New year, new home

At the end of the year, I sit in a wide and pale-lit room, tracing the dark designs of the carpet on my wall. Valentina clangs in the kitchen. Last night I found a row of xholodets – meat jelly – in trays keeping cold by the door.

Two weeks ago I came to live in Valentina’s house, in Bogdanivka. She looks as if she were carved from rock, like a wise and solemn god in a garden. Her fingertips once brushed me and they were like rock.

She is kind, but like most babusyas I would imagine, she doesn’t take no for an answer. The night of my arrival, she prepared me a bath by heating water on the stove. In the bathroom she showed me how to mix it with cold water in the tub. At this point I thanked her and waited for her to leave. Instead, she took off my clothes and put me (horrified, stunned) into a bucket and poured water on me. She then instructed me to scrub my lady parts, and watched, repeating, “Molodetz! Molodetz!” (Good job). Since that night, I wash myself as quickly as possible – sometimes when I dally, Valentina bursts in and scrubs my back with a bristly, wooly rag.

I came here at a strange time – the winter holiday began on Monday, and so I haven’t been doing much actual work yet. My first day I met with the principal, and I had barely sat down when he asked if I could sing “Yesterday.” He grabbed his guitar from the wall and strummed, and everyone watched me eagerly as I sang the lyrics. Every time a verse ended, I thought I could stop singing – but no, I had to sing the whole song, the principal eagerly trying to sing along even though he doesn’t know the words, nor English.

This meeting excited everyone so much that I somehow got roped into singing “Yesterday” at the party for the entire school. This was mortifying, but luckily the entire school is only about 100 people. And then again, at the party for teachers, about 5 toasts of vodka later, my colleagues made me sing.

After this, the teachers began to dance. They formed a ring and swayed from side to side, clapping off-time. The mathematics teacher jumped into the center, heels splayed, and let out whoops and guttural laughter. She grabbed another teacher’s arm and they whirled – both short and round, like merry gnomes. Then they began taking down decorations – streamers, paper snowflakes, plastic tinsel – and draping their shoulders.

I even made a toast – wobbly and mispronounced, the only toast I know: “Za drooz-boo!” (To friendship.)