The Broken Places by Frances Peck

Author:Frances Peck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NeWest Press
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Miss Dodie will be fine in the powder room, alone, for a few minutes. Anna tells her employer that she is going to find something to clean the woman’s bottom with — she does not say bum; she does not want another tantrum.

It is not the truth. This bathroom, into which would fit the entire living room of Anna’s childhood apartment, holds every cleaning supply she could want.

Perched on the toilet, polyester slacks pooled around her ankles, urine-soaked diaper still fastened around her (to air out, as Anna puts it), Miss Dodie is morose. “Annie, when did I get so old?” She shifts her haunches, their leak-proof wrapper rustling squeakily. “Whatever you do, don’t let that man come in and see me like this.”

Which man she means, the gardener or the homeowner, Anna isn’t sure, but it makes little difference. She has no intention of letting anyone in the bathroom. Gently she closes the door, shielding Miss Dodie from view. She will go straight to the wine cabinet in the kitchen, grab a bottle, hide it somewhere for later, and come right back.

Carefully she picks her way around upturned furniture and smashed knickknacks. No noise, she must not make noise. If she is discovered stealing wine, the result will be worse than any earthquake. The rich man will throw her on the street for theft, and Miss Dodie will fire her for drinking. She will have nowhere to go.

The breakage is extensive but hardly alarming to one born in 1986, the year nuclear destruction rained over northern Ukraine. Who in this clean, orderly country of Canada could comprehend the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone? The deserted, rotting city of Pripyat, whose fifty thousand citizens were herded onto buses, leaving behind their apartments and toys, dishes and vehicles, to fester forever? Who could imagine the more recent heartbreak of the Donetsk airport, the gem of modern Ukraine, reduced by warring forces to rubble, dust, and corpses? This tossed-around house, the disorder outside, the beat of helicopters, the distant sirens, the ashy smell that leaks through the windows, the occasional yell that carries across the water — none of it compares to the destruction of Anna’s homeland.

The kitchen. At last. Silently she steps over a spill of long-stemmed flowers mixed with glass shards and comes face to face with the wine storage unit. Spies two unbroken bottles, one red and one white, grabs both. Retreats to the more enclosed mudroom, a good hiding place for now.

Now that she has the wine, she cannot wait. Just a little, that’s all she needs. Just enough so that she can manage.

Back home she managed until late September, when in the midst of a ceasefire the Russian insurgents resumed their assault on the airport. She had gone about her business those final turbulent months, clocking in at the factory, returning to the apartment straight after work, venturing out only when the cupboards held nothing. She told herself the conflict was temporary, the damage limited, the civilian casualties rare.

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