There are some times, just like that, when little lies I've established, I'm happy about.
Like the fact that Jack would eventually die, for not reproducing. It soothed my Baka, and it's thanks to Mom; it's what she's found to ease her pain, to soften it. It was a lie out of love, spelled with good intentions. And it worked.
When she'd be sad because of her bird, my Baka, she'd tell herself that "
anyway, the poor thing would nevertheless have died, because it had no other to mate with". Right. It was a beautiful delusion, and now that Baka is no more, and that she gets she was fooled, she also knows that it was done out of pure and sincere love, whereas it costs to lie.
I feel that she does not blame us for that, my Baka. And I'm happy to have chosen the lie that is good, rather than the hard, harsh, cruel truth that hurts and doesn't heal. Especially since she didn't deserve this pain, my Baka.
Baka, she took her bird to Serbia, for it to die there, somehow.
She cried so much, she was so desperate, and although I was sad for her, I couldn’t cry with her.
I was obsessed with the attention I was receiving in the bus back from Serbia, obsessed with the fact that men were looking at me, that they were saying I was pretty... – it had been so rare up to then.
Yet, they weren’t so good looking, were much older than me, and quite the winos. I got pissed off, when one of them -the most cheerful and the most interested- would spill his beer on me, without apologizing, just saying : "Well what, it's only beer ! "
O N L Y beer? But there I am, asshole, letting you talking to me, flirting with me, taking my time, and my attention away from the tragedy of my grandmother’s - I'm the one allowing it - you take my self-esteem - I'm the one allowing it - and you, you dare to tell me it’s O N L Y beer!
I'd then head to the front of the bus, no better. Milutin repeats almost word for word the expression of the previous asshole.
And me, in my head, side by side but separated in two by a red line in the middle, I have two scenes that are displayed:
On the left, there's my Baka, who cries, screams, who makes CPR to her little bird, who is alone there, helpless. Then, I have memories of her and her Jack, which was sleeping in her hair... My baka, who climbs the ladder near the wall that separates us from the neighbor, as she'd tell me, to try and save her little one's claws from the neighbor's cat. Said neighbor just doesn’t give a shit, doesn’t understand why she's crying and screaming, that 'it's just a bird, after all'.
The neighbor... she doesn't see that my Baka is disabled and yet she's on a ladder.
And on the right side, there are scenes of a hypothetical future, the one I always think of, as soon as a guy spends more than 5 seconds looking at me; the one where I always pitch the pros and cons, that there would be to consider a life with him... yes, in 6 minutes, no more, I’ve analyzed a/the guy, or so I believe. What was stupid, was not using my analytical capacities for something else... But I was stupid, I was 20 years old, and I'd prefer to think about old winos, just because I'd lack male perverse attention, instead of being completely and sincerely heartbroken for my grandmother.
Today it is, this heart of mine, broken.
Today, as soon as I project my Baka against my inner eyelids, I feel the pain darting, I feel my ribcage being compressed, my nose starting to snore, my view being blurred.
Today I understand her sorrow, because it's now mine.
She lost her bird - I lost her.
