The phone rang at half past seven just as Ira was carrying two bags back from the store, one of which already had a suspiciously cracking handle. The number was unfamiliar, and she wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear because both hands were full of discounted potatoes and milk. «Ira? It’s Kira. I’m […]
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— Where are the dessert spoons? Klavdia Semyonovna held a teaspoon in front of her as if she had just found a rusty nail in her bowl. I was just setting the cake on the table. Homemade honey cake, with nuts on the sides. My daughter had written in chocolate on the frosting: «Mom — […]
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Nika stood in front of the window in her new pants, while Taisia crouched down, asking for the third time: «Nika, stand still. Not on one leg. I’m marking the hem, not trying to guess which way you’ll lean in a minute.» «I’m standing still.» «You’ve already scratched your foot with the other leg twice.» […]
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$ “Mom, Marko is already three years old. He knows he has a Grandma Halyna. But you’ve never even heard his voice.” Halyna Stepanivna stood frozen in the hallway, her son’s jacket in hand. Andriy had come for the first time in years. No warning, no wife, just himself and a small box of pastries […]
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“Mom, please don’t be upset, okay? I won’t be able to come today. There’s a situation at work and I just can’t get away.” Tamara Volodymyrivna stood in the middle of her kitchen with her phone in hand. A freshly baked pie was cooling on the table, and seven festive plates were already set out […]
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«You spent nine hundred hryvnias on all this?!» Mykola pulled a chicken, potatoes, bread, and a pack of butter out of the bag. «Do you even realize how hard I work, and you just throw money around like that?!» «Do you even realize how much groceries cost nowadays?» Halyna asked calmly. «Of course I do! […]
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“Irina will stay with you for a couple of months,” my mother-in-law said—how my sister-in-law turned our life into chaos and ended up thrown out with her bags. “Yana, do you even realize what you’re doing?! Kicking your husband’s own sister out onto the stairwell at three in the morning, with all her stuff—that’s the […]
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«It’s too runny,» my mother-in-law said as she licked the spoon. «Let me tell you something: cream should stand tall like a soldier on duty. Yours is sitting down.» I shoved my hands into the pockets of my sweater. The honey cake with eight layers stood in the middle of my kitchen in an open […]
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Iryna never visited her sister without her bag. It was big and brown with a brass clasp, and on the way there it dangled from her arm as if it weighed nothing, like an empty basket. But on the way home, the bag was always heavy: filled with jars of pickles, a bundle of dumplings, […]
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Mykola Petrovych, how many more apples can you bring! My cellar is packed to the brim, and I’ve got three crates sitting in the attic already! Halyna stepped out onto the porch, wiping her hands on her apron. At the gate stood her neighbor with a woven basket filled with big yellow-green apples. He wore […]
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