What does a rose smell like?

When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to factory parties.

Literary lounges, plays, and "What? Where? When?" games. - That's how the factory took care of the workers' cultural leisure.

My father usually got an invitation for two, but my mother was a homebody, so I went instead.

- What does she understand? - My mother always scolded my father when he took me, a five-year-old girl, to the theater. - It's late, it's time for the child to sleep! (in our family it was strict - right after the program "Good night, children" my sister and I had to be in our beds).

And here we are going somewhere at night with dad.

The play was boring, so I fell asleep. I was awakened by the actor, a curly-haired, passionate young man, who snatched a paper rose from a vase and rushed into the audience:

- Girl! - he asked everyone he could reach. - What does this beautiful rose smell like?

The girls were embarrassed, blushed, and shyly poked their noses into the paper petals.

- Well, it smells like, uh, fresh morning!

- Something sweet.

- Lollipops!

- Spring!

The young man smilingly held the flower up to his face, as if to make sure they were right, and moved on to the next row.

- Man in plaid jacket, do you know what a rose smells like?

The audience was confused. What answer is he looking for? What is he trying to accomplish? I was nervous, burning with curiosity and impatience. Finally it was my turn.

- What does this beautiful young creature have to say? - The young man smiled.

I inhaled loudly, wanting to fully experience the smell of spring, fresh morning and candy.

And after inhaling, I stared at the actor, perplexed.

- What? - he recoiled in feigned horror.

- It smells of nothing! - I blurted out indignantly.

The audience laughed.

The young man raised his eyebrows and touched the flower to his lips.

- Girl, are you sure? I think the rose smells like ... honey.

- It's paper! - I jumped out of my chair. - It has no smell! Dad, tell them...

Dad smelled it and agreed with me.

- You know, the child is right! - The actor waved his hands theatrically. - This rose really doesn't smell of anything, because it's lifeless!

And the play continued according to the script.

As for the passionate young man,

he kept making goo-goo eyes at me, winking at me, and trying to catch my face in the frame with his thumbs and forefingers.

- Ah, what a lovely child! - he used to exclaim. - I must paint her portrait.

This young man made me so angry that I decided that all actors are cheats and pranksters. And the audience too! They're adults! Why can't they tell a living rose from a dead one? Fools!

Traitors

First grade. Tanya was sent to a sanatorium for children with weak lungs. My parents and I were home alone. I don't remember exactly what happened that night. I was punished. I didn't write the capital letters "A" and "B" correctly - I put the squiggles in the wrong place.

So my mother got angry, tore up my notebooks, and made me rewrite the letters all night.

Or maybe my parents were fighting and I just got caught in the middle.

While they argue, I put on my school uniform, coat, put my books in my bag, grab my skis (the first class on the schedule is gym) and quietly leave the house. I have only one way to go - to Grandma Luda and Grandpa Slava. Clattering my skis, I climb the stairs to the eleventh floor in the dark (I'm afraid of the elevator). I ring the doorbell.

My grandparents are surprised by their granddaughter's late visit, but I lie convincingly that my parents know where I am. And that I was late because I met my friends in the yard, played and did not notice how dark it had become. They believe me, undress me and give me hot tea.

Steamy from my bath, I lie on my grandmother's feather bed with a book in my hands.

Then the phone rings.

My grandfather, a war veteran, has a phone, but we don't have one at home.

Dad calls from a pay phone. I shrank into a ball. I make signs asking my grandfather not to give me away, but of course he tells my father the truth, that I'm here and that I'm fine.

- He'll be right there," Grandpa hangs up and looks at me angrily. - You lied to us!

I sob and confusedly explain that I could not help it, that it was impossible to stay at home. I beg him not to throw me out, to let me stay the night.

My father came in. He was angry: how dare I leave home without asking!

There was a small argument between him and my grandfather, from which I learned two things: first, I had to go home, and second, I would be beaten at home.

From the hallway my relatives went into the kitchen.

My grandfather and grandmother begged my father not to beat me, but he insisted - I had done something wrong and had to be punished.

You all traitors! - I think. Without wasting a minute, I get dressed, grab my skis and briefcase, and rush out the door with my hair still wet from the bath. I waddle down the stairs.

Dad is waiting for me in the courtyard - he heard the door slam and came down in the elevator.

Without a word, he smokes a cigarette and walks forward, and I obediently follow, dragging my heavy skis behind me. We are both silent. I don't remember what happened at home.

Many years later, on the eve of September 1, my seven-year-old nephew Oleg would also run away from home because of family problems. He ran away to his own father's parents.

Grandfather and grandmother were so shocked by their grandson's escape that they later did everything to ensure that the child would never return to this family, in fact, they took him away from his mother.

They didn't deprive her of her parental rights, but they did forbid Oleg to see her, even to visit.

Perhaps the pressure from the grandmother and grandfather really saved Oleg from the bad influence of the street, but it eventually broke Tanya. The loss of her son robbed my sister of something more important - the meaning of life.

