The Pommel Horse by Olga Breydo

I stand at the kitchen entry, hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath. Outside, people in the streets of Kharkiv are panicked; the explosion sent them running this way and that. Inside, there is a sense of forced calm. Everyone is dressed in jeans and thick sweaters, but I’m still in my nightgown. My brother, standing by the window, swipes the screen of his cellphone and curses. His jacket slides off the back of the chair he threw it on. He looks out, peering at the scene below. Mama hauls a pan of fried potatoes with mushrooms from the burner onto the table.  

“Calm down, Ron,” she tells him. “What do you keep looking at? Just thank God you weren’t out there.”

“Shut up, Ma,” he says and shoves the phone into his pocket. Then he drops into the chair, spilling over its edges, spreads his legs wide and rolls up the sleeves of his sweater. His chin is razor sharp, dry lines are pressed into his cheeks; deep parabolas of skin hang under his eyes. He turns to his sweet Oksana who stands nearby with her back to me. She hugs herself to stop her body from shaking; an unlit cigarette dangles between her long, manicured fingers.

“Light your wife’s cigarette, will you?” Mama asks Ron, motioning at Oksana.

“It happened just as we came up the stairs, it was so loud,” Oksana says to no one in particular and pulls a lighter from her purse.

“Light her cigarette,” Mama says again, but Ron picks up the Vodka bottle instead and starts to undo the cap.

As I move into the kitchen, my elbow bumps against Oksana’s waist.

“Oh you’re here,” she says.

“Where else would she be?” Ron asks, and Oksana tightens her lips and narrows her eyes.

To me Oksana is still a kid, under twenty. Light, bony frame. Ballerina legs loose in her tall boots. Boy cut. Sharp bangs.

I reach for a stack of plates in the overhead cupboard and start to place them around the table. Oksana lights her cigarette, even though she knows I can’t stand the smell. They all know. She pulls the smoke into her lungs and then lets it out of her mouth. She throws her head back and I see her chest rise and fall.

“Not these.” Mama scoffs at me, stacking the plates back up.

Of course. Brother’s here with his pretty new wife. Better plates are in order, nevermind the bombing. Nevermind the chaos right outside our windows, the yellow and blue stripes of the Ukrainian flag buried in the snow, the homemade posters commemorating the first anniversary of Maidan Revolution scattered on the ground. Nevermind the bodies along Avenue Marshala Zhukova, the limp poses, heads turned sideways and back, torsos twisted.

“Put some clothes on, Ella,” Ron says to me, and I feel his eyes pierce through my nightgown. “You turn forty this year. Put your clothes on when you get out of bed, okay?” He tips the bottle over and lets the vodka slosh at the walls of his glass. “You need a reminder to brush your teeth too?” he asks, chugs his drink, and slams the glass back on the table.

“Let her be,” Mama says. She spoons a mountain of potato onto a plate and slides it over toward him. “Here, eat.” She fills another plate but adds more mushroom and wipes the grease off the edges. “For you, Oksanochka.” She walks the plate over to where Oksana sits. Then she sets the third plate down for me. Nobody talks for a while and all I hear are the sounds of lips smacking against the food and the sirens still whining outside.

“I should be out there,” Ron says, pouring another drink.

“Right now it’s a mess. Flooded with police,” Mama says. “Have you looked out the window?”

“How could this happen? I’m sick of this. Sick of this city,” Ron says. “It’s a Russian city. Full of Russians. A Soviet city,” he says and I notice his voice strengthen, the way it does after he drinks a bit.

“Don’t exaggerate how Ukrainian you are. You forget, your father was Russian.” Mama hooks the last potato slice onto the tip of her fork.

“They bomb their own. They’re fucking terrorists,” Oksana says, flicking the ashes onto the side of her plate.

“You’re being hysterical, both of you,” Mama says, puts down her fork, and uses a piece of bread to soak up the residue oil from her plate. “We don’t even know who did this.”

I don’t say anything, but I think we do know who did it. Kharkiv is not in the separatist territories, but we are way east of Kyiv. Half our city is Russian-speaking, if not more, so I can think of many who’d want to disrupt today’s celebration of Ukraine.

“I’m not sticking around to find out who did this,” Ron says, taking Oksana’s cigarette and putting it out into the ashtray, saying. “You’ll go through a pack in a day at this rate.”

