Concrete

By Denisa Dobrovodová

It was a miserable morning, like almost every other one, when Sara heard the cry of her firstborn and rose to consciousness on an ancient mattress covered in sweat and piss. She stayed lying there with her eyes closed for just a little longer, attempting to gather the strength to face the day. She was twenty years old but appeared older, the beauty of her fair skin contrasted with her dark brown hair and the fullness of her body was accentuated by her recent pregnancy. She was beautiful in many people’s eyes and even in her own, but it no longer mattered, for she had married and given birth, and was now lying to rest in the sweat of her husband, whose remarkable alcohol dependency and even more remarkable low tolerance led to accidents and constant misery.

            He was lying by her side that morning and every other morning too, for although he was a drunk, he was also faithful, and somehow always found his way back home. It was only 5 a.m., and Sara longed for a few more hours of rest, but her son saw it differently and was already fully awake. She finally brought herself to open her eyes and scanned the room in which she slept, and ate, and studied, and breastfed and played. In fact, there was no space but that of this room that Sara could call her own. How differently she used to picture it before she left her hometown to come study in the capital, but there was no point in recalling that. This was her life now, and she was too pragmatic to torture herself over what could have been. She occasionally caught herself, but only for a second, daydreaming about the possibilities she had abandoned to choose this one, like the full scholarship at the University of Moscow, or her plans to emigrate to Canada to follow a hitchhiker she had only met twice but fell in love with right away. She never made it to Canada, in fact, she never even made it past the country of her birth, but in her mind sometimes she was there for a brief moment before returning to the now. Some would say she practised mindfulness, back in 1985, when such a word didn’t even exist and neither did the concept. What was the point of thinking about what could have been? She made her choice, and she made it willingly, believing that it was some sort of higher power that set her on this path. After all, she knew the second she first spoke to her husband that he was the one, and that was the only choice she had. She stood by her choice even now, after the honeymoon ended with him secretly getting drunk in the bathroom of a Prague bar, after they moved to a basement flat with mould on the ceiling, and after she had given birth to a son who was too hungry for his own good and almost immediately drank all her milk. 

            She stood up and lifted her crying baby from the crib placed beside her, lovingly caressing the little clueless boy who came into the world as an accident, but who she could no longer imagine her life without.  She walked to the sink with her son in her arms and used only one hand to warm up the formula that would finally satisfy him. She then sat on a chair by the small dining table she would often use as her desk and opened her economics textbook while holding the bottle in her son’s mouth. The room was still dark, but electricity was too expensive, so she moved her chair closer to the small, high window on the level of the pavement and struggled with the terminology on the pages of her textbook, fighting the urge to go back to sleep. She tried for a few minutes, but she couldn’t focus because her son was restless, and so was she. She proceeded to walk around the room, rocking the baby quiet so he wouldn’t wake her husband. She wasn’t ready for him to wake up, and longed to keep the morning still for a little while longer. She ate breakfast, a bare roll, and drank a cup of coffee that grew colder every second that passed in that basement flat. 

            “Sara?” 

She stayed quiet for a moment before facing the bed where her husband sat upright. 

            “Good morning.”

            “What happened?”

            “What happened when?”

            “Last night.”

            “What do you think happened? You stumbled home at 1 a.m., and I put you to bed. I was waiting for you after work, you know.”

            “You were?”

            “Yes. We were.”

He gazed at their son, whose little hands were now spread towards his father. 

            “I am sorry. We went to the bar after work and… I suppose I lost track of time.”

            “I’ll say. Do you have the money?” There was tiredness in her voice caused by more than the lack of sleep, but she remained pleasant, for there was no point in yelling at him now.

            “What money?”

            “Your wage. You were supposed to bring it home yesterday. The full month's pay.”

He looked into her eyes with regret before proceeding to speak: “I am sorry. I don’t have it.”

            “Where is it?” She asked, knowing exactly where all the money had gone.

            “I spent it.”

            “On booze.”

            “On booze.”

He caught a glimpse of anger in her eyes before she put her son down on the bed. 

            “I brought cigarettes though,” he said, trying to remedy the situation which could hardly be improved and took the little boy into his arms. 

She walked around the room and picked up his trousers, finding a pack of cigarettes in his pocket, with only three left. 

            “Seriously?” She uttered, putting one in her mouth.

She quit smoking when she was pregnant, but there was no reason to not get started again, with her not having enough breast milk and all. 

            “I am sorry- I will get more.”

            “With what?” she asked quietly while sitting on the wooden chair and nearly crushing the cigarette in her fingers.

            “I will go back to the bar. I will ask the guys. There is no way I could have spent   everything.”

            “Judging by your state last night, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

            “I…. I’m sorry, Sara,” he said in an apologetic voice, and she noticed a tear in the corner of his eye, for he was a good man, and he meant what he said. 

