A mother and a daughter. A t-shirt. Months of silence, closed doors, fear. Then a step towards the exit – perhaps the first towards the light. Will it be enough to lend a hand?
How long has it been since I saw my daughter undressed. Here she is today from the crack of the tent in front of which she told me to stand – her fear that someone might see her.
The dressing rooms of girls’ shops have curtains: on this side, I am the only mother.
My daughter no longer has any friends. At a certain point he stops responding to all of them. And after a while, very soon, the friends disappear.
It looks great on you – I say, peeking out. – Now try this, come on.
No – she says.
I say we won’t buy it, I promise, it’s just my curiosity, I want to see it on him.
She refuses.
I then ask what costumes she plans to go to the beach in, she replies that she will wear last year’s. I say they’re small.
It doesn’t matter – she says.
I therefore understand that my daughter will not come to the beach or swim in the sea. She will remain locked in her room all summer. She hasn’t left the house for months. He dropped out of school. And if in the beginning that had seemed like a catastrophe to me and her father (you don’t think about the future, where you go without a diploma, look at your friends), if dropping out of school had seemed like a catastrophe to us, as the months went by, she was in bed, she was taken bodily by us and stuck in the shower screaming: don’t touch me. Well, as the months went by, school fell into the background, maybe he could have resumed it – we said to ourselves. Losing a year has become our hope. Isolate yourself for a year and then return to the world. Go away: isolate yourself for two years. Three – the future was receding.
I’m looking online for private schools, three years in one.
Then this morning my daughter comes out of the room and says maybe she needs a short sleeved shirt. Striving to control my enthusiasm, I know that I must not overwhelm her with excessive impulses, the risk is to scare her, causing her to stick her head back in – think of a turtle, the doctor said.
Therefore, controlling my enthusiasm, I simply say: what color?
I do not know.
Opening the fridge, we are in the kitchen, I suggest we go together, we take the metro, we get off at Termini.
I don’t like it – (the turtle).
In retrospect I can say I was good.
I don’t protest, I announce that I’m going to get ready, I leave the kitchen.
Shortly after I reappear to say that I’m going to buy the t-shirt, hoping not to make a mistake, buy something you don’t like, I’m afraid of making a mistake – I say.
Feeling submissive, almost guilty, perhaps moved by pity, or perhaps, but this is an optimistic hypothesis, perhaps remembering that she was sixteen and feeling an albeit weak urge to live, my daughter decides to accompany me.
After months of imprisonment and silence. Of confinement and music beyond the door of his room, confinement and voices that for a moment you hope, the father and I hope are the friends on speakerphone, but instead, putting your ear to the door, they are only the voices of the series he is watching.
Giulia watches TV series.
Having the shared account, I can see which ones. All series for teenagers, among these one reassures me: Summertime. I don’t know what it is, but the title and the colors of the poster give rise to hope – I plan to look at it.
What if she lived vicariously through the series? – I reason with my husband.
And also: would it be positive? Positive or negative – we have to ask the doctor.
Our uncertainty for months in the face of our daughter’s every gesture and word. Is it good or bad?
Is it good or bad that he eats at night?
For better or worse, I go up and down the stairs at home, up and down thirty, forty times a day – I counted them. Does that mean he’s not letting go completely?
It’s better or worse, Doctor, that the girl no longer pulls out her hair, in fact I’ve stopped finding tangles on the floor.
Is it good or bad – I would like to ask the doctor, already knowing the answer, waiting for her to answer for once: it’s good, ma’am, so good – it’s good or bad that today we find ourselves on the minus 1 floor of the station.
In recent times, many shops have opened in the basement, so many shops, it’s like a shopping mall here.
Under the artificial lights my daughter appears different: calm, placid (does this mean she is no longer afraid, doctor?).
He looks at the windows, goes into the shops, goes out, eyes the one for girls, let’s go, he says – summertime, I think. Summertime.
Precisely me who, impatiently hasty, always hated shopping, I who would now stand endlessly outside this tent waiting for my daughter. The future seems close to me, other than private school
On the wave of confidence I risk the bikini. I dare, I insist. I err. So much so that I fear in a shot of Giulia, she gets angry and runs away from me – in recent months I have been the person who most irritated her.
In these months, outside his closed door, I begged, I screamed. I whispered: if you want I’ll leave, if the problem is me.
Convincing me that without me she would leave the room, go back to school. The problem is me, only me – I said to myself. Our different characters, the mother daughter conflict.
So today, outside the tent, after having insisted that she try on the bikini, having realized that I had made a mistake – and every mistake in our family for months has had enormous consequences – well I am preparing to say: if the problem is me.
I am ready to repeat it outside the curtain – however: that it is the dressing room curtain and no longer the bedroom door is a step forward, let’s look at the progress.
Progress: go out, walk.
Beyond the curtain therefore – beyond the door, beyond all the walls raised by my daughter – Giulia has no shot. I just want the t-shirt – he says.
Thanks though – he murmurs.
The progress.
In this case I don’t even feel the need to consult the doctor, I understand on my own that the calm reaction is a step forward, a huge step forward. And this time I struggle to contain myself, I can’t control my emotion.
What a great shirt – I say, and if anyone listened to me they would say I’m crazy. A mother who rejoices over an ordinary t-shirt.
Cheerful, beautiful – I continue.
And I might add – if there is anyone listening, who would also listen to me: hopeful, vital, surprising, beautiful, beautiful. I could add and I won’t add – still the fear of scaring Giulia, of making her withdraw her head inside.
We walk on a tightrope and we must not fall – to myself I start speaking in the plural.
We must not fall, my daughter.
In the precarious balance I try the next step, knowing I risk the precipice. But we are together, I tell myself, we are together now.
Taking advantage of Giulia’s terrible sense of orientation, once we leave the shop I don’t go in the direction we came from, towards the metro.
We came by metro, and since the stop is one hundred meters from home, apart from those hundred meters done quickly, with our heads down, our entire journey was underground. We’ve been underground for three hours.
Taking advantage of her poor sense of direction (how many times did she get lost as a child?),
I advance on the opposite side, she follows.
Too late she realizes the deception: when I am at the foot of the escalator and about to go up, when we are both in the cone of light coming from above, from the windows on the first floor.
In the light I hold out a hand to my daughter, it doesn’t matter if she remains dazed, I don’t take my hand away. I don’t move from down here, where, if you lean out, you can also see a piece of sky. On the surface it is a sunny day.
by Teresa Ciabatti
