The County of Birches by Judith Kalman

Author:Judith Kalman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466882577
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

MONAHAN AVENUE

The usual clouds hang above Monahan Avenue. My mother shuts the heavy door behind us and looks up to check for rain. It is typically chilly, the sky weighted with damp that hasn’t yet materialized. Mummy takes my hand and leads me down the road. Under my cardigan I wear a new, crisp black overall with a little pink posy stitched on the bib. It’s nice wearing something new, like on a special occasion, only this is different. We walk down to the bus stop, which means the hospital must be in London, or somewhere beyond my infant-school or the greengrocer’s. My mother carries a small suitcase with some of my things. The houses descend like stairs to the bottom of the street. I feel them urging me downhill, saying, “Get along now, Dana. Out you go.” Mummy says I’ll be gone a few days.

My mother was gone a week when she disappeared into a hospital. It went so fast, like a holiday afternoon, not like a week at infant-school that yawns towards what feels like an ever-receding weekend. I trace the silky stitching of the posy on my pants’ bib over and over as we walk down the road. Pink and delicate and pretty. I’m not sure why I’m going. I don’t feel anything hurting me. My mother has explained that the operation must be done in a hospital, just like when she had her stones. My mother’s stones came from eating good things like butter and cream. She wouldn’t be so stupid as to eat stones, but she got them just the same. I don’t feel what I imagine as the cold clammy weight of stones in my stomach. I have been caught scooping butter out of the dish on the kitchen table so many times it’s now kept in the icebox, but I don’t think my parents would actually send me away because of that.

“Just a few days,” Mummy assures me, “and you’ll be all better.”

I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve done something wrong. It must have something to do with what the nurse at my infant-school called Mummy in to talk about. The shame of it, having your mother called in, but no one ever accused me of anything. There was some talk about the way it’s done here in England. Every child must have his tonsils taken out. But it’s so vague and bleary. I don’t know what tonsils are. Not like stones that you can see.

I have the sense of being deliberately kept in the dark. Maybe my mother thinks I will make less trouble if I don’t know why I must be sent away. Certainly I would be less tractable if I knew that I would be in hospital for two whole weeks. Two weeks. What largesse on the part of the British. My mother is not in the habit of explaining things in detail. She assumes my sister and I are quick enough to pick up whatever we need to know.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.