He turns back to Mama. “If most idiots in this city want to be Russian, let them. The future isn’t here, it’s in Kyiv. Or Lviv. That’s Europe. This place? We blink and it slides back into Putin’s claws.”

He rests his hands on the table and leans in. I see that look in his eyes—the look that makes the hair stand at the back of my neck. I feel the food curl up in my throat and my knees clamp together so tight that the bones meet. I hold my breath, waiting for what he’s about to say.

“I’m selling this place, Ma,” he says. “While I can still find a buyer.”

My eyes get hot and my body shivers. I bring the napkin to my lips to spit out the food but I hesitate. I want to say something but as I look for the right words the moment passes and Ron is speaking again.

“This town is no place for business,” he continues, talking about his counterfeit operation. “People don’t know which way is West. I’m sick of it.” He runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. “I’m putting you and Ella up in one of my Kyiv rentals. It’s got plenty of space, you’ll like it, Ma.” He watches Mama, waits for her reaction but makes it a point not to look at me. “Oksana and I won’t need to travel as much,” he reasons. “We’ll push more merchandise, sell more bags, save on transportation. You’ll make more money, Ma.”

They sit in a familiar pose, on the opposite sides of a decision Ron has already made. I know what Mama’s thinking, she’d rather not move. This is her home. Our home. But he used that word, money. An important word. Her face softens. Her lips part. The corners of her mouth go up a tad. That’s her boy sitting there. She nods and then looks at me. She’s counting how much he’ll sell this place for. What her cut might be. The travel cost between the two cities they’d save. Against the price of the Kyiv rental. It doesn’t add up that well, but she trusts him. Why shouldn’t she, he’s her son. He’s always making ends meet, always coming up with the right stuff in the worst of times.

As usual, Mama isn’t thinking about me. I suddenly imagine my family as one of those handbags we make to sell. Sturdy, fine leather and stolen brand name. A world of inner pockets and compartments underneath a solid zipper. And I’m lost some place inside, on the very bottom.

“Stop it. Stop. Stop.” Mama’s voice comes in through the cloud of Oksana’s smoke and the haze of my thoughts. “Stop pulling your cuticle,” she says to me, her lips quivering in anger, a drop of spit landing on the table next to my plate. I can feel all eyes turn to me. I look at my thumb and bite at the loose piece of skin, sucking in the salty taste of my blood. He’s moving her to Kyiv, which means he’s moving me to Kyiv. I shudder at the thought of leaving the only home I know.

“I’m going to get dressed,” I say, trying to hold back my tears until I’ve reached my room.

My brother’s chair scratches against the floor and his footsteps catch up with mine. He’s made it into the room before I can shut the door. He shuts it for me. He opens the window, letting the air and the noise slide back in. He looks out, then at me, then out again.

“Go on, get dressed,” he says, approaching the easel that stands in the middle of the room.

For a moment I consider changing right in front of him. I wonder if he wants me to do that. I turn my back to him, open my closet door, and hide behind it. I scan for something to wear and grab a pair of black slacks and a wool sweater. I let my gown fall to the floor and slip the clothes onto my body. Everything feels rugged against my skin.

He sits down at the easel, his head level with the drawing I’ve made of Sasha. “Your imaginary friend,” he says, mocking. “Why do you keep drawing that girl?” he asks. “She’s been gone for years.”

“I’ll stop doing this,” I promise him. I’ve learned to say whatever he wants to hear.

“You’ll stop because I’m taking you away from here,” Ron says as he gets up to approach me.

His posture is fatherly. He feels sorry for me, he says. He wants to wrap his arms around me and fix me. He knows what’s best for me, he insists, he’s my brother. Yes, yes, I repeat and feel myself shrinking as he towers over me. I want to paste myself onto the white of the walls, wedge myself into the plaster cracks in the ceiling. I want to powder myself into the woolen dust balls at the corners of the floor.

I look around and there aren’t many places to go. Mine’s a small room, no more than fifteen steps from the door to the window. Ten steps from the closet to my bed. Boxes with leather and fabric for bag-making are stacked throughout. An old work table is pushed against the exterior wall, tools and fabric scraps litter its surface. Stretched canvases, thick paper rolls, drawings. Images of Sasha are everywhere, stacked away and shoved behind furniture. Hidden.

