Breaking

Spring break? What is this “break” of which you speak? I’ve walked to Amherst for the last three days because the buses aren’t running. I like to think it will be worth it at the end of the semester, when everyone else is in finals and I’m done with all my work. Then I will gloat. Now, I rub my feet, I screw my courage to the sticking post, and…I write. And write. And write. And write.

I’ve spent far too much time on this considering how much I still have left to finish. Still, it’s the first piece in the book – I figured I might as well get it right. Introducing my problem child, the third narrator: Vassilike.

#1 Thursday, Evening – Vassilike

The sun is setting over the mountains, but by the road here it’s so hot it might as well be noon. I am sweating. My shirt is wet with the sweat. The collar of it is wet and sticks to my neck – it itches. Even the backs of my knees pour sweat, and they stick to the dusty old tire I am sitting on so much that I think they will turn the dust to mud. It’s better than sitting on the ground, but not much. The tire is part of a tractor that someone broke and dragged to the roadside at some time, I don’t know when, who cares? It is all we have for a bus stop. The rest of the tractor is here too, down the road a little. It is rusty, and making a square shadow on the wall of the corn behind it. Little grass and flowers grow up out of the rust; what parts were good were taken ages ago. Behind me is nothing but more corn and a dirt road that splits to two roads later on. One way goes to the village. The other way goes to Casalui Domnul Nostrii – “The House of Lord.” It is the orphanage that I live in. I’m not an orphan, I don’t think, but whatever.

To both hands, the road runs away flat a few hundred meters, then turns a corner around a hill and disappears. In front of me, just more hills. Close, they’re covered all in grass and a few trees – good for nothing but sheep, but some have cornfields too. Farther away, the hills get darker and smaller. When the sun falls right in behind them like an orange ball I can see the tops of the farthest ones, lined up and pointed like a dog’s teeth. They look only as small as the end of my finger. Up close they are much bigger– muntii Carpati, the Carpathian Mountains, the heart of my country Romania. It is all very beautiful, I guess. Still the light hurts my eyes and like I said, it is hot. So I cover over my eyes with my hand and look the other way, down the road.

The bus is late like it always is – lucky for me I’m not going anywhere. But eventually I hear the noise of an engine and an autobus turns into view around the hill to my left. The bus is only a van painted brightly red and yellow with ‘Transportati Romani’ printed blue on the side under the windows. It takes the turn too fast: I see it shake and almost roll before the guy muscles it back on the track. Still, when it hits the straightaway the accelerator bellows, the bus kicks and it speeds up, running straight for me like an angry painted cow. Five hundred meters. Three hundred. A hundred and fifty meters away and it looks like it isn’t going to stop at all. Then the brakes yell; dust flies. Then the bus swings to the roadside almost on top of me, bumps through the gravel, and stops just before it hits the old tractor. The side door slides open. The driver yells goodnight. Before the door can even shut the bus starts off again, sending up another giant smog of dust. I have to cough and spit and before I can even look up to see who’s gotten off. Of course I know already. I’ve been waiting, haven’t I? When I look up she is already next to me, looking down and smiling. It’s Elena.

“Vassile! Ce faci? How are you?”

“Bine. Good.” I shrug. “Tu?”
“Yeah, good.” We are always good. It doesn’t mean anything, bine, it’s just what you say. Still, right now it’s pretty true. I grab her hand and pull myself up.

“You are waiting for me?”

“Eh. Sure. De ce nu? Nothing better to do.”

“Ha. Wipe your ass.”

The seat of my shorts is white with dirt from the tire. I slap at it, but it wants to go exactly nowhere. “Forget it. I’ll wash later.”

“Uh huh. Anyway, it suits you.” She twists my arm back and holds it to the dirt. “See? Same color. When last did you wash?”

“Ow! Termina! What did I do to you? Let go!”