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Tanya would die eight years later, on that very day, August 31st.

Not my poems

I wrote poems as a child. Naive, silly, inept.

Like any budding poet, I wanted recognition, but my family did not share my passion and refused to listen to my verses.

Then I began to secretly record them on a tape recorder.

- You're doing that nonsense again! - Mom was angry. - You'd better go and sweep the dust or do something around the house.

It's a shame when your creativity is considered nonsense. When I grow up, I'll be like Pushkin, then you'll know! - I thought, imagining myself a world-famous poetess.

How can I prove to my mother that I am serious about poetry? I have to impress her, write a poem that will please my mother and change her opinion of me. But as luck would have it, the lines come out pale, sluggish. Not like my peers - young talents, two Vikas - Ivchenko and Vetrova, whose names are known throughout the Soviet Union.

In desperation I decide to cheat. I take the book of a little-known children's poet and copy line by line into my notebook: "Why do you need legs? To walk on the road. And hands? To put in your pants when you're bored." After copying the whole page, I pass off these verses as my own.

My mother looks at me in disbelief, but doesn't say anything.

The day after tomorrow, she proves me to be a liar - she pulls out the book I had carefully hidden under a pile of newspapers, opens it to the unhappy page, and shoves it in my face.

My ears burn. The deception is revealed. But most horrifying of all is the sentence Mom has thrown at me:

- I now doubt that Puppy was written by you.

Unable to bear such a heavy accusation, I immediately burst into tears.

"Puppy" - my only worthwhile poem. Why did she tell me such hurtful words?

But Mom is relentless. I am a talentless person, and I must immediately get rid of the "dope" from my head, forget poems once and for all, because the use of my "scribbles" is no good anyway.

The doorbell rang. It's Grandma Luda. I beg my mother not to embarrass me, not to tell her anything, to keep it between us. But my mother gloated and told my grandmother everything - about the deception, about the "Puppy", about the fact that she no longer trusted me.

Grandmother goes to the desk, takes a notebook with poems, flips through it and says:

- Don't scold her, Angelina, let her write.

And she winks at me discreetly:

- You know, I liked your "Puppy". Don't cry, I believe you.

Spies

I am ten years old. My family and I are walking down the main street of Kirov.

- Letoh vozalg tnaruatser! - I read the sign on the hotel and wink conspiratorially with my sister.

- Vozalg si a ytic, - seven-year-old Tanya replies.

- Sey, - I agree.

From the outside, our dialogue looks like gibberish, nonsense, a series of empty words, but we just say the words backwards. We are playing spies.

In school, my friends and I had our own language. I came up with a cipher of complicated squiggles, crosses, and circles that replaced the alphabet. I carefully wrote it down on a piece of paper and hid it in a secret place. Now, at the math test, I can send a strategically important message to the excellent Katya: "Let me write it off!"

Katya turns the mysterious message in her hands, shrugs, and leans over her notebook. It's clear that she left the decoder at home, or worse - lost it. Those scribbled papers always go somewhere! Of course, a spy should know the secret alphabet by heart, but for the sake of secrecy, it's easier to make up a new one.

Secret Alphabet

During the summer vacation, my neighbor Natasha and I developed a system of conventional signs. I live on the ninth floor, Natasha is one floor up, we don't have telephones yet, so we knock on the radiator. A knock means: "Go out on the balcony." Two knocks: "Let's go for a walk", three - "Come over, I have no one at home". If we want to declare our love to a boy we like, we send him a note. If he's smart, he'll understand:

"You want to know who I love?

Oh, it's too hard to guess.

Unless you don't look at the big letters."

In the sixth grade I have a new game called "Greetings from Outer Space".

In the evening I take my place at the light switch and flick it for a few minutes: "on" - "off", "on" - "off". The bulb in the room flashes brightly and then goes out. There was never a time when someone didn't answer my calling. Sometimes the lights in several windows would flicker on and off at the same time. Of course, such flickering made no sense, but it was nice to know that you were not alone in the universe. I imagined I was being answered by aliens from distant planets.

The window on the seventh floor of the house across the street responded most often to the beacon. Sometimes a thin figure, or rather its shadow, moved behind the curtain.

It would be good, I thought, if it were a boy, a romantic and a fantasist like me.

Without speaking to each other, my vis-a-vis and I learned to understand each other without words.

Before going to bed, I would give him a signal that meant "Bye," and my mysterious interlocutor would respond with frequent blinking, "Good night!"

I calculated his apartment. Using a thick phone book, I found his phone number. Behind the window on the seventh floor lived someone whose last name was Filaniuk.

And when we finally got a phone at home, I called that number many times - just to hear the voice, to make sure that this "space" friend was not a figment of my imagination. Maybe we even go to the same school. I wonder if he's older or younger.

Alas, the stranger from the house across the street remained a mystery to me, as elusive and unreachable as the shadow that used to flash behind the curtain at dusk.

