A former teenager’s story. Ch. 16-18
16
My route went in one direction, to Sue’s place. As I came by her tacky wooden house with an overgrown garden the first thing I heard was a distinctive ruckus coming from the inside: that was Sue fighting with her old folks.
“Where’s the phone?”
“Sasha! Put on your tights!”
“Where’s the phone?!”
I opened the heavy frontdoor upholstered in filthy oilcloth and instantly smelt the stale air of a poor country house. It smelt like dampness mingled with chimney smoke, dried herbs and dirty old clothes – it was the smell of poverty, so familiar to me. The decor of the house spoke for itself: a pile of cardboard boxes containing all sorts of rubbish, a tattered plastic tablecloth with spilled milk and spat out plum seeds on it, buzzing flies circling over. The picture was completed by an old couch, greasy and lumpy, and a rolled-up on an iron bed dirty old matress with yellowish stains on it.
Sue’s grandad was crouching in front of a small furnace and putting twigs on the fire. Her grandma in a greasy apron was standing at the cooker and making sugary plum jam. Sue herself was running around with a bare butt kicking the rubbish on the floor and nervously eviscerating the cardboard boxes in search of the telephone.
“What’s up? Going to call someone?” I asked her instead of saying hello.
Sue gave no answer. She grabbed my hand instead and pulled me to her “bedroom” – a little corner behind a thin partition. There were two iron beds in there and a big poster with Eminem on the wall. One of the beds was piled up with rubbish; the other was occupied by Sue. I sat down on her unmade, untidy bed and some sharp item immediately poked me in the ass. I ran my hand through the sheets and fished out an aluminum fork with crooked prongs.
“Why do you need a fork in your bed?” said I, “Oh my God, what else is that… peas or something, ew! What a mess your bed is! How can you even sleep like that?!”
“Well, I eat in bed” Sue shrugged her shoulders. Like there was nothing wrong with it.
“I’ve got kicked out of home,” I said with a sigh. “Bitched with grandmother. Can I stay with you for a while?”
Sue squeezed my hand with a solemn air.
“Oh honey, of course you can! My place is your place, you know.”
“Sasha!” her grandad called out as he stood in the doorway.
She winced with annoyance.
“What is it, old man, you are wanting?”
“Come here for a minute”
“Why can’t we talk where we are?” muttered Sue.
She went outside the partition, though. I got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Is there anything worse than being let know that you are no more than an outsider and there are things definitely not for your ears? However, the “not for my ears” information shared behind the partition was heard pretty clearly.
“Sasha, you have to understand, we cannot let her stay with us. She should make it up with her grandmother…”
I went out and, without saying anything, headed for the front door.
“Wait, I’ll go with you!” Sue grabbed her jacket off the nail.
“Sasha, come back!” her grandma shouted to her.
We sat on the roof of a shed near the mentioned above phone booth the villagers used to call the city from. Neither Sue nor I knew where else to go; so we, hiding on that roof, entertained ourselves picking yellow plums and eating them, and throwing the seeds down on the road trying to fling them as far as possible.
“I told you I’d sacrifice anything for our friendship,” Sue convinced me heatedly, “You have no idea how restless I felt all the time while you were gone! Then I realized I didn’t really need any Roma… So I just turned him down.”
“I don’t need him either,” I said ostentatiously, “I love Shurik. And Roma is just a passing thing, you know.”
“But you may never see Shurik again” reminded Sue.
“That’s true. Dads say after the May incident I’m never setting foot in Kruglovo again. But nonetheless, I will always love Shurik, for the rest of my life.”
“And you will never marry anyone else, right?”
I shook my head.
“No. No one else but Shurik.”
“What if he rejects you?”
“Then I’ll stay unmarried forever. I love him truly and deeply and I will love him until my last breath.”
Sue giggled up her sleeve.
“What’s so funny?” I snapped out rudely.
“Sorry. You’re just being so naive…”
“Why am I being naive?”
“Because… Shurick the hick… You may never cross paths with him again!”
“Never say never,” I said unexpectedly, “The world doesn’t revolve around dads, after all! There are plenty of ways to get to Kruglovo…”
“What ways?”
“What ways? Going there on our own, for instance! Why not?”
“Do you have any idea where it is located?”
“Not really…” I mumbled, “But we could buy a map and see…”
“Maybe it’s not even charted on the maps! Even if it is – do you know how many Kruglovos there may be in the country? More than you can count, that’s how many!”
