On the Street That’s Still Called Lenin
by Elizabeth Olguin
The cow lows in the field behind my house as the sun sets, purple and orange and pink against the wheat fields on the street that’s still called Lenin. When the night sky goes from blue to black and the stars shine above me in a panorama unbelievable, the crickets chirp, and the moths and bugs and sand flies that bite my ankles beat their wings against the window’s screen.
Morning announces itself as a bright, blinding dawn that shines through the house’s lace curtains. Maria shuffles into the kitchen in woollen slippers to set the fire under the oven’s burner with a strike of a match and the whoosh of gas enveloped in flame. The kettle bubbles and whistles while her knife scrapes butter over bread and slices sausage and cheese for breakfast.
I emerge, and Maria chatters away to me in Russian, a language that glides and rolls over its sounds, musical in a way most foreigners don’t appreciate but I have loved since I first heard it sung. On the street that’s still called Lenin, cars in a wedding procession drive by, honking their joy for the whole town to hear because joy in Moldova is something to be distributed amongst all your neighbours in the same way the elderly women around us share their chicken and eggs and milk warm and frothy from the cow. Maria calls for her son, the man I refer to as my brother but who’s older than my father, with his litany of nicknames. Sasha, Sanya, San, Sashenka. I will always call him Sasha with my nasal ‘a’, the one vocal concession to my foreignness I can’t seem to shake.
The tiny, brown birds that live in the bushes that border my yard are twittering and arguing amongst themselves, fighting over the choice spots along the fence. I call for the cat, and she comes trotting from her place, the stool by the garage that she and Sasha fight over when he goes to smoke and drink his coffee in the cool, morning breeze. She purrs and chatters by my feet, begging for the scraps of fish from last night’s dinner.
Out on the street that’s still called Lenin, a horse-drawn cart goes by, driven by a man in a flat cap with a cigarette dangling from his lips. The horse’s hooves clop against the ragged, pitted concrete and scatter gravel that skitters out into the middle of the road. The neighbourhood store welcomes me with a ringing bell and a murmured hello from the cashier. I’ve lived here for over a year now, and my Russian is confident and fluid as I fetch the small, dark loaves Maria requested, the specific type of milk, the homemade tvorog, double bagged in thin plastic that rustles against the cotton of my t-shirt as I walk home.
The children who live on the corner have ventured out to play amongst the mud and rocks that form our street, screeching and yelping, their wet, plastic flip-flops squelching against the broken stone. They stop their play to run to me, wrapping me in their tiny arms as they scream my Russian name: Liza, Liza, Liza. Then they let me go, because only for a moment am I more interesting than the game of tag from before.
At home, Maria prepares dough, stirring and slapping and kneading as the table creaks and rocks against the cracked kitchen tiles. I sit at the same table with a cup of strong, black coffee and observe, fascinated by this act of creation, the passing of knowledge. When I think about Moldova years later, this is what I will remember. But at that moment I hear, in the rhythmic formation of the dough, that I belong here, in this family, in this house, in this place with the lowing cow and the chirping birds and the sunsets that defy description, on the street that’s still called Lenin, where all my neighbours wave as I walk by.
WENSUM 