Magdalena abandoned school in the 5th grade because of her home problems. Now she is 23 years old and 3 children whom she promises not to let them make the same mistake.
Magdalena is a Young woman of 23 years old with long and brown hair, a bit burnt by the sun on the edges. Her brown eyes and with black rings around them betray her tiredness of a child who grew up without a father from the age of 4, of a teenage mum who takes care of 3 children today. She doesn’t remember her father, but she knows she had troubles and she couldn’t surpass them. At 36 the man suicided, and „my mother struck by pain started drinking”.
She speaks slowly and she looks into my eyes: „My mother didn’t have time for us. We managed how we could”. They lived with rent in a flat with two rooms. In those walls they packed 9 brothers and sisters, the mother and wife of the elder brother. When they didn’t have money for the rent, they were on the street. They went for begging in order to have a slice of bread at night.
At the age of 8, a teacher asked her if she wants to go to school. „She dressed me, she gave me notebooks and she put me in the class where an ex pupil of hers taught, Cătălin Mîndru”. The teacher helped her a lot, he gave her clothes, shoes and stationery. „I had the will to study. Although sometimes I was absent from school it didn’t take me long to learn a lesson. I learnt it fast. Cătălin Mîndru was that man who guided me to learn”, remembers the young lady in her red blouse and a skirt up to her knees. She studied until the 4th grade at School no. 8 from Bârlad, by graduating it with mention, and after those 4 years she could not continue. „I didn’t have possibilities”, explians to me Magdalena thinking about the lack of stationery and clothes. The form teacher wasn’t interested in the problems the girl had daily at home. She told her that she must forget everything after she steps the threshold of school.
Now she feels sorry that she couldn’t continue her studies. She wanted very much, but in that moment the food and money were a priority. She begged, she took care of her little brothers and she thought that someday she will return to school, at least with part-time courses. At 15 years old without 3 months she got married reluctantly to a boy who courted her. Life with him promised to be easier than with her family, even if she didn’t love him. She had her first child at 18, then other two followed. After giving birth Magdalena’s life became a routine with sleepless nights. Beyond tiredness, her joy are her three children. The Eldest boy, Marius, is 5 years old and he goes to „upper pre-school group”, the middle girl, Mirabela, is at the kindergarten, and the youngest one, Alexandra is two years old.
Magdalena’s husband is not employed „but he works daily where he can in order to bring some money in the house or what’s necessary for children”. This has 5 classes. Not even he, didn’t have the possibility to study more, but the studies neither attracted him so much so as to continue his studies. „He liked work more than school”, explains to me the girl. He tried them all, he was a bricklayer assistant, he loaded iron trucks and he dealt with constructions. Magdalena, at her turn, stays home with the children. She would like to work, but nobody hires her, not even at cleaning the blocks of flats’ staircases. „If I had had at least 8 classes…” sighs the girl. She borrows money in order to buy for her children clothes because the allowance is not enough. She borrows from her elder sisters and for the health problems of her elder son. Marius has hemorrhagic rhinitis and she must operate him also for the tonsils, because he „makes pus and has grown flesh in his throat”. When she speaks about her son’s problems, her eyes fill up with tears and she looks helpless. She doesn’t have money to consult a specialist and she feels that nobody helps her. „I am thinking one day after another not to happen something. He reaches high temperature, I often go to hospital with him because of his spasms”. She doesn’t feel any support from the state side „They didn’t approve me even the canteen. We live one day after another. Here in Bârlad as you make your bed, so you must lie on it”, tells me Magdalena.
Together with her parents-in-law, children and her husband, the young woman lives in a bachelor flat, „a simple room with a bathroom in the hall”. She has debts and she is afraid not to have her electric power cut, and the bachelor flat is not connected to the running water network. „We take wáter from a pump and we keep it in barrels for food and washing”. There are three beds in the room, on one she sleeps with her husband and the two girls, on another her father-in-law with her son, and on the sofa her mother-in-law sleeps who has health problems. Hers husband’s mother worked as a female sweeper on a period of 6 months, but her health doesn’t allow her, and her father-in-law finds sometimes day labor. „We don’t argue but we complain about our fate”, sound the words with a sad voice.
Besides tomorrow’s preoccupation, Magdalena is hurt because she doesn’t have money to walk the children or to ake them to the park. „They want what they see at others, and I cannot see how my child cries after something that I cannot give him”. She manages how she can and she hopes that Marius, Mirabela & Alexandra will have other chances for their children. Her soul laughs when she sees that Marius holds all day long the pencil and the brushes in his hand and she feels that the elder boy is eager to learn. Until then she fights to raise them healthily and she prays for keeping all three of them at school. „What I couldn’t do, I teach my own children”.
This article can also be read here http://narisuisudibu.blogspot.ro/2015/04/mireasa-la-14-ani.html
