“How much are the axes?”
An old man lost in a drawer full of screws said, “Price is on them.” Derda went out again and grabbed an axe and looked at the price tag on the handle. He stared and he stared and he stared. And then he bolted, the axe still in his hand. He ran down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He didn’t have to go as far as the cemetery gates. Every ten meters or so the cemetery wall had collapsed, like a rolling wave. He jumped over a collapsed concrete wave and ran, skipping over the tombs.
By the time he got home he was gasping for air. Insects were crawling out of his mother’s open mouth and streaming into her nostrils. He felt nauseated but he didn’t puke. He forced himself to hold it in. It came all the way up to his throat. That’s as far as it’s going, but I’m not going to let it get any further. A few belches, but nothing else came out. He pulled the sheet off her floor mattress and covered the woman up so her blazing white eyes wouldn’t be able to see. Standing with his shoulders level, he grasped the axe in two hands and held it high above his head. He closed his eyes. “I’m not going to that orphanage, mom!” he yelled as he drove in the first blow. His eyes opened. He had tried to aim right for her neck but the axe had hit the woman’s chest. It was lodged deep in her chest. Soon the dirty white sheet changed color. Red. He put his foot on her chest, took the axe in two hands, and yanked it out of her flesh. He raised it again and dealt another blow. Then another. For hours he drove the axe into her, yelling “I’m not going!” with every blow.
Then there were ten gangrene-colored lumps sticking up from under the sheet. The sheet made bridges, sagging toward the floor between the ten pieces. He smashed those bridges again and again to break the lumps into ten separate pieces. But still some bits, some pieces held together. He took a deep breath and with a single swift movement pulled the sheet away. He opened his eyes slowly and looked over his mother-in-pieces. He couldn’t hold himself any longer and the puke that had only come up his throat before now spurted out. Whatever was on the floor, he puked all over it.
He poured three full tanks of water over his head. Both to wake himself up and to wash himself off. His blood went cold as ice when he got near those ten pieces spread out over the floor, what was left of his mother. His mothers, that is.
Pieces of his mother’s flesh were welded inside the şalvar and shirt she had worn for the last two months. He got a knife and started to cut the fabric. The pieces opened up like he was unwrapping presents. Inside each one, his mother’s nakedness was exposed, dripping with blood and bone. This was the way Derda saw his first naked woman. By first chopping up his mother, then by undressing her.
He ripped the sheet into pieces and wrapped all his mothers up, one by one. Then he piled them up one on top of another just inside the front door. He grabbed three empty water tanks and left the house.
Everything was bathed in darkness; the sun had gone to rise in other places. He stuck one of the empty tanks under the cemetery fountain and waited for it to fill up. Then he heard a voice:
“Derda!”
He looked all around him, but he didn’t see anyone. He thought he’d die from fear when a thin branch stretching out from the thicket bent revealing Isa behind it. He was carrying a full tank. Derda was so terrified that he felt like he was looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. Everything and everyone seemed so far away. Even those closest to him. Even Isa, one step away.
“It’s overflowing,” the kid said, pointing to Derda’s tank. If he had looked at Derda a little more closely and not at the tank, he would have seen the change in his eyes. Isa didn’t see the tears in his eyes. Whatever else there was, there was darkness. Derda wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand, pretending he was wiping away sweat. Then he snapped back to life and nudged the full tank away with his foot and stuck an empty one under the fountain. Then he realized Isa was still there. He’d been watching him in silence for a while, but he didn’t think he could have seen anything.
“What’re you doing out here at this hour?”
“My dad kicked me out,” said Isa.
“Where to?”
“What do you mean, where to?”
“Where’d your dad kick you out to?”
“He didn’t say. Get the fuck out of here, he said. I’m just wandering around.”
“What’d you do?”
“Told him I was going to drop out of school.”
Derda felt water at his feet. He bent down and saw his second tank was overflowing. He put the third one into place.
“Why?”
“You don’t go to school either, you said so!” Isa said.
“That’s different,” Derda said. “I never went to begin with. What year were you up to?”
“Fourth.”
“Ok, then you only have one year left. It’s over then anyway, right?”
Isa laughed.
“Over? Then there’s middle school, high school, university.”
He stopped laughing.
“Why didn’t you go? Didn’t your parents make you?”
“No,” said Derda. “I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“University. I’m going to start from there.”
Isa couldn’t tell whether Derda was serious or not. He could understand as well as he could see in the darkness. Then at once both started to laugh. Like when they carried water tanks together. Then their laughs tapered off and
