Dinner is served!

I was born very small, and everyone tried to fatten me up at every opportunity. But my mother took me away from her breast early - at the age of two - because she thought that such a big girl should not "ask for a tit". Although I was not against it, but very much in favor of it, and no amount of persuasion could make me give up the milk diet.

But someone had taught my mother to smear soot on her breasts (some women smear it with mustard) and show it to the stubborn baby (or, in the case of mustard, give it a taste).

My relatives laughingly recalled that when I saw my mother's black breast, I cried: "Tit is poop!" and never touched it again. But I lost my appetite.

As for my mother, she didn't lose any milk. But she suffered from breast pain and didn't know what to do with the milk.

She tried milking it into a bottle and giving it to my father, but my father - a man who was not squeamish in general - could not drink it, wrinkled his nose and spat, saying that it was too sweet.

However, my great-grandmother Matrena drank breast milk with pleasure.

My favorite meal as a child was bread and butter and tea. Also fried potatoes with milk and mashed potatoes with a cutlet. Nothing else could tempt me.

In order to feed the "skinny" child, my parents used various tricks. Dad took toys and showed tricks from the bathroom window. While I watched with my mouth open, my mother fed me semolina. She persuaded me to eat a spoonful for mom, for dad, for grandma and grandpa, and so on - we had a lot of relatives.

I used to rebel. I would sit at the table for two hours, smearing porridge on my plate.

Everyone complained about me. The teachers at the kindergarten and at school all said with one voice that I didn't eat well. The adults saw this as some kind of pathology and insisted that the district doctor send me to a sanatorium to "cure" me.

In the sanatorium we were fed up to six times a day, strictly according to the schedule. Dinner was at five in the evening, but for some reason we began to feel a wolfish appetite afterwards. We dried breadcrumbs under our mattresses and crunched them at night. Rye breadcrumbs with salt - how delicious! As for the suppositories the doctor prescribed for my appetite, I used to flush them down the toilet.

"Dunka perepech"

My father's specialty was called "Dunka perepech".

Dad would turn on the stove, take raw potatoes, cut them into circles and put them on the hot burner. The raw potatoes would roast and even become charred in no time.

The fumes in the kitchen were unbreathable. Burning, my father had swept the cooked "dunka" onto a plate, sprinkled it thickly with salt, and thrown another portion on the stove.

Tanya and I could eat a ton of burnt potatoes!

But the family favorite was dumplings, which we made ourselves.

Who wants a surprise dumpling?

Early in the morning, my parents would go to the market to buy meat. They usually bought pork and beef.

Then Dad took out an old meat grinder, screwed it to a stool, and turned the minced meat. The red and pink slices disappeared into the iron jaws with a slurping sound. Raw onions crunched appetizingly, followed by stale pieces of rye bread.

Dad would salt and pepper the mincemeat, stir it with a tablespoon, and then hand it to me to lick. Mm, the taste of raw mincemeat is incomparable!

Mama forbade me to eat raw meat, but there are no prohibitions for Papa. He would wink at me:

- Just don't tell Mom.

Yes, I would nod. And I would run to my mother:

- "Mom, I didn't eat raw minced meat!

I have these honest eyes. How did she always know that I wasn't telling the truth?

We make dumplings like this: my mother rolls out thin dough on the table, stamps circles with a cut glass, and stacks them. And the three of us - Dad, me and my younger sister - scoop minced meat out of the pot with teaspoons. Put it in the middle of the circle, bend the circle in half, pinch the edges - done!

My dad's dumplings are the best - the edges are neat and the filling does not stick out. My dumplings are okay too, tolerable. But Tanya's dumplings have holes in them, they are sloppy. Besides, her spoonful of filling falls on the floor.

- Get out of here! - Mama gets angry.

Tanya is just waiting for that. She runs off to watch cartoons. She is happy!

On the tenth tray, my father and I get bored, and to amuse ourselves, we decide to make dumplings with a surprise: in one circle we roll a lump of dough, in another - two pennies. Who's going to get their teeth caught? I usually get all the surprises.

The pot is already boiling on the stove, and the smell of laurel and oregano pepper fills the house. One by one, the dumplings float upside down. Pushing, tumbling, bubbling.

While Tanya washes dirty dishes as punishment and Mom dilutes vinegar in a saucer, Dad pulls the last trays out onto the balcony - to freeze.

