The Path to Yourself. Aigerim Dautova
reproaches, threats, questions. The perfect woman kept asking her imperfect son when it all had started and why. How could the youngest son of a respectable family be gay? What if someone found out about this? How would this affect his father’s career? The mother cried, and begged her son to come to his senses, to have a heart, for her unhappy life had become even more unbearable. Her husband had put the blame on her: It was her fault. The stupid woman had failed to keep an eye on her child, to take care of him. Ed looked at his mother. She was so pathetic, so lonely, and confused. Her entire life, she had been playing roles. All people could see was a happy wife and loving mother. At home, she turned into a punching bag for her husband. Ed’s father would take out all his failures, problems, and annoyance on her. That was the mother Ed had ever known. When he had been ten, he’d tried to protect her. They both had ended up sitting in front of a trauma doctor, making up a story about falling off their bicycles. The doctor had put green bills into his pocket and had done his job without saying a word. Ed had been begging his mother to leave and be gone for good, but it would spell doom for her. What would she do alone with three kids? And most importantly, what would people say? It was much easier for her to tolerate beatings, unfaithfulness, and humiliation than to lose her status, public position, a good name, after all. She had tried to find a way as best she could. That’s when the series of her plastic surgeries had begun. She had had her nose, eyes, and breasts fixed, not to mention all kinds of face and body lifting. A lot of people believed her surgeries to be an attempt to keep her husband by looking younger, more attractive. It would never have occurred to anyone that this happy woman wished her husband dead. Every time there was a call from an unknown number, her hopes would rekindle for a brief moment of time: What if an unfamiliar voice would tell her that her husband had suddenly died – of a heart failure or in a car crash.
The youngest son had been sent to England, to a public school. There had been frequent brawls and beatings: The offsprings of English aristocrats picked fights just as often as kids of simple work-folks. While in England, far away from home, Ed had harbored more and more hatred towards his father and resentment towards his mother. Though he had never been able to play a nasty trick like his brother and sister could do. Oddly enough, the older siblings had been able to adjust to the toxic environment. They had gotten to the level of their parents, becoming just as deceitful, unscrupulous, and manipulative. His brother and sister had grown up to be idles and spenders, and yet it was Ed who had disgraced the family name. The black sheep of the family. An outcast.
Mother and son spent two hours in a stranger’s kitchen. They were strangers to each other. But they left together because the boy loved his mother. He was bound to take pity on her and save the family reputation. Ed disappeared for three years, but then returned to open the fashion house – a shopping gallery in the city center – and became an extremely popular designer. That was the award he got for keeping his mouth shut.
Chapter 5
Rose got home late. She crept along the corridor and tiptoed to the kitchen to brew some tea. She was wide awake and couldn’t get Ed’s story out of her head. For the first time in her life, Rose realized that money, status, and beauty do not guarantee happiness. But why? Why is it like this? After all, this is precisely what people strive for, sacrificing everything else. She was interrupted mid-thought by Paul who appeared in the doorway. He was shifting from one foot to the other and kept turning around to look into the empty corridor while pumping air into his lungs. He tried to bring himself to get out his canned speech, but it stuck in his throat. An awkward silence hung in the air, creating an invisible wall between two people. Rose didn’t know what to expect – yet another scandal or an apology. She cowered in her chair and kept silent, hoping to avoid the former and, strange as it may seem, the latter. Paul kept hovering there, but couldn’t force himself to talk. With a sigh, he turned around and left, ending the conversation that had never begun.
The next morning there was another smoky cab, followed by black coffee, a new to-do list, and traffic jams. The two assistants – one former, the other current – were getting ready for the trip to Paris. In the matter of just a few days, they became a team and had a tacit understanding with each other. One of them loved to chat, the other listened. They both did their best. And yet, while Rose’s motives were clear as day, Ella’s aspirations remained vague. Why would she help someone who had taken her place? This question kept popping up in Rose’s head, but in the bustle of their working days she couldn’t afford thinking about it for too long. She also didn’t dare to just ask it out lout, for fear of offending or pushing away her helper-outer. Little did she know that Ella would answer her readily, desperate to get this off her chest and share her story…
Little piece of shit. That’s what her alcoholic mother and older sisters would call her. As for the father, Ella didn’t even remember him. A problem child from a dysfunctional family. That’s what was written in her personal file kept in the police department of a godforsaken provincial town. Ella’s childhood was made up of an unremarkable succession of events: domestic violence, school fights, police records. At the age of sixteen, she ran away from home, or rather, fled the scene of the crime, boarding a train without buying a ticket. The young delinquent huddled herself up in the corner of a stinking carriage, like a wild beast, ready to get her claws into anyone who’d dare to approach her. She traveled a thousand kilometers and found herself in a big city. Hungry and scared, she wandered about the train station until stopping at a diner in the hope to get some food. “We need a dishwasher. Eat this and get to work.” Those were Dina’s first words to the girl who’d later become her friend.
The zest for life Ella had been cherishing for years finally found a way out. She worked in the diner all day long and stayed there at night because she had nowhere else to go. She did her best, knowing this was her only chance. Her coworkers, mostly students coming from more or less ordinary families, would not even consider to make a career in a station diner, but Ella dreamed of it. Dina was always able to read people’s minds (better than any X-ray machine could do!) and she was quick to notice Ella’s grip of steel and lively mind. She’d helped Ella ascend in her small business. Together, they would open new restaurants, expanding the chain and increasing their income.
It was Ella who scoped out the financial prospects and suggested that Dina start an Instagram blog. She was helping Dina with content and advertising clients. Their bond seemed unbreakable: The girls would grow and evolve together, soaring to new heights. When Ella came to Dina and said, self-consciously, that she wanted to open her own small coffee shop, Dina gave her the money, without thinking twice.
Then, at a party, Ella met a smart and handsome young man. As it often happens with young girls, she fell in love for the first time. Always bold and cheerful before, Ella suddenly turned timid and shy. A couple of months later, unable to take it any longer, she confessed her feelings for him, but the young man did not return her affection. Gentle and well-mannered, he tried to make it clear without hurting her that he did not and would never love her. To Ella, it felt like the end of the world. She sought revenge. It is commonly known that the most dangerous creature is a wounded one. She confronted his father – a high-ranking official – and Ed’s life was never the same. A well-placed shot to hit a bull’s eye.
Ella had been keeping this a secret for a long time and only told Dina all about it a few years later. That day, her friend was visited by a fit of gloom. As soon as Dina heard the news, she flew into a rage. “You little piece of shit,” Dina hissed. Ella felt a bolt of pain splitting open her old wounds. That was what they’d called her in her previous life. It brought scenes from the past back to her: her drunken mother, barking stray dogs, the train carriage permeated with the smell of urine. Three thousand days and the same number of attempts to prove the world wrong: She was not a little piece of shit. She was a good girl.
She wandered around the city, just like on the very first day of her arrival, lonely and miserable. Her bartender friend was pouring her the eighth shot of vodka when she dialed the number of Dina’s new good-for-nothing boyfriend. Two hours later they were lying on the sofa