. She cried so many times a day the large house the lived in had thimbles in every windowsill. When Daniil was away at work, Zoya would mix the tears with Darya's formula and then she would cradle her little daughter as she gulped and drank away her mother's sadness.
Even as Darya grew up, her taste for melancholy was never quenched. She become an anthropologist of sadness. Immersing herself in it's intricacies. She searched sadness out in the streets of her village. She found it hiding in the corners of back alleys, in shrouded, shivering creatures with swimming, stark struck eyes and matted hair. She found it in cathedrals where women in black robes prayed to a man they had never seen to fill their voids (their knees were perpetually sore from kneeling and their hands tinged with early arthritis from always being clasped so reverently together). She found it in Flavia's library, where all the books were dusty and untouched and in Kouri's kitchen, when a place setting patiently sat empty every night, waiting for a dead son to come home and pick up a fork. She found it at the ends of dead end streets and in rain clouds. But mostly, she found it in her mother.
She would come home from a day of playing to find her mother curled in her bed. Darya would wrap her arms around her tiny mother and nestle her face against Zoya's temple (every one knows this is where sadness is most evident on a person because it is the place on our bodies that is the most vulnerable). Darya's mouth would be even with her mother's ear and she would whisper bedtime stories to her because she knew this is what made her mother the most sad. The sadness that comes with the inability to do things we desire to do most is the hardest sadness to find because we bury this sadness so deep within our selves. Her mother was a rarity, a treasure trove of sadness and this is why Darya loved her.
"Mother, once upon a time there existed a world where the moon was made out of parchment paper and God drew the stars in the sky with a silver felt-tipped pen. In this world, love grows on trees and happiness can found in a carousel ride. Papa is the czar of this world are you are the empress."
A tear would begin to slide off from Zoya's dark lashes and Darya would run and grab a thimble and then collect the tear.
"The air smells of fir trees and fresh snow. In this world you laugh and dance. In this world your eyes glow like amethysts. Clouds are the stuffing for our mattresses and your dresses never crinkle, even after you sit for a long time."
Zoya closed her eyes and somewhere in her mind she was thinking of a world entirely different from the one Darya was describing. Of a world where love didn't grow on trees but of a a world where love was the mystery she could spend a lifetime figuring out.
Darya always thought her mother was asleep.
Darya always thought her stories were a lullaby.
Darya always thought her stories would make Zoya turn her head and kiss her on the bridge of her nose like Daniil did. In the language of their love, a kiss on the nose meant, "I CANNOT IMAGINE A WORLD IN WHICH MY LIFE DOESN'T CONTAIN YOU."
Darya always finished with this line-"In this world, you tell the most beautiful stories. In this world you lull me to sleep with words. In this world you love me."
Zoya did not love her daughter, but every night as Darya would gently close the door to her bedroom she would whisper into the forgiving darkness, "You must know if I could I would."
I promise that I won't ever imagine a world that doesn't contain you (even if I could, I wouldn't).
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