“I can’t move anywhere, you know that.” I try to steady my voice against the force coming from his body, against the weight of his eyes. My pulse is so fast I can feel it in my temples. My armpits are drenched in sweat. “I need to stay here,” I say. “This place makes me feel safe.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Ron says, and cups my neck with his hand. “You need to leave all this behind. All this junk.”

He’s talking about my drawings, not the bags I make for him, of course.

“This so-called art,” he continues. “You need to leave this girl behind, Ella. Forget her.”

I feel his hand stiffen, his fingernails press into my skin. His face wears an endearing smile. His breathing is steady.

“Okay?” he asks me, his grip still strong, his gaze still directed.

I listen to my heart pound inside me, to the sirens outside. I wish to be strong, to free myself from him. But his power feels immense. My body is numb with fear and my throat is dry with silence.

§

In the evening, I pull back the shower curtain and step out, the water dripping onto the floor. The whole apartment is lost in the darkness and calmness of the night. I treasure the isolation, thankful that today Mama forgot to make me leave the bathroom door ajar so she could keep an eye on me. Some good things come out of Ron’s visits, I think.

The bathroom is brightly lit, with thick steam swirling about. I recall how hard I scrubbed in the shower and take comfort in knowing that I’m cleaner, that the dead cells are gone from my neck and shoulders where Ron’s hands have touched, that the panic is gone from my face. I hear faint snoring from the living room, where Ron and Oksana must be curled up between the sheets on the pullout sofa. I imagine how he holds her slim body in his. How his muscles must be soft, his face relaxed. Outside, the cars continue to honk. Wheels screech in front of the scene of recent terror. There are voices, conversations. Some people still hang around the site of the explosion, not wanting to let go of excitement.

On the vanity mirror there’s only fog. I wipe it with the pam of my hand to find my reflection. I’m full of lines. The spaghetti of wet hair. Two dark slashes of the eyebrows. Upward strokes of the cheekbones, like the wings of a bird. Thin, chapped parallels of lips. Vertical slit through the chin. The fork of the neck, the dash of the collarbone.

I’m startled when I hear Mama’s wet cough. I can make out the shuffle of her feet and I know she’s approaching the bathroom. Quickly, I try to open the lock without making a sound. She wishes me ‘good night’ as we pass each other in the doorway, and I hurry away from the smell of alcohol-scented sleep that comes from the back of her throat.

When I’m in my room, the shades are closed and everything is swallowed by darkness. At the easel, I remove the drape to uncover Sasha’s face and trace the features I’ve drawn earlier. I feel the fresh charcoal on my fingers and think of all the other renderings I’ve made of her over the years. I think of the paintings, of the small sketches that hide behind heavy furniture and inside dusty book jackets—in places where no one looks. I’m aware of the years I’ve spent drawing Sasha back into my life, of all the evidence I’ve created that proves she is still here. And it breaks me to know that soon I will have to leave all this behind.

§

It was thirty years earlier that the four of us walked home, eighth-grade textbooks in our backpacks, dirt-orange leaves crunching under our boots. November wind brushed against our cheeks. Sasha was on my left; Alyona and Natasha were fighting for sidewalk space on my right. We held identical waffle cones and swallowed mouthfuls of ice cream. It burned our throats.

“She’s a bitch,” Alyona said about our gym teacher.

Her class was the last part of the school day and we had a routine of mending the scars of her abuse with a mandatory complaint session.

“And she’s ugly,” Natasha agreed.

Alyona and Natasha hated her for the typical reasons other girls in the class disliked her. The rough voice. The hairy legs and armpits. The stench of sweat. The muscular biceps and yellow teeth. She was the antithesis of the lace collars they ironed each night and sewed onto their brown school dresses, to their blond ponytails and perky little breasts, to the pearly earrings they wore and the pinkish polish they applied to their nails.

But Sasha didn’t care about all that. Sasha hated our gym teacher for one reason only: the pommel horse. A simple piece of gymnastic equipment all Soviet kids had to master. It stood at the far end of the gymnasium, a tall, leather-wrapped bench with handles. We had to line up and sprint towards it, one by one, on command, until our feet reached a small trampoline positioned right before the horse. We pushed off, grabbing onto the handles, and tried to fly over this ‘animal’ in a spread eagle jump. The trick was to actually clear it, which I always did, but Sasha could not.

