A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska Page A

sticks. Someone had been selling them in the hospital. They were not for Srebra and me; they were just to have around the apartment. We put one in our room on the shelf; the other sat in the big room on top of the old television. After our mother put on her blue robe, she lay down on the couch and silently looked at us seated in our chair. What concerned us most was whether she would laugh as she had before. Her laugh was the only thing that eased our anxieties about being unloved children. When our mother laughed, it gave Srebra and me confidence; we grew more sure of ourselves. In those moments we heard her laugh—and she laughed loudly, almost hysterically—Srebra and I felt close to each other, and carried our misfortune more easily. Our father almost never laughed; he only let out a sound that was supposed to resemble laughter, a sort-of laugh released as an exhale, as if he were clearing his throat, a laugh he had second thoughts about. As it turned out, for a whole month after her return from the hospital, where they had removed a cyst from her ovary, Mom didn’t laugh in her usual fashion. It was not until she went to work again and was once again able to tell us who said what and who did what, in particular about “Comrade Director,” that she was able to laugh as she had before. One evening, before going to bed, our uncle, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket and shivering, accidentally broke one of the globes on the lamp that hung in the big room. Afraid of what our father would say, he opened his drawer (the top one was his our mother had decided), took out his pants, and got himself ready in case our father should happen to kick him out of the house. My heart was beating like crazybecause I loved him and was worried and afraid for him. Srebra loved him too, but she argued with him, calling him an idiot whenever we played a pinching game and he pinched us too hard. Our father did get very angry, but he controlled himself and didn’t kick Uncle out, but that evening in front of the television, he muttered the same thing for hours: “As if people like that should study languages, the bastard; because of people like that the country will fall apart…” Our mother sobbed silently on the couch; Srebra and I watched the quiz show Kviskoteka , but both our minds fled to the big room, where, scrunched down under a quilt and thick wool blanket, our uncle’s body trembled. What we loved most was when mother vacuumed and shooed Srebra, me, and our uncle into the hallway, where we sat until she was done. In the hallway, we played hopscotch on the brown carpet with its brightly colored lines. Srebra and I held each other tight under the arms and hopped each on one foot, while our uncle hopped on two. We laughed until our uncle turned completely red in the face, including all of his forehead, and then Srebra would toss at him: “You look like a monkey’s ass.” Something oppressed my spirit, though, something indefinite, but our uncle said, “And you look like a witch.” In the evening, Mom boiled some noodles, and we grated the cheese that was brought from the village. When our uncle wasn’t lying in bed, he sat in the dining room and watched television, silently, trying to be invisible. Mom always asked him if he wanted to eat, as if it were not quite clear, since, during the day, he ate in the student cafeteria, and for some reason all of us expected that he would never be hungry at home. I think we all secretly prayed that he would say no so there would be more for us. Also, Dad often yelled at him, like he did at us. Our uncle was nearly full grown, the only one in our family to finish university, and was now enrolled in a foreign-language course. He was a man on the verge of marriage, but our father treated him like a child. When our father insulted him because of some minor thing even Srebra felt sorry for him; I could hear her swallow the lump in her throat. I