There is a gentle knock on Ife’s door, something she is not expecting, because she is not expecting anyone. Besides, no one knows her here, although she has made friends with Valentina the ice cream shop owner, she does not know where she lives. She answers anyway.
‘Bonasera.’
‘Bonasera.’ It is not the ice-cream shop owner but someone she had seen out and about in the village.
‘Sorry to disturb you.’ He said in perfect English. ‘My wife… she’s asked me to check if you have wood. You need wood for the winter.
‘Oh.’ She smiles, ‘thank you, I don’t have any I was going to buy some.’
‘You cannot buy the wood signora I can chop it for you. This house was not occupied for at least two years before you came.’
‘That explains everything.’ Ife laughs a little. ‘If you show me how I can chop the wood myself.’
‘I can do it for you.’
‘Thank you, but I would also like to know how.’
And so, she finds herself chopping wood with her neighbour whom she’s never met but was kind to her on first meet. He showed her how to chop wood using an axe and Ife, true to form, chops not only her wood, but some for her other neighbour, an old man she’d seen from time to time, but never exchanged a word with.
Giuseppe, the kindly neighbour, brings her a bowl of freshly pasta, ‘my wife thinks you are insane for not making me do this for you.’
She laughs, accepting the bowl of food from him, it is tiring work, but she doesn’t mind it.
‘Give her my thanks.’
‘So, what brings you to the village?’ Giuseppe asks sitting down on a stump opposite her with his bowl of pasta.
‘An escape. My life is imploding, and I need somewhere to hide.’ She didn’t mean to be that honest, but she must say the words out, if only to understand what the hell she is doing here. Would Giuseppe know who she is?
‘It’s a good place for that.’ Giuseppe nods. ‘So, this is your first time here?’
‘No, I’ve been here before, its where I come to escape my life when I need to but this time, I am too afraid to return.’ Did his wife put truth serum in this pasta?
‘What have you left behind?’
‘History.’ She answers. ‘A full life.’
Giuseppe cracks that melancholic smile as if he understands. ‘It has a way of catching up to us eventually.’
She nods; doesn’t she know it. Life will catch up with her and when it does, she will be ready for it but for now she wants to chop wood and enjoy this bowl of pasta, the first real meal she has had in days since arriving here. Just then an older woman comes out of the house with two glasses of something the looks like lemonade. She smiles a warm hello to Ife handing her a glass of the freshly made liquid; she converses shortly with her Giuseppe before heading back inside.
‘My mother. She is telling me off because she thinks I didn’t offer to help you.’
‘That’s awfully kind but I really don’t mind expending some energy since I have been cooped up inside the house mostly.’ That brief interaction between Giuseppe and his mother almost makes her miss what she did not have with her own mother, theirs was never a warm relationship, it was cold because they were often always at opposing ends of just about everything. The last conversation with her mother makes her bristle, adding another frosty layer of black ice over her heart.
…
Emerson had been trying to get Ife to see their mother who’d been in hospital, terminal with cancer, but his sister wouldn’t budge. She put it off until he bullied her into going. Seeing her mother in the hospital bed, frail and ghostly pale is an image Ife will not soon forget not least because it was the last time, she would see her alive. A woman who felt eternal sometimes.
‘I never thought you’d come.’ Evelyn said to her daughter when she walked into the private room where she’d been staying at the hospital.
‘Emerson wouldn’t leave me alone until I came to see you. What do you want mother?’
‘Please sit down.’ Evelyn sat up on her bed grimacing from the pain of her meds.
Ife acquiesced and moved the chair closer to the bed.
‘You hate me, and I am sorry.’
Ife makes no effort to refute her mother.
‘I could tell you why I did what I did, making it a condition of your inheritance to marry Tristan, but I know that will make no difference to you and thinking about it now, it was an awful thing to do to you, but I had to save a friend. Awful as that sounds.’ She swallows, ‘I know nothing I say will ever make a difference to you, but I want you to know how sorry I am.’
‘Are you seeking absolution so you won’t go to hell?’
‘No my dear girl. I have lived in hell most of my life knowing you will never forgive me, knowing even as you look upon the face of a dying mother, how hurt and angry you are. How I made you diminish yourself with the choices I forced you to make.’
‘You already said you were trying to help your friend and as your girl child I was expendable.’
‘You are not expendable Ife. I know what you believe but I promise you, you have never been expendable to me or your father.’
‘Daddy wouldn’t fight my corner.’
‘Because I didn’t give him a chance to, but he was never happy about it.’
‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ Ife sighed, ‘I came to see you so Emerson could get off my back. I wish you well.’
‘Please don’t leave. Not like this.’ Evelyn pleads with her daughter.
Obligation is her most hated word in the English language and she did not want to be obliged to do anything for her mother, she’d done enough for her but seeing her this weak, this fragile, she felt obligated to stay.
Evelyn reached for Ife’s hand, and she took it. It was cold, so cold to touch, ‘I want to tell you something and I hope you’ll take it to heart.’
‘What.’
‘I made you play small when I knew better, and I am sorry. Sorrier than you would ever know. What I did to you? What I made you do? I could never forgive myself for it. Seeing you fade away and morph into this cold woman knowing it was all my fault will never be something I can forgive myself for. Seeing you here today at my weakest is a kindness from you I do not deserve. If there is one thing, I want to leave with you, it’s a few words my darling girl.’ She wheezed, sputtering out a cough before continuing, ‘stop playing small, go after the life you should have lived, you have done your duty to me as your mother and to Josephine, and for what it’s worth, I am so sorry I ever put my needs above yours. I should have been a better mother.’
Evelyn relaxed back into bed, her energy depleted, she closed her eyes and fell asleep still holding on to her daughters’ hand.
She did not wake up. And Ife would never get rid of that cold dead touch of her mother’s dead hand in hers. She also never shed a tear.