And Then She Went Home
Melanie Haney

Easter

*

They slit them right in the middle of the market. In the middle of the vendor's tables, of onions and tomatoes and dirty radishes. Blood soaked into the cracks of the concrete, and pooled in murky clots beneath the white morning light. And right there, between ruddy potatoes and piles of brown sack cloths, the townspeople bent down, lifted the small bodies up over their shoulders and strode out, crimson streaked wool on their backs, the sun in their eyes.
I hurried past, clung to the fringe of the square and did not stop for bread or eggs. For lunch I would have coffee and the heels of yesterday's loaf.
That's nothing, I was told by Collette, you should see what they do with the pigs.

*

Before midnight, we walked around the church three times. As a crowd, we shuffled in circles, candle wax dripping to our palms. We paused at the completion of each round and milled on the square in front of the church, just as if we were at a party. People talking, laughing, lighting their cigarettes in the flicker of the flame hovering above their fists.
It was there, after round one, that Collette introduced me to a few of her friends, people she'd come to know over the past year she'd been living in Transylvania. There was Paolo and Radu and Steve, who was actually a fair-haired girl with sharp features and a broad, though yellowed, smile. The shorter of the boys, Radu, draped his arm over Steve's shoulders and pulled her a step back from me. I pretended not to notice and instead let Collette tell me again how lucky I am to not be here for Christmas.
This is nothing, she said, Christmas is when things get really strange.

*

After midnight we clogged the church, moving slowly forward into a mist of incense, waiting to be given our peace. A monotone blessing muttered over our heads and plastic baggies of wine soaked bread cubes squeezed into our palms.
I ate the squares one after the other when I got back to my room. I ate them hastily and without enjoyment, but unable to stop myself. And when the plastic baggie had been torn in two and was laid on the nightstand, I wondered about what I'd even eaten. It wasn't how I'd expected peace to feel in my mouth -- more sour than sweet, more firm than soft.

*

For Easter supper, I sat at the table with my host family and ate only the reddish broth of the soup, sucked up in the pores of dense bread. The father popped his knife through the eyeball of a lamb like dissecting a black olive, and the table raised their glasses and smiled big and hearty. The plum brandy burned, so I mixed it with the Coke and drank until even the light felt lighter, the meal over.

*

Collette came over after dinner with a shoebox from home. I filled two glasses with Cola and brandy and we slipped into my bedroom to open her package. Cellophane wrappers and chocolate, sugar shaped into marshmallow chicks and ducks. Our American Easter feast, an explosion of color and candy, spilled between us like a kindergartener's wildest dream. With my legs curled beneath me, I raised my glass and she hers and we ate Hershey's and talked about how much we missed the things from home. Simple things, like peanut butter and taking showers, soft toilet paper and non-rotary telephones.
I haven't shaved my legs in seven months, she said, hiking one leg of her jeans up over her calf, as though I needed proof.
She was what I considered a long-haul volunteer -- came to Transylvania right from college with an open ticket and hadn't made any plans to go home. Not like me, a get-out-of-the-country-for-a-semester volunteer. I was there by chance, because it was the first brochure for a study-abroad program I saw in the student center.
I looked down at the thistly black hair on leg and gulped the rest of my brandy-soda in a single swallow.
I don't know how you do it, I said, don't you ever want to go back?
Without blinking she tugged her jeans back down over her ankles and sighed, What for? Peanut butter and a hot shower?

*

In the kitchen of the Family Center, I stirred a vat of swollen pink beans with pork fat and watched the line of little bodies form outside the window. Every other matted head, was now shaved to the scalp. They slept in rooms of eight or nine people, on floors and on top of one another and they feared lice.
This job in the kitchen was better than going in the van to the fringe villages. It was easy: chop, stir, scoop, wash. The children who came to us wore pants, if not shoes and I didn't have to smell anything worse than onions or dirt.
Out back, Collette and other's had packed the van with pots of rice and beans. She passed through one last time before heading off, three thick loaves of bread under her arms and a knife. What do you think? she asked, enough to feed five-thousand?

When the line snaked its way through the lunch room, I spooned soupy beans until the bowls overflowed.

*

Home

*

Twelve hours of travel comes to this. Mom's hair smells clean and our drive home is smooth over paved asphalt.

*

The yard is manicured, my brother has grass stains on his pants and sweat stains on his shirt. But he still smells clean. Like cut lawns and sprinklers and dirt that you buy at the store.
My father is in the backyard, firing up the grill.
I settle into a lawn chair and cross my smooth ankles over one another. Sitting still, I let the day wash over me, rising so slowly I almost don't realize when I've drowned.

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