Short Memoir Submitted by Mariangela Jordan

I. Balcony

The balcony of our one-bedroom apartment, on the fourth concrete story of the last building built in town, where the paved street abruptly stopped and the wild woods started, is the clearest image I have of my childhood. It is where I spent all of my time, whenever it was possible. For most of the year, the space was open to rain, snow and wind but the few weeks of spring and the two months of summer were delightful.

On that balcony we dried our clothes, stored the trash, and kept secret from our neighbors the few items of “delicatessen” we managed to gather during the year: mostly pickled mushrooms, dried and smoked meet, and few wooden boxes of apples wrapped in news paper, and buried in sand. Actually, after all, it might have been the dungy moldy basement where we kept all that. Nevertheless, there was always some food on the balcony that I was not supposed to touch.

A wooden chair sat quietly in one corner. Apparently my great-grand father, sometimes in his late eighties, made the chair in his shop at his house in the country side, then carried it on his back on a ten hour trip, as a gift for my mom and dad’s new life. It was the very year I was born. I never met him; he died two weeks before I decided that life in the womb was not satisfying anymore.

I never sat on the chair. It was more symbolic than functional, and somehow I understood that without being told. I’d usually bring a blanket from inside, drop it on the balcony’s cold concrete floor, and make believe it was the softest sofa—softer than the luxurious linings on the immense beds described by Scheherazade in Thousand and One Nights. I cannot recall why I have been given that book, but I know I enjoyed it immensely. It was colorful (in a literary sense), and its myriad colors, smells, and sounds came in handy in the black-and-white life we were all forced to live back then.

The balcony had its own will. It rejected strangers. Whenever we would have guests in our small room, I’d retreat on my balcony hoping that no one would come to share the space. I had balcony jealousy, and it must have known it. Thus, most people would come out only to resolve few minutes later that “This balcony is too high, and open, and it makes me dizzy; I better go inside.” Victory!

Now that I think about it, I am amazed I never fell off that balcony. After all, I played plenty of dangerous games, hanging by its edge. Once I even passed from our balcony to the neighbor’s balcony, and back, only to see if I can. I didn’t like theirs; it was empty, and somehow colder than mine. The balconies were separated only by a thin cardboard sheet, with a 20 cm gap right on the outside edge. There must have been about seventy meters between me and the ground, but back then I wasn’t yet afraid of heights.

My friends would come up on my balcony sometimes, and we would play games. My favorite was throwing plastic bags filled with water on by passers. To most Romanians, swearing is an art. I loved helping some of them exercise that craft. I have been fascinated with language ever since I started talking. I remember sometimes looking in the mirror and talking to my self, only to see how the mouth moves when certain words are voiced. What can I say, I am an only child, and I never had imaginary friends. So, I played a bunch of corky games all by myself.

One evening, my favorite toy flew off that balcony. It was a small washing machine, with batteries and a motor that made an annoying noise, a loud buzz. I played with it all night, and all day. We didn’t have a real washing machine (nor did we know anyone who did), so I pretended to help mom with her loads. Washing clothes was a real pain, and it always made her ill for days. When I didn’t do homework or read a book, I played with my pretend washing machine. One day, my dad put his book aside, got up from bed, grabbed it, went to the balcony, and threw it off. No previous complaints, no asking me to stop, no warnings, nothing. I didn’t cry, nor did I protest in any way.

I simply put my shoes on, made the dreadful trip on the total of 88 steps connecting the four stories, went out and looked for my toy in semi darkness. I found it, checked if it worked, and brought it back upstairs. Nothing back then was made to last. It’s not that Romanians didn’t know how to make things; I simply think they didn’t care. Communism does that to people: it makes them numb. But this little metal washing machine survived, and it remained until today one of the most durable things I remember from childhood. The walls collapsed, the doors fell on us, the roads didn’t last long, the clothes thread apart too fast, our hopes were fading more and more, but my toy lived many years after its flew from the cuckoo’s nest. Dad never touched it again. He laughed at me when I brought it back, said he was sorry, then all was forgotten.

Great-Grandpa’s wooden chair didn’t make it though. I watched gravity work its magic, and marveled at the symmetry of its thousands of splinters scattered on the ground. I was glad mom didn’t made the jump after all, after she screamingly announced it to my dad (who was trying to hold her), and to the neighbors who synchronously came out on their own balconies to see whatever happened. No one said “Don’t jump,” though the building facing ours was close enough to throw packets of cigarettes from one another, which some people sometimes did. Some watched the spectacle, while smoking. Mom kept screaming and laughing in turns.

