Every Wednesday, a chocolate cake. Her contribution to the
office, though they ask her why. Why? They eat it anyway, the
frosting thick and potent. A hand to her jaw, jowled, soft. My father was a dentist in the old
country. No money,
no status. Just like me here, she says, sweeping her
thick arm around the room. They sit, bite into Styrofoam cups of
muddy coffee, the bottoms thick with sugar substitute. Today’s
Russian word is Luk,
she tells them. Something
hard to come by, she laughs without a smile. There is
no small talk. They shuffle out in single file, back to their
veneered, particle-board desks pocked with cigarette burns when
smoking was allowed, stiff fingers over keyboards, wristwatches
like prison wardens, ticking time. She presses her fingers into
the moist brown crumbs, holds them to her mouth. We never wasted, she says
to the air. I am a woman of
an age to remember. The rusted Sucrets box in her stiff
apron pocket. Pills shaped like little bullets—red, yellow and
green. Oh the games she played with herself when she took one
and then another. The trembling of effect. The string mop
languid against the wall. The filthy bucket of water that she
stands over, her face reflected like a wavy parody. The memory
of screeching birds at dawn. The shots. Her father’s stiff white
collar, needless, among the peasants who laughed at him. The
brazen cold. The hunger for something sweet, anything. Something
that would stay in the blood. Instead, every day: No bread. Four corn.
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