For the rest of the day, our dumplings are eaten by tits. In the morning, when Dad goes to get a new batch, half of them are gone. Nothing. We'll make some more.

Petya was here

In kindergarten the teacher used to tell us:

- Leningrad is a heroic city, and the people who survived nine hundred days without bread are heroes. You're no match for them. You little pigs! Especially you, Khabibullina! Why did you spill the milk again? In Leningrad they would have shot you for that!

And after such a fiery speech I came home and heard the "happy" news from my mother: we were going to Leningrad. I cried all night. When you're six years old, you don't really want to die at the hands of a hero with a machine gun just because you can't stand milk froths.

In Leningrad, we stayed with my mother's cousin, Aunt Olya, and her husband, my brave military uncle, Sasha. No one could understand why I refused to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When asked to eat at least an apple, I would stubbornly shake my head and squint at Uncle Sasha's pistol sticking out of its holster.

Didn't they notice that I really ate like a piglet, with crumbs all over the table?

On the third day of my forced hunger strike, I could barely stand on my feet, and my relatives dragged me by force to the public canteen. I enter and what do I see!

Is it really those blockaders from Leningrad? There were stumps and food remains everywhere. The cleaners are throwing leftover chicken porridge with plates into the garbage can, and some boys are kicking a roll of bread under the table. I feel a mountain fall from my shoulders - normal people! And I happily ate two portions of mashed potatoes and a schnitzel.

What else did I remember about Leningrad? The Neva River. As I looked into the murky, raging waves, I wondered: if I jumped in, how many people from the embankment would come to my rescue?

As if reading my mind, my mother took my hand in hers.

I remember the inscription scratched with a nail in the Catherine Palace: "Petya from Glazov was here", and the famous shoe factory "Skorokhod". My mother bought my father a pair of white branded Velcro sneakers, and when I saw them, I almost burst with envy.

I waited until everyone left the house and tried them on. Why do adults need fairy tale seven-league boots? Children need them more! But sneakers and did not think to carry me to the end of the world at a speed of seven miles per hour, and only quietly squeaking soles.

So I was disappointed in the factory "Skorokhod". I decided that they were bastards, they'd sold my mother a defective sneaker!

The Missing Ingredient

I was five years old. One day I wanted some tea.

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My parents weren't home. No problem. I'd seen them do it a hundred times before. You pour water from a kettle into a cup, and from another kettle - a smaller one - you pour the brew and add sugar.

There was a problem with the sugar.

I put in three spoonfuls and tasted it - not sweet. I put in two more, it's not sweet again.

What's wrong? My father always puts three spoonfuls in my tea. Maybe the store sold me the wrong sugar. I licked it, the usual sugar. But the tea still isn't sweet at all.

Just in case, I added five more spoonfuls - but the tea still wasn't sweet! I cried.

I poured the whole sugar bowl into the cup. It's no use.

Just then my parents came home from work. They saw their daughter sitting on the floor, crying.

Next to her is a cup filled to the brim with wet sugar.

- Daddy," I complained, "my tea is cursed! - There's so much sugar in it, and it's not sweet.

- You silly little girl! - laughed my father. - Who do you think should stir it?

Oh, that's it! Why didn't I guess at once?

Another time, I decided to bake a cake for my mom's return from work.

It's not that hard! You take flour, sugar, eggs, knead the dough. When it's ready, you put it in the oven. Mom makes pies every weekend. I can do it too!

I've kneaded the dough. I wait. I wait an hour. I wait another hour. The dough doesn't rise.

Maybe I didn't put in enough eggs? Or flour? I add half a packet. It's thick. I added water. Now it's too liquid. I knead it again. There's dough all over the table and the walls.

My mother came home from work. She saw the kitchen and gasped.

- "Mom," I called. - The flour seems to have gone bad. The dough won't rise!

- Did you add yeast? - Mom asked.

Yeast? What kind of yeast? I thought Dad only put yeast in moonshine.

Moonshiners

As a kid, I naively believed that moonshine was made from sugar and yeast.

But it turns out you can make moonshine out of just about anything. Potatoes, rice, fermented jam, wheat grains, beets. Even food waste, as long as it ferments.

My father made moonshine from tomato paste, syrup, and rotten fruit. My grandmother Dusya made moonshine from caramel - to sell.

My father also sold moonshine, but unlike my grandmother, he was not averse to consuming the homemade strong drink himself.