Sasha, who was the most athletic girl in the class and a serious figure skater. Sasha, who I’d seen jump high over the ice, spin in the air, and land on a thin metal edge with her arms spread out and a satisfied smile on her face. Sasha, who barely broke a sweat when we had to run circles around the school yard, whose legs didn’t shake when we had to squat and stretch back up for endless repetitions. Sasha simply couldn’t get over the horse. Our gym teacher’s anger mounted as she screamed from the sidelines, “Do it. Run faster!” But Sasha walked away defeated and ashamed, having failed every time.

§

One day when we were thirteen we went to Sasha’s apartment after school. I told her I’d forgotten my house keys and wouldn’t have been able to get in—nobody would be home. I didn’t tell her that Ron was in one of his moods that morning and I didn’t tell her what had happened the night before. I just needed to be someplace else for the night, someplace safe. I needed to be away from him.

It was winter, and her Mama made us hot chicken soup with potatoes and buckwheat. I remember my body finally warming up after a second helping. Later, we sat curled up on Sasha’s bed, her plaid covers tucked over our street clothes. We puzzled over a physics homework problem that neither of us cared to remember after that day. It got dark quickly and her Mama walked in to see if I was getting ready to go home.

“Or, you could stay here if you want,” she asked, after a long silence and the pleading look in my eyes.

That night we pretended to be too busy to have tea, too busy to chat to Sasha’s father, who stuck his head in the door several times to see if we needed anything. Too busy to brush our teeth or braid our hair. Our minds slipped away from our school work into a tight space between us, where there was no room for anyone else.

Sasha pulled on the cord to turn off the small light above her bed and the Turkish rug that hung on her wall, with its geometric pattern of red and white hexagons, disappeared from view.

“I’ll tell you the nightmare I always see,” she said into the darkness, and I held my breath, sensing that she was about to reveal something special.

“I’m in gym class,” she began, “and I stand at the end of the line. I hide there because I can’t jump over the horse. There’s nothing to it, I know, I’ve watched my classmates do it a thousand times. You run hard, place your hands on the horse’s back, throw your legs out into the air and jump. That’s all. Nobody lands on their crotch. Except I will. I know I will.

I hear the teacher call my name and wish for a hole in the floor to fall into. Somebody pushes me forward and my legs start moving. I don’t want to run fast because I don’t want to do the jump, but there’s an energy inside my body that I can’t stop. When I get to the horse my hands grip the leather, my legs go up in the air and for a second I feel like I’ve made it. But then I realize that I can’t see where to land. In fact, I can’t see anything at all, because I’m wearing a gas mask and the eye lenses are cloudy from my breath. I start screaming, but nothing comes out because I’m actually too scared to produce a sound.  I don’t know if the atomic bomb had already gone off or if it’s about to go off, but there isn’t enough time to figure it out. I need to get to safety, but it means finishing the jump, and I don’t know what I’m scared of more, the bomb or the horse. Then I realize that I’m not wearing my red Soviet Pioneer scarf, which means everyone will know that I don’t love my country, which I know to be worse than flunking gym class and certainly worse than the bomb. This is the end, I think. I wake up.”

There was a quiet thickness to her bedroom, a heavy pause in which lay the things she shared with me. Things we both knew shouldn’t have been said. Even then, in 1988, when the ideas of perestroika and change were strengthening, one knew not to talk. Not like that, anyway. Our fears and dissatisfactions, however strong, were to be the hardened layers of skin we grew each year, not the soft fur we could shed when we felt like it. And yet Sasha was open and brave. I wondered: what had made her so forthcoming? Was it her comfort in knowing that her father, unlike mine, was very much alive? That he was just in the next room, with his deep-set eyes the color of olives and a tight imperial beard, engrossed in a book so antique-looking that it might pulverize at the turn of the next page? Or was it her certainty that her mother was seated next to him, looping her knitting needles through the wooly lines of what would soon be Sasha’s scarf?

I didn’t know why she had opened up to me. But I realized that Sasha created a space where certain thoughts and words had the right to exist, where I felt safe to share my own troubles and secrets.

“Are you sleeping?” she had finally asked through the darkness. Her voice was soft, as if she had hoped her confession went unnoticed.

“No.”

“Do you ever feel this way at school? Are you ever . . . afraid?” she probed.

“I’m not scared of the teachers,” I said. “ Or the school, the state, the bomb.” I was lying, because of course I was scared of these things. It’s just that I was more scared of something, or rather someone else. I could hear her breathing accelerate, she must have regretted having shared with me.

