Mom, I Fell Out of the Third Story Window
Humor. Who is going to save you when the story gets, out of control?
It was a convincing lie. The teacher believed it. Her eyes showed concern, care, and maybe a touch of bemusement. She leaned closer to look at my black eye, then closer still so I could smell the bread she had just eaten and see the fine whiskers on her upper lip. I loved her. I loved Maria Ivanovna. I was eight. She was old, probably thirty, and she was my teacher. There could be no future between us, so I loved her like you love the best aunt. She could not know the true cause of my wounds.
“Tell me again what happened?” She said as she pulled back.
“My friend, Alesha, was on another balcony next to me on the third floor. I leaned out to see him and asked if he was going outside to play. Then I fell over. Then I was spinning. I saw the second floor. Then I landed in flowers.”
“In flowers? What kind?”
“Tulips. They were yellow tulips. And they had flowers that were not open.”
“Ok. And how did you get the black eye?”
“I hit a tulip. But I don’t know because I was spinning really fast.”
“Well, I would like to talk to your mother to make sure you are all ok.”
She gave me a note to pass to my mother and send me home. I ambled on the dirt footpath across the unused soccer fields. They were still drying after the last of the Siberian snow melted in early May. My head hung low. What was I going to tell my mother? I could not spin a story. My mother knew it was Lenka.
Lenka was a neighbor girl of ten, a head taller than me, and the oldest in our band of four. We played tag, called each other names, ran on the streets, fought, then were best friends again. Lenka had shoulder length hair, cut in a straight line, and the bangs to match. She was skinny, with bony knees. She had a cutting tongue that none of us could challenge. And she had enormous feet. I never noticed the feet until two days before. They seemed normal until that afternoon. But there, sitting in the dirt and playing tic tac toe with loose sticks, I saw them.
“You have long, ugly feet,” I said.
“No, I don’t, you idiot.”
“Yes, you do. They are as long as your legs.”
Lenka rolled off her butt onto her knees in my direction and threw her fist at my head. Into my eye. I screamed. Jumped up. Tried to hit her. But she pushed me to the ground. With tears rolling, I ran for home.
Our parents met on a stairwell of the apartment building later. They collected the testimony from all present, looked at my eye, and sent us to our respective flats on the same floor. I could hear them through the door laughing. “Haha. He got his butt kicked by a girl. Haha.” Savages.
The next morning, I saw a proper black eye. It wrapped around and crept onto my nose. It hurt. I watched it in horror, wondering how to explain this abomination to my classmates and to Maria Ivanonvna. That is how the balcony story was born.
I gave the note to my mom. It was pointless to hide it. Maria Ivonavna always called after I went home with a note about one trouble or another. With my head low, I gave her the note. I stared at her feet in contriteness. I heard a hiss, or a croak, or a stifled cough, a sound indeterminant and terrifying. My life was over. Mother would tell Maria Ivanovna. The word would spread, and I will be forever known as the boy who was beaten up by a girl.
“Fourth floor,” she said.
I squeezed my eyes.
“Alesha lives on the fourth floor, and we live on the fifth,” she went on, “so what balcony did you fall from?”
I squeezed my eyes tighter, then felt a tap on my head. Two fingers — tap, tap. “Hello, what floor?”
“Third,” I squeezed out.
“Vova!” She hollered for my dad. I heard the balcony door open and close. The heavy footfalls of punishment headed my way.
He looked at the note. Tapped it with a finger. Lifted my chin up. Looked at my black eye. Looked at my mother. Then he broke out into outrageous laughter.
Mother tore the note from his hand, slapped his shoulder, and shoved him out of the room. “You big oaf! Keep it down!” She yelled after him. Then at me, “And you go do your homework. Already did it? Do it again. Three times!”
The next day, she walked me across the unused soccer fields on the way to school. I stopped to re-tie my shoes, then for the second time. She saw through my ruse when I tried again and scolded me, “Face the consequences!”
On the stone steps of the main school entrance stood Lenka, with her stupid bangs, stupid bony knees, and her stupid grin. She was smirking, but then she saw my mother’s look, a pure evil, and she slouched repentant.
Maria Ivanovna was in the homeroom. She stood up to greet my mother. The women chatted about their little dachas in the country and plans for planting the strawberries and carrots, how the new Italian shoes were due to arrive at a store in the city center, and how early in the morning they must join the queue for them. I wished they talked forever but waited for my turn with a bated breath.
“So, it was so scary what happened,” Maria Ivanovna finally said, “go over the balcony like that. The third floor!”
My mother turned to me. “Why are you lying?” She did not wait for an answer. “He exaggerates sometimes. He thinks it makes the story better.”
“Oh,” Maria Ivanovna nodded and glanced at me. “Exaggerates?”
“Yes, yes. He just talks a big game. Takes after his father. It is fun for these men to tell people a story with all the facts a little bigger.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, yes. We were at my cousin’s, a building over. They have two boisterous boys. So they get out of hand sometimes,” my mother shook her head, looking exasperated.
“Oh!” Maria Ivanovna was listening in rapt attention. I was listening, too.
“So, the boys get wild and shove this one right over the railing, off the second-floor balcony. Can you believe it?”
“Oh, goodness!”
“There was a mattress, you see. Down there. That’s why they did it as a joke. But he, of course, hits a branch, you see. And gets a black eye.”
“Oh, not a tulip?”
“A tulip?”
“He said he landed on a tulip.”
“A tulip? Why are you lying?” She turned to me. She turned to my teacher, “No, a branch.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t you say anything!” My mother commanded.
For years, I have not questioned this story. But twenty years later, an event with my own kid at school triggered the memory of my balcony escapade. I remembered it only in broad strokes. So when my mother visited me in Wisconsin, I asked her why she kept up the lie. “Can’t let the kid down, ever,” she said as she retold the story in detail. “But mostly, I thought it was just funny.”
And I always thought she was a serious person.
I enjoyed writing this story, it was a great break from boat work in the morning hours a few days ago. If you enjoyed it, please hit Like and leave a comment.