Sara was aware of the situation before she got caught in it. She was in love, but there was no illusion about his alcoholism- only a romantic dream to one day cure it. She had little patience for alcoholics, as her father had been a horrific one before she could even remember, and sometimes she wondered how she got caught here despite her past. But then she'd always remember why she'd fallen in love with her husband and decided to make him one almost right away. She first met him as his tutor, recommended by a mutual friend, appointed to teach him maths that his brain could simply never comprehend. Math- she didn’t teach him, but they quickly fell in love, for he could have been dumb when it came to numbers, but she had never met anyone more knowledgeable than her in any way. He was an artist at heart and an art connoisseur in mind; he spoke about literature and films, and music, and she couldn’t understand how a lower-class nobody with a denim jacket on a bare chest and a drink in hand could know so much when she, a smart woman, a good student and an avid reader, could barely keep up.  

It was a similarly miserable day when Sara finally gave her husband the ultimatum. And coincidentally, or not so much, her decision was preceded by intoxication and a urine-covered seat, only this time it was on a bus, and it was not the morning, but rather an afternoon for which they had made plans. The weather on that day reminded her of family vacations by the sea, but there was nothing around her, only concrete, steaming from the hot rays of the sun. Her newborn was now a toddler, standing more or less surely, but he was nevertheless right by her side and holding on to her strong legs covered by a long, floral skirt that her mother had sewn many summers ago. 

            They were hiding from the sun below a bridge built by the communist regime, which would later become an emblem of the city. The wounds caused by the destruction of the Jewish Quarter to make way for this socialist marvel were still fresh in the proud souls of the city’s inhabitants. She didn’t always consider herself one of them but was slowly getting there, for she had lived there for around five years and had no desire to return home. Sara’s family lived only two hours away, a distance she could cross with an afternoon train, but she wasn’t ready to do so because of her pride.

“Don’t marry him,” her mother cried- and so did the aunts, uncles and all family relatives from both sides. “He is a drunk, and he will ruin your future. You have so much promise, Sara.” She heard the words of her mother louder than ever before on that hot, concrete afternoon when she was waiting for her husband with their son by her side.  Her love was fading alongside her patience, only she didn’t yet know how close to the end she had come. The longer they were waiting, the more impatient she got, and so did her son, who could no longer stand, and so she once again held him in her arms, only he was becoming too heavy. 

            The bus carrying her husband was supposed to arrive at 2 p.m.. It came, and they approached it with excitement, for the boy loved his father, and for that moment, so did she. She scanned all the passengers on that full bus- the young, the old, the sweaty - but her husband was not one of them, so they returned to the shade and waited longer. 

            “Daddy must have caught the next one,” she said to the toddler, and though he couldn’t answer, he was the only one to whom she could speak. They had become partners before he was able to stand, and they remained such even when their lives improved. They relied on each other with a silent understanding of everything they had overcome and had yet to face. Three more buses came and went, and Daddy wasn't on any of them.  It was close to 3 p.m. when Sara started to give up. Her impatience had turned to anger by the time the second bus left for its next station. The heat was getting to her as quickly as her husband’s irresponsibility, and had she been alone, she would have left right there and then. But she wasn’t alone, she would never again be alone, and her son was looking forward to seeing his father - and so she waited, for the sake of her firstborn and the sake of her marriage, wiping the sweat off her forehead and continuing to hope. 

Two hours. Two hours they spent standing there and waiting for the right bus. Two hours they spent sweating, and counting, and hoping. Two hours later, exhausted physically and emotionally, they sat on a bench nearby. She had bought a chocolate bar for her son that was now melting in his hands, and she smoked a cigarette, which brought nothing but dissatisfaction on that hot summer day. What a prick, she thought, and for a moment she felt sorry; sorry for herself, her son, their past and their future. She felt tears burning in her eyes, but she couldn’t allow to let them flow and instead focused on cleaning the chocolate off her son’s mouth and hands with a cloth handkerchief. “Are you still hungry?” She asked, and he nodded, and so she opened up a juice box, hoping it would satisfy more than his thirst. He was that intriguing age at which a child cannot speak but understands language, intonation and all the connotations of speech.  Another few moments passed. He finished his juice box, and she smoked another cigarette.

 A construction worker approached them when passing by.

“I’ve been watching you. You’ve been sitting here for a while.”

She didn’t respond and moved closer to her son, placing a hand on his shoulders.

 “Are you waiting for someone?” The little boy nodded, and she glared at the strange man with an intensity that surprised him.

“You are a feisty one, aren’t you?” She planned to respond with a snarky remark, but before she got the chance, she spotted her husband on a bus that was stopping.

“Excuse me,” she said while standing up and grabbing her son’s hand.

“Come on- Daddy is here.” She felt a pinch of relief and excitement, and for a moment, she was ready to forgive with a forced naivety that she had long outgrown. 

His shift must have run late.

They walked towards the bus stop, a young woman and a little boy, full of youthful excitement and naïve anticipation, all forgotten, all forgiven. It was in that moment that Sara noticed her husband, and the father of her child, stumbling off the bus. He could barely stand and barely walk, his trousers wet and stained, his eyes confused and absent-minded; the image confirming what she had suspected but forced herself to ignore. Entirely unaware of his surroundings, he moved with difficulty, more of a wounded animal than a man; unable to notice his wife and son on the platform, anxiously waiting for Dad to come home. Sara burst with anger and disappointment, cursed her foolishness and the pathetic man, and swiftly made the executive decision to turn around.

