When I rang the bell to my grandmother’s apartment, I tried to remember which floor she lived on. It surely wasn’t very high up because we’d take the elevator less often than the stairs. I recalled my brother and I racing each other to her floor. He’d take the elevator while I, in a rushed spurt, nearly flew over that grainy, bleak staircase that switched directions every so often, dizzying me so that I’d almost blaze past her door. If it weren’t for the echo of the heavy metal elevator door, which marked my defeat and broke my trance, I would surely have kept running till the very top of that stack of identical concrete units, crossing hundreds of families I didn’t know, but would have known if only my parents had stayed where they were born. And maybe this blissful, sweaty rush would have made me forget that I wasn’t home and would never be home, that I didn’t fully understand or ever feel understood in either of the languages I spoke, that there were two sides to me, but I could never show both. 

A crackly buzz let us in, and we were immediately welcomed by muted barking that resounded through the compact entrance hall. Following it up the stairs led me right to her front doors. The outer one was a bronze metal and opened outward and the inner one, a wooden door painted white, opened inward. This had always baffled me. As a kid, I was told this was an extra safety measure against burglars, but I later noticed she only locked the more firm outer one. Both were opened when she approached me in a slow hunching shuffle. Sharp, agitated barking interrupted our brief hug marked by the stingy smells of coffee and tobacco. I walked in and took off my shoes with her dog scratching both my legs and eardrums. The way grandma uttered her fatigued words, his excitement seemed to have drained all her energy.

She always held onto something, supporting her back with one arm or leaning on the back of a chair. We told her to have a seat, but she refused with a tired swing of her arm. ‘Stupid dog! Won’t you just stop barking?!’, she cried as she closed the doors, only locking the outer one. She grabbed a shoehorn from the umbrella basket and held it up menacingly thumping her foot. The dog stepped back almost slipping on the brown tiles, but his cries persisted. I figured stroking his head might calm him down. Thankfully, it did. In this newfound silence, I discovered new noise. A TV in her bedroom was playing a poorly-dubbed Turkish soap opera.

I couldn’t think of a dog that was quite like my grandmother’s. She had somewhat of a Maltese, but it was shaped like a Teckel and had the fur of a poodle. This breed collage made his proportions seem off. He looked kind of mismatched. Only his barking matched his appearance: loud, disturbing and wonky. Moreover, he liked to be petted from above, which I was taught to never try with other dogs. He wouldn’t lick you either. Instead, he showed affection by nudging his runny snout in your hands or legs, which he did then.

Whilst scratching his head, I felt bad for despising his presence. The poor dog was just so stressed all the time. My grandma would intentionally give him too little to drink, for fear of him peeing on the floor, which he did quite regularly. His days were mostly spent in airconditioned rooms listening to my grandmother’s snoring and those dubbed soap operas that were about as unintelligible to me as to him. No wonder the invasion of a family of five in a one-bedroom apartment made him awfully restless. He followed her into the kitchen, turning and slapping his paws on the floor, his insolent cries almost drowning out the soft clicks of his untrimmed nails on the stone tiles.

[…]

Leaning against the sink, she watched us while we had dinner. I gave up asking her to have a seat, for she only really cared about our comfort. Besides, there wasn’t much space for her to unfold one of her wooden garden chairs in. The kitchen table was about the size of a small desk, and we accidentally shoved each other with our elbows all the time trying to cut our food, only adding to the tense, claustrophobic atmosphere.  I sat with my back to an open window facing a busy street that connected her borough to the city centre. Behind it was a sizeable meadow, that bordered a train track. With the static of cars and trains gushing past behind me, occasionally interrupted by the sounds of a horse dragging a Roma family in a cart, I tried to make out what my grandma had to say about Putin.

‘But that’s the way it is!’, she said. ‘They wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for the Russians!’. My dad rolled his eyes. I could see him fighting the urge to respond, scraping the meat off the stuffed bell pepper on his plate in a deep sigh. She took notice of this and in turn also rolled her eyes. Waving one hand dismissingly, grandma added ‘I don’t know what lies Momma Cobra has been feeding you over there.’ She noticed none of us had caught the reference and started to explain which European politician she meant. She’d been listening to lots of alternative sociologists turned internet bloggers and had taken on their lingo and, more concerningly, their ideas. How could such a well-educated, witty woman switch sides so radically? I now realise this was probably the first time we’d discussed politics, that maybe she’d never flipped at all, and I’d just never noticed before. Why do you never pay attention to things.