“I’m scared of my brother,” I finally whispered, and tight-sealed my lips as though they could trap the sound that had already escaped.

“Ella . . .” Sasha began to say something but then, as if not knowing the right thing she just stopped.

I turned to my side, brought my knees to my chest and buried my head in them. Wrapped my arms over my curled body, like a mother cradling a child. I wanted to look into that place between my legs, the one that still tugged. I could smell it, could still smell him on my skin, feel him inside.

I described to her what he’d done to me. Described it over and over again, looking for the right words, talking around something I didn’t yet know how to explain. Told her that I wished he had beaten me, had left visible bruises on my body—purple puffy lesions that I could nurse with cold compresses and watch heal over time. But instead he had pressed into me there, in that strange place that I, myself, had no access to. Had made one of his hands into a fist and brought it to my chin, forcing my mouth shut. He had pushed and pushed until everything ripped and exploded, until I felt him ram through me, bang at my tailbone. Until suddenly, full of dirt and shame, something shifted and I didn’t want him to stop. He had pulled out, so I tried to grab him—his neck, his shoulders, his hips—anything I could hold onto. But he got away and I felt cold, wet, and hollow. He had stuffed himself into his shorts and went back to his room, leaving me in all that mess until Mama came back from her night shift at sunrise. By then, I had cleaned up and limped to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Sasha said nothing but spread the covers over me and stroked my hair. We fell asleep like that, she dreaming her nightmare and I dreaming my reality.

In the morning her mama towered over the bed, talking about eggs.

“Boiled or fried?” Her cheeks glowed with face cream. Small, round studs in her earlobes caught the early light. She was tying an apron over her brown winter dress.

To my surprise, two fresh school uniforms were thrown over a chair for Sasha and me to change into, and on my way to the bathroom I noticed Sasha’s father crouched over a newspaper spread out on the floor. He scrubbed dirt off our boots with a cloth.

While we brushed our teeth and washed our faces, we could see him pop his head in the door and then pull it back by his hair, as if someone else tried to grab him. It was impossible not to laugh, and so the sink was soiled with spit and our faces were smeared in toothpaste.

Then, in the kitchen, we sat on the two chairs at the wooden table. Sasha’s father was perched on a tower of books, which he used as a stool, and her mother didn’t sit at all. She balanced over us on her long legs, stretching to pull plates from the cupboards, reaching to supply us with the necessary utensils.

Sasha sprinkled salt on top of the boiled eggs that sat, half-peeled, in two small holders. Then, pushing with her finger at one side, she cut the top of each egg with her teaspoon, revealing a soft, yellow middle. Her father mixed sugar into his coffee and motioned first at his watch and then at my plate, prompting me to break the film on my sunny-side up. They talked about our physics homework, about the French sculptor, Rodin, and about their cat, Ariadna, who’d recently come home very pregnant and was now eating for probably ten. I couldn’t keep up with the conversation and the way it skirted, from one topic to the next, one person to the next, hopping over little familial jokes and jabs. But I observed every detail with my eyes or my ears, noting colors, shadows, contrasts, rhythm, and pace of the three of them. I saw their conversation in brush strokes on an imaginary canvas, ready to be transferred to a real one later when I had the time. I caught myself smiling: I was part of the painting.

When we set off for school Sasha’s parents were getting ready for work. I remember turning back at the door to thank them for my stay and noticing Sasha’s father bend over to help ease his wife’s calf into her suede boot.

§

Now we continued our walk, finishing the last remaining bits of the sugary ice cream cones. Suddenly, I realized Sasha had slowed, so I looked back. Natasha and Alyona did as well. She watched us in silence, her arms folded over her chest.

“I have to tell you something,” she said. “I’m leaving.” And then she added to clarify: “we are leaving, my parents and I.”

Sasha let the three of us chew over the meaning of her words. We knew what people meant when they said they were leaving. We knew what Jewish people meant when they said this. Many, many families over the last three years. We’d watched familiar apartment windows go dark in the night, like bulbs going out in a chandelier, and then light up again suddenly, with the unfamiliar color of a new family who had moved in. We’d sensed the empty chairs in the classrooms, wondering what the ghosts who used to occupy them were up to in their new, American, life.

