The Best American Short Stories 2023 by Min Jin Lee

Author:Min Jin Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

At School No. 6, French had been Alyona’s favorite subject, and, by extension, Shura’s. Chattering in broken French was how they got to pretend that they were more than provincial Soviet schoolgirls in a quasi-industrial railroad city. In their sixth-grade production of Cinderella, Alyona, with her shining blond head and biscuit skin, was cast as Fée Marraine, the fairy godmother. Shura, slight, pale, with dark braids and eyes that could narrow suspiciously, had played an evil stepsister. Alyona was one of only five Ukrainian kids in their class of twenty-nine. Zhidovskaya shkola—the Jew school—was how the Ukrainians and the Jews both referred to School No. 6, a neighborhood Russian school known to be one of the best in the city. Not a snide designation, just fact. There was a Ukrainian school in the same neighborhood, so parents had a choice. Alyona’s parents, engineers at the mechanical plant, had chosen the Jew school.

All Shura remembered now of her French was that song they’d sung at the top of their voices, walking home. “Les Russes veulent-ils la guerre?” Do the Russians want war? A refrain that, fifty years later, could land you in prison. Alyona had kept up her French, reading classics in the original. When Shura had spoken to her by Skype last year, while Alyona and Oleg were living in Toronto (no, not living, only visiting, as it turned out), Alyona had been working through a copy of Colette’s Le Blé en herbe. Into the corporate-issued Mac that Shura had inherited in her retirement, she’d nearly shouted, “What are you doing with that? You’re wasting your time. It’s Toronto, not Quebec! Start practicing your English.”

Foolishly, she’d imagined herself and Alyona forming a study group the way they’d done as girls, a tight unit to beat out the boys in their class. She advised Alyona on the best language software and told her that she would dig up her old ESL coursework from night classes. She’d held on to it, sentimentally, even after her daughters had left home and she’d decluttered the place. “I’ll mail you everything,” she promised overeagerly, too pleased to have her friend on the same continent to hear her demurrals. “I have my grandson here if I need to practice conversation,” Alyona had said. “And, anyhow, I prefer to work on my French.”

Shura had never asked what it had taken Pavel to get his parents Canadian residency cards. Years of paperwork, she imagined. Regular checks mailed to lawyers. And yet, after only three months in Toronto, they’d packed up and flown home. “Not for us” was all Alyona had told her.

Shura could understand Alyona protecting her pride—she certainly had enough of it. But practicing her French? It made no sense. She would have thought her friend more pragmatic than that.

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