MERCEDES SALISACHS - THE GOOD MUM AND THE BAD MUM

MERCEDES SALISACHS - THE GOOD MUM AND THE BAD MUM

Translated by Sandra Dermark

illustrated by Jesús Gabán

THE GOOD MUM AND THE BAD MUM

Zoe was a little disobedient, somewhat mouthy, and prone to look before she leapt. And, in spite of being a kind-hearted little girl, whenever her mother set her right, she got cross with her.

"You're a bad mum," she pouted.

On the other hand, Chloe, Zoe's best bosom friend, assured that her mother was very good, because, whatever Chloe did, she never scolded her daughter.

"I always do as I please," she confided in Zoe. "She doesn't even care if I watch the shows that we kids are not allowed to watch. If I make fun of Grandpapa with his limp and begin to walk like him, she laughs with me; and so forth.

And, upon hearing her friend speak about her mother with such elation, Zoe turned green with envy.

"Wish my mum were just like yours," she told her.

However, sometimes Zoe's mum was good as well, especially when her daughter fell ill; she never left Zoe's bedside, and, if Zoe told her so, she told her fairytales and, time after time, she kissed her daughter's forehead to check if her temperature had risen.

Of course she was good as well when she tucked Zoe into bed and sang lullabies to her and reassured her that she would not leave her alone, because her guardian angel kept her company and watched over her sleep until the break of day.

The years went by. Zoe's mother, upon surveying her daughter's wardrobe, realised that the girl had grown too big for most of her clothes. And, since Christmas was right around the corner, she decided to renew it and give away Zoe's dresses to charity.

But when Zoe found out what her mother had done, she was furious.

"How dare you give my clothes away!?"

"They didn't fit anymore," her mum replied. "You've grown too big for them."

"That's what you believe, but I used them as well!"

"How dare you wear a skirt that reaches halfway down your thighs?"

However, Zoe would not back down:

"But Mum... nowadays long skirts are out! What's in are miniskirts. And, when it comes to trousers, if you lengthen the legs a bit, they would be trousers in fashion, because the waist nowadays isn't at the waist, but down in the hips, which means, you have to show some midriff."

Her mother frowned in anger and did not let her daughter keep on rambling.

"Stop this, Zoe. I cannot tolerate that a daughter of mine should be so obtuse. Have you realised how old you are?" At eleven, you are still a little girl, still a child too young to think of so stupid fashion..."

Of course, that day Zoe's mum became a bad mum once more.

Nevertheless, whenever Zoe came home from school and settled down in her room to do the homework du jour, if her mother didn't help her, she felt herself unable to carry on. Everything was difficult. Nothing that Zoe wrote down ever matched what was explained in the textbooks. And then, in spite of how much it bothered her to ask her mother, a teacher at her school, for help and yield to her, she always asked for a helping hand:

"Please, Mum. If you don't help me do this homework, I won't be able to make head or tail out of it..."

And Zoe's mum, even if she was frightfully busy, would leave everything else to help her daughter.

Hours and more hours passed while the two of them mulled over the questions that were demanded at school.

"Don't worry, my girl," the mother told her daughter. "If we have any doubts, we'll look it up in the encyclopedia."

And Zoe felt tranquil once more. The truth was that, in those moments, she did not remember that her mum was a bad one.

On the other hand, Chloe never even addressed her mother to help her with the homework, because her mum was rarely at home when she came from school and for other reasons as well. Besides, from as far as she could tell, she had heard her mother said that studying was not a thing for women.

"That thing with racking one's brains while cramming over those textbooks is for men only," she reassured her daughter.

And she added that, in her own childhood, she did not study either.

"And, you see, life has not gone so badly for me. We women were born to please our husbands, make ourselves look good, and follow the latest fashion."

She also assured that, when the time came for her to go to school, she could not have felt worse.

"I didn't like to study, and besides, the teachers were all so dull... So don't worry, dear. Put a smile on your face and face the time, for the time heals all wounds."

And Chloe, since her mother was so good, thought that if she advised her not to study, that was for a good reason, and that the best thing she could do was leaving her textbooks for later on, for when exam season grew closer.

