Mama Leone

Mama Leone Read Free

Book: Mama Leone Read Free
Author: Miljenko Jergovic
Tags: Fiction, Literary
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Isak’s life, and left. To Grandma he said you sleep, I’m fine. I’ve been fine for some time now . She was sleepless until the day he died. To Mom he said there’s no one left. Just the two of us and the darkness . And then he died. Mom closed his eyes and wrote the words down on a box of laxatives. I was at the seaside at the time, with my auntie Lola, Grandma’s sister. I marked the date in the calendar with a little cross. So people would know my grandpa had died. Actually, no, I did it so they’d know I knew my grandpa was dead.
    That day Auntie Lola baked some cakes, put a plateful in front ofme, sat down across from me, and placing her elbows on the table said eat up, little man . I ate, scared she was going to tell me Grandpa had died. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. Was I supposed to stop eating cakes, burst into tears, ask how he died, shake my head, and say tsk-tsk-tsk like I saw Granny Matija from Punta doing the time I peeked out from the pantry, or was I supposed to do something else, something I didn’t even know about. I’m only six years old and don’t have any experience with the rituals of death. I ate a plateful of cakes and got a tummy ache. I climbed into bed, the blinds were down so it looked like it was dark. I flew a plane through the darkness. I didn’t do the brmm brmm brmm because the plane was supersonic so you couldn’t hear it, but eavesdropped on what Auntie Lola told the neighbors gathered in the kitchen with their gifts of coffee, bottles of rakia, and something else I couldn’t see. The good Signore Fran suffered so, may God rest his soul , said Ante Pudin. He’s at peace now, but who knows what awaits the rest of us , said Uncle Kruno, a retired admiral. The little one might as well be an orphan now; parents today, God save us. Whatever he learned, he learned from his grandpa , said Auntie Lola. My tummy still hurt. I shut my eyes tight, farted, and fell asleep.
    Seven days later, Mom and Grandma arrived from Sarajevo, head to toe in black. I pretended this was normal. They pretended it was too. I was scared Mom was going to start talking about it so kept out of her way. I knew Grandma wouldn’t say anything. She wasn’t one for starting conversation; she’d leave it up to me and then join in. It was likeshe kept quiet about things I didn’t want to talk or hear about. There was nothing to say about Grandpa’s death, just as there’s nothing to say about anyone’s death. I had no idea death was a widespread occurrence, that grown-ups talked about it all the time.
    Between thunderclaps of his rasping asthmatic cough, Grandpa would every morning repeat sweet, sweet death and Grandma would say zip it Franjo, I’ll go before you do , and so it went every day. I thought other people didn’t go on like this, just the two of them, that they were special people because they were my grandma and grandpa, and that everyone else was just a puppet in a puppet theater. When Grandpa died it turned out Grandma was a pretender. I thought she should be ashamed of herself because she’d done something bad. She’d said she would go before him, but now he was dead. You don’t really die of your own choosing, but it does have something to do with you, so you shouldn’t say you’re going to die before someone else if you’re not. Later on I forgot about Grandma’s shame. Probably because it didn’t seem like she was ashamed.
    Once we went to visit Auntie Mina in Dubrovnik. Mom said I don’t know if the little fella knows . I was playing with the garden gnomes and making like I didn’t hear anything. Auntie Mina looked at me in silence. She would’ve loved to ask me if I knew about my grandpa’s death, but didn’t dare. You don’t ask kids those kinds of questions. The poor old boy peed his soul out , Mom told Auntie Mina. The hospital botched the treatment

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