To Mum by Kvitan Shevchuk

Have you ever tried to make out familiar shapes in the clouds?

Maybe the silhouette of an animal? Or a person? There it is: a button nose, the curve of a thick eyebrow, wise wrinkles around the eyes; together they blur into that same Mum’s face from when you filled out your school diary all the way to the 64th of September in first grade.

And by now you are long past being seven, or even fourteen, and yet for some reason Mum still looks at you the same way. As if you have just announced that you want to study photography in an art college. Verbally, she was never against it. However, “do whatever you want” is a very traitorous phrase. It always meant it was time to guess what Mum wanted. Mission: impossible. Mum never wants anything. Ouroboros. She only sighs heavily, breath turns to steam. February 2010. We are walking through a snow-covered forest with my parents. My brother takes a photo I will later pull out of an album far too heavy for a six-year-old and place in the glass cabinet whenever my parents are fighting.

There is steam in the air again, only now even in the bedroom. February has seeped in like a parasite through the wooden shutters painted white. I wonder whether white Quick Lime Paint protects trees from pests about as well, as white window frames let all the anxiety from outside pass straight into the room. February seeps through pale skin and long telephone beeps and sinks deep inside the soul.

The steam from my mouth hangs in the air. But not motionless. Filled with resentment stored up in the lungs, mixed with anger and tobacco, it moves, evolves. It takes on different shapes, gathers into a cloud and hovers overhead.

The cloud shrinks when there is enough to talk about for an hour every Saturday: everyday things: choosing a family doctor, a carbonara recipe and the fact that the rules of life only have two points — first, Mum is always right, and second, if Mum is not right, see point one.

Sometimes it is half an hour. Sometimes an hour and a half. But it is always small talk. Testing the ground that never quite reaches a truly emotional conversation. But when it does happen, once every six months – when we are tired to the point of dizziness and nausea, when the cloud fills all available space, when Mum starts asking questions in a tone that sounds like she knows something. She does not suspect. She knows. And she would have preferred a normal child. And the cloud keeps growing and growing. You have to run out of the apartment; it has already swallowed up all the living space. It begins to seep into the stairwell. To flood the neighbors downstairs.

But then suddenly a little breeze starts blowing with some neutral topic for conversation. About how absurdly well-fed the cats near out house are. They probably eat more than I do. And not a single personal question has time to make it through the receiver. About why, I cannot find another job that pays more. That I do not want anything for my birthday. Or why I never tell her anything about my life. Why I do not call my father. Or my grandmother. Why I do not eat properly. Why I do not finally leave, and instead stay here. Near war.

There are six cats in the yard. The ginger one is the fattest. King. He has a spare penthouse under the entryway. And outside it is March. And the cloud gets smaller, and it is possible to go back into the apartment. And now the cloud is shaped like a dog. A dachshund, low and long, with short legs. Then it turns into a rat. Then a mouse. A beetle. An ant. But it does not disappear. It keeps hanging above your head in different forms. It finds ways to feed itself even when no steam is coming from your mouth.

Even when it is June. Even when you are no longer ten, or sixteen, or even twenty-two.