Empty Can
written by: Damjana Vidicheska
You can still hear voices in the walls? Some cut deeper than the knife he used to cut his red apple every day at exactly 2 pm. You get up from the shabby sofa and make your way to the kitchen counter. It is all a learned habit – the way you move around the room. Ants below the sink take their everyday route. A swift energy within your calves forces you on your tippy toes. You grab the tin canister. Rust covers half of the Christmas landscape on it. North Pole but underground. You put it near your ear and shake it firmly.
“I got it!”
“Bravo, altan.”
You sit next to him as he caresses the top of your head. A forgotten memory peeks out from the wall. It smiles.
“Five for you – five for me. Or should we make it ten this time?”
“Ten.”
You watch him glide the white beans from the center of the table to your side, then to his. His hand movement is slow, his fingers, cracked and folded, carry an unusual precision. His palm holds ancient maps.
“Someone’s feeling lucky today.”
“I’m fairly confident in my prediction skills, Grandpa.”
There is an apple peel on the floor, but you both decide to ignore it. Time is valuable, and your favorite winter sport is on. You wonder how brave one must be to do ski jumping.
“That was a weak one for a large hill. I’d say he– hm, he did 121 meters.”
You think the same.
“I’d say it was 125 meters.”
The TV zoomed in on the athlete’s face: Karpenko 119 m.
“You lose this one, altan.”
The game continues till one of you is out of the white beans. He doesn’t let you win. You know this is not about winning.
“If you count to five, it will all go away.” He thinks you are a sore loser. He is right. After all, you got most of his son’s negative attributes.
“Whatever, Grandpa.”
The place is cold. It is there with everything there ever was. It just breathes emptiness. The ants are long gone. I make my way to the kitchen counter and open the shelf. The dusty order gives me anxiety. I’m frozen in time between walls that once embraced smells of kifli, pickled cabbage, and smoked sausage. Tightness around my throat. The dark pantry contains unopened 2010 turshija jars. The natural twine around them keeps them neatly stacked and pretty. They look back at me. I grab the tin can quickly, trying to avoid their stare. I shake the can next to my ear. Empty.
The walls still smile, but most of the time, no one sees them. When I visit the old house, I rush. I think, just for a moment, that everything I’ve ever known from this place is the quickness that came with childhood. I think, most of the time, I should have appreciated the slowness of it, too. The walls ooze silence.
You are always bound. You let your body become inanimate so that just for a second, you can remember what your grandpa was like before he completely lost his mind. The UNIS tbn typewriter he gave you was the tool with which you wrote the last red apple poem. You might have got all of his family’s negative attributes, but you got to be a hell of a writer like him, too. You imagine all the stories he never got to write. You now inherit them. A picture of you hangs tilted by the sofa where he used to sit. You are reminded that you kept calling less and less. It eats you whole. The walls ooze regret.
“It’s time to go!” my mom yells from the other room. I run to her, ready to go, before I let the stuffed emptiness consume me completely.