Elena is darker than me: black hair, black eyes, everything else bronz like the skin of the saints on the walls of the village church whose faces are covered with gold leaf. Gypsy dark, my mother would have called her. Elena is clean as a saint, too, and ever since she left school and started work at the clothing boutique in town, she is just as colorful. On laundry day when the girls wash and hang their clothes off the balcony to dry, I can find Elena’s no problem. Just whatever is colored gold or purple or lime or pink or teal. Whatever sparkles. Tonight her dress is red, and where the sun catches it the sun shines through; her earrings could have caught on fire and they would burn less. Looking right at her hurts more than looking right at the sun. When a car rolls up behind us, coming from the village, it stops before turning onto the paved road and someone rolls a window down just so they can soak her up. The guy in the side seat clicks his tongue.

“Tch, domnisoara, you’re ready to go! Better leave the kid here and come with us. Tonight I take you someplace only a man can take you, yeah?”

I know the guy a little – we don’t talk with the villagers much, but we see them around. He’s a real loser: tall, yeah, but skinny arms, skinny little chest. If I were just a little bigger, he wouldn’t be talking at all. Even as a little kid I’ll give him something to cry about. Elena catches my hand before I even bring it up all the way.

“Is that a joke, huh? I couldn’t tell. Look, go pay a whore if you want someone to say you’re funny. My brother and I have to go home now. Noapte buna, ok? Good NIGHT.”

It’s an insult – oh, and it’s a good one. The guy stiffens up like he’s going to get her back. But his buddy that’s driving gets the joke, so he just laughs and guns it out of there onto the main road. Soon they’re out of sight. We cough in the dust and exhaust, and Elena makes dirty gestures after them.

“Don’t bother with those hicks, Vassile. They have dicks for brains.”

“I’m not your brother.”

“Yeah, sure, but they know that?” She swings my hand in hers once before she drops it.

“Besides, you look out for me, yeah? And I take care of you. So it’s the same thing. Anyway. You coming?”

“Yeah.”

The sunset is behind us now, so our shadows lean out in front of us when we walk down the road. We walk slowly. There is nowhere to go.

“How was work?”

“Asa sa asa. Same as always. The bus was bad, though. Fifteen minutes late! Also it smelled and a farmer pinched my ass. It was horrible! I almost asked Nutsa to stay with her the night so I wouldn’t have to put up with it again.” Nutsa is her boss; sometimes when it is winter, Elena sleeps overnight in her apartment.

“Yeah? Why didn’t you?”

“What, I would leave you alone for a night? No, you’d get bored and hurt yourself. Anyway, the donkey told me to come back.” Father Cristi, the priest who is in charge of the orphanage, is Elena’s enemy, and she says his name only if she has to. She is afraid of him.
“I am working every day, and still he tells me, ‘Oh, you do this and this.’ Why not just say, ‘You’re mine, do what I want?’ And who came to the shop today but his slut daughter and old hag wife? Rubbing it in! ‘Oh, Elena, who knew you worked here? You must come for dinner! Lunch!’ And so and so and so…iishhh, as if I am their pet! Like, a cow from the family farm. I almost couldn’t stand it. Hicks!” Elena is from Bucharest. Everything she hates, she hates it because it is from the country. “And stop laughing already. It’s not funny.”

“Ha aha ha, you are their COW! Ha!”

“Oh, shut up.” She crosses her arms and makes a face like I am worse than the priest’s whole family all together. She gets angry very fast like this, and always she is really angry – she does not pretend. It scared me when I first knew her. Two years ago, when I first came to the orphanage, Elena showed me around and took care of me, so when she was angry I was afraid she would give up and leave. Now I know that she doesn’t stay angry. Already now, insulting me, she smiles a little. “You’re a hick too, you know!”

“Sure! I’m a cowboy!”

“And I’m the cow? Okay, whatever, fine. But no branding.”

“Fine.”

And imediat – just like that – we’re friends again. She slaps my shoulder.

“I was surprised that you were waiting for me today. Is your party over so soon?”

“I didn’t go.” I shrug. “It’s not my party, anyway.”

“Vassilike! It is a graduation party! You graduated, right?”

“Only the seventh grade.”

“It is better than a lot of people. Think of Alex! He is as old almost as me and only just now he graduates the seventh grade.”