I felt my feet sink into the leaves as I stopped. And in that moment I heard and saw everything around me. The bits of conversation from the two bundled up women who walked by on the opposite side of the street, the aluminum lids clanking against the rims of the milk cans they carried. The wheels of a green Lada screeching against the pavement at the intersection. A tree branch nodding in the wind. Alyona smacking her chapped lips. Natasha shuffling change in her pocket. A second-floor-window closing with a thud above our heads. A family of scared pigeons clapping their wings.

Sasha stood alone, at a distance, all the nerve endings between us paralyzed. She avoided my eyes and motioned to something up the road.

“You girls go ahead, I’m getting more ice-cream,” she said and backed away, turning in the opposite direction.

“What a cow,” Alyona said, while Natasha elbowed her to get going.

“Whatever, no point standing here,” Natasha said. “People leave all the time.”

They headed home while I remained, still unable to move.

“More room for us,” I heard them say.

More room. Yes, there was now all this room, a large gap forming between us as Sasha’s thick skater’s calves carried her away. I could feel parts of me tighten and pull. Precious, private particles I’d revealed to her taken I didn’t know where. I remember finding my way out of my stiff body later on, catching up to my friends, chatting and laughing about something unimportant, going about my evening, yet thinking of only one thing. There was no school the next day, and I would run up to Sasha’s place to talk one-on-one. Figure everything out. When, how, and why was she leaving me?

But the following morning nobody answered her door.

§

When I open my eyes it’s sunrise and a layer of frost has gripped the window.  I throw my legs over the side of the bed and pull myself up to my feet. I tuck my memories back under the pillow and fit the covers over it, folding the ends under the mattress. I take my nightgown off and let it drop to the floor. You turn forty this year. Put your clothes on when you get out of bed. Ron’s voice scratches against my temples as I make my way to the closet to change. Black tights, black smock—I put on my uniform. Does it matter what I wear, if I never step outside?

I tiptoe past Ron and Oksana on the living room sofa. They lie frozen in an hourglass pose with their backs touching. I wait for the kettle by the kitchen window, careful to move it off the stove before the whistle goes off. One, two, three spoons of instant. I pour the water over the small hill of caffeine on the bottom of my cup and stir.

If anything about my life makes sense to me, it’s my workday routine—a series of movements that are second nature. Nothing scares me. Everything is familiar. A cup of hot coffee on the table, boxes of knives, punches, awls, mallets and shears spread around the room. My fingers are hardened by the thread, fatigued. My mind is in a fog from the smell of leather and glue. It takes me several days to make a new handbag, and the first day feels almost exciting. By now I’ve already spent hours looking at the real item, taking measurements, creating a pattern, committing every bump and curve to memory before Ron must return it back to the store. I’ve already watched every video of the bag available online. Now I can get lost in the detail of it, the mechanics, the craftsmanship. Ron sells my bags at thirty percent off what they go for in the Kiyv boutique. A heap of cash for a bunch of fakes, he often says to Mama when he comes to pick them up. But I think these bags might as well be real the way I make them, the way I use everything imperfect in me to create something flawless. I put every bit of me into each stitch.  

Every bit of me. In my room, seated at my table, I stir this thought over and over into the brown liquid. What is me, actually? The only traces of my existence are in the renderings I make of Sasha and in the bags I sew for Ron. Those are the things that bear my fingerprints. When Ron gets his way and moves us to Kiyv, my so-called artwork will have to stay behind. All this junk, as he calls it. All the paper rolls stacked up along the walls and inside the closet, all the canvases pressed flat under my bed. Twenty-five years of trying to remember Sasha and our friendship. How to let go of it all now?

I hear Ron cough and spit in the bathroom. I picture myself as that repulsive, green, slimy knot of gunk spewed out on the white ceramic surface, burnt by the steaming water from the spout. As I adjust my seat to begin work, my eyes fall on a set of scissors, their large thumb loops protruding over the rim of their cork container. I get an idea that makes me feel light-headed. I take a long sip of coffee and let the warmth coat my insides. I’m not leaving Sasha behind, I think.

I set my cup down to begin making my first Speedy 25, the classic doctor style Louis Vuitton handbag. I uncover a sheet of soft calf leather and glide my hand over its surface. It may not be the real Empreinte, but it’s also not the cheap stuff that comes out of most counterfeit shops. It’s camel color—not my favorite—but the easiest die to match, according to Ron. Vuitton calls it Safran. When Oksana sets the bag down on some wannabe Ukrainian socialite’s coffee table she crosses her legs, leans in, and takes the item by the sides with her manicured fingers. She makes a sophisticated smile by bringing the corners of her mouth up a tad, just like Ron has taught her, and says:

“It’s a beauty,” in English or French, depending on the woman she’s selling to. “A classic Empreinte Safran Speedy.”

