We Sinners by Hanna Pylväinen

Author:Hanna Pylväinen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

THE SUN AND THE SOW

THE WAITRESSING WAS supposed to have lasted just the summer, but it had been a year and Paula was still at the nursing home. She was still being yelled at by the old lady who was a Holocaust survivor, and she was still being yelled at by her supervisor, for having been yelled at by a Holocaust survivor, since there were only three left at the Jewish Community Center, and since the center, whatever else it did, prided itself on keeping the survivors alive. “Everyone else knows to pour the boiling water over the tea bag,” Miriam snapped at her, “everyone else. You’re the only one who pours the water in first. The only one.”

“Pull your shit together,” Manny said to her, back in the kitchen. She knew she should have minded, but even when Manny yelled at her she didn’t really mind—he had such beautiful eyes, with eyelashes too heavy for his eyelids, like a doll.

The old Russian ladies who made the food laughed at her. “You should put some makeup on,” they said to her in the kitchen, pinching her cheek with a gloved hand. “You should do your hair. Then maybe he sees you staring at him.” But when she ironed the white collared shirt, or when her sisters did her hair in a fancy bun, they would laugh harder. “Look who thinks she’s so pretty now!”

The old men liked her, though. She was a natural blonde, straight to the roots. “You should be in a movie,” they would say. “Eh? Eh?” They winked. She would blush, and half the table would clap. But then they would realize she hadn’t put lemon in their water, and they’d send her off to the kitchen. Sometimes she just never came back with the lemon, because she knew they would forget. For her favorites, though, for Irene, for Otto, she always remembered, even if they forgot, even if Irene didn’t realize she always put ice in her milk, even if Otto was too tired to see she had put his dressing on the side. Otto never said she should be in movies; he only said, sometimes, slipping her a sweaty one-dollar bill, “You got hair like the sun.” She had hair like the sun but a face like a sow. Her grandmother had said it herself, maybe because it was, after all, her grandmother’s face.

But like her grandmother, she was strong. She wanted to cry sometimes, but she never did. She could tell other people thought she ought to be crying, because they would comfort her. After Miriam had yelled at her about the tea, Irene took her hand. Irene’s hand was the softest hand she had ever touched.

“Don’t worry, I’ll quit,” Paula said.

“Don’t quit on us,” Irene said. “What’ll I do? What’ll you do?”

“Move.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Minnesota, maybe,” Paula said.

“Listen,” Irene said, “you have a family who loves you. Family is all that matters. I’ve lived in three countries and eighteen cities and

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