Mama Leone by Miljenko Jergovic Read Free Book Online Page B

when we’re reading the story, and this means we have to have lots of courage because stories don’t always have happy endings, and because you have to killyour fear so you can live in the story. Life in a story is more beautiful than life in real life because in a story only important things happen and because in stories there aren’t any of those days when nothing happens and the world is as empty as the white dates in the wall calendar.
    Will Mom be back from Ljubljana before we finish White Fang ? I interrupted Grandma as she was reading. I don’t think so, we’ve got eighty pages left, and that’s eight days. Mom will be back in about fifteen days . . . Are you allowed to know how a book ends before you’ve read it? . . . It’s allowed, but then the book isn’t very interesting . . . Have you read White Fang before? . . . Yes, at least five times . . . And you always forget the end? . . . Well, I don’t actually forget it, but it’s as if I don’t know how it’s going to end and the ending might change . . . I don’t want anything bad to happen to White Fang before Mom comes back from Ljubljana . . . Why do you think something bad’s going to happen to him? . . . Because good things only have to happen in fairy tales. Otherwise they don’t . . . Who told you that? . . . No one told me. I just know . . . Well, I didn’t know that . . . You’re just pretending you didn’t know . . . No, I really didn’t know that. I’ve never thought about it . . . Well, have you ever thought about why shadows split in half so half of you is on the asphalt and half of you on the wall? Grandma looked at me, closed the book, and said she was sleepy. That was weird. She had never been sleepy before I fell asleep. I didn’t know about after because I’d already be asleep by the time she went to bed. That night it was different. Grandma was scared Mom was going to die, I knew it. I knew exactly what she was thinking. If Mom dies, we’ll be left alone, her, Grandpa, and me, and they’re old,and old people are scared of being alone with children because they think one day they’ll close their eyes for an afternoon nap and never open them again, and then the children will be left alone, helplessly trying to phone someone, hollering to the neighbors, but always end up waiting there all alone next to their grandpas and grandmas. Children shouldn’t be alone because loneliness is something grown-up; we grow up so that one day we can be completely alone and no one has to worry about it. That’s what Grandma was thinking when she pretended to fall asleep before me.
    In the end she really did fall asleep. In her sleep she wheezed like a big mouse. She breathed in through her nose, and then puffed out through her mouth. You could really hear a puff. Only she slept like this. I know because I’d already slept in the same room as all of them, lying awake as they slept. Mom was a quiet sleeper, but once she said a word in her sleep. I asked her what did you say last night? and she looked at me like she’d brought an F home from some school of hers. But even she didn’t remember her dreams because the little creature of the darkness came to visit her too. Dad slept smacking his lips and grinding his teeth. His sleeping was funny. It was like he was trying to make someone laugh with his sleeping, or like someone wouldn’t let him go to sleep unless he first made them laugh. Uncle snored horribly, and for a whole night I was seething.
    But none of them slept puffing, not even Grandpa and he’d lived with Grandma for more than fifty years and he even said that in fiftyyears two people become very alike. But he coughed in his sleep because of his asthma.
    I heard a last puff. A lot of time went by and I was waiting for a new puff, but it never came. I wasn’t really scared, but I was starting to get a little bit worried. I mean,