My dad didn’t say “Don’t jump” either; he just said “Get inside, woman, it’s getting late and I have to go to work.” So she did, after she threw off the balcony few things: her blouse, Scheherazade and all of her Arabian nights, one jar of pickled green tomatoes, a small box of potatoes, a hammer dad borrowed from our next door neighbor, few newspapers, and great grandpa’s chair. Dad carried mom inside, and I stayed on the balcony for few more minutes to look at the neighbors. No one said anything neither to me, nor to each other. They would all come out in the same time on their balconies only on few occasions: when there was a game of soccer between the blocks, when there was a game of soccer on the radio, and when some crazy neighbor decided to announce she wanted to jump off her 4th story balcony. The times they—and I—enjoyed the most was when Constantine, the funniest drunk in town, came out to swear at everyone for not lending him a cup of sugar, or for some other such petty reason. Constantine mastered his art, and entertained us once a month at least. He certainly earned his sugar. Sugar was rare back then, so any time we, the kids, would get hold of it, we’d spread it on a piece of bread and eat it like that.

Seeing mom’s face was rare too, after the scene on the balcony.

When I finally got back inside, dad was holding my mom’s head in his palms, and she was crying—I think. The whole scene was dead silent and I couldn’t tell if either of them was still breathing. I was sent down stairs to see if I can find the neighbor’s hammer or any of our potatoes: we still needed those.

“Michaela, why did you have to throw the chair?” dad asked on a soft voice, as I closed the door behind me.

I did find the potatoes, but someone took the neighbor’s hammer.

II. Weekend visits

“Voila” was a famous loony bin, filled with political prisoners, and rarely with genuine cases of insanity. Except for the spelling, there was nothing French about it. My father’s uncle Nikki was a psychiatrist there. He eventually became the Director. He was an intelligent and refined man, and my dad wanted me to be like Uncle Nikki when I grew up. He had a car, which he called “Froggy,” but in Romanian. Uncle Nikki was funny, generous, kind, and loved classical music.

Mom was “thriving” there, or that’s what she always said when we visited. The food was horrible—dad and I agreed, after mom let us taste it. Mom said “It’s ok, Uncle Nikki sends me real food at least once a day, straight from his wife’s kitchen.” A nurse came in, and gave mom the noon pills. Mom drank a lot of water with them. After the nurse left, mom took them out from under her tongue and handed them to dad, along with few others, stored in a napkin, hidden between a heating pipe and the wall. Dad took them, and hid them in his pocket. She smiled, and we all held hands as we walked the grounds.

I always wondered how come a place so sad and strange, with a tired, cold and desolated feeling to it, could have such beautiful grounds: atop a beautiful hill, with the majestic view of the Carpathian Mountains, and a crisp blue sky with perfectly shaped clouds within arms’ reach.

We visited every Sunday, for many months. Dad and I got up in the morning before the roosters did, we took a train, then a bus, then we walked for awhile, and then we waited in a room. For a long time, Dad always said the waiting wasn’t more than 20 minutes, but it felt like days. Eventually a very sad nurse saw us in the women’s building.

“Voila” was not a loony bin, it was a prison. The first I’ve seen, with real bars, and all…

Everyone there was very skinny and always busy. Especially the patients: if they were not crying, they were screaming, swearing, begging, threatening, or asking for help. The nurses were busy too, but somewhere else. With the exception of the “noon-pills” incidents, and showing us in and out, I only recall seeing the doctors and the nurses running between buildings as if there was always something on fire.

My uncle knew my mother was not taking her pills; he knew she gave them all to dad, on Sundays. He recommended it. My uncle knew more than I did about why she was there; he knew she didn’t really want to die.

It wasn’t that she needed time away from herself; she needed time away from others, dad told me one day when we were coming back from seeing her.

She needed time from others…

“From us?” I asked.

“No,” dad said without explaining.

“Don’t ask too many questions, you are too small.” Then he added: “It’s not that I do not trust you, or that you could not understand, it’s just that some things are better off not talked about.”

I trusted him too, so I never asked again. Dad pushed mom on a swing every Sunday. They laughed sometimes, and we all held hands.

Sandy pushed me on the swing. Sandy, my first boyfriend (or so I thought), came there every Sunday to see his dad. His dad was a doctor, a real doctor, but he did not work there.” He’s here for his headaches,” Sandy told my dad the first day we met. But later, dad whispered in my ear that Sandy’s dad was hiding from the commies; that he did something good for others, but very bad for himself.

Sandy was many years older than I was (he must have been in his twenties), but he kissed my right cheek every time the swing would return to him to push again. He brought me chocolate sometimes, and smooched my hair. His hair was sandy, his eyes were green.

Mom eventually came home. She never threatened to jump from the 4th floor again, nor did we live so high anymore. We moved to the first floor. She was really sorry about great grandpa’s chair.

Dad said “Forget it.” And so we did.