My mother’s stories
chapter 14
My mother's helping hand
My aunt was not very happy in Odessa doing hard masculine work at the plant and wrote several letters to my mother expressing a desire to join her in Bushkiria. My mother discouraged her sister, describing long winters with bitter frosts, piles of snow and lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. She was not in a hurry to leave Bushkiria herself but suddenly changed her mind after receiving a letter from one of her sister’s room-mates. This sympathetic girl asked my mother to come to Odessa
One cunning girl volunteered to protect my mother’s sister from her greedy friends and offered to become her cashier. Zina agreed with relief but as it turned out she didn’t know what she had signed up for. In reality the girl just took all her salary and gave her one ruble a day for her everyday needs. The rest of the money the girl pocketed for her own needs, explaining that she was building a house somewhere on the edge of the city and had high expenses. She promised to return her debt some time later, of course.
One cunning girl volunteered to protect my mother’s sister from her greedy friends and offered to become her cashier. Zina agreed with relief but as it turned out she didn’t know what she had signed up for. In reality the girl just took all her salary and gave her one ruble a day for her everyday needs. The rest of the money the girl pocketed for her own needs, explaining that she was building a house somewhere on the edge of the city and had high expenses. She promised to return her debt some time later, of course.
So my mother arrived in Odessa
Even now, 60 years later, when she forgets what she was doing one or two
minutes ago, she can still recollect how she arrived in Odessa for the first
time and was struck by her sister’s shabby clothes and two left shoes on her
feet. Or how some time later they went to the First of May demonstration and
Zina put on one white and one blue sock and that on her white blouse there were
buttons of different size and colour. So, before going anywhere else, she took
her sister to a shop to buy new socks and Zina was arguing with her, saying
there was no need for that because her mismatched socks were clean and new.
As my mother discovered her younger sister had to be taught a lot of
things and not only about socks and buttons. First of all she persisted that
Zina had to give up this rural habit of lending her things to everybody, who
asked for them with a friendly smile. My mother was sure her sister didn’t even
notice when her sly friends replaced her new clothes with their shabby ones. It
wouldn’t be really difficult for them because there was not a big choice of
garments and shoes in the shops. Moreover, my mother persuaded Zina to stop
eating fried pasties, washing them down with some water, instead of proper
meals. It would be much healthier and cheaper for her to cook herself. There
was a long stove in the dormitory kitchen – although it was a slow process to
cook on it. Girls usually left pans filled with all the ingredients on the
stove and went to their rooms to rest. So my mother explained to her sister
that she should not leave her pan alone for too long. Otherwise she could find
it half-empty by the end of the cooking, because there was always someone who
preferred to fill their plates from somebody else’s pans. It was not so easy
for a young artless girl like my favourite aunt Zina to learn how to survive in
that menagerie known as human society.
My mother was Zina’s first teacher and taught her a lot of useful
things. She gave her first lessons of hygiene. It was not an easy task – as a
naughty spoilt child Zina never allowed to wash or comb her hair. I believe
it’s a rather painful process when you have long entangled hair and your
mother’s hand is impatient and heavy. So I can understand a poor scruffy girl,
who ran away and climbed the highest tree in the yard as soon as she saw that
adults were going to catch her for bathing. As a result, the child was always
lice-ridden and nobody wanted to sleep with her in one bed. It lasted till her
elder sister, my mother that is, discovered that their neighbours regularly
washed their bed-clothes and unlike them didn’t sleep on the sheets which were
dark grey with dirt. Luckily, my mother had just found a pile of table-clothes
in the attic. They were almost new – only a bit stained with wine. She boiled
them with the soap on the advice of a neighbouring woman and after that had a
lot of material to make sheets and pillows. Her elder sister’s new bed struck
Zina to the very core. She pleaded eagerly, saying she was ready to endure
anything to get rid of lice – just to be allowed to sleep with her sister on
those marvelous snow-white sheets.
My mother was too enthusiastic with her hygienic treatment and burnt out
some patches on her sister’s head with petrol, which she used instead of
kerosene. In panic she ran to a local witch doctor for help and treated her
sister’s head with prescribed herbal decoctions and ointments till those bald
patches were healed and overgrown with hair. But before that Zina was devotedly
hiding her head under the kerchief in order to safe her elder sister from their
mother’s wrath.
To be continued…
(c) Anna Shevchenko
