Anna Krutchenko, Unfulfilled Memories series
Pisqu
Orleans Saltos
I’m nine years old, and my name is Pisqu. I live next to the Gray Sea and a range of mined mountains that looks like a long roll of crumpled brown paper. In my village by the sea, most folks know me. They know my name. And most of them either love or hate me; there isn’t much in between.
A lot of the hate is because I’m smarter than everyone at my school. I’m always the first to point out when a teacher says or does something wrong. My father says that history textbooks are only agreed-upon lies and always to be skeptical of what I read. So, I don’t trust my classmates or teachers who believe everything. But when my teachers look back at me, they do so with even more doubt.
Also, I enjoy playing a good prank. I admit it isn’t a nice thing to do. Once, I found this long tack and put it on Tan’s desk chair. Tan is in my class and always teases me about my father. When he sat on the tack, he yelled, “Ahhhh!” so loudly that I imagined even the skeletons in the cemetery down the road jumped up from their graves in fright. If anyone catches you playing pranks, you will be hated and get a butt kicking. Therefore, getting my butt whipped should happen a lot. But lucky for me, I have two older brothers who are larger than anyone else in school.
My brothers are five and four years older than me, Hatun and Alli. Mom says the age gap won’t always seem so big, but it’s like a wide canyon to me now. I had another brother who would have been only a year or two older, but he was “stillborn.” That means he died before he got out of my mom. My second-oldest brother, Alli, could handle defending me all alone, but he detests fighting and is always kind to everyone. Not at all like me.
My eldest and biggest brother, Hatun, is nice and terrifying. He reminds me of the sea crabs in the Gray Sea–a hard, sharp shell on the outside and tender on the inside. But I’ve seen him take down a bully before, and it was almost enough to make me sorry for the bully.
One time, Hatun asked me, “Why do you like to throw words around and do things that might get you in trouble?” I had to lean back to see his face because he is so tall. His eyes and hair are like mine–a dark coffee brown, like the dirt in Mom’s vegetable garden. But his hair is straight and falls in gentle strands across his shoulders. My hair is so thick and wild that sometimes my parent’s fingers get stuck when they try to run a hand through my curls.
Hatun told me that if someone can’t do anything in response to my pranks and big mouth, their hatred will grow like water boiling in a pot with a tight lid. And he said that one day I might get the butt kicking to end all butt kickings because people who hold grudges are the ones who eventually hit the hardest.
I want to be a good brother. I want to be a good person, too. But it’s hard when my brain dreams up ideas faster than I can decide if they are good or bad ideas. The teacher says I have “poor impulse control.” My mom says I am a future philosopher and that as I get older, my mind and actions will work better together. Hatun says I’m only a philosopher of the contrary.
That’s why I often play alone after school. My go-to play area is an abandoned junkyard near a barbed wire fence that’s mostly open and a large leafless tree. It is where concrete posts stick up from the ground like tombstones no one takes care of anymore. Abandoned cars also lie around, looking like giant skeletons with bent metal pieces of skin. I sit inside them and make believe the cars come to life with tick-tock and rumbling sounds. I yell roaring engine noises, as you might do only when you are little. But no one is around to hear me. The red sun hears me though. The sea listens, too. And the leafless tree, who waves at me.
Every space has its very own scent, and the junkyard air smells like burning metal mixed with a whiff of sea kelp. It smells like dry grass and gravel. I have a good nose, like a bloodhound. Our house smells of rotting wood and onions, while my mom has her fragrance of bread and cinnamon. My father whiffs lilac soap. Hatun and Alli mostly just smell like sweat and dirt.
Some of the hate I get is not about me but about my father being from a different country. And he’s not from some ordinary faraway land but from the same government that invaded and killed hundreds of our people long ago. Even though my father writes newspaper articles attacking his own country for how it treats us, people still see me as half of the enemy. It is easy to study my face and see a picture of the people who brought ruin and hunger to our land. As I said, because of my brothers, no one can hit me for it. But some things hurt as much as a punch. Big teenagers shout curses at me when I walk alone. Their words stay buzzing between my ears like tiny electric centipedes.
But the love I get from my family is greater than all that hate. My family thinks of me as a miracle child, born too early and supposed to die on a temple stone. Yet I survived! That is how I got my name–Pisqu means little bird in my mother’s old language. My father says I looked like a little bird when I was born. Every few years, I become ill, and everyone prays and acts like I am about to die again, but I never do. I’m like those weeds that spring up out of tight concrete cracks–no one knows how they can live there. I’m healthy now, but mom still spoils me with the biggest portions of food, and my father carries me on his shoulders even though I am too old for that. I like riding on top of my father because it gives me temporary tallness. I spread my arms wide and pretend to soar like birds, like my name. I hover over the Gray Sea, and the waves under me sparkle in the sun like gold coins from an ancient treasure.
My father is a journalist, and I usually find him at his desk, typing madly away. But some nights, he takes a break. As I lie upside down on a worn armchair and Allie sits on the floor with a book in his lap, our father tells us tales of his home country. Hatun never joins us, as he doesn’t get along with our father. Their personalities are too big for one room. But I love listening to my father’s fascinating stories about his homeland. Even though his country is supposed to be the enemy, it sounds like one big shiny jewelry box, a place filled with rich trinkets.
I steal my father’s words and present exaggerated versions to my classmates. “In my father’s country, the cities are made of gilded towers with crystal-paned windows. Canals of clean, sweet water snake around the towns like little rivers, so no one is ever thirsty. Everyone gets honeyed pastries for breakfast in the morning served on silver trays by people in top hats and uniforms threaded with gold silk and diamonds.”
