The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

pull it over my head, and it’d be a hooped skirt, like a princess’s.... And there was this one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about...we made a secret a couple days before, that girl and I. We were very proud of it, too. And so I stood there and all I could think was, now she is moving out and what’s going to happen to our secret? You see, she’d forgotten all about it. She’d moved on to other things. Maybe if we’d had a chance and snuck away, just the two of us, to dig up that secret and pledge our undying friendship over it, everything would’ve been different. More melodramatic. Or, if she had bequeathed that secret to someone else, given me permission to show it to someone else after she left, to another girl...but nothing like that happened—our secret just died; it was so clear. It died because she forgot about it. The same thing happened to it as happened to the armchairs and the lampshade—it lost its defining purpose. It was still in the same spot as the day before, and perfectly undisturbed, but it was no longer a secret—just a little pile of buried rubbish. Are you listening?”
    “Uhu.”
    “And I remember this very un-childlike gloom came over me. A child—she feels the same things as the adults, you know, just doesn’t have the words for them. It was like I saw all at once all those secrets we’d made and then abandoned and never checked on again—how they all were somewhere underground. All our sealed friendships, tears, pledges...our little lives under glass like exhibits in Mom’s museum. A giant museum of abandoned secrets. And people walked right over it; they didn’t even know it was there, right under their feet.”
    “The museum of abandoned secrets—that’s nice. I like it.”
    “I don’t feel like I’ve been making much sense.... ”
    “No, I understand. You are trying to say that you and I are together because we accidentally dug up someone else’s love. Like one of those secrets that got left behind.”
    “Yeah...something like that.”
    “But don’t you think it’s also possible that whoever made it may have, as you put it, bequeathed it to us?”
    “I’ll tell you what I think. I think that man was in love with Gela. And she did something wrong. She made some terrible mistake that messed up everything. And it still hasn’t been fixed.”
    “Now, that’s just your imagination...”
    “No, it’s a hunch. A woman’s hunch, trust me on this one. It’s always us, the brilliant and the beautiful, who make the kind of royal mess no plain little mouse of a girl could ever dream of. It’s true. You know why? The risk is higher: plain little mice don’t get nearly as many chances to imagine they can control someone else’s fate.”
    “Never really liked those plain little mice...”
    “That’s the problem right there! You all want the brilliant and the beautiful. Do you think that makes our lives easier?”
    “Oh, you poor, long-suffering, brilliant thing...”
    “Finally, about time someone felt sorry for me. At least I’m alive—for now.”
    “And warm too. Damn it!”
    “What?”
    “My knee!...Got it! Lolly, I remember! I was crawling along a wattle fence somewhere on the outskirts of town, and ahead, in the city, lay a betrayal. I was supposed to kill the traitor, Lolly! That’s what I went to do; that’s why I was called! And I didn’t even learn his name! I learned nothing!”
    “This was all in your dream?”
    “And I bumped my knee—against that fence!”
    “You’re kidding?”
    “Nothing to kid about, girl! The pain made me remember.... And you, by the way, were there too—you spoke to me.”
    “Me? And what did I say?”
    “Wait, it might not have been you after all...Granny Lina, maybe? In any case, it was a woman’s voice; I’m sure of that. A woman that’s very close, very dear to me. It couldn’t have been Mom, could it? Shit, I can’t remember.... All I see is this soggy plowed field right in front of me.”
    “And you don’t remember what she said, the woman?”
    “Wait, I wrote it down as soon as I woke up! It should be here somewhere.... Here, got it! On my cigarettes.”
    “Let me see. Jeez, that’s some chicken scratch.”
    “I wrote in the dark! ‘You won’t need.’”
    “What does that mean?”
    “How should I know? It’s all gone now. ‘You won’t need’—no kidding, that’s like a joke or something.... ‘Blood will stay in Kyiv.’ Don’t remember that either. ‘Women...’ what