Unlived Lives

The earth struck the coffin lid twice. They are burying me alive. All the nails had been driven in except the left one. I was only beginning to remember the previous funerals, but one thing I knew for certain: it always works loose. - Lay her deeper, - said mother from above. - This time the monster lived longer. The board sagged over my lips. For some reason it smelled of lilies here, and of the familiar smell of my own house.

Under my back a long fingernail slowly ran along the cracked bottom of the coffin, and every scrape exactly repeated a beat of my heart. I pushed the left board aside. Grave earth poured into the gap at once, packed into my mouth and grated on my teeth. I squeezed a shoulder through, clawed my way out of the pit and ran home barefoot. I was wearing a funeral dress, hemmed for a shorter woman. Mother silently combed the earth out of my hair. - You have just buried me.

- You woke early again. She gave me milk with honey and poppy seed. In the mirror by the table my reflection lay in a coffin and beat its fists against the glass. - Go to bed, - said mother. - Tomorrow is a hard day. In the morning there was a wedding ring on my finger. A stranger wept over the coffin. - My beloved, come back. I remembered the smell of his hair, the weight of his hand on my waist and a quarrel over a stillborn child. I did not remember his name.

Shaking off the earth, I looked at the cross over the grave; scratched into it was: "I have been here before." At home another bed stood beside mine. The pillow was still warm. Mother had a new grey streak and called me a widow. At the next coffin a little girl was screaming: - Don't bury Mama! I caught up with her at the church gate. - What is your name? - You named me Melania before you died. She had my features.

We went to her home; on the table there was a drawing: a man, a child and a black pit. At home mother said I had never given birth. Then my shirt grew wet at the breast with warm milk. Terror took hold of me; I tied myself to the bench and held a candle under my palm so as not to fall asleep. At midnight the door slid closer. The walls breathed together with me. Earth trickled from the cracks, and under my ribs a lullaby began to play. - What are you doing to me?

From behind the door a child's voice answered: - Growing you back. Mother moistened my lips with milk. I did not close my eyes. And still I woke in the coffin. The funerals came faster. I woke in wedding silk, in a maiden's shirt, with a seam across my throat, with grey hair and an old woman's hands. Different children wept for me. Some had my eyes. Each time I remembered a whole life, and by evening nothing was left of it but someone else's pain.

One morning, among the people by the coffin, stood I myself, about seventy years old. She simply watched, without a drop of grief. I pointed at the left board and moved my lips; she answered: - Don't come out. This time was unlike the others: today the graveyard key-keeper was waiting among the graves. Behind him stood eleven crosses with my face at different ages. - Is all of that me? - All you managed to become in one night. He touched the smallest grave.

- The left board doesn't really let you out. It moves you into the next coffin. - How do I stop it? - At the last funeral, do not say the lives you lived belong to someone else. If you renounce them, the earth will scour you out from within. And then the first Marta will look out through your eyes. I broke the bolt on mother's room. Inside lay eleven clay masks, locks of hair of different colors, wedding rings, children's drawings and records of my deaths.

Each mask whispered the name of someone I had once loved. Outside the window someone was breathing in my rhythm. - You were not meant to see this, - said mother. - Who is out there? She pressed her palm to the windowpane. - The one for whose sake I lived through all your lives. On the ninth day after my death mother came to the grave with a milk tooth, poppy milk and the left nail. The key-keeper said:

- However many years each possible Marta lives, that many years the earth will take from you. When the bell rang backwards, the nail came out of the coffin by itself. - I wanted to see who you could have become, - mother wept. - And me - did you ever once see me? She looked at me as if she were already searching my face for the seven-year-old.

In the house stood a small coffin. The seams of the child's shirt had been let out, as if it was preparing to grow. In the gums stirred now milk teeth, now worn old ones. The girl opened her eyes. - I am the first you. - I have lived more. - You taught my future body to love, to give birth, to grow old and to fear death. She took my hand. - When you renounce these lives, everything will come to me. Even the place behind your eyes.

I fled, but every road turned back toward Hlukha Hriadka. The river smelled of wax and poppy milk. The sky came down so low it became the silk lining of a coffin. By the fresh pit lay mother. In one night she had withered to the bone, and the skin on her face sagged, as if all the years she had given away had turned into her at once. - I gave you all my years. - You gave them to the child. - I want to embrace the one I buried.

It hurts to understand: mother remembered every one of my deaths, but not once did she love the one who came back. I came to in a coffin and felt that this one was the last. Above me the seven-year-old Marta repeated my every breath. In my head a daughter, an infant and an old woman with my face were all weeping at once. I knew: they had lived through me. But the earth was already pressing on the lid, and in terror I said: - Not one of these lives is mine.

The left board settled flat. Later my body embraced mother with a child's arms. I was screaming behind my own teeth. - Daughter? - Yes, Mommy. She poured milk, delicious... Now I am buried inside myself.