Mama Leone by Miljenko Jergovic Read Free Book Online Page A

If Mom has gone far away, all the way to Ljubljana, she must be totally lost. She’ll never come back because her life isn’t a fairy tale, she gets two creases between her eyes and thinks bumps can get bigger. My mom isn’t Snow White, Cinderella, or Queen Forgetful. She isn’t coming back from Ljubljana, she’s going to stay there forever and come back to us dead, just like the people who don’t get well at the hospital come back dead, because you can easily lose good health inwhite corridors and green boiler rooms, in the smells of chloroform, ether, and medicinal alcohol, in places where the air reeks of worry.
    That’s what I was thinking as I started following my shadow. It was moving along the asphalt a little behind me. I could see it out of the corner of my eye but didn’t want to turn my head toward it. I wanted to watch it sort of in passing, to not change anything, just to keep seeing it. When I moved along the white stone wall a little, half the shadow disappeared from the asphalt and climbed up the side of the house. Up to my stomach I floated along the asphalt, my chest, neck, and head making their way along the house. My shadow split in two, but I stayed as one. You see, a shadow isn’t actually an image of a person that always follows him, tracing his every move and being just like him. A shadow splits in half. But I wouldn’t have felt or noticed a thing if I hadn’t been looking. It keeps following me; it’s just that its life isn’t mine anymore.
    I turned around and marched back the other way. The shadow moved a little out in front of me. Heading home, I stayed close to the wall, my shadow still split in half, Grandma was probably done on the phone. Mom’s woken up from the anesthetic , she said. The bump’s gone? . . . Yes, it’s gone, but what do you know about that? Were you eavesdropping again? . . . No, I just overheard . . . You’re not allowed to listen to your elders’ conversations . . . Why? Because they’re sneaky? . . . No, because you don’t understand them . . . When will I understand them? . . . One day, when you grow up . . . Are they really that scary? . . . Who’s that scary? . . . Are all grown-up conversations as scary as yours? . . . No, our conversations aren’t scary, you don’t understand them . . . A conversation about a bump isn’t scary?. . . No, it’s just a conversation about an illness . . . Why am I allowed to listen to conversations about my bronchitis but not about a bump? . . . Oh boy, no more conversations about bronchitis for you, you little devil, look at the mess you’re in. Go wash your face and hands, and don’t ever let me see you in such a state again . Grandma grabbed the frames of her glasses, just like she always did when she wanted to show me she was angry.
    I lay tucked in up to my neck, staring at the ceiling, listening to her voice. She was reading me White Fang . Ten pages every night. We were already halfway through. White Fang is a wolf who thinks and feels, and scary things happen to him just because he thinks and feels. It’s not a fairy tale and that’s why I’m scared there won’t be a happy ending, but today I don’t listen to Grandma’s voice. I don’t remember sentences and I don’t feel like I’m White Fang, because to listen to the story of White Fang I need to feel like White Fang, because when you don’t do that the story doesn’t work. In fairy tales you don’t feel like a prince, princess, old king, brave knight, or Queen Forgetful, just like in fables you don’t feel like a fox or a raven, but in true stories you need to feel like White Fang to understand what happens to him. Fairy tales and fables are made up, but true stories actually happen. If they haven’t happened, then they happen when we listen to them, or when we learn to read one day and we read them. They happen to us