“Ok, so. I am smarter than Alex.” Alex is sixteen, four years older than me, and on the outside, his head is hard like a brick, Inside, it’s soft as mamaliguita – as cornmeal mush, polenta. He always is smiling, though he never gets jokes; he likes to pinch the little kids until they cry. “This is not hard, being smarter than Alex.”

“Yes, yes, you are smarter than Alex. But who cares? Right now he is in town dancing and drinking and rubbing himself against all the little girls because he knows that graduation is a good thing. But you, draga, you are smart, and here look at you! Having no fun at all!”

I shrug again. “Alex leaves tomorrow.”

“Mm. For Moldovia?” Every year, boys from Casalui go the east of Romania, to cut down trees and get paid for it. To go, you need to do good in school and also to have an identity card. To get a card, you need a paper, proof that your parents are dead, or that they don’t want you. I don’t have a card.

“Da.”

“Well, he’ll be hungover on the bus then.”

“Da.”

“Look, Vassile, are you still worried about your paperwork? God, you have years, something will come up. So you can’t work in Moldovia this summer – so WHAT? Anyway, you can hang out with me instead of with assholes like Alex.”

“Da.”

“My god, you are an idiot sometimes.”

I can’t say anything back to that, so we are quiet as we walk. Ahead of us now we see the split in the road. The corn comes to an end. In front of the split there is a grassfield, and an old woman bent double with her scarf over her hair is leading a cow out of it. We wait for them to cross the road and move away down the right hand side. Then we start down the left. All suddenly, Elena stops.

“My God, what is that smell?” She stands in the middle of the road, crunching her face in disgust. “Nasul meu va morti. It is HORRIBLE!”

“What are you talking about? Don’t be an idiot.” I walk a few steps, and then suddenly it stops me like a rock – Domnul! A smell so strong I can taste it. My eyes water. It is the smell of something dead. “Oh God, it is terrible. Come on, let’s go quick!”

I run up the hill and hold my nose, but Elena doesn’t follow me. She walks to the side of the road and stands there looking around for what stinks. She is wearing high-heeled sandals – gold ones – like she always is, and she stands on the very edge where the road falls away into a deep ditch on either side of the hill. Afraid she will fall, I walk back. “Elena? Come on!”

“I think it’s a dog.”

I look down.

Behind us, the sunset is over, but still the sky is still pink and light enough we can see where we are walking. In the ditch, though, it’s already night. I can see nothing. Then when I watch for a long time I see something, but what? Lying next to a rock, just another color of darkness in the dark. It is the size of a dog, at least. Out of its round middle, its four straight legs sag out to the side, like fat sticks stuck into wet mud. Squinting, I make out its head in the shadows. Dog ears. The dog’s face is turned away from me, pressed into the dirt of the hillside. Still I can imagine the look of the dead eyes – black and ashy, like burned-out coals. The moment something dies, you can tell from its eyes. They change. The thought of it makes me shiver.

“Vassile? Hai Vassilike, e doar un caine. It’s only a dog.”

Suddenly, I’m sick. I haven’t eaten for a while, so there’s not much to come out; still, I gag a little and some sour water comes out and lands in the ditch. Some of it sticks in my throat. I cough. When I’m done, Elena pulls me away. We walk up the hill so we can’t smell it anymore.

“Look, I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.” If I look up I’ll be angry, so I don’t look up.

Just a few more steps and we’re home. At the top of the hill the road turns a circle, and around the circle are the buildings of the orphanage where we eat and sleep. In the middle of the circle is a playground, and behind the buildings are more hills. It isn’t that dark yet – still, noody’s hanging out. Behind the far buildings, I hear shouting. Cheering. The party must be over. They’re playing futbol.

“Listen to those drunks,” Elena laughs. “You want to see?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, but I have to sleep soon. I have to wake up tomorrow.”

“You have to cook for the doctor again?” There is a guest staying in Father Cristi’s house, an American doctor. Who knows why? He never does anything.

“Yes, and another one is coming tonight. Another American. A girl. Aren’t you excited?”

“What do I care?” I don’t – my stomach still hurts. Anyway, it has nothing to do with me. “Come on, let’s go before the game’s over.”

“Fine.”