Mia and her father had climbed down into the dug-out cellar in the yard to check out last year’s potatoes, when the bitch started to bark. Mia went to look. God knows why as there was no one there. God knows why she went back into the house. God knows why she decided to quietly open the door and to look, if her mother had been disturbed.

Having shot about the pond, Mia for a moment grabs unto the dock, breathing hard like a long-distance runner.

Her mother was sleeping in an odd position. Her arms thrown over her head. Fighting for air. But her eyes gave away the fact that she was losing consciousness. The wine glass had tipped over on the bed and a large bite had been taken from the slice of bread. On the shelf beside the bed rested a sleeve of sleeping pills. She had taken four of the pills with the wine. Her mother’s daily dose of happiness.

“Mamma,” screamed Mia. “Mamma!”

She tried to insert her fingers into her mother’s open mouth, but her hands were trembling dreadfully. Saliva mixed with bread crumbs was trickling from the corner of her mother’s mouth. Bluish lips. Without lipstick, bare.

Mia pushes off from the dock and calmly slides into the pond. She swims with large, measured strokes.

Mia rushed down the stairs, stumbling, falling raced across the front yard, and screamed at the door to the dugout cellar:

“She’s dying, choking on bread, dying, choking …”

Her father followed Mia, leaping across the lawn like a frenzied wild animal.

Her mother’s lips had turned more blue.

Her father pulled her up into a sitting position, pounded her back. Her mother wheezed and Mia began to cry. Her father screamed angrily at Mia, turned her mother on her side and tried to get the stuck lump out from her throat.

Her mother’s lips had turned yet more blue.

Mia heard the last gurgling sounds of her mother’s body.

Her father helplessly was shaking her mother by the shoulders.

“It’s over, over!” Mia sobbed through tears.

Her father threw her a savage look and tried once more. This time the congealed lump of bread was in his hand. Her mother was not breathing.

“Heart, pump her heart!” her father shouted at Mia.

Mia placed palm on palm and, crying, rhythmically pumped her mother’s chest. Her father blew air into her mother’s mouth with a force that would have moved the clouds. The air gurgled in her mother’s chest cavity like a steaming lake in the mountains.

One more time, once more, again.

Her mother rasped and then drew in air herself.

Wheezing, her breathing returned.

In the middle of the pond Mia once more turns over and calmly floats on her back.