They told me to ask Jack. Ever since I could think. My mothers, my brothers and sisters, my neighbors, anyone I spoke to advised me to contact Jack for receiving the answers. Even when I asked: "Who is this Jack, where can I find him?" they replied: "Ask Jack!"

Sitting at the table, I must have been in an awkward mood that evening! I was shivering as I opened my mouth – and they must have known. Was it the form of my lips, was it the glance of my face? A deathly shadow covered their faces. Their mouths open, their eyes just about to burst. They screamed, that's what they did. In the wide black of their pupils I saw this image, I saw the silhouette of a chain. While I gazed, this chain got hold of my brain. My forehead ached, I started to sweat, I closed my mouth. My unspoken words drowned in the mud of my brain, forever lost.

My mothers quickly recovered from that screaming session. And they kept on smiling. They were single women, they gave us bread to eat, every second day a glass of warm milk, they cared about my brothers and sisters. I wanted to see my mothers smiling, thats what counted to me. Because I thought smiling was a sign of happiness. "You should smile too," was what my mothers said, then they paused, kissed my forehead and quickly turned away.

They would not answer my questions, I would not get to know my past. I accepted this feeling of living in a dead-end street. I began to cross my fingers instead of asking questions. From then on everybody felt very contented with me. My mums smiled when I was sitting in the living room, learning vocabulary for school. They came, kissed me on my forehead, kindly jiggling their heads. "You are grown up now!" and I felt as if being grown up means accepting this chain in my brain, this necklace keeping me from stepping forward. I crossed my fingers.

While I slept mothers sat next to me on my bed, their lips sticking on the hair that covered my forehead. I crossed my fingers, I blanketed my face. But my mothers did not mind, they kissed me through the blanket, even through the pillow which later I put around my head. I felt like being a mummy, an artifact of history without any past of it's own. I was walled by an impermeable mass of smiles and kisses. The necklace was choking me, that was what I felt. I was breathing very slowly and kept my fingers crossed, waiting those kisses to go by.

It takes years and a curious incident to come closer to answers. "What is that on your forehead?" Maria wipes away the hairs that curtain my face. It must be signalling deepest astonishment; Maria immediately lets go of my hair, lets go of the question, lets go of me. The curtain falls quicker than it was lifted.

After Maria's question I am too nervous for anything. All I can think of is that thing behind my curtain, I cannot stop my hands from touching my forehead. Yes, there is something, is it a deep scratch? I enter the bathroom. With short breathing I face the mirror. I have been waiting for this moment all my life. I don't dare to lift my hair. I move my hands between my reflection and me. Sweat is running down my body. I open my eyes. I catch a glimpse through my two fingers, through a crack in my sweat soaked mummy. It is the first time ever that I see myself. How could I have missed this all these years?

Headache: the necklace bursts, the mummy cracks, I stamp on it as I rush into a toilet cubicle. I throw up as much as I can, evena little blood comes up. Spitting out all my dull existence, I knock on the door of my mothers' shack. The door creaks. A smell surrounds me. Never have I perceived a smell at my mothers' shack before. I inhale. I inhale deeply.

My mothers stand facing me. They see my shaved head, feel my empty body, spot my fear. They look alarmed. They look prepared. They do not smile. In their wide open eyes all the answers are accumulating, floating.

With no chain around. That's how we stand, severely, immovably, like grave rocks. Our gazes are melting, building something. It is a path to move forward.