The Daughter Read Free Page A

waiting period was long over. That’s the pension I still get to this day, but we only started collecting it much later, of course, after we left Rampartville for good.
    Those two were the first officials ever to set foot in our house. Later, around the end of the first year of the Occupation they finally came looking for weapons. Italians, this time. They rummaged through the chest-of-drawers and then checked out the floor, some floor, nothing but hard-packed earth, wall to wall. One of the Italians took a long look at Mother. My name’s Alfio, he said, you can find me at the Carabineria. Looked like a nice man, the homely type; shy too. He spoke a few words of broken Greek. After they left, my brother Sotiris called her a slut and I smacked him one.
    That earth floor of ours was nothing but trouble. Ma was a real housekeeper; like mother like daughter, I always say. We had to keep the floor damp all the time. If we used too much water it would turn to mud. So we all took a mouthful of water and sprayed it over the floor to keep down the dust and make it hard like cement. Sprayed it during the winter time, too, all of us together. And after the spraying came the tamping. We’d lay down a board and all of us walked up and down on it, then we’d move the board to another spot and start all over again. Because if we didn’t look after the floor it would turn back into dirt, and weeds would start to grow, mallow mostly, but once a poppy sprouted right next to the sink.
    I know, I know it’s sinful to say, but I always loved that earth floor of ours. Maybe because I always had a love for earth, ever since I was a kid; figure it out if you can. I was always dreaming I had a little piece of earth all my own. Always carried this lump of earth around with me in my school bag. And I had this little corner in our backyard all to myself, called it my ‘garden’, built a little fence with sticks and planted green beans, but they never grew, planted them at the wrong time of year it seems. After that, I set up a little garden, right under my bed.
    In winter we kept the floor covered with rag rugs and dusters but it was no use, the weeds kept popping up. One day, early in the morning it was, I look over and I see the rug moving, rising up: it’s a snake, I say to myself. I lift up a corner of the rug and look: it was a mushroom! Like the sun rising right out of the floor.
    We did our best, whitewashed every Saturday and dusted every day, but there were always fresh cobwebs in the corners. But the spiders always popped right out and wove their webs all over again. Leave them, Mother told me one day, they don’t hurt nobody and they eat the flies besides. What’s more they keep us company. 
    Must be from back then that I get these dreams of mine about snow falling in the house. Here I sit in my apartment in Athens, and there’s snow right in the house. Snow in the corners, snow at the feet of the console, snow on top of the chest-of-drawers and all over the washbasin. How can that be? I say to myself: doesn’t the place have a roof? Then I wake up. Sometimes I dream there’s snow in Mum’s grave. It’s nothing but a little hole in the ground: can’t imagine how I’ll ever fit in when the time comes. There are snowflakes in the corners. Nothing else. Not even debris from the casket; nothing. Nothing’s left of Mum but snow.
    So, we’re in the second year of the Occupation, and one day I burst out laughing. Let’s make a bet how many days we can last, I tell my brothers. Twenty-six days without bread, weeds and raw coffee, coarse-ground coffee was all we had to eat. A couple of days before there was a grocer’s break-in, but all I could grab was some coffee. We had a handful each to eat every afternoon, then go outside to play. Ma didn’t like us playing because we fainted a lot: we weren’t hungry any more, but we walked really slowly. The shop break-in was the first; up until then, self-respect was all that held us