Page 71 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #10

nodding toward the headstone, a simple cement slab with flaking silver paint at the base and a ce- ramic tile bearing a faded picture of the resident below—Galina Antonova, a Christian, according to the inscription. “I came here during the winter. Everybody told me not to, but I came. It was so cold here, so dark, and when I got over here—Oh, these mosquitoes! A cow couldn’t lick them off— when I got here water was bubbling out from the grave. I thought I was about to see the coffin. You can imagine how I felt! And these people ran up and started putting stones on the grave.”
“Heavenly kingdom protect us—“
“Why are you standing there mumbling non- sense? Better say, ‘Dear Ones, don’t call me yet,’” Aunt Sasha tells Aunt Lyolya. Then the two of them wander off to pee somewhere no one they know is buried.
“Say a few words,” says Aunt Sasha, rising from her bed of freshly planted fabric lilacs.
Reprinted by permission of The Pinch, Copyright 2012 by Maria Rapoport.
Rapoport’s literary work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Iowa Review, and The Pinch.She received an Iowa Review Award in creative non ction and has been awarded fellow- ships by the Edward Albee Foundation and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program.
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Puddled
digital photograph 18” x 24”
By Michael Hower