The Street That Followed My Mother

How it begins

The removal men had carried up six boxes when Nadia noticed the butcher's shop outside the window.

There was no butcher's shop on this street.

There was a bus stop, a pharmacy, and a gray office building. She had checked all three before recommending the flat to her mother.

Now a striped awning shaded a pavement she had not walked since she was nineteen.

“Mum.”

Lina continued unpacking cups.

“Isn't it convenient?”

“That shop closed in 1998.”

“Only because Mr Bell retired.”

“Mr Bell died.”

Lina put down a cup.

Outside, a man in a white apron arranged sausages behind the glass.

Nadia opened the window. The air smelled of wet pavement and the bakery that had stood beside the butcher's. From farther down came the rattle of a bus with an engine no longer allowed in the city center.

The removal man looked out.

“Nice area,” he said.

Nadia closed the window.

Her mother had insisted she was ready for a smaller place. Fewer stairs, less cleaning, somewhere she could reach the shops without asking for a lift. Nadia had mistaken the calm acceptance for agreement about everything.

A knock came at the door.

Mrs Rao stood outside holding a saucepan.

She had lived opposite them when Nadia was a child. In memory she was permanently middle-aged. Here, she looked older, her hair white, her hands marked with brown spots.

“Your mother will know what to do with this,” she said.

Nadia took the saucepan automatically.

“You're not dead?”

Mrs Rao raised an eyebrow.

“Not when I left home.”

Lina came to the door. The two women looked at each other, and something passed between them that Nadia did not recognize.

“You brought the whole street?” Mrs Rao asked.

“I didn't mean to.”

Below the window, the pharmacy sign flickered.

For one second, Nadia could see it through the butcher's awning, like a place being rubbed away.