When I thought about it, it seemed this was true. Most of the time I didn’t need the Great Tome to tell stories. I looked up, suspicious. “Are you a storyteller, Mamaie?”
She chuckled. “Your tataie would say so, but not in the way that you mean.”
“Can you tell any stories like the ones you talked about, though? About the Mother of the Forest and the balauri? That sort of stuff?”
“Well, I couldn’t tell you about characters and climaxes and all those things from the university. But I have a few stories I know. Your tataie and I often sit by the stove while I work on my pillows and blankets. Sometimes he’ll play his fiddle and we’ll tell stories to keep away ghosts.”
My eyes widened. “You have ghosts here too?”
“There are ghosts everywhere, child. The world is full of them.”
I twisted my fingers together, looking back down at the rug. “I think I’d like to listen to your stories.”
“I think I’d like to tell them to you,” she said. “And perhaps if you find your own stories again, you can do your job from before. Your tataie and I are good listeners.”
My grandfather came in through the door then, the smell of the night on his clothes, and Mamaie smiled.
“But tomorrow I have to get up extra early to help in the fields,” she said. “So it’s off to bed now. You can come with us in the morning if you like. The other children will be there. In this village, we all work together.”
After a moment I nodded. “I could maybe go for a while. I still don’t know if I want to be a storyteller again, so if I’m going to be a farmer, I’ll have to start practicing.”
“A farmer?” my tataie repeated, hanging up his hat and taking off his vest. “Well, I’ll be.”
The next morning, when I sat down for breakfast, I found a small yellow notebook and a ballpoint pen at my place.
“Oh, don’t mind that,” my mamaie said, pushing bread with plum jam in front of me. “It’s just a little thing. In case you start to remember.”
I watched the notebook as I ate, fingers twitching. I set it by a painted bowl of water as I brushed my teeth. Before we left, I opened it just long enough to flip through the pages, and then again to draw a little puffy chick. The notebook could fit in my pocket, so I took it with me to the fields. And at lunch, after weeding around potatoes and feeding the cows, I sat down and made a few notes about the people I’d met and the things I’d seen.
Slowly, bit by bit, the something eating me from inside trickled out.
The Wasp Nest
After my first couple of weeks in the village, my grandparents became concerned because I hadn’t made any friends. This was fine with me, though. There was no reason to make friends when I’d be leaving so soon, and I was busy anyhow, learning to cook and take care of the animals. I spent lots of time in the fields where everyone worked, and it was much more fun to see how many buckets of water I could carry before I collapsed, or to fork hay into giant piles, than to talk to the children from town.
Sometimes, when there was a lot to do at the cottage, I stayed back and fed the chickens or pulled weeds from Mamaie’s garden. I started making lunch for everyone all by myself and collected eggs and goat milk to trade for bread or cheese or a salve for Tataie’s leg cramps. I’d walk to the store for cornmeal or thread, or to the old butcher’s to get bones for broth. I liked Mr. Ursu and his big chopping block. He had a great gray mustache and was always telling jokes and playing tricks, sticking his hand under his bloody apron and shouting that he’d cut it off. Even better, he kept his portable radio on pretty much all the time and talked often about how he missed my mother’s singing. When I asked him if he’d let Mama ride down the mountain in his truck with the sheep, he laughed till he started to cough.
“Of course not. Where did you hear such a thing?” he asked, a hand patting his chest.
I shrugged, pretty sure he was lying.
The truth was, I was content being useful and spending time with my notebook. And even in the city, I didn’t have many friends. There were no other children on my floor of the apartment building, and most of my classmates had brothers and sisters to play with at home. That just left the other kids in the Pioneer club, and I hated them. In fact I hated everything about the Pioneers—our matching red triangle scarves, our dumb songs, our “patriotic work,” where we had to clean up trash or sort potatoes. My father had made me join the club in second grade with all the other students in my class, and there’d been a long, boring oath ceremony at the Communist Party Museum. One time we got to go camping, and that was fun, but mostly we just went to meetings and practiced marching or reciting bad poetry about the Leader.
“It’s good for you to do things you don’t like,” said my father. “It makes you appreciate the things you like more.”
I knew that really he was just scared of how it would look if I got kicked out. Already, long before the electrician, our names were on lists.
Mamaie pressed me to make friends, though, insisting that I’d like the village children.
“You’ll meet someone who changes your mind. I’m just certain,” she said. “Have you walked into any spiderwebs recently? That’s a strong sign. You know, Mr. Bălan, the innkeeper, has a son who’s just turned eleven. And there’s Sanda’s girl, Gabi. Have you thought about playing with her?”
I had, but whenever I saw her, she ran away.
“I’m really okay just hanging out with the goats,” I replied.
“The goats!”
“Leave her be,” Tataie said. “If she wants to make friends, she’ll make friends.”
Mamaie gave him a look, then innocently examined the stitching on her apron. “If you humor me and play with the other children tomorrow, I’ll tell you a story about your mother.”
My eyes widened. “Like from when she was a kid? Like what you told on the phone?”
“If that’s what you want.”