“Oh well, we could find all the Kruglovos and travel to all of them… Sooner or later we must get lucky and come to the right place!”
Sue laughed contemptuously.
“Do you know how many years it’s going to take before you’ve been to all your Kruglovos? You’ll make me die, really…” she said doubling over with laughter, “I imagine this picture in sixty years… You are a crooked old woman traveling around on and on in search of Kruglovo… Ha-ha-ha! And when you finally see your beloved Shurik, a bald old man, wrinkly and toothless, all falling apart… Hallo, my luv!.. Oh, you crack me up!! Ha-ha-ha!!!”
“Very funny” I said offended.
But there was no stopping Sue.
“And then he… farts!!!” she squealed like a pig choking on her laughter.
That really took the biscuit. I sprang up and went at her.
“Say one more word and I’ll kick you off the roof. Understand?”
“Okay, okay, I got ya…” she pretended to be scared but couldn’t help laughing out again.
I swung at her with the intention of giving that ass a good punch and teaching her to watch her mouth when I suddenly saw the fat figure of my grandmother Zoya approaching our booth.
The blood drained from my face. I ducked down to the very edge of the roof and crawled rapidly back.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Grandmother…” I gasped quietly, “Get down or she’ll see us! I wonder what the heck she’s doing here…”
We layed still up there like two spies. Meanwhile, Gran Zoya went inside the booth and we understood that she had come here to make a phone call.
“She must be going to call my father and complain about me,” I said in a whisper, “What an old cunt! That’s all I needed…”
“Be quiet! Let’s listen to what she’s gonna say”
We got quiet on the roof. And the loud, distinctive voice of Gran Zoya wasn’t long in coming.
“Hello, I need an ambulance! I think, my husband’s having a heart attack! Yes, a heart attack! Please, come quickly to the address…”
A few days later my grandfather passed away.
18
It was September already and I was back in the city when one evening our phone rang and sobbing Gran Zoya without saying hello or calling my name said briefly:
“Put your dad on”
My father picked up the phone in the big bedroom and, as usual, he shouted to me in the kitchen:
“Hang up!”
However, I wasn’t in a hurry to hang up on them, and, holding my breath, I listened. As it turned out it wasn’t a waste; for the information I learned was very important to me.
From the abrupt grandmother’s replics, tearful and incoherent, I concluded that before his death my grandad had bequested to be buried near his native village Kruglovo. Moreover, he had asked for me to be present at the funeral.
“If it weren’t for that little asshole, Sasha would still be alive” grandmother said evidently meaning me, “After what she said that day… I can’t stand the sight of her; but his wish is my command…”
At another time such epithets hurled my way would affect me much more; but now they didn’t matter. All that mattered was me going to Kruglovo tomorrow! Meaning that tomorrow and not a day later I would finally see Shurik!
I carefully put the receiver back and darted to my room. I was so excited that even being conscious of the improptiety of this excitement in the midst of everybody’s sorrow didn’t diminish my excitement, but, on the contrary, aroused it.
My hands shaking, I opened my wardrobe and swept all my shabby rags down on the floor. I was supposed to be present at the funeral dressed in black; and of all my black clothes I only had two options. The first was my baggy woolen sweater making my whole body look pear-shaped, and equally baggy black jeans. The second option was my small black cocktail dress – so small that it couldn’t even cover my bum properly. Me wearing it at my grandad’s funeral would definitely be shocking to everyone; besides, it would mean an authomatic death sentence for me. The ugly shapeless sweater would be a lot more appropriate for this sad event; but how could I attract Shirik wearing it…
“I’ll wear the dress,” I decided, “I don’t care what it does to me or what people think! The most important thing is that Shurik will be mine; and fuck the future!”
The next morning, at five or six am, my father knocked at my door.
“Are you ready?”
“Just a minute!”
I jumped out of bed and, shrinking from the chill of my bedroom, groped in the dark for my bag prepared beforehand. It contained my cocktail dress, black stockings, high-heeled shoes and my grandmother’s big black shawl. Having dressed myself quickly, I loosened my long hair I had had in cornrows all night to make it look thicker and curlier – and I started hastily to do makeup.
“Hurry up!” my father opened my bedroom door and tapped his finger on his watch, “It’s time!”
Having barely managed to hide my lipstick before he noticed it I covered my head with the shawl and, wrapping it around my face and body like a Muslim woman, I followed him downstairs.