Mahmutovic At the Feet of Mothers

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78864-101-2
Verlag: Cinnamon Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 252 Seiten

Joseph Schneider grows up in a Cherokee-Jewish family in the Smokey mountains of North Carolina. He dreams to be a cook on the biggest ship there is in the world but his attachment to his mother Rachel and his rootedness to the little mountain village keep him from moving on. When his mother falls ill she reveals she stole him from a Palestinian girl Aliya in the 80s when she volunteered at a hospital in Gaza. Joseph refuses to know anything more about his biological mother, but later when Rachel dies, Joseph honors his promise to her and embarks on a painful pilgrimage to the holy land, a walk in the footsteps of his American mother and a search for Aliya.

Adnan Mahmutovi? (1974) became a refugee of war in 1993 and ended up in Sweden. He worked for a decade with people with brain damage while studying English and philosophy. He has PhD in English literature and MFA in creative writing, and he is currently a lecturer and writer-in-residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. As a part of a global project Transnational Creatives and GALA Network, he has started and is managing the first MA in Transnational Creative Writing. He has published a novel Thinner than a Hair with Cinnamon Press (2010), as well as short story collection How to Fare Well and Stay Fair (Salt, 2012), and a volume of literary criticism Ways of Being Free (2012).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mahmutovic, Adnan

Leseproben

DAY OF REST

A LOT OF things happened following that Saturday. A lot. I don’t even know where to begin. With Mom’s sexual appetite? Or Helen not coming home from New Orleans? Or the birth of an ugly little boy that I witnessed? Ah, and then there was my sister Kathryn dating the biggest jerk in the county. Yeah, a lot of things happened but all I was thinking at the time was I wanted to cook like Mom did, or better than her, much better, so when I turned eighteen I’d leave the valley on a big ass ship, cook for sailors and spend the nights on the deck looking for weird new constellations. God, I had no idea when that day came how bad I’d feel about leaving the woods for the seas.

All right, let’s start with the things that’d make Freud come to Maggie. My mother was changing. And she didn’t think I’d notice. She became a head-nurse down in St Joseph’s hospital where she’d worked for… I don’t know how long… decades probably, since she was a girl, since way before I was born. She loved delivering babies and no promotion could stop her from helping the other nurses bring a baby into this world, at least once a month, yes, something like that, and she’d always want to be the one to tag it with its mother’s name and a proper number. Kathryn once told me Mom freaked out when a nurse didn’t tag the baby right away. But that’s not what I’m getting at. That year, Mom often looked like someone had smacked her upside her head and made her all wide-eyed and hot. I don’t know how many times I’d seen her signal to Dad and pretend they had something to do, like she had to help him in his workshop with whatever suit he was tailoring at the moment. Sure they tried to be quiet but we did live in a cove. A big cove, I give you that, but… you know. And I’m not sure if that behavior explains what’d happen later, the stuff she’d come to tell me, the things she’d come to do, the way she’d die, but a horny mother is not exactly something you just forget.

I think what started it all was Caddy. He got sick on the Sunday Helen was supposed to come home from New Orleans and stay over the summer, but she didn’t, because she had an internship at some newspaper and was hoping they’d offer her a job after she finished college. Mom was angry and Dad sad and Kathryn didn’t care and I was the only one who knew that the internship was an excuse. Not a lie, mind you, no way Helen would lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. Helen had a new girlfriend. A really pretty one, she told me, but I doubted any girl could hold a candle to my sister.

Anyway, as always Mom and I woke up at sunrise and she hung the big clay disc on four old cords with buzzard feathers attached to its bottom. An inch underneath she put a white enamel pan filled with water. On the tense surface, there was a water-beetle made of fine wire mesh and black yarn. I’d made that model of the Cherokee creation myth at school but still Mom wouldn’t let me touch it like it was something that’d been handed down since the great buzzard created the mountains.

She’d baked bread the night before and put it on the disk, and sprinkled it with water and covered it with a linen cloth. The next morning the loaf was harder, but still fresh. She took a long stalk of lemongrass, checked that it hadn’t gone soggy, and laid it on the cutting board and cut off the woody leaves and peeled off the outer layers of the white stalk, and then she pressed it with a wide kitchen knife to release the juices and left it on the windowsill. I buttered a slice of bread, and we went out onto the porch.

Caddy lay at our feet, eyes hardly open. Dad came out and sat between us and rubbed his head against Mom’s shoulder and whispered something about the last night. She dug her fingers into his beard. ‘I could always braid it for you.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What’s with all that lemongrass in the kitchen?’

I said, ‘It kills the spirits that didn’t drown in the water.’

‘That’s fantastic. You guys are updating old superstitions.’

‘Shut up,’ Mom said.

‘You’re not going to church today, are you?’

