Za Boravi Tamet-Lost memories

I am sitting on a dirty floor. The tiles are one you’d find in any Croatian home, they’re all the same, a light brown orange colour with dark brown and white patterning in the middle. They span out across the whole floor of this small kitchen, which is connected to the dining room. Funny, that I look at it now and find it so small when only six years earlier I found it so large, so exciting, so new. There are a lot of things that have changed in the six years that have passed. For starters, I ponder, six years ago I wouldn’t be sitting on the floor of my Baba and Dida’s kitchen cleaning their fridge. As I stare into the fridge, my mind wanders further. Six years ago the fridge would never have been this disgustingly dirty, with grime and bacteria and everything else imaginable spread out across over the fridges once white walls. Six years ago there would never be jars of unopened food that went off two years to the current date. Six years ago there would never be so little food in the fridge. I remember as a child always coming to this fridge and finding it full. Full of prusut, cheese, ham, salami, fresh fruit, vegetables, cool drink, sok, mlijeko, and always in the corner of the fridge, on the left hand side in the small compartment, cokolada of all different kinds, just for us. Just for her grandchildren. As though they were some kind of reward for coming to visit her and brighten up her life for a while. But that was six years ago.

My Baba’s awoken from her sleep now and walks in to find me sitting on the floor, surrounded by four bags of soiled food, cleaning out her fridge. She lets out a short scream of surprise, as though in shock of my being there. She says something in Croatian I don’t understand…the language still seems somewhat foreign to me after all these years.

“Gdje je Marko?” she asks me, she can’t even remember the whereabouts of her own husband.

“On je ovoj club.” He is at the club, I reply.

“Ah,” she says, still looking confused and disoriented, as though she awoke to a house that isn’t hers, “Sto si ti?” she asks me.

“Cleaning.” I replied, I can’t remember the Croatian word to clean. I knew raditi was to work, which I was doing but I thought I’d be more specific. My Baba speaks very little English, but luckily for me she can understand the word “clean” and, I’m quite sure that when she saw the sponge and detergent she gathered what I was doing.

“Ah,” she says, still looking confused and disoriented, as though she was in another world, “Molim, tko si ti?” she asks me. And with these words I try to hold back the welling tears in my eyes, I try to remain strong as I reply,

“Ja sam Ivanka. Ja Sam tvoj anuka.” I’m Ivanka. I’m your granddaughter. What pained me most about this moment was not actually having to say those words, the words that prove my Baba has truly forgotten, but having to see her face. Her face with so many emotions. Confusion as she tries desperately to place my nameless face, anger with herself that she can’t recall her own granddaughter and sadness, a deep despair at the fact that she no longer knows her own life. She starts to cry. She cries and cries and cries, her frail body shaking with every sob.

“Molim dragana”, is all she manages to say, over and over and over, I’m sorry, my darling. I’m sorry, my darling. I’m sorry my darling. With this she retreats back to her small, typically Croatian lounge room, where all the walls are white and everything else is some shade of brown. There she sits in her dark brown chair, in the corner of the room, and sobs and sobs. Once she has forgotten the reason for her sadness, she stares blankly at the window with the blinds closed, trying to remember what she forgot. Then, when she forgets that she was trying to remember what she forgot, she turns on the small rectangular television, not to watch it, just to hear the sound, and she closes her eyes and falls asleep.

I continue to clean. I clean and clean and clean. Something my mothers Croatian ethics have taught me. Something her mother taught her. But her mother, my Baba no longer remembers to clean. Or she starts and forgets. So I clean for her. I clean and clean and clean, hoping that if I clean enough and make her remember, everything will be the same.

She was not always like this, my Baba that is. She used to be magnificent. Nothing could faze her. She was so strong. She remembered and did everything. She used to be able to endure so much. Now though, she is so frail, so weak, so forgetful. She used to hold together a family, to support each and every one of them. Now they support her. She also used to make my Dida happy. Now, he doesn’t know how to deal with her and wants to her to be sent away to a nursing home. She also used to be so strong and stand up to Dida and the way he treated her. Now, he tells her what to eat, what to wear, what to do and what not to do. He makes her food that she doesn’t like, that she doesn’t eat, and gets upset when she doesn’t eat it. He dresses her everyday in clothes she doesn’t like, even though she can actually dress herself. He tells her to stay at home all day, not to go out without him and not to have any form of a social life. He told her to no longer even go to church. No wonder she’s always so sad, and her once bright blue eyes have turned to a dull, plain shade of grey. She may forget but she’s not incompetent. This is not what she left Croatia for.

I remember when her eyes were that bright blue. They had to be the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen. I remember them staring down at me while she made krustole on the kitchen counter.

“Watch,” she said to me “someday you will make krustole too and you will be a great wife.” I always hoped I’d be a great wife, the way my Baba was. She cleaned. She had everything immaculate and pristine. The way a good European wife should leave her household. The way my own mother does. She used to cook the most superb foods as well. Sacare, gradale, walnut palacinke, krustole, baklah, kruh. She used to remember us too.

But I saw when things started to change…six years ago on my tenth birthday, when Baba said I was turning nine and said my name was Kate´, my younger cousins name. Then it gradually got worse, the disease taking over her entire body, her entire mind, and her entire soul. Until now, where she spends her entire days not knowing when it’s morning, midday or evening, Just sleeping and crying the whole day away. This isn’t how she pictured her future in Australia.

She left Croatia before the war on Croatia, on Yugoslavia, in a hope of freedom, of life, of a future. She left Croatia to come to Australia in a hope that her family would come too, and they would live together and make a life. Her brothers and father died in that war, and her sister and mother were shot on a rampage. She came to Australia from Croatia with visions of a family to support, grandchildren she adored and a fridge full of food. Now, the fridge is filled with nothing at all, and her restraints don’t allow her to be the way she was for but a short while.