Toothbrush

Each summer I buy a new toothbrush in your pharmacy. Since you left, many things have changed on that street. The stores I used to know in childhood are gone (the bookstore where we bought textbooks for elementary school, an always empty chemical-product store, a hairdresser's with fading letters on the window...). The pharmacy is still there, with some brighter colours on the display windows (the orange teddy-logo of some pharmaceutical company is now waving at passers-by). The inside is as small as always, but whiter, and seemingly more-spacious. This summer I realized that none of your old colleagues work there any more, and when I walked in, no one recognized me.

(... in Grade 6, the history teacher stopped me after class one day, fixed his tiny pig-eyes on my face inquisitively, and asked if my mother worked in a pharmacy; apparently, to him we looked alike so much that even though he had seen us separately, he knew I was your daughter... I was also a princess -- whenever I dropped by the pharmacy, the ladies you worked with treated me as a guest of honour, let me go behind the counter, offered me this and that, smiled, congratulated me, congratulated you... on what, I don't really know, but we both liked it.

When I walked in this summer, it was still the place I knew -- it was still your pharmacy, it even smelled like you -- but the smiling young woman who came up to the counter when she heard the opening-door bell looked at me with blank, unseeing eyes and asked how she could help me. I said I needed a good toothbrush and asked if I could see all the models they had. While she was collecting various specimens from the shelves behind, I looked around. The wooden screen door which allowed access behind the counter was the same; its worn-out metal catch on top probably even trickier to push down fully in order to open the screen door. The white shelves were stacked with all kinds of medication boxes as neatly as when this was your kingdom. The stairs at the back led to the room which served as your "office" (always full of spools of paper); right next to it, a minuscule kitchenette with probably the same stove and the same blue kettle that you knew so well. The glass panel to the right of the reception area was crammed with advertised small objects -- pacifiers, baby bottles, band-aids; this is where once you scotch-taped a smiley note I left for you, so you could see it as you worked.

The young pharmacist spread out the toothbrushes in a line in front of me, and began to explain conscientiously the advantages and disadvantages of each one. As she was talking, I stole a few glances, sizing her up. She was there because you weren't. She was what you had been. She moved in the space deeply imprinted with the shape of you (did she know this?). And yet there was no connection, no thread, no link between us. On her side of the counter glass panel, she was churning out the pertinent information; on my side, I was hungrily looking for ghosts of a time which was gone the same day you left, never to return.

She was so young, and she had her own life. Maybe it was all as it should be.

I finally chose the toothbrush the young pharmacist recommended and bought two: a yellow one for myself, and a white one for my brother. While I was paying, pushing the money through that half-circular opening in the glass panel, I wasn't looking around any more. The bell above the door announced my exit with a tinkling note of farewell, I stepped out, and faced the sunny day without you in it.

Late 70s/early 80s, Banja Luka