Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (23) - Flipbook - Page 79
and die the way their grandmothers do! Maybe they want a job and a smartphone and a
scooter and to live in an apartment with electric.’
With that she disappears into the bedroom, the only other room they have, where Ania and
Verinka both sleep; where the wallpaper peels off the damp walls and where the windows are
small as arrow loops because that's how they have kept out the cold for generations. Verinka
can hear the bedsprings mewl. She sighs and sits down. She takes a spoonful of beetroot soup
but her mouth is too full of unsaid words. If words were like rosary beads, neatly lined up on a
string she could let them out, run them through her fingers, one by one in good order, but
words have never been like that for her. They have always been awkward, jumbled things,
getting caught in her teeth or pushed back into her mouth by her elders. Verinka has always
done things with her hands.
But she understands. She looks at her hands. No one wants hands like this. No one wants
the kind of life that gives you hands like that. No one wants Verinka's life. That´s why Ania's
mother is cleaning houses in Germany. It's back breaking work, illegal, and once a month she
takes an overnight bus to come and see them for two days. Every time she comes, she looks
more translucent, the skin around her eyes blue from tiredness. Sometimes her hands are
numb for no reason and sometimes she smells of drink. A doctor she cleans for told her she
needs to stop work, have an operation and therapy, none of which is possible. How is that a
better life, thinks Verinka, but she knows. It's better because in the winter, Verinka has to
wrap sackcloth around the only tap in the house to keep it from freezing; because there is no
bath, only an outside toilet with newspaper to wipe yourself with and once a year the toilet has
to be emptied, a task that takes a whole day and leaves Verinka unable to eat for a week, sick
at her own stink even after she's washed herself in the river; because Ania has to sleep with
her pungent, creviced grandmother on a thin mattress; because there is no school and no
shop and no computer or smartphone and only an old television; because there are no jobs
and no discos and nothing sparkly at all.
The next day Ania isn't home by dusk. Verinka tends to the garden, the poppies are in bloom
now, bright as bloodstains on a white sheet. It makes her ache sometimes, the pockets of
beauty in her life: the bushes dotted with orange rose-hip like little lanterns; the soft forest
floor covered in pine needles like a woven rug, the fallen walnuts hiding in the tall grass, their
shells patterned like fingerprints; the vines reclaiming the steelworks. It's always been their
land, cruel and gorgeous. Verinka picks the poppies. Not just one, all of them. She takes the
severed heads inside and begins to bake. When night falls, she goes to find Ania at the tavern.
She's with the man.
Walking home, Ania's head is bowed, but Verinka can see something defiant there. When she
is home and sitting at the kitchen table, her flushed face hidden by her fringe Ania suddenly
says, ‘He loves me’ and almost imperceptibly, ‘he wants me to come be his woman.’
Verinka breathes in sharply. He´s craftier than she thought.
‘He's lying to you,’ she says and puts a slice of poppyseed cake down in front of Ania.
‘Here’ she says, ‘Eat’
Ania shakes her head ‘I'm not hungry’ she says.
‘Eat!’ her grandmother shouts, both hands coming down hard on the table, hard enough to
make the spoons in the drawer rattle. It jolts Ania. She reaches for the cake, breaks off a
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