“False alarm,” she said, leaning to her son and never letting go of his hand, “Daddy wasn’t on the bus.” 

When she was later asked what turned her marriage around, Sara always brought up that hot summer afternoon. She spoke of the disappointment and anger she felt towards her husband. She spoke of the sacrifices she made for her son, the metallic taste of cigarettes on that day, and the feelings of shame and defeat when she had to admit that her family had been right. Most importantly, she spoke of the desire to keep the illusion of his father for her little son. Somehow, she believed that if he had ever seen him that way, he could never unsee it, and it would forever stain the father-son relationship vital for the boy’s healthy development. It was precisely this action that proved the gravity of her maternal instinct and the softness of her steel heart. It wasn’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength and insight that all women miraculously acquire when they become mothers.

             Having shielded her son from the horror of seeing his father blackout drunk in the middle of the afternoon, she took him to a playground and watched as he socialised with other children, without a care in the world.  As she was sitting there, on yet another bench, this time under a tree that was cooling her overheated body, she watched over her son’s unsure but determined steps and thought. She thought long and she thought hard, for she had arrived at a decision that would ultimately change their lives. She could crawl back to her parents, admit her defeat, and bring up her son in a family of which she no longer wished to be a part. She could stay with her husband and watch him drink himself to death, more than likely failing to keep up the illusion of normalcy with the years passing by. Or, she could leave and be on her own, a twenty-one-year-old single mother, a student, a teacher and a parent. Various versions of her future were flashing behind her eyes, one worse than the other, while her son was playing in the dirty sand between panel houses in the land of a socialist nightmare.

By the time the sun set behind the concrete horizon, she had come to a conclusion and knew what she had to do. It was almost bedtime, at least for the little one, when Sara unlocked the door to her basement flat. Upon arrival, they were met with the scent of mildew and the sight of her husband fast asleep. She cooked dinner, bathed her son and read a fairytale, before putting him down next to her husband. Then she sat behind the table, studied and waited. It was almost midnight when her husband came to consciousness. 

            “Hello there,” he said, standing up. 

            “We need to talk.”

            She sounded serious, but that wasn’t a novelty - she was born serious, and the more she experienced, the more pronounced this trait had become. They’ve had the talk before, several times, in fact, and the result was always the same. He apologised and promised not to get so drunk again, and she forgave him, because she loved him deeply and they had a child. She signaled for him to join her at the table, and he reluctantly did so, with confusion that comes from not remembering the day and waking up in the middle of the night.

            “I’ve had it, Michal,” she said, looking directly into his ashamed eyes, “the water has spilt.”

            “I am sorry.”

            “Do you even know what happened?” she continued before he could interject, “We were   waiting for you, for hours on end, and when you finally show up you’re drunk and covered in piss.” 

            He stayed silent, having nothing left to say.

            “How can I respect you, Michal? Tell me.”

            “I…”

            “Let me guess. You’re sorry, you won’t do it again, this was the last time,” she laughed and shook her head in disbelief. 

            “How could I believe you? Do you think I’m stupid?” She paused for a second, taking a deep breath and becoming more and more infuriated with each moment that passed. 

            “Actually, maybe I am stupid. How else could I have ended up here, with you? Look around! We live in a fucking basement. We have no fucking money. And the little we have, you spend on booze. You have a child, Michal. A child! Do you know what I had to do today? I had to pretend you weren’t there so that he wouldn’t see you as the pathetic man you are.”

            The more she spoke, the more terrified he became. The softness he found comfort in and loved so deeply was rapidly disappearing. His wife’s youth and kindness had been left under the socialist bridge. 

            “I cannot believe this. I seriously cannot believe this. The fact that you do this to yourself and to me that I can accept, but to him? To a child who loves and idealises you? You are a father, Michal, you can no longer just be a drunk.”

            “I am sorry.”

            “No. Keep your apologies. They don’t mean anything anymore. In fact,” she stood up and appeared hard and terrifying in the weak petroleum light, “I am done. We are done.”

            “Sara, please.”

            “What? What do you have to say for yourself?”

He remained silent. 

            “Listen to me closely, Michal, because I won’t say this again.”

He nodded and stared at his hands, for he could no longer face her strength. 

            “I am giving you one last chance. You either quit drinking altogether, or I am taking the child, and you will not see us again.”

            Michal had heard a lot of threats in his lifetime, a lot of ultimatums that he had ignored, but he knew with that metaphysical sureness that this time, it was different. This time, it was for real. He was watching his wife, a woman whose youth and promise he had stolen and whose softness had turned to ice, and he would have had to be stupid not to recognise the seriousness of her words. And he wasn’t stupid. She made a decision, and it was there and then that he had to make one, too.