At home we had a large glass bottle of thick fermented mash with berries floating in it, mixed with dead flies. A black rubber glove was tied to the neck of the bottle.

The glove hung lifelessly when the wort was first poured into the bottle, but as it fermented it swelled more and more until it stood upright with its fat, sausage-like fingers outstretched. It reminded me of a floating Nazi mine.

We were taught in school that moonshine was bad.

I was a pioneer, so I threatened to report my father to the police, both as a seller and as the main consumer of the "fire water". When Dad found out about my plans, he became furious:

- Get out of the house! - he shouted, waving his belt - Pavlik Morozov!

One night I pierced the black glove with a needle. The "bomb" exploded in such a way that even the wallpaper in the next room was covered with red, stinking scraps of mash. After that, the bottle was put in the closet called "mother-in-law's room" - far away from me.

For the first few years, Dad brewed the moonshine on the stove - in a pot covered with an iron plate of water.

The water in the plate heated up quickly, and it was necessary to constantly refill it with cold water.

The alcohol fumes stunk so badly that we had to clean the floor every half hour and spray air freshener to keep the neighbors from smelling and get "alarming".

Once my mother sent me to the neighbor's house to get some salt. The door was opened by a frightened Aunt Galya with a rag in her hand, and the familiar smell of caramel hit my nostrils so hard that I immediately guessed what was bubbling in the pot on the stove, but I didn't let on.

Later, Dad brought out a huge aluminum bucket with a powerful boiling pot inside. The bucket had rubber hoses and a tangle of colored wires.

My father connected the hoses to the water supply and began making "fire water" from morning until night.

From time to time he would "test" it by pouring moonshine into a spoon and lighting it.

One night he made a fool of himself and threw back the lid of the bucket and stuck his head in - to see how the process worked. Dad obviously had a problem with physics. The hot steam threw him into the hallway and burned him so badly it was a miracle he didn't end up in a hospital bed.

After this incident, he walked around bandaged like a mummy, telling everyone what had happened:

- I went in there and it went boom! Bang, and I don't remember anything!

When the bandage was removed, the skin on my father's face was like the skin of a young potato - smooth, soft pink, without a single wrinkle.

- Well, at least your foolishness is doing you some good! - my mother teased my father.

But she didn't want to be "rejuvenated" like that.

Polina, the extrasens

Unlike my father, who made moonshine on an industrial scale to supply himself and others, my grandmother Dusya with her small pot could not keep up with the needs of the local drunkards - the hidden drink was often found and drunk by my grandfather.

Then my grandmother decided to cure my grandfather from drinking.

At first he was against it, but out of curiosity he agreed.

So my grandmother invited Polina from the brick factory. Short, overweight, with greasy, uncombed hair and a swollen face, Polina was a drunkard herself.

No one knew how old she was, maybe forty or sixty. But everyone knew that Polina was a clairvoyant and good at telling fortunes. "Oh, our extrasex is coming!" - The drunkards at the entrance used to joke when they saw Polina. She just snorted contemptuously.

Polina often visited my grandmother, but I always had my doubts about the strange woman's psychic abilities. And it hurt her ego.

- Shall I show you a trick? - she asked me one day, handing me a dirty deck of cards. - Make any card, but do not tell me, just hold it in your hands longer.

I gave Polina a mocking look. Blue jogging pants, stretched knit sweater, horn-rimmed glasses with thick, thick lenses. A black eye under the left one. That's an extrasens?

- Don't look at me like that, choose a card, - Polina was embarrassed.

I had chosen a ten of diamonds.

Polina took the deck, shuffled it and began to put a card face down on the table, quickly running her dirty hand over each one.

- This one! - Polina pointed solemnly at the card.

I had turned it over. The ten of diamonds! But how?!

Polina leaned back proudly in her chair and grinned with her toothless mouth, "I told you, but you didn't believe me.

- Wait," I grabbed the deck. - Let's do it again!

I ran out into the hallway and had chosen the king of clubs.

- Give it to me! - Polina waved her hand nonchalantly.

She shuffled the deck, then moved her palm over it and guessed the card again.

The clairvoyant with the black eye was definitely beginning to appeal to me. But how does she do it?

- I don't really know," Polina said honestly. - I just feel your energy on the card. I have a very strong bio-field.

- What about mine? - I shifted in my chair. - What kind of biofield do I have?

Polina gave me a quick, appraising look:

- Ordinary, like everyone else's.

