When I saw two lines on the pregnancy test, my father looked me in the face and told me that I was already dead to this family.
I heard these words in the school restroom, at ten in the morning. I was still holding the small white test, on which two dark lines seemed to have written my entire future. My fingers were trembling. I looked at my own face in the mirror and did not recognize it.
When I returned home in the evening, my parents asked me nothing. Mother sat at the kitchen table and turned the teaspoon in the cup as if she were trying to extract an answer from it.
“Is it really so?” my father asked.
I nodded.
“I still don’t know what to do…”
“We already know,” he interrupted me coldly. “You disgraced the family.”
Mother did not even look at me.
“You will not go to school tomorrow,” she said quietly.
“Mother, I am afraid.”
“We are afraid too, Nino. But not of the child. Of you.”
That night the rain struck the windows. Father threw my torn bag into the hallway. A small wooden elephant-shaped pendant hung on the bag, which my grandmother had given me in childhood. I had always thought that pendant connected me to the house.
“Go outside,” my father told me.
“Where should I go?”
“Wherever you want. From today you are no longer my child.”
Mother opened the door. I put my hand on my stomach and paused on the threshold for one moment. I thought one of them would call me back. No one called me.
The next morning I rented a small room beside the bus station. It was eight square meters, damp was rising on the walls, and the neighboring women whispered about how one girl had ruined her life. Every time I heard their voices, I wanted to run away, but the baby was moving in my stomach.
“I will not abandon you,” I told her at night.
And I did not abandon her.
My daughter Salome was born at the end of winter. That day the wind made the windowpanes tremble, but when I saw her for the first time, everything fell silent. Her little fingers wrapped around my thumb.
Two years later I left the city and went to the capital. During the day I worked in a restaurant, and at night I attended professional courses. Salome slept on an old bed, while I slept on a blanket spread on the kitchen floor. Sometimes I fell asleep over a book from exhaustion, but in the morning I got up again.
The first item I sold through the internet was returned three times. But on the fourth order, the customer wrote me a thank-you. That one sentence convinced me that perhaps I could still build my own life.
Years passed. One small warehouse became three stores, and three stores became a company. On my fortieth birthday, my assets were worth more than two hundred billion. I had a black Mercedes in the garage, but I still considered that little wooden elephant, which had hung on my bag when I was thrown out of the house, my most precious possession.
One morning Salome asked me:
“Mother, will you ever return there?”
“Not to ask for forgiveness,” I answered.
“Then why?”
I looked at the rainy street through the window.
“I want them to see what they threw away.”
When I arrived in my native city, their house seemed smaller to me. I barely opened the rusty gate. Weeds had grown up to the waist in the yard. I knocked on the door three times.
An eighteen-year-old girl opened the door.
My breath caught.
Her eyes were my eyes. The same nose. The same slight knitting of the eyebrows when she doubted something.
“Whom are you looking for?” she asked me.
At that moment Mother and Father appeared in the hallway. Mother covered her mouth with her hand. Father clutched the door handle.
“So, now you regret it?” I asked.
The girl turned toward my mother and took hold of her hand.
“Grandmother, who is this?”
The word pierced my heart like a knife.
“Who is this child?” I whispered.
Father started to say something, but at that moment a black car appeared from the street. A man got out of it, holding a leather folder, and walked straight toward me. The folder’s clasp opened, and his hand touched the first page…
The folder stopped in front of me. The man bowed his head.
“Mrs. Nino, I am Levan Beridze, a notary. This conversation must not continue here.”
Father stepped forward.
“No one called you.”
“You did not,” Levan replied. “Nino hired me.”
Mother’s face tensed. The young girl was still holding her hand.
“Grandmother, what is happening?”
I looked at the folder. My surname was written on it, but beside it a date was indicated—the day when I had been thrown out of the house.
“Before that, tell me who she is,” I said.
Mother moved her lips.
“Your sister.”
My knees gave way. I leaned against the wall. The eighteen-year-old girl who carried my face turned out to be my sister.
“Why didn’t I know?”
Father looked away.
“Everything was already over then. You left.”
“I did not leave. You threw me out.”
Levan opened the folder.
“Mrs. Nino, your father hid one thing for twenty years. And until you see this, you will not understand why you were called here today.”
He took out a sheet, but did not hand it to me. First he looked at the second sheet and his face changed color.
“This is impossible,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
Levan locked the door and added quietly:
“Your parents did not hide only a family secret. They signed a document in your name, because of which their house may no longer belong to them today…”
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Levan placed the sheet on the table. The corner of the paper was slightly bent, as if someone had tried to hide it many times.
“This is the will drawn up before your father’s death,” he said. “Nino’s grandfather left all the land and the house only to her.”
Father laughed loudly, but the laughter stopped immediately.
“This is an old paper. It no longer has force.”
“It does,” Levan replied. “Especially when the heir’s signature has been forged and the property has been transferred into someone else’s name.”
Mother put her hand on the chair.
“We were simply trying to preserve everything.”
“For me?” I asked.
“You were no longer here,” Father said. “You made your own choice.”
Something inside me collapsed. All my life I had thought they expelled me because of shame. Now I understood that on the same night when they threw me into the street, they had also decided to take away my inheritance.
Levan handed me the second document.
“It says here that Nino voluntarily renounced her family, property, and any claims. But this signature has one problem.”
“What problem?” I asked.
“That day you were in the hospital. You were giving birth to Salome.”
Tears came to Mother’s eyes.
“You survived anyway. But we were left alone.”
“Alone?” I laughed, but my voice cracked. “I had one room, an empty wallet, and a child in my arms. And you sold my house.”
The young girl, Mariam, stood by the window. Her face was pale.
“Grandmother, you told me that Nino ran away from the family.”
Mother could not utter a sound.
“You told me that she did not want to see us.”
Father raised his hand.
“Mariam, go into the room.”
“No,” the girl said. “For the first time I want to hear the truth.”
Levan turned on the phone. An old recording sounded in the room. It was Father’s voice, from twenty years ago, but every word could be heard clearly.
“Go outside. From today you are no longer my child.”
Then Mother’s voice sounded:
“Leave the bag. It does not belong to you either.”
Mariam covered her mouth with her hand. Father sank into the chair.
“Where did you get this?” he croaked.
“Your old neighbor kept it,” Levan said. “He knew that one day you would need the truth.”
I listened to the recording and for the first time heard my own past through someone else’s voice. I no longer thought that I had missed something that night. Everything had happened exactly like this.
Levan took the last document out of the folder.
“And now the worst news for them. A lawsuit has already been filed over the transfer of the property. But this morning the court called me. It turned out that part of the sold land is not only a matter of inheritance.”
“What else is there?” I asked.
He turned the screen toward me.
“An illegal waste storage site has been discovered on that land. Your father’s name is on the list of responsible persons.”
Father raised his head.
“Did you do this?”
“No,” I said calmly. “I only opened the door. You brought the past into the house yourselves.”
„
At that moment a message came to my phone from an unknown number. It contained only one sentence: “If you go to court, I will reveal everything about your daughter.”
I was still looking at the screen when Mariam stepped toward me and quietly said:
“Nino, this message did not come from my father’s number. The man who has supported us until now contacted me for the first time today…”
“
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იმ წერილმა ყველაფერი, რაც ვიცოდი, შეცვალა…
მე მეგონა, რომ სიმართლის გაგება საკმარისი იქნებოდა. მაგრამ ყველაზე მძიმე არჩევანი ამის შემდეგ დამელოდა.
„აქედან გასვლა შეიძლება.“
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