Айгуль Кемелбаева

Отрывок из прозы ”The Nanny”

Rita’s father met his daughter himself, and carried her backpack for her that rainy day, after her last day of school event. Rita seemed more estranged and reserved than usual. When her mother didn’t like somebody, Rita was perfectly willing to not consider that person a human being. Again we were playing a mute game, a cold war. I did not care. I was not going to grieve because a nine-year-old girl looked down at me. I was not tied to this household. The moment will come, and I will be free.

The two spouses came back early from work that day, and in a hurry. Jamal’s eyebrows were still like Moscow’s gray cloudy sky. First, she ran to her daughter, not even stopping to take off her shoes. She hugged Rita, kissed her and congratulated her on the end of the school year. She also declared her hope that she’d get only top grades from now on, nothing less than the best. Rita hung like a puppy on her mother’s neck, full of adoration. I had already noticed that she was always desperate for her mother to pat her. After she wrapped herself in her long dressing gown and spread on her French perfume, Jamal turned her serious, cold gaze to me.

“Aizhan,” she said, “Rita’s school year is over. Soon we will be leaving, going abroad for a vacation. You don’t need to come tomorrow. It is time to say goodbye.”

“All right,” I said. My voice sounded calm.

I wiped the kitchen floor of the mud that Jamal had tracked in on her shoes. The streets were full of puddles. I was leaving this house forever, and still I grabbed the mop! I would be lying if I said that I had to. I understood that this was the only way for me to get rid of the most difficult period of my life, one like I had never experienced before and that would stay in my memory forever. Joy will dry up with the next sunrise, but grief will never be forgotten. Pechorin said that. I was not too bothered that this seemed to be the way my life of slavery was ending.

I must have felt conflicted again and was protecting myself. Here at the end, I was not disgusted by taking, with gratitude, this last drop of social discrimination and inferiority, the kind that human beings have practiced since ancient times. To do otherwise would have been to oppose God. Jamal put the last banknote intended for me on the table. I stretched out my hand to pick it up and put it into my purse. At that majestic moment when the clock’s hand pointed to seven, I put my work clothes into a plastic bag, and got up. “I have to thank you for hiring me at a time that was difficult for me.” I said those words to honor the truth, and because I knew that I would not forgive myself if I didn’t say them. “I sincerely wish your family happiness!”

Jamal’s eyes glittered for a moment. I noticed from Maxim Andreyevich’s face that he felt somewhat uncomfortable. Only Rita showed no emotion. I knew why the master felt a bit ashamed. It was probably awkward for him, given that he had told me, before, that they were going to buy me a present. When I said goodbye and approached the door, Maxim Andreyevich stood up from his place in front of the TV and looked at me sadly.

“Goodbye, Aizhan. May luck always be with you!”

I had no complaints. His voice was calm and full of gratitude. Rita still sat soundless and motionless, reading a book on the old bed in that rented apartment. She had no desire to acknowledge that I was leaving for good. The mother must have felt abashed by her daughter’s stony indifference, so she ordered her, “Rita, daughter, say goodbye to auntie Aizhan.”

“Goodbye,” said the girl, without any change to her indifferent look. She did not think that I was a monster, but she still wanted to demonstrate a protest against me, because I refused to flatter her and do things the way she wanted.

 We parted politely. When the iron door was closed behind me, I felt weightless. I sighed one more time while stepping out of the grayish entrance hall, and as if I had suddenly acquired a pair of wings, I walked away with a new, longer stride. When I came to the metro station, I noticed a merchant from the Caucasus, someone whom I was used to seeing every day. Now his beard seemed to be catching fire in the sunshine. May I never come back to this place, I thought. Mostly I wanted to be rid of the depressing yellow shade of all these lemons and bananas. I staggered a little, realizing that the last strange three or four months, and my life of slavery, were over.

There’s a slang word “lemon” that means a million. It is every man’s dream. The image of green apples, big as bowls, from foreign countries tries to drag me back to Rita. In life innocent necessities and simple needs do happen, and sometimes the answer is Nannyhood. One cannot say that it is disgusting, and it would be terribly wrong to call it something intolerable. But there is no need to pretend that it is sweet as honey either. It is a complicated phenomenon, where pulling one way kills the bull and pulling the other way breaks the cart. The saddest thing is that it is a job for bored, lonely women, but sometimes students just five minutes away from their diplomas accept the work, too. What should they do, die, instead? So there should be no shame in sampling what is it like to be a nanny.

But why can’t this sadness stop, this feeling that sucks on the heart as heavily as a bear? Even then, with the sounds of the electric train pressing down on me, the three of them, when I said goodbye… Jamal never left my mind for a moment. I found myself losing my grasp on the important facade that I had been holding up back there. My eyes filled with tears, and they spilled out like sea waves rushing to the shore during a flood. I was ashamed before the passengers around me. But the treacherous tears still fell, white drops from my black eyes. I tried to dry them with my palms, but the damned things just poured out more quickly. The woman I left in her temporary, rented apartment also had black eyes like mine. We had the same shape of eyes, and the same oval face and thick hair.

“Why did you become so mean at the last moment?” I asked Jamal in my mind, an interview in pleading thoughts that made my chest cold. “Why did you do it? Tell me!” I saw myself as an apparition, stamping my feet in anger. “At our roots, we are relatives. Out of that household, you were the closest to me. Tell me the truth, what did I do to you? Did I harm you? We are Kazakhs. Why did you become so arrogant when we met in a foreign country? Did you have any right to do that? You cannot excuse it by the fact that you grew up an orphan. We betrayed our traditions. We broke the rules of our ancestors to be friendly and generous. If a man refuses his own kind, his own blood, what happens then? Did you know that today you put yourself down in front of your own husband? It has not even been three full years since you became rich, but you’ve already lost your head from the steam of money and become like this? Only sheep can take fatness. A man must remain himself until he dies. We had a kinship, we belonged to the same tribe, but why did you want so much to find fault in me, and crush me with your sharp heels? Time will pass, and you will regret humiliating and intimidating me. Your Kazakh soul will force you to regret it, because you have not erased your own native language from your mind. You cannot turn away from your sacred language simply because you are Rita’s mother. You still love your own language. You are an intelligent and strong person. Why did you behave as a stranger when we met far away from home? Why were you so stingy with your kindness? I did not beg you for money. You knew that I was only working until I completed my studies. Have you forgotten your own student days? You were also short of money back then!

“Jamal, I don’t want to see you again. I will forget the days when I scratched your floor like a cat, and perhaps I will also become a rich woman one day. But today, your cruel, cold image spoiled the purity of our kinship, and that is the only reason my heart is crying. As a Kazakh, you had an obligation to protect your Kazakh character, with solemnity. You begrudged me your kind words, and you were dry as burnt skin!”

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