Emotions rule. Ira Lav
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of finding my prince on a white horse for a happy family life to the point of treating men as little adventures,’ explained Katya.
‘Oh, that’s how you see men. I’ll have to prove to you otherwise. I do care,’ stated Sasha.
‘Care about what?’ wondered Katya confused.
‘Care about you, about the beginning of our relationship, at least now,’ confessed he, ‘but your words are misleading at the moment.’
‘That’s interesting… Can we talk it over tomorrow? You can have me the whole day, the whole Sunday will be yours, I promise,’ Katya reassured him.
‘Ok, tomorrow then,’ agreed Sasha.
‘And prepare the Teach Me, Tiger song. I’m totally into it now,’ added Katya.
‘I will. See you,’ said Sasha.
‘See you, Tiger,’ responded Blondie and hung up.
Katya entered her kitchen a bit perplexed but with a wicked playful fire in her eyes. This air of confidence about Sasha drove her crazy. Confident voice, confident posture, confident gliding arms…
‘Who was that, Mum?’ wondered Varya raising her voice from a low to a high note. She noticed every change in her Mum’s face.
‘Just a man. You don’t know him,’ answered Katya, sipped some coffee, took a spoonful of tiramisu, and placed it in her mouth. As she finished chewing, she announced, ‘So… my life story… I guess I’ll begin with the trip to Germany.’
Chapter 1
Katya, Yulya and Tanya go to Berlin
The girls became friends at Moscow State Pedagogical University, Foreign Languages Department. Although they’d been learning German for a year already, they could hardly speak it. Thus, the ladies had decided to spend their summer holidays together and brush up their German. The trio believed the fastest and surest way to learn the language was to stay in the country where the very language was spoken. That was their recipe and they felt a strong urge to give it a try. What they had to do was to mix the following ingredients: A) socialize with native speakers, B) stay open to communication, where making mistakes was not only inevitable but also contact-finding and amusing, C) get acquainted with the culture and compare it with your own and D) have fun obviously. If you followed the instructions correctly, you would master the language pretty fast. Bon appetit!
Back to Moscow Vnukovo airport.
The blonde-haired Katya, a tall, slender girl was in her hyper mood waving happily b’bye with her long palm at her parents. Her Mum and Dad were masters of a farewell scene with a real pep talk of be careful here and there spiced up with lots of examples from newspapers, books, news and movies of young ladies who go on adventures abroad and end up deceived serving foreign pimps. Every time they saw her off they would spill on her the same stories. They wanted to give her all the opportunity in the world but at the same time protect her. She was an only child, as her Mum had been advised against any other pregnancies due to her catastrophically bad eyesight.
Katya didn’t want to let down her worrying parents and like a really good-natured daughter, she pretended to listen to them with great attention. To herself though, she was thinking if she took to these horror stories she would spend the rest of her life in Moscow being afraid of the rest of the world. Or she might even consider going back to her home town, where there were only about one hundred thousand people compared to Moscow official thirteen million. Instead, Katya chose to trust in good. And the good would take care of her. She cherished the notion of thinking positively in order to attract it in her life. That was her faith.
She was so excited to escape. Freedom was about to come! No irritating small laws of parents, teachers, elderly people to obey, at least for the time being! You could forget all about ‘Don’t swear! Don’t come home late! Don’t get drunk! Don’t mess up with guys till you’ve graduated from the university!’ Although in the back of her mind she knew being alert would do no harm obviously. Shit happened. No one was ensured against crooks.
Red-haired, miniature pretty Yulya with her outstanding lips and freckled face was hugging her Mum and Dad telling them in her high-pitched voice not to worry. Having never flown in a plane, they were really worried about the flight, more than Yulya herself. While the latter was just thinking of a new experience with the excitement of discovering a new world and new feelings, her parents had these terrible pictures in their heads of plane crashes they’d seen so often on TV. On seeing her Mum’s wet eyes and Dad’s absent look Yulya was obliged to quote the three Musketeers saying ‘All for one and one for all’. She squeezed her Mummy hard and cheek kissed her.
‘I’ll be very prudent, Pa, I promise,’ she whispered in her Dad’s ear. After all, it wasn’t like going alone, but with very, very good friends of hers. They were like her elder sister, very care-taking.
On her own stood dark-haired Tanya with a thick fringe of hers which had provoked her friends to call her just Fringe. She was chewing gum, eyeing the ceiling. She looked as if she was somewhat irritated with her friends whose parents were such Mummies and Daddies as if their kids were leaving for war. She had handled her b’bye procedure at home telling her Mum not to worry as she was capable to get to the airport on her own. She didn’t need that puppy-love scene performed at the airport.
Since the age of sixteen, Tanya had been making clear to her Mum that she’d grown up. Fringe began to feel her growing independence when she started earning her own, though little, money by typing texts for some publishing house. With her own money, she could indulge in her own wishes without begging her Mum to give her some cash. That was the turning point for the newly-acquired phrase she threw whenever her Mum was about to lecture her. With a slight note of irritation Tanya would say, ‘I’ll decide by myself what to do with my life, I’m big enough, Ma.’
Maybe it had not been only her own money that had made her rely only on herself as a teenager.
She had become aware that life was not only honey and sugar at the age of twelve, the personal experience mutated through a psychological trauma into the secret she’d kept to herself in the lowest drawer of her memory.
Plus, at the age of fourteen, she’d witnessed her Dad get himself utterly drunk and bit up her Mum. In a panic, Fringe’d called an ambulance to take her Mum to a hospital where the latter had spent a week. That week Tanya’d spent alone with her beast Dad home. Fringe had been afraid he might perform the same beating act on her, so she’d always kept a pocket knife on her for defense, even though she hadn’t been quite sure she could raise a hand on her own Dad. Surprisingly, she had been relieved to observe his permissive beating had only been directed onto his wife. The attitude toward his daughter hadn’t altered. Nevertheless, she could not forgive him for her Mum’s beating.
When her Mum had been released from the hospital Fringe’d told her she didn’t want to live with her Dad and she would run away if they kept on living together. Mum’d replied she needed time to think.
When Mama Irina had been beaten one more time, she’d filed for a divorce and arranged to stay at her sister’s place where the latter lived with a daughter of hers. Two sisters and cousins had to endure a little inconvenience of being packed like sardines in a one-room apartment during the process of changing the beating husband’s three-room apartment to two one-room apartments. As a matter of fact, Tanya and her cousin, Anya, had become quite close at that time and had been determined to keep their friendship after their inevitable separation. Soon the exchange had been performed. The sisters and their daughters had been back to living apart.
Since then Fringe had been living in a one-room apartment with her Mum. Tanya believed she was deprived of her private room only temporarily. She valued that she and her Mum resided in a safe and non-violent place now.
Maybe because of all the family cataclysms Fringe looked older and wiser than her besties.