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‘Solnyshko, if you ignore your dreams they will liently

Twelve

Tasha Evanoff

Moving through the high-ceilinged, gilded, pillared excesses ofon the one, I feel oddly hollow, as if I have left an important part of me back in Noah’s home

I go up to my room, open the door, and iei, rushes over to me and throws his sleek body at hly washed, but he suddenly stops and sniffs me curiously

‘I know,’ I whisper ‘I’ve been with a , powerful man’

Sergei stops sniffing ently, as if he understands that I ahtly

‘Oh, Sergei, Sergei, what aht it would be like that I thought I had built it all up in my mind and it would fall flat He would be a selfish brute, but he was just beautiful Just beautiful Indescribably beautiful’

I lie on ei’s head on ht I think of Baba’s expression when she grasped nored drea eyes and then I think of Mama

When I was five years oldimpression, that the decision was in so could be further from the truth My father kicked my mother out Literarily opened the front door and kicked her out so she fell sprawled on the front door steps He spat on her and forbade her to ever seewith fear while Baba heldup to her feet, her knees were bleeding, but she was staring atmy face, when the door shut on her

He did all that because he suspected her of being unfaithful to him Of course it was not true, but hly paranoid Every shadow is a Judas waiting to betray him, steal from him, plot his murder He even did a paternity test to confirm that I really was his child And since then Papa has been married three times None of them could bear him any children He divorced the first one I think she went back to Russia She hatedSheme, but disappeared one day I don’t knohether she ran away because she was so afraid of my father, or my father did aith her Papa’s third wife died in a car accident Brake failure When he was informed of it, he nodded slowly, then put another forkful of calves’ liver into his mouth We went to her funeral dressed in black Nobody shed a tear