Time Flies

Time flies. Yesterday you were going to school for the first time and now you’re coming home for the first time. Your parents pick you up, their faces brighten like they did when you won the chess tournament in 4th grade. In the car they won’t shut up. They ask you a million questions about miscellaneous information. You get out and the gate is still decrepit. The dogs jump and their bodies wag, and they bark outrageously loud barks, triumphantly signaling your return to the rest of the world. Your brother doesn’t look too bothered to see you, but you know you’re both happy. It turns out your house has a smell, your mother still cooks the nicest food and the garden looks really dead in the middle of autumn.

Light shines off the wood of the mantelpiece as you lean on the piano, in the mid-afternoon stillness, trying to figure out where the time went and where exactly it is going. You wonder if you’re going to spend your life like this, always in transit, some uncertainty rooted at the back of your mind. You shake it off while you’re getting ready.

Your friends are beautiful, Paris is beautiful, the night is beautiful. Home is beautiful. You wonder if you’re going to see that person, because they’re always someone we want to see and don’t at the same time--and inevitably, you end up seeing them. But it’s fine. Everything is just fine.

Except after a few days. There’s something going on below the surface. You might not even see the tip of the iceberg, but it could still be there. A field of icebergs hiding in the cold water under an infinite stretch of clean ice.

You start to feel blue again. The lonely melody of a saxophone follows you down the street.

You walk. You wonder what the world has to offer. How dare you wonder that though, because you know it contains so much more than your finite scope. But every time, it’s the same.

You are blue. The buzzing streets, the striking stone buildings that look at you like you’re in a dream, the window lights.

You brush it off as you stride aimlessly through the traffic with your friends like you’re the most important people in the world. Unstoppable at each other’s side. You descend into the beautiful Parisian station that will take you to the party where all your dreams will come true. You giggle and take turns for a sip of the disgusting vodka you bought, the one that tastes like nail polish remover because it was the cheapest, the metro rushing along, stop to stop. That’s when you see her--the cleaning lady. The woman who’s been coming into your home since you were very small to clean things up. She’s seen your dirty underwear, picked up your favorite magazine from behind the cupboard; she’s found your hidden pack of cigarettes in the bottom draw and some condoms and put them back where they were after she cleaned, without saying anything to your mother. She has a beautiful name and a beautiful face, but she isn’t what you imagine cinderella to be when your father read you the book.

The cleaning lady is sitting opposite you in the metro, and as she tentatively calls your name from the opposite row of seats, you turn your head in disbelief. You are both overwhelmed with joy and stand up to greet each other. You both look very different, and you are not the same age, maybe that’s why the whole carriage is staring. Even your friends, they’re not sure what is going on or what to say, they don’t know who she is; even if she has been cleaning your home every monday and thursday for years and she found your cigarettes and didn’t tell a soul.

The following Thursday it’s one o’clock sharp when the dogs bark so you know it’s her. She comes in tired and puts down her handbag and the plastic bag with her slippers.

In the kitchen you ask her about her son, not out of politeness, but because you really care. For once she doesn’t smile and describe a few things with her broken French. This time, she looks away, out the window into your garden, and tells you about how he asks his grand-parents why his mother and father aren’t home. He asks them where his parents are, why all the other children spend Christmas with their mummy and not him. She wipes the tears pearling in the corner of her clear eyes. She says she doesn’t want to be a cleaning lady for the rest of her life. You ask her why don’t you fly your son over from Ukraine and live with him in the 18eme arrondissement, school is free in France. You realize you don’t know anything, because the words ring false as soon as they come out of your silly mouth. She stares at the floor. A floor she will have to clean in a couple of hours, after she’s finished the living room. She says she wants to speak French, in her broken French.

You look up “Free French lessons for adults” on google and take the hours, the phone numbers and the addresses down of the only two organizations which provide them. Somehow you’re not surprised that in the land of socialism there are no governmentally run programs for teaching French to foreigners. Growing up means seeing what is beyond the beautiful decrepit gate for what it is. You even look up the words “hours”, “days”, “telephone” and “address” in Ukrainian, and write them down next to the information.

When you hand her the piece of paper she smiles, and says your handwriting in Ukrainian is very sweet. She leaves the house and you’re leaving too, tomorrow morning.

In the plane you stare out the window. Your mother didn’t want to let you go. Your friends, your dogs. No one did. Even the one you didn’t want but wanted to see. You didn’t want to leave them either.

The plane takes off and you feel your heart thump quicker. In your head you say good-bye to Paris, cloudy and grey, miniature streets and buildings intertwining with that old, long river. The city sees you leave. It commends you to come back soon.

With a sigh, you tilt your head back against the seat. You wish you had spent the money from the plane ticket on the sad and confused little boy.