The answer annoyed me. I was sure that my young biofield must be larger than that of the alcoholic Polina.

Hocus Pocus

When I was a kid, I wanted a magic wand so I could perform miracles.

One day, in a toy store, I saw a young magician's set - a big box with a picture of a boy in a turban. In his hands, the young magician was holding a magic wand... That's what I'm going to ask Santa for New Year's Eve!

In addition to the magic wand, the box contained many other items, such as flying cards, a box with a secret bottom, an invisible coin, and a black bag in which the items mysteriously disappeared.

All this was accompanied by a booklet with a detailed description of the tricks.

In a minute, he shuffled the whole deck. He put the black suits in one pile, the red suits in another. The guests were amazed - this time without pretense - and rushed to see if the scarf was tight over the father's eyes. The most incredulous asked to tie a black cloth over the scarf and repeat the trick. Dad didn't object and repeated the trick over and over again without any mistakes. So many of Dad's friends ended up believing in his superpowers.

They had no idea that I, the little assistant who sat modestly at the table next to Daddy, was the solution to the trick.

My eyes were not blindfolded, and when a red-suited card came up, all I had to do was stealthily step on my father's foot under the table.

When one of the guests suddenly suspected a secret connection between us and asked me to change seats, I innocently complied.

From that point on, plan "B" was activated. Now, in the case of a red suit, I was supposed to sneeze, hum, cough, call the dog, in a word, give my dad a sign.

As you can see, the trick would end safely anyway.

Sometimes my father and I would switch places - I would be blindfolded instead of him. It didn't affect the results. Our show was a big success.

So maybe Polina was a cheater, too? But there was no one at my grandmother's house to help her, and yet she always guessed my cards correctly. A riddle!

Treatment

When Polina came to treat my grandfather for drunkenness, he sat at the table with his hands folded in his lap. Quiet, smooth-shaven, in a clean plaid shirt, his gray hair neatly combed back, he watched furtively as she took from her bag some herbs, vials, and a tattered book of incantations.

- You haven't been drinking? - Polina asked him sternly.

Grandpa shook his head.

- OK. I will read the incantations for two weeks. After that you won't even think about drinking.

My grandfather sniffed his nose and looked at my grandmother, but found no sympathy in her face.

For a week, Polina faithfully performed her passes, whispering abracadabra into a vial of murky liquid. Grandpa sniffed cautiously. He had a vague feeling that after the deadline he would have to take this nasty stuff inside.

What if his wife and Polina were planning to kill him and put poison in the potion?

After the sessions, he wandered around the house, thinking about something, standing for a long time at the window, watching the men in the yard excitedly playing dominoes and demanding that the loser pour a "penalty" shot. Then he went to the kitchen, drank water greedily, and listened to himself anxiously.

It seemed that the lack of desire for alcohol was really beginning to worry my grandfather.

Three days before the end of the treatment, the inevitable happened. In a bale of dirty laundry, Grandpa found the bottle of vodka that Grandma had hidden and drank it with relief.

In the evening, sprawled in an armchair and trying to focus his eyes on our dog Belka, Grandpa had shared with her his thoughts on Grandma's anti-alcohol campaign.

- Grandma, ugh, bitch, tried to poison me. She was going to marry a young man. A very young man. Fucking hell. Grandma! - Grandpa turned towards the kitchen.

- What do you want? - Grandma appeared in the doorway, shaking her head sadly with her arms at her sides. - Oh-oh, you are drunk, asshole! Why did I, the old fool, pay Polina money in advance?

- Grandma! Admit it, you have a fucking boyfriend?! – Grandpa frowned menacingly.

- I'll show you a boyfriend! - Grandma Dusya got angry. - I'll show you such a boyfriend!

She grabbed a cast-iron frying pan from the stove and hit the grandfather on the head with all her might.

- Ouch! - she cried, covering her mouth with her hand. - Sasha! - and slowly slid down the wall, using the pan as a shield.

But Grandpa had no intention of attacking her. Spinning wildly with his eyes, he jumped up and hobbled over to his sofa:

- What are you doing, Grandma? What are you doing? - he muttered.

Grandpa threw off his pants and shirt and ducked under the covers. In the morning he got up as if nothing had happened, pretended not to remember anything, but tried to stay away from my grandmother.

- Should I call Polina? - she asked sullenly.

- No! - my grandfather shouted, waving a crooked finger in his wife's face. - Don't do it! That's enough!

To be continued