The next morning, while Mamaie and Tataie were out, I searched around the cottage for a spiderweb, then walked into it on purpose, shivering and frantically rubbing my hair. After that I went down the hill with the intention of finding friends—any would do. It didn’t take long till I spotted some children hanging out near the well. The girls were holding hands in a circle. Two of them looked much alike, but the third was smaller, with shaggy dark hair and a metal leg brace with an extra-tall shoe—the veterinarian’s daughter. In the middle of the road, the boys were sitting in the dirt looking at a shared collection of brightly colored candy wrappers. I crept closer to hear what they were saying.
Most of the collection belonged to Ioan, the innkeeper’s son, who had an older cousin who went abroad for work, but one of the other boys was showing off his own addition—a full-size candy-bar wrapper he’d found next to a trash can at the bus stop. It was white with some blue decorations and an English word in red letters. He tried to read the name, but all he could figure out was the number three, which anyone could have done, since it was the same in Romanian.
“I bet you stole it,” said Ioan, making a face. He had dirty-blond hair that grew past his elephant ears. Back in Bucharest the police would have stopped him, since hair that long on boys was illegal.
“Some foreigner threw it on the ground,” said the other kid defensively.
“I bet you’re the one taking palinca from my father’s tavern, too,” accused Ioan.
One of the older boys ruffled Ioan’s long hair, snickering. “Still sore from that whooping?”
The innkeeper’s son shoved him off. “I didn’t deserve it. Someone’s coming in and stealing things. There were footprints.”
I cleared my throat and the boys finally noticed me hovering. They put their hands protectively over their treasure.
“Hey, look,” Ioan said to the others. “It’s Ileana. Do you have candy in your city? Did you bring any with you?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, go away, then. Go play with the girls.”
“
Yeah, go play with the girls,” said the older boy. “They’re teaching Gabi the Spitter how to dance.”
It mostly just looked like they were laughing at Gabi. She kept trying to copy their steps, but with her brace she couldn’t move quite the same way.
“She’ll get mad and start spitting any second now. Just watch,” said Ioan.
I started to get the feeling these kids weren’t very nice, but I was determined to hear Mamaie’s story, so I took a seat on the edge of the stone well. When Gabi spotted me, though, she turned and darted out of the circle, vanishing down a little alley between houses. The other two girls looked to see what had scared her off, and I stood up, offering my prettiest smile. It seemed to have no effect.
“Why do you always dress like a boy?” asked one of the girls.
She was wearing a skirt and a blouse and a scarf tied under her chin. The girl standing beside her was dressed almost the same. I bit down on my tongue to keep from saying something nasty and pretended I hadn’t heard. Being in the Pioneers had at least taught me how to do that much.
“Do you want to come play at the cottage? I can’t play for long ’cause I’m really, really busy today, and my parents could show up to take me back to the city any second, but I could use some help making flower necklaces for the goats. And a lot of my tataie’s chickens still haven’t been named,” I said. Then, thinking of a story, I added, “Also, there’s a place under the house where we can crawl around in the dirt and look for buried curse boxes.”
The girls blinked in unison till one said, “You’re really weird.”
They went right back to doing their dance.
I thought about just leaving. I had to pee anyway, and these children seemed pretty much the same as the ones at home. If they told any stories at all, very likely none of them would be worth writing down. But when I remembered Mamaie’s promise, I hung my head and scrunched up my nose and muttered, “I have a piece of chocolate I’ll cut up and share with anyone who plays with me.”
Ioan leaped to his feet. The girls’ eyes got huge. By the time I was halfway through the fields and up the hill, I had a whole troop of children trailing after me. When everyone started playing in the yard—and I started counting—I realized that if I divided the chocolate into so many pieces, we’d each only get just the tiniest nibble. The other kids might say I’d tricked them, but I didn’t really care, since Mamaie would certainly admit that I’d held up my end of her deal.
The girls were playing a clapping game that determined how many children they’d have. The boys had just begun sniping one another, belly down in the grass, clutching long, knobby sticks. I was trying to decide which group to join, when I remembered again that I had to go pee. Back home this wouldn’t have been a big deal, but at the cottage, of course, there was no toilet inside. Instead, in the yard was a little wooden house with a door.
And under the cusp of the tiny roof was a wasp nest.
Country wasps were much bigger than the ones in the city. Their abdomens had black and yellow stripes. Tataie had warned me about them. He’d said last fall he’d been stung, and his finger swelled up till he thought it would burst. For days it looked like an overstuffed sausage. When he’d noticed the new nest on the outhouse, he’d warned me about that, too, promising to get rid of it. But he’d been busy—my grandparents always were busy—so I’d taken to sneaking around and peeing in the backyard or the bushes. If I did that now, the other children would tease me for sure.
I crossed my legs. I bit my lip. I toed a step closer. The wasps dove around the door and skimmed the grass. My skin prickled at the sound of their hum.
“Where’s the chocolate?” Ioan called from the porch.
“Hold on,” I called back, then stood there grinding my teeth and squeezing my thighs tight together.
“What are you doing?” He came over. “Is this one of your games?”
I shook my head, then reluctantly pointed. “I have to use the toilet, but there are wasps.”
