A Story About How I briefly wanted to become an English major

Part 1- A falling chandеlier

Every story begins somewhere before, amidst another story; and we’re the ones who pick a point in time to start telling it, at will or at whim.

This one, I’ll start before I was born, when a relative did a half-assed job screwing some ginormous crystal chandelier to the celling of our then-living room. 

The presence of the chandelier itself must have been my Grandma’s doing, hunting after it, probably borrowing money for it, and so on and so forth. 

But it’s an understandable weakness -when you have a shared entry, shared toilet, shared bath, shared kitchen, and two rooms of your own, you probably got to self-express in the bigger room at least.

The legend goes as such: one day that chandelier, in all its glory, got unscrewed, went down and shattered right where my toddler brother stood. A miracle happened and the kid stayed unharmed; yet they say that it took him another year to walk under the place where the chandelier was hanging before.

Much later when I asked my brother how my coming into this world affected him, he told me: 

-You know, compared to that chandelier falling, your birth didn’t quite impress. 

(eh. And who told Mom: “Mommy, she stayed here for a bit already, right? And now take her back”? And who put a fork in my crib??
 Even though it might be me, as I was a mischievous baby. But I digress)

Let’s count several years forward; I think I was four or so when we were sitting in the circle with some other girls in our preschool doing girly stuff, this time it was just talking. Svetochka Sh. was doing the talking. 

Me and Svetochka Sh. were friends in misery: we both ate abominably badly. Each meal was a battle of ...not wills, because I don’t remember anybody being and remaining willful in a Soviet pre-school, but rather just a battle of seeing us a) with plates finally empty b) being sent to nap so the teachers and nyanyas could at last get some rest. 

But we both were tiny, Svetochka being even shorter and thinner than me; and as hard as we tried, we often just couldn’t swallow another piece. 

Nyanyas, being the ones with smaller salaries and growing disgust for their ungrateful work, especially were sick of us; and would mock us and add something about our parents, I was too little to understand what, but enough to gather it was not complimentary. 

We’d sit over our plates, suffering, until they’d decide enough is enough, and would tell us to just get lost already. 

I don’t understand until this very day, why the hell it was so important, all that empty plate thing. I might expand some other time on that, bringing you examples of other preschools, and the horrors I witnessed there at some dinner or supper time. Let’s say our teachers weren’t the worst.
 
Our preschool, or one can say kindergarten, as one’d start it usually at 3 years old, and graduate at 6, with some exceptions, was in a big fancy building, almost across Vladimirskaya Gorka, and as such was considered a very coveted place; later I learned some parents would bribe the administration for their kids to go there. 

But we lived close by anyways, and didn’t have money for bribes either. 

That preschool was very prestigious, as I said, but they also had their ways of spinning wool over the eyes of various committees checking on their performance.

For example, we had some amazing toys; some talented parents made doll houses and furniture; others sewed costumes, in short, an awful lot of toys never to be found in stores, was proudly and tastefully displayed there. 

Only we weren’t allowed to touch them.
 We had a corner with some older toys and books we could play with. Which we did, each time making considerable noise, as every group consisted of thirty or so kids if not more.

But a couple times per year, when esteemed members of a committee would come, we were told five minutes in advance -now you can go play with all the toys and look in all the books.

Imagine this picture - tens of well-behaved kids sit quietly in awe, exploring, reading, and playing, and obviously getting the best early childhood education possible.

The committee would leave, greatly impressed again, and we would be herded back to our normal state.

Still, it was a proud place, our pre-school, and they prized themselves on many things, including quality of food. So, me and Svetochka Sh., we really got on their nerves, with what came across as our lack of proper appreciation for their efforts. 

Usually this Svetochka wasn’t too talkative; but on that fateful day she started telling us, in agitated whispers, a scary story. 

The story went like that: 

-There are bad, bad, evil people. They are called … (I'll drop the word; it’s just “Jew” in Polish, in all fairness, but became a slur).
In the night they climb into windows of houses; and steal little children, and later they kill them and drink their blood.

My family taught me to read early, and by age of four I read many fairy tales, not adapted either as my Mom despised adaptations.

But that story sounded obviously real, given how stricken Svetochka herself seemed, telling us all that.

 I asked whether such people also live in Soviet Union, and in Kiev, and Svetochka said of course, they’re very cunning and live everywhere and one needs to sleep with one eye open else they snatch you and bleed you to death. 

 I became frightened. Really scared and distraught. That was not fairy-tale; even though fairy tales can haunt too, I know since I love fairy tales, always did and always will. 

How come such evil exists; and oh my, what if they steal me and kill me too? 

I waited, heart beating hard, until Mom picked me up in the evening. 

Then I waited until we got home. 

Then I, tormented with this awful new secret, decided at last to share, and to verify, so to say. To get some consolation, maybe. What if Svetochka was wrong? 

- Mommy, I said. You know, there are some very evil people, and they’re called Jews (I used the Polish word) and they steal little kids, and then kill them, to drink their blood? Do you know of them? Do you?

 Mom continued to sit where she was sitting. She put her chin on her hand. Looked pensively into some great beyond. 

I was waiting for the answer, but she was silent.

Then she said, in a very calm, slow fashion:

-Why yes, I do know them, - that’d be us. 

The room and all in in it turned on its axis and shifted around me. I remember hard ringing in my ears. Everything was falling and shuttering, breaking into thousands of pieces, like that chandelier.  

I looked at Mom, completely crazed. 

It didn’t take long, of course- minute or two after, Mom explained to me that it’s not true in fact, some people are just ignorant, and nobody’s killing little kids and drinking their blood.

And yet, the chandelier of the world, as I knew it, was gone, became a bunch of blinding shards -and a somewhat new life started for me. 

Part of me finds this episode amusing as hell now, part says “a tad too amusing maybe, given I was just four”, yet another part writes, and I guess I’ll know more when I’ll continue to write.





**********

* footnote (the button doesn't work)- "nyanyas" is plural of Russian "nyanya", ( "няня"), which means "nurse", "caregiver", or, as here, "teacher's assistant". 

** as I have circumstances, I've no idea when and if there will be Part 2 of this magnum opus. 

*** I might torture you with other unrelated things in between, or not

**** Lastly, if you read until here -allow me, dear readers, to express my sincere surprise and gratitude



 yours,
April alias Chen

PS да, я знаю, я начал издалека :)