Ghosts of People Past

Now

A shrieking sound jolts Nora out of her thoughts and beams her back to reality.  By the time she realizes that it is the phone ringing, the bloody thing has stopped its screeaching sound.  She looks at her computer screen and watches as pictures of her daughter’s graduation parade by. She sees her ex-husband offering her a large bouquet of flowers. Her daughter’s face is as a brilliant as the summer sun.

She must have dozed off and dreamt that Hamid had sent her an email. She might even have dreamt that the phone was ringing since the house was now ghostly silent. The only audible sound was the steady drone of her computer. Her body ached form head to toe. Her fifty six years feel like a deadweight pulling her down, making her feel like a reptile dragging its feet on the Earth. She feels stiff as a corpse and her every move is accompanied by a shooting pain in some part of her body. She rubs her eyes with her fists and gets up to look for the cordless phone. She curses the day she bought the damn thing. She can never find it or tell what direction the ringing is coming from. Not that she really cares since she hardly ever answers her calls anymore. People are beginning to tire her, get on her nerves, always wanting something from her. She prefers her solitude, nice and serene, always letting her do what she wanted, never making demands, allowing her to be herself at all times.

She finds the thing wedged between the two cushions of the small couch that huddles, as if trying to get warm, next to the huge corner stone fireplace that her father had built.  The minute she picks it up it starts ringing, startling her so that she almost drops it. She quickly presses the green button and is immediately awarded by the sound of her daughter’s, Sofoulenska’s, chirpy voice. Of all the nicknames she had ever concocted for her baby girl, Sofoulenska was her favorite.  She liked the Russian sound of it. After her ex-husband had walked out on them, she devised a way that would help her cope with her new ordeal. She would imagine herself as a being the heroine in a Russian nineteenth century romantic novel. Her perky four-year-old daughter, would be the co-heroine, the brave little munchkin who loyally accompanies her through life and all its vicissitudes. Sophia became Sofoulenska and she became Mamoulenska, two brave heroines who struggled against all odds to survive in a cruel, uncaring and often time’s inhuman world - especially for women struggling on their own.  In her mind, her life, seen this way from a distance, gained value and a universal meaning and gave her the incentive to not give up the fight, to continue weaving the plot to its culminating cathartic end.

“Mom, mom, are you there?”

Her daughter’s shrill voice was calling out to her over the cabled distance.

“Yes, yes, of course I am.  I ….”.

“Then why don’t you speak up? Have you any idea how long I’ve been yelling your name? I was just about to hang up!”

It was so nice to hear her daughter’s voice.  Twenty-four whole years had gone by since that day she brought her home form the hospital all wrapped up in a blue blanket with duck appliqués, on the threshold of winter.  The decision to keep the little thing that had latched itself onto her, despite the objections of the man who in a state of intoxication donated his sperm, was a miracle, a divine epiphany that came to her as she was descending the stairs with her gynecologist, determined to rid herself of the few extra cells that were growing inside her like a cancer.  They had reached the last step leading to the OR when she made a sudden turnabout and ran back up the stairs again leaving her doctor standing there in a state of amused surprise. There was no doubt in her mind that her daughter was a godsend and born under a lucky star.

For months after she had brought her baby home, she would wake up in the middle of the night remembering the Lilliputian newcomer and peek into her bedroom just to make sure the miracle was real and not something she had just imagined.  No matter how many times she saw her, she just couldn’t believe in her amazing existence;  not when she was an infant nor even now that the little one had grown into a beautiful, smart and successful young lady.  That’s how miracles are, she thought to herself, they always seem so unreal.