He followed my finger, brow raised, and the other children started to take interest too.
“So what?” He shrugged. “Just go really fast.”
“They might sting me.”
“So what?”
“Tataie said when he got stung it hurt for forever.”
“So what?”
I started to hate him.
“They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them,” said one of the girls.
“That’s bees, not wasps,” corrected the other. “Wasps can smell if you’re afraid. And if you are, then they chase you.”
“Yeah, but if you move really, really slow and hold your breath, they can’t figure out where you are,” added the boy with the full-size candy wrapper.
None of this appeared to be sound advice.
“I’ve been stung lots of times,” said Ioan. “It doesn’t even hurt. I guess your tataie’s just a baby like city kids.”
I didn’t really care what he was saying, since all I could think about was how I was seconds away from peeing my pants. Groaning, I made a run for the outhouse. I knew a wasp might be hiding under the handle—that was how Tataie had been stung—so I checked before I opened the door. Relief swept over me once I was safely inside. I crumpled up some newspaper for wiping. Real toilet paper was almost impossible to buy in the country. Everything seemed all right until I was pulling back up my shorts—until I heard the children out in the yard go quiet as pigs in a cornfield.
When someone shushed someone else, I knew something was wrong.
“What are you guys doing?” I called, but the only response was a spatter of laughter.
There was a sound, something small and hard clipping the side of the outhouse and smacking the roof. That was when the buzzing started—loud and mad, first around the outside of the door, then everywhere all at once.
“What’s going on?” I yelled.
The village children began laughing. Through the cracks between the wooden boards, I could see them all running and jumping. My heart raced.
“This isn’t funny!” I shouted.
“Come out, Ileana! You’ve got to come out!” one of the girls screeched.
“I can’t! They’ll get me!”
“You’ve got to come out,” she repeated, breathless from giggling. “They’re going inside!”
I looked up. The wasps had squeezed through the space between the roof and the wall. They were dashing around over my head. I cried out and grabbed the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. Pain shot through my shoulder and straight up my neck, so terrible that for a moment the whole world turned white. I tried the door again, desperate now, sobbing. The laughter only grew louder. I threw myself against the outhouse so hard that it tilted. I started to scream.
Then the other children started screaming too.
“Gross!” shouted Ioan.
“Get away! Get away!” cried a girl.
“Make a run for it! Hurry! She’s spitting!”
There was chaos. A stampede of feet. Then, finally, silence outside. I was still banging on the door, yelling and kicking, when all of sudden it swung open. I fell out onto the grass.
First I saw feet. An extra-tall shoe. A brace attached to a short leg. I looked up into the face of the veterinarian’s daughter. In her hand was a stick, which I realized the other children had used to prop closed the door. Gabi looked like she wanted to run away again, but before she could, I said, “I got stung on my shoulder,” and started crying once more. That must have made her feel bad for me, because she put down the stick and helped me to the porch.
“Could you go get my grandparents?” I asked, sniffling, and she nodded and hurried off toward the fields.
Mamaie and Tataie showed up soon after, while I was still sitting there nursing my wound. My grandmother fussed and fumed and finally just stomped right down the hill, knocking on parents’ doors and wagging her finger. Tataie stayed behind, quietly chewing tobacco and packing it wet on top of the welt. My whole shoulder w
as still throbbing when my grandmother got back. Since the village didn’t have a doctor, Sanda came up to check on me and gave me a paste made from ground oatmeal to put on the sting. Then she washed my shoulder and covered it with a tied cloth.
“Sorry, but we’re all out of bandages,” she said. “I could have sworn I had some left. Maybe Gabi knows where they are.”
I told the veterinarian how her daughter had saved me. “Please tell her thank you,” I said. “I’d do it myself, but I’m afraid she’ll just run away.”
Sanda sighed. “She’s very shy, isn’t she? The other children aren’t always nice to her. I guess they aren’t always nice to anyone who seems different. Give Gabi some time, though. I’m sure she’ll warm up.”
Later Mr. Bălan dragged Ioan to the cottage and held him by the ear on our front porch.
“It was just a joke,” the boy muttered. “Besides, if you weren’t so scared, then they wouldn’t have stung you.”
His father smacked him on the back of the head till he apologized properly.
The other children came too, one at a time, to say sorry. I could tell, though, that really they were just thinking about the chocolate I owed them. And it was funny, since the only person I wanted to share with hadn’t asked for any at all.
After supper Tataie took out his fiddle and played while Mamaie sat at the loom. Looking pitiful, I said in the quietest voice, “I think I’d feel a lot better if I had a story.”
My grandmother glanced up from her work. “Are you still wanting the one about Old Constanta?”
“Yes, please.”
I didn’t expect any resistance. The story was technically mine. I’d done just as she’d asked and gotten stung, too. And I’d been so good recently. I was even eating all my sour cabbage these days—though, truthfully, that was mostly due to the fact that Mamaie swore that leaving leftovers on your plate meant you’d grow up to marry someone terribly ugly.
It was a surprise to watch my grandmother hesitate, to see her share an uncertain look with my grandfather.
The Story That Cannot Be Told Page 7