Exam season did not delay that year, and, since Chloe kept on with her textbooks gathering dust in a corner, her results were disastrous. All the subjects she tackled were worthy of zeroes as grades.

Yet, far from admitting that she had not studied and that flunking was normal for her, being so lazy, upon seeing the grades she had attained, she got furious with the teachers and called them cruel because, ever since she had started school, each and every teacher had grown to "hate" her.

"I was sure I would fail every test," she told her mother. "I always knew the teachers were cross with me."

And her mum, who was so good and could not bear the thought of her daughter suffering due to harsh injustice on the teachers' side, supported her and told her she was right:

"All we need is to complain to the headmaster."

And the fact is that her mother was used herself, as well, to complaining, to recriminations, and to wear her broken heart upon her sleeve whenever anyone had the boldness to do wrong unto her daughter.

"Don't you worry, Chloe dear; tomorrow morning I will go see the headmaster and give him a piece of my mind. I will never forgive that; how dare they value your efforts with zero grades?"

But, since she was always so busy, she never found the time to confront the headmaster.

The worst came when both of them got to know that Zoe had got the highest scores there could be, passing all her tests with flying colours.

"I don't really understand how you can be friends with such a disturbance as Zoe is," Chloe's mum told her. "Surely her teacher mother has been pulling some strings to have her precious little pet attaining such inhumanly high scores."

Yet Chloe was not quite convinced of what her mother was insinuating.

"You're wrong. Zoe's mum doesn't love her daughter. That's what she says. It seems that her mum is always scolding her, and, to add insult to injury, she even gives away their clothes to charity, without asking for her girl's consent. Besides, everything that Zoe does always seems to be wrong to her. That's why I think she's incapable of doing anything good for my friend's sake." 

"Then, how is it possible that Zoe, with a mother like that, has aced all your tests with flying colours?"

And, since Zoe lacked valid arguments to justify her own laziness, she came to openly criticise her best friend:

"Zoe is quite twisted, Mum. A real schemer. Whenever she has the chance, she spends her time flattering the teachers, so that they regard her as a top-notch student."

"Then, dear, why don't you do the same as she? The result could not have been better..."

"'Cause I don't like being a flatterer like Zoe. I want to be as honest as you, my dear mum, are. And honest means telling truths and being a good girl, like you once were and always will be.

And, as soon as Zoe had finished speaking, her mother embraced her, kissed her on both cheeks, and gave her all her thanks.

But time went by and, as Zoe aced all subjects in each and every year, Chloe was left behind because she never scored high enough on any subject. Of course the two of them were no longer studying in the same classroom, nor took part in the same classes with the same teachers.
And when the weekends came, they tried both to regain the friendly trust that had always kept them united. Both Chloe and Zoe had to make a great effort to reach one another, since the distance between them was now a considerable one.
It was then that Zoe began making other friends and going out with them, while Chloe still frequented the same places as ever.
On the dark side this meant that sometimes, without even meaning to, when the two friends met in one and the same of their common places, Zoe confronted Chloe and ranted about how care she skip grades forwards, when she was always repeating the same grade.
"If you were a true good friend, you would have flunked some tests, so that both of us would still carry on together!"

But Zoe, who was not stupid and no one's fool, replied with a certain sharp edge to her voice:

"And, if you hadn't been so lazy, you would have studied more, to avoid failing all those tests!"

And then, both of them realised that their friendship with one another had vanished without a trace.

However, the catalyst that caused the final separation between the two girl friends occurred whein, one year for Christmas, Zoe's mother gave her daughter a silver casket with a message inside it, as long as the girl would keep it for always.

"This is a secret for you to be happy," Mum said with a smile while she handed over the gift.

So Zoe opened the casket and she found a message that said exactly the following: "DO NOT BE PROUD LEST YOU BECOME IGNORANT, AND DO NOT BE IGNORANT LEST YOU BECOME PROUD."

And, ever since, she knew that her mother had not only never been a bad one, but also that the goodness concealed beneath that alleged badness outdid by far the greatest goodnesses in this world.