We spend the most time in the kitchen, Aunt Nana’s habitat. She is clearly comfortable there, in the place where she makes and unmakes with the most freedom, preparing each day’s meals and, once a month, her specialty: the walnut kuchen. She knows that she is as safe there as in a bunker, and I also feel protected. There are times when I have the feeling I’m under a giant bed.

At around seven in the evening, my favorite moment of the day begins. Aunt Nana spreads two towels over the table, brings out the basket of clothes, and turns the radio on. She irons. I don’t do anything, I’m just there. We always listen to the same program, a kind of radio theater transmitted by the national station. The stories are always suspense and they awaken my curiosity; they fascinate and disturb in equal measure. I’m drawn in by the murders and persecutions, the long and shadowy hallways where two strangers look at each other. I can see us there in the kitchen, not saying anything, immersed in the intrigue of the stories. The air is a bit close because of the iron’s steam, and the afternoon light is gradually extinguished almost at the same speed as the narrator tells the story. It all leaves us in shadow, until finally we have to turn the lights on and the radio off.

The kitchen is still our place, but now I am fifteen, then sixteen, and seventeen, and things have changed so much that I don’t know to what extent it’s still the same rented house, the same family. Or maybe I’m very far from the house and the family. I have two little brothers, a father with occasional jobs, and my mother’s nighttime footsteps. Soon I won’t have anything.

The only thing I maintain more or less intact is my relationship with Aunt Nana. Every night I go to her room and say good night to her with the playful words she taught me when I was seven years old. With her, I go on showing myself as I did when I was little.

Aunt Nana is exhausted. In front of her there’s a pile of ironed and folded clothes. The radio program no longer exists. It’s almost dark in the kitchen. Tomorrow I’m leaving the house, and aside from some friends who are helping me, no one knows. I haven’t told her, I can’t open myself up to the possibility of losing any of the courage I need in order to escape. When I was little and cried impotently when I didn’t get what I wanted or after fighting with my parents, Aunt Nana always consoled me by saying: “We must be grateful.” But the person I am now knows that there’s no relief in those words.