I Must Betray You(19)

“Oh, yeah?” I leaned against a chair. “Can you guess what my sign is?”

“I don’t have to guess.” She smiled. “I know.” She placed her hand near the candle. On the center of her palm was a small symbol. It looked like a lowercase “m” with a comma stuck to it. “You’re a Virgo.”

She had drawn my sign on her palm? “Whoa, how did you know?” I asked.

“I just know.”

I nodded, not sure what to say. “Hey,” I whispered. “What color are your eyes?”

“Yours are a weird gray-blue color,” she said.

“Weird?”

“Sorry.” She laughed. “Not weird. Different. I mean, unique. They’re unique.”

“And what color are yours?” I repeated.

She lifted the candle from the table and held it in front of her face.

“You tell me. What color are my eyes?”

The candle flame swayed. “I can’t see them through your hair,” I whispered.

“You can’t?”

“No.”

She stepped closer to me.

And then closer.

Silence and candlelight flickered between us. I paused, then slowly brushed the hair from her eyes. A shudder of energy pulsed through me. Did she feel it? I thought something might drop from a shelf.

“Brown,” I whispered. “They’re brown. They’re really pretty.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled.

And then she blew out the candle.

We stood, silhouettes in the dark. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked softly.

I gently wrapped my arms around her.

She pulled me closer and pressed against me, placing the side of her face on my chest. We held each other. Soundless yet somehow boundless. And in that quiet moment, all hardship melted away. For once, the shadows weren’t gloomy. They were private. Holding Liliana, alone in the stillness of that dark apartment, feeling her breathe, it was everything.

I had everything.

I closed my eyes, held on to the moment—and for once, thanked the heavens for the darkness of communism.





20


    DOU?ZECI




5:00 a.m.

Layers.

Two pair of socks. Three shirts. Hat. Gloves. Jacket. Ration card.

I pulled the woolen hat down over my ears and zipped my jacket. It doesn’t take long to dress when you sleep in your clothes for warmth. Bunu’s wall thermometer said the temperature in our apartment had dipped to 8 degrees Celsius, 46 Fahrenheit overnight.

I left quietly. As if in unison, the other apartment doors opened and a line of tired residents clutching oilcloth shopping bags appeared. We trudged down the cement stairs to join the sea of humanity swarming into the freezing dark—that bleak wasteland of time.

To stand in lines.

Every family had a system for the Alimentara, the local shop. This was ours: I stood in line three days per week before school.

Cici stood in line three days per week before work.

Mama stood in line after work.

Our father relieved Mama in line during the evenings.

To shiver. To wait in line for absolutely everything. That’s what I was used to.

That’s what we were all used to.

How long were the lines in other countries?

I thought of the advice from the British travel book:


Best to avoid Romania. Visit Hungary or Bulgaria instead, where conditions are better.



How much better? Did they have blue-eyed boys and teenage informers?

The wind blew in icy breaths. A little boy shivered alone in front of me, gripping his rumpled shopping bag like a blanket. He yawned, awakening a slumber of phlegm. His cough sliced so sharp I could feel the infection in my own chest. Near him, a spindly silhouette hunched against the wind, smoking a cigarette in the cup of his hand. Ahead of the smoker was the quiet kid from my calculus class who wore a ratty brown scarf. I had finally found an English word for him: loner. An ancient, babushka-wrapped woman heaved in close by, propped up by arthritis and a cane. Age or illness was no exemption from standing in line.

If an outsider approached, they wouldn’t see Romania—once beautiful, lush land of the Romans and Dacians. No. They’d see a snaking line of frosty communism, huddled against the cold on a dark street full of potholes.

I looked toward the front of the line. Luca stood behind the woman with the drooping face. Beneath the flickering lights of the Alimentara, the folds of her skin glowed an eerie blue. If Luca passed the university exam for medicine, he’d eventually be drinking coffee and counting Kents in the morning instead of standing in lines. He’d cure coughs, save babies from broken incubators—maybe even save women from drooping faces.

Me? I’d be a philosophical wordsmith. A poetic traitor.

My stomach murmured, reminding me it was empty.

Would there be anything in the shop today? We stood in line, programmed, never knowing. If a line formed at a neighborhood shop, most rushed to join it. Last night after three hours in line, my father came home exhausted, clutching a dented can of beans covered in dust.

“The expiration date is 1987. Two years ago,” said Cici.

My father said nothing, just shrugged. My father was quiet when he was mad, quiet when he was tired, quiet when he was happy, and quiet when he was contemplating. He felt inaccessible and I hated it. He was nothing like Bunu. How could a father and son be so different?