It was always his mother who answered the phone. She said "hello" sternly, and I didn't have the courage to ask the boy to come to the phone, or at least to find out his name.

As for the woman, it probably seemed to her at such moments that there was trouble on the line and blew angrily into the receiver: "Why are you always silent? Hello!" I pressed the lever and looked forward to the evening when the light in the cherished window would come on. On-off, on-off, on-off, on-off - bye!

A few short flashes in reply: good night - that was all that connected us.

A close-knit family

Everyone who knows my mom and dad thinks of us as a close-knit family. They even envy us: we are always together, wherever we go - to the dacha, to visit someone, or to the forest - it is always the four of us.

Maybe from the outside we really seem to be an ideal family. But it's not like that, it's not friendship or love, it's just that we have no one else but each other.

We are trapped in our little narrow world and try not to let anyone else in.

My mother forbids my father to bring his buddies to our house - they can get drunk, smoke, and then she has to clean it up.

She doesn't welcome our friends with Tanya either, comparing them to locusts and saying we don't have enough food for them. Every gingerbread, every candy bar counts - I'm even afraid to pour tea for my guests, because if my mother finds out, she'll scream: "Make money first, then treat them!

"Your mother is stingy, oh, stingy!" Grandma Dusya often said.

Mom had almost no close friends. And with those she did have, the friendship came to nothing because of daddy's love affairs. He is the kind of man who doesn't miss a single skirt.

Sometimes, during holidays or vacations - New Year's Eve or March 8 - I would be an unwitting witness to Dad's fleeting adulteries.

Dad was sure that I did not suspect anything, but I saw and understood everything perfectly.

And I suffered. I felt sorry for my deceived mother, but I couldn't tell her, I didn't want to upset her, we had enough other scandals and quarrels in the house.

Live as you wish!

Summer. I'm five years old. My mother is scrubbing the kitchen floor. She is standing on all fours, moving the wet rag back and forth. Suddenly she dropped her head on her hands and began to shake - she was crying. I ran up, fell down beside her, stroked her, tried to hug her, but my mother pushed me roughly away and hissed, hiding her crying eyes:

- Run quickly, find your father!

I jumped up and ran into the hall. Where to run? Where could he be?

In my hurry, I forgot to put on my sandals, so I ran out the door in my socks.

I run around the yard like a lost dog.

The neighbors are laughing at me, saying that my father is adulterous again somewhere. My dad is nowhere to be found. I waddle back guiltily. To my surprise, my father is already home. He is sitting in the hallway, untying his shoes.

- Had enough fun?! - Mom swings a rag at Dad. - You bastard! I've had enough of all of you! I swear I'll poison myself, and then you can live without me as you wish.

With these words, Mom runs into the kitchen, grabs a bottle of acetic acid from the shelf, and locks herself in the bathroom. Dad runs after her and pulls the doorknob with all his might:

- Angelina, open up! Open up, I say, or it will get worse for you!

Mom did not answer. I hear the water running loudly in the bathtub. Dad puts his foot on the doorjamb and breaks the door with a crack. Mom is sitting on the curb by the sink, staring defiantly into Dad's eyes. Next to her is an unopened bottle of vinegar.

- You fool! - Father says angrily.

- I'll poison myself anyway! - Mama cries defiantly. - And you can live with your lover Lyuska!

She takes a rag and goes to mop the floor.

Another time

I can't stand my mother's tears. With childish naivety, I suggest that she find a new "daddy" for us.

I would agree to live with her and my stepfather, but never with a stepmother!

At the same time, I made a firm decision that I would stay with my father in the event of a divorce. He doesn't yell at me, he's not picky, he lets me go out late and he knows how to keep secrets. It's easy for me with him, I can even ask my dad for money - he's generous, he'll never refuse.

It's not like that with my mom. It's hard to find a common language with her. She can't stand to be crossed, to have her words questioned. Any attempt by Tanya and I to play pranks on her is met with a harsh rebuke: "Shut up!", "I'm not your friend!".

My sister and I are a little afraid of her, my mother seems to us to be an unfeeling, heartless bitch. We wish she would sometimes caress us, kiss us, hug us. But Mom is rarely tender with us. Her lips are pressed into a string, her eyebrows are knitted together, and lightning flashes in her eyes.

I know that Mom is actually kind and vulnerable and loves us in her own way. But for some reason, she tries to hide that love. She is afraid that if she does, we will become a burden by becoming dependent on her for care, "spoil ourselves, do something we will regret later. She can't let that happen.

I was already an adult when my strict mother once sadly confessed:

- I'm sorry I've been rude to Tanya and you sometimes. Forgive me, girls.

It was so unexpected and so unlike my mother that my nose and eyes pinched. I wanted to hug her, to say, "Come on, Mom, what was is gone". But I held myself back. I even pulled away a little. Why all this tenderness? Another time. I have a lot of time ahead of me.

But I haven't. A week later, my mother died without a hug or a kiss from me.

I'm so sorry, Mom.

To be continued