She turned to the cupboard above the sink for a glass of water, but it slid out of her wet hands. It didn’t break, but the sound of it bouncing made the dog jump out from under the table to start a barking blitz. ‘Oh, Zelenski! Can’t you just shut up for once!’, she cried picking up the glass. His barking was piercing my eardrums with the shards of the glass that almost broke. An image of me dragging the dog through the hall and locking him shut between the front doors shot through my head. Shoving the insolent monster in that tiny space, pushing the inner door to squeeze him in, bending his frail ribcage until it burst. How could you be so cruel?! To crush that poor animal between those doors… You’re the monster.

I had frantically started rubbing my wrist under the table with my thumb. I let go and looked down at the flush I had created, when grandma cried, ‘That’s it! I’m putting on the muzzle!’ She took it from her pocket and forcefully pulled it over his snout. The dog scratched the plastic cone with his awkward paws and let out muffled barks while we had dessert. Grandma had bought us chocolate-covered ice cream on a stick, but my sister wasn’t very hungry. She’d only nibbled the top of hers when she asked me if I felt like finishing it. I wasn’t very hungry either. I’d barely touched my main course, but I figured it’d be better not to waste any more food with grandma around, so I took it. You. Fucking. Pig. Is one ice cream not enough for you? Have you forgotten about that coke you drank at the airport earlier? And those biscuits? That was more than enough sugar for you! But go on then! Go ahead and fill up that belly of yours. I don’t have to walk around with that shameful body. I don’t have to drag those love handles and those man tits through the heat in the city all day! But go on then, Fatty.

I put down the ice cream and asked to be excused to use the restroom. After squeezing my way past the other chairs, I shut the bathroom door, but failed to hit my head in doing so. Locking it, I wished there were two of them like in the entrance so I could try to press myself shut in between. I stared at myself in the mirror. What a shitshow was that! Can’t you just talk to her? Get through to her? The woman’s gone down a fake-news internet rabbit hole and you can’t talk her out of it? And what was that about ignoring your mother? You barely said a word to her! You couldn’t even look her in the eye! No wonder she called you names when you were little! I clenched my fist firmly and slowly raised it to my forehead. God, you’re really something, are you? You can’t even talk to your own mother! You can’t even tell her how you feel or even cry about the way you feel! You’re an apathetic disappointment. I say you stop pretending you’re the victim! I closed my eyes, breathed in and started banging. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight…

[…]

For a second it turned quiet. I could only hear my fist thumping, could only feel my forehead throbbing.

I sat down on the toilet to pee in peace and looked down at the flesh of my thighs covering too much of the surface of the seat to my liking. I pressed my fingernail into my hip and dragged it down to the bulge of my kneecap, like a pen drawing a red line. Watching my corrections disappear, I wondered why I never said anything. Why I felt like whatever I tried to say would be in vain because I don’t have a mother tongue. I don’t feel when I speak, and I can’t speak what I feel. I either speak or feel. I am chained by language. If it immobilises me, why bother showing what I feel, communicating what I will have to, yet cannot explain. Speaking is scratching an itchy open wound you’ve scrubbed open yourself, and feeling is the itch, the festering discomfort you have to sit with. ‘Are you feeling okay?’, I heard my mother say behind the door. I stood up and walked right up to an inch of the white wood. I looked straight ahead, showing my mother on the other side my million-dollar smile and started nodding in a heavy repetition, syncing the thuds of my head on the wood with the bangs of my mother on the other side that grew more frantic. Listening to her screams and unsuccessful twists at the doorknob fade away, I fell down on my back feeling like I slid through the bathroom tiles, three floors down, to gently land in the entrance hall. I wanted to start running up the stairs again in that youthful rush and this time blaze past grandma’s front door, to sprint to the top of the building and fall once more, twisting and spinning endlessly, never letting go of that million-dollar smile.

© 2024 Emil Krastev