‘We are. To St John’s.’

‘Again? Joseph doesn’t even like Father Finn.’

‘Yes he does. And so does Kathryn.’

I really did, but decided not to say anything. Kathryn didn’t much like church whoever the priest was. There was never anyone handsome there, she’d say.

Dad went on, ‘Come on, that silly priest speaks like he was born and bred in the South. I hate him. I hate eloquent, liberal Catholic priests who bring up gay rights before their congregations. They mess up the order of things.’

‘Nothing left for you New Yorkers to complain about, huh? Besides, now that she got herself that hillbilly, it’s only good that Kathryn’s still keen on going.’

‘For God’s sake, Rachel. You’re as close to Catholicism as your mother was to sobriety.’

‘What do you know Mr. Big Apple Man? Sometimes you sound like you’re the one who grew up in these backwoods with my kin and their moonshine.’

I couldn’t listen to that so I got a bowl of milk and crumbled bread and tried feeding Caddy, but he wouldn’t open his mouth. I massaged his jaw until he did and fed him. I wasn’t worried at the time. I’d seen him drowsy like that and chalked it up to laziness.

Kathryn came out, mumbled Good morning, sat on the floor next to Caddy and fingered his ears. She was really cool, my big sister. Like some old Cherokee goddess. Mom and Dad stopped talking and each pinched a lock of Kat’s curly hair and then looked at each other and smiled. Kat looked so much like Mum I could understand that back when Dad came to the mountain and saw this creature in the woods, he got drunker than if she’d poured Grandpaw’s moonshine into him through a sieve. It’s odd, I have to say, how Helen never had that fire though they were like two drops of water. You could see this even in a picture, as if Kat sucked in more sunshine.

We sat there among the sounds of the woods, until Mom’s said, ‘Let’s go. It’s Father Flinn’s last day. I want to hear how he’s going to round off these ten years in the county.’

‘Can I come too?’ Dad asked.

We all stared at him because we weren’t entirely sure he was joking. Then he smiled and said, ‘Nah, I love being Jewish on Sundays. I’ll listen to and until I’m sick and tired of those ugly voices.’

In church, Kathryn and I sat around Mom in the pew closest to the door. Kathryn leaned on her and so did I. Mom loved this church, said it was among the few places where the ghost of her late mother didn't follow her with that moonshine breath and preaching prejudices like she seasoned food, and Grandmaw’s food was spicy I’d heard, too spicy even for all the heavy drinkers congregating at their old house.

In his farewell sermon, Father Finn looked like he was taking the temperature of his congregation with all the big words, fate and choice, and turning the other cheek. He flipped two pages and said, ‘A wise man said that Christianity is radically reformatory. Satan has usurped the government of this world.… Christ has undertaken the work of counter-revolution to create all things new in the moral order of things to reform or destroy all governments that don’t obey God. It follows that conservatism is its great antagonist.… Its law is custom, precedent, established usages.’

I had no idea what that meant at the time, but it sure sounded badass. I got the feeling Dad would like it. Father Finn finished with the words, ‘Conservatism looks back for all that it thinks excellent and counts progress insanity. It is everywhere and evermore antichrist.’

I don’t know why Mom decided we should leave, but she just said, ‘Kids, let’s go.’

We walked out, and when I turned to smile at Father Finn I saw him watching us like he was a lightship and we were boats bobbing on the open sea. He nodded at me, and I nodded back. Kathryn’s blue scarf flapped behind like a cape.

Later that night, Mom had a phone call from the hospital. The old nurse Rebecca was sick, and Mom didn’t trust Angie with this particular delivery, something about the woman’s… I don’t know, something was weird and Mom had to go. I never understood why she wanted me to go with her.

Dad said, ‘You can’t just take him to work.’

‘I want to go with Mom.’

‘You’re staying.’

Mom said, ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be fun for him.’

He went upstairs.

In the car, I fiddled with my eye-patch and asked, ‘Where are we really going?’

‘To deliver a baby. What did you think?’

‘I thought you wanted to be alone with me.’

‘I did. I do. But I didn’t lie.’

‘So I’ll get to see this for real. Wow. Can I help?’

‘No.’

‘I can give the mother that… what’s it called, the gas, like on TV.’

‘You can’t be in there. You’re a kid.’

‘That sucks.’ I said, tightened my seatbelt, and counted to ten, breathing slowly.

She smiled that proud smile when I did something she’d taught me, and said, ‘You’re not supposed to count aloud when you’re angry.’

I kept counting to thirty. Maybe more.

‘Tell you what, there’s a room, and a keyhole. But no one can know.’

I kissed her. ‘Mom, you’re so cool.’

‘Who knows, you may want to be a nurse when you grow up.’

‘What’s with you and Dad wanting me to do what you guys are doing. I...