Black Milk - Elif Shafak [63]
In the evenings, I sit in front of the computer and write down notes and compose journal entries far into the night. I don’t socialize anymore, I don’t go to parties and I avoid brown-bag lunches, as strong as the urge is sometimes. I don’t allow anything outside of writing and books to enter my life.
Mama Rice Pudding watches me from a distance with eyes that cannot hide their hurt. Whenever I try to communicate with her, she turns her head and stares into space, sitting as still as a marble statue. Some nights, in bed, I hear her crying.
One day a major Turkish newspaper does an interview with me about my life in America. I speak to the journalist on the phone for about forty minutes. As we are about to hang up he asks me about marriage and motherhood.
I tell him that I am miles away from both right now. It is a huge responsibility to bring children into this world, I say. But when I am old enough, that is, after many more novels, I could see myself becoming a foster mom or perhaps raising someone else’s children, helping their education and so forth.
That weekend when the interview comes out, its title is as catchy as it can be: “I am Raring to Become a Stepmom!”
Next to the revelation, there is a picture of me taken in Istanbul standing in front of the Topkap1 Palace. I am dressed head to toe in black, my hair a cuckoo’s nest due to a strong wind, my face etched with a grave expression. When my image is juxtaposed with the words, I look like a black spider about to jump on any divorced man with kids.
I decide not to give any more interviews for a while.
Approximately at the same time, as if a muse has fallen from the sky onto my head, I begin to write a new novel. It is called The Saint of Incipient Insanities. The story has sorrow cloaked in humor and humor cloaked in sorrow. It is about a group of foreigners in America coming from very different cultural backgrounds and struggling, not always successfully, with an ongoing sense of estrangement. I write about “insiders” and “outsiders,” about belonging and not belonging, feeling like a tree that is turned upside down and has its roots up in the air.
PART FOUR
Never Say Never
Sweet Love
There is a short, round Mexican cleaning lady, Rosario, who every morning at seven o’clock vacuums the northwest section of the library where I usually work all night. I can still dip into Spanish, albeit clumsily. Rosario loves hearing my funny pronunciation and correcting my mistakes. She also teaches me new words every day, blushing and giggling as I repeat them, because some of them are pretty lewd.
When I fall asleep on the leather couch only a few feet away from the John Stuart Mill collection, it is Rosario who wakes me up. She brings me coffee that is so heavy and black my heart pounds for about three minutes after I take a sip. Yet I never tell her to make it a bit weaker. I guess I like her.
“Why are you working so hard?” she asks me one day, pointing to my laptop and a stack of books.
“You work hard, too,” I say, pointing to her vacuum cleaner and duster.
She nods. She knows I am right. Then she takes out her necklace and shows it to me. There are four rings on her silver pendant. When I ask her what they mean, she says, smiling from ear to ear, “One ring for each child.”
She is a mother of four. That’s why she works so hard. She wants them to have a better life than the one she has had.
“How about your husband?” I ask. “Tu marido?”
“Marido . . . puff,” she says, as if she is talking about gunpowder. I cannot figure out whether he has died or run away with someone else or never was. Oblivious to my confusion, Rosario smiles again and elbows me. “Children are a blessing,” she says.
“I am happy for you.”
She pats my shoulder with a touch so genuine and friendly, I drink two more cups of coffee with her, my heart racing.
“You are a good girl,” she says to me.
“Some of me are,” I say, thinking of my finger-women.
She finds that hilarious and laughs so hard she almost loses her balance. When she manages to get hold