And even before the woman looks at the bag she pictures herself just as young, pretty, long-legged, and worldly as the image little Oksana conveys. Sell her a lifestyle before she ever looks at the bag, Ron teaches.

He can talk lifestyle all he wants. But the only reason he has merchandise to sell is because I spend years right here, in this room, pressing each LV monogram by hand, stitching exact replicas. Depressed people have to work too, Ella, he likes to tell me. You can’t just be a burden. Okay. But should I be exploited?

I place the plastic stencil over the leather and use a sharp piece of soap to mark the center of every imprint. Then I reach into my box of stamps, alternating the logo with the flower designs, and hammer at their tails with my mallet to press the face into the leather. It’s not about hitting hard. What matters is how precise my placement is, how steady I keep my hand. I start out slow until my fingers get into the rhythm and my breathing settles. Soon the diagonals of the monogram pattern begin to fill the leather.

§

I don’t know how much time passes, except I feel my eyes tire and my neck stiffen. The smell of fried sausage, vodka, and cigarettes tells me that everyone is up. Any minute now Ron will head out to make the rounds he calls business. My insides tighten when I hear his steps nearing my door, but he doesn’t enter.

“Turn up the volume,” he yells. “Can’t hear a word with all her hammering.”

“They don’t say anything new,” Mama yells back from the kitchen, where the TV is probably on. “Our channel says the Russians did it. Russian channel says we did it.”

I wonder, does it matter what they say on the news? Russia and Ukraine are like unequal siblings. Despite what’s fair and true, the bigger one will always win.

I try to refocus. A few more stamps and I’ll be ready to sew. Oksana’s heels tap across the living room, then Ron’s cell phone rings and he replies with a voice that’s full of echo, which tells me they’re at the stairs. The front door slams. My shoulders relax and I glance at Sasha’s face on the easel. I get up, take the scissors, walk over to the drawing and unclasp it from the board. The paper curls back into a roll, but I catch it and then both Sasha and I are on the floor. I begin to cut. Long strips and short, irregular bits. Sasha’s hair and the tip of her brow. Sasha’s eye and the suggestion of her nose. Sasha’s lower lip and the soft curve of her chin. I become so engrossed that I don’t hear the door open. I don’t notice Mama’s difficult breathing, her heavy, unbelieving eyes set on me. When I look back, her face is dark with worry but also twisted in a grimace of surprise. In this moment Mama is a representation of everything that neither of us understands about our lives.

She walks in like this every morning. Drawing from the light of day the idea that everything might be okay, she’s always about to offer that I come with her to the store, always momentarily hopeful that I will say yes. And every morning she sees me working, back hunched over the table, and she doesn’t stop me. She doesn’t dare suggest that stepping outside and seeing people is more important than producing Ron’s precious merchandise. Under her eyes, in the smears of yesterday’s makeup, is the dark, rotten guilt for being complicit in what he’s done to me.

Her body is motionless now as she observes me on the floor, with pieces of Sasha all around.

“That’s right, cut. Cut her up,” she says, stammering, and backs away while tightening her scarf under the collar of her coat. “It’s about time,” she mumbles and lets the door shut her out of the room.

When I’m alone I collect Sasha into a neat pile and transfer her to the table to work out the scheme. Some parts I will sew into the body, between the leather and the velvet inner lining. Some I will fit into the handles. Then I will cut up another drawing, and then another. How many bags can I make before I have to give this place up?

Maybe this is how pain gets recycled. From the explosion comes the blood that seeps into the earth and gets carried into our lives on the soles of our shoes. From an assault comes the trauma drawn into paper, cut and stitched into a bag, sold into the world. Ron won’t know it, but soon there will be women out there holding Sasha, draping her over their wrists, taking her and everything she knows about him wherever they go.

Olga Breydo received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in New York. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Slice, Joyland, Joyland Retro, The Cossack Review, Bodega, and Cagibi. Her critical essay, Nabokov’s Space-time, was longlisted for the 2015 Notting Hill Editions Prize, her short story, Torre Flavia, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her short story, Cherry Preserves, was a finalist in the 2018 New Letters Prize for Fiction. She teaches in the First-Year Writing program at Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts, The New School.