My favorite part of telling stories is when the other kids say, “Wow!” with eyes so large that their pupils are surrounded by white. They love me for the short time I’m entertaining them with these stories.
My mom says brains have separate spaces for love and hate. One side is cautious of people who look different, while the love side makes life worthwhile. She says many people in our village are stuck on the hate side of their brain because they lost someone in the wars. She says death carved a hole in them as deep as the Gray Sea and as wide as our chopped-up mountain range.
“But why take it out on me?” I ask her. “I didn’t kill them.”
She smooths the curls out of my face, kisses me on the forehead, then tells me not to worry, our lives will be OK. I might be only nine, but I know her words don’t match her eyes. It’s funny how easily you can see the truth inside the words that are supposed to make you feel better.
My insides screw tight and turn upside down. It’s hard not to worry about a butt kicking.
Orleans Saltos
I’m nine years old, and my name is Pisqu. I live next to the Gray Sea and a range of mined mountains that looks like a long roll of crumpled brown paper. In my village by the sea, most folks know me. They know my name. And most of them either love or hate me; there isn’t much in between.
A lot of the hate is because I’m smarter than everyone at my school. I’m always the first to point out when a teacher says or does something wrong. My father says that history textbooks are only agreed-upon lies and always to be skeptical of what I read. So, I don’t trust my classmates or teachers who believe everything. But when my teachers look back at me, they do so with even more doubt.
Also, I enjoy playing a good prank. I admit it isn’t a nice thing to do. Once, I found this long tack and put it on Tan’s desk chair. Tan is in my class and always teases me about my father. When he sat on the tack, he yelled, “Ahhhh!” so loudly that I imagined even the skeletons in the cemetery down the road jumped up from their graves in fright. If anyone catches you playing pranks, you will be hated and get a butt kicking. Therefore, getting my butt whipped should happen a lot. But lucky for me, I have two older brothers who are larger than anyone else in school.
My brothers are five and four years older than me, Hatun and Alli. Mom says the age gap won’t always seem so big, but it’s like a wide canyon to me now. I had another brother who would have been only a year or two older, but he was “stillborn.” That means he died before he got out of my mom. My second-oldest brother, Alli, could handle defending me all alone, but he detests fighting and is always kind to everyone. Not at all like me.
My eldest and biggest brother, Hatun, is nice and terrifying. He reminds me of the sea crabs in the Gray Sea–a hard, sharp shell on the outside and tender on the inside. But I’ve seen him take down a bully before, and it was almost enough to make me sorry for the bully.
One time, Hatun asked me, “Why do you like to throw words around and do things that might get you in trouble?” I had to lean back to see his face because he is so tall. His eyes and hair are like mine–a dark coffee brown, like the dirt in Mom’s vegetable garden. But his hair is straight and falls in gentle strands across his shoulders. My hair is so thick and wild that sometimes my parent’s fingers get stuck when they try to run a hand through my curls.
Hatun told me that if someone can’t do anything in response to my pranks and big mouth, their hatred will grow like water boiling in a pot with a tight lid. And he said that one day I might get the butt kicking to end all butt kickings because people who hold grudges are the ones who eventually hit the hardest.
I want to be a good brother. I want to be a good person, too. But it’s hard when my brain dreams up ideas faster than I can decide if they are good or bad ideas. The teacher says I have “poor impulse control.” My mom says I am a future philosopher and that as I get older, my mind and actions will work better together. Hatun says I’m only a philosopher of the contrary.
That’s why I often play alone after school. My go-to play area is an abandoned junkyard near a barbed wire fence that’s mostly open and a large leafless tree. It is where concrete posts stick up from the ground like tombstones no one takes care of anymore. Abandoned cars also lie around, looking like giant skeletons with bent metal pieces of skin. I sit inside them and make believe the cars come to life with tick-tock and rumbling sounds. I yell roaring engine noises, as you might do only when you are little. But no one is around to hear me. The red sun hears me though. The sea listens, too. And the leafless tree, who waves at me.
Every space has its very own scent, and the junkyard air smells like burning metal mixed with a whiff of sea kelp. It smells like dry grass and gravel. I have a good nose, like a bloodhound. Our house smells of rotting wood and onions, while my mom has her fragrance of bread and cinnamon. My father whiffs lilac soap. Hatun and Alli mostly just smell like sweat and dirt.
Some of the hate I get is not about me but about my father being from a different country. And he’s not from some ordinary faraway land but from the same government that invaded and killed hundreds of our people long ago. Even though my father writes newspaper articles attacking his own country for how it treats us, people still see me as half of the enemy. It is easy to study my face and see a picture of the people who brought ruin and hunger to our land. As I said, because of my brothers, no one can hit me for it. But some things hurt as much as a punch. Big teenagers shout curses at me when I walk alone. Their words stay buzzing between my ears like tiny electric centipedes.
But the love I get from my family is greater than all that hate. My family thinks of me as a miracle child, born too early and supposed to die on a temple stone. Yet I survived! That is how I got my name–Pisqu means little bird in my mother’s old language. My father says I looked like a little bird when I was born. Every few years, I become ill, and everyone prays and acts like I am about to die again, but I never do. I’m like those weeds that spring up out of tight concrete cracks–no one knows how they can live there. I’m healthy now, but mom still spoils me with the biggest portions of food, and my father carries me on his shoulders even though I am too old for that. I like riding on top of my father because it gives me temporary tallness. I spread my arms wide and pretend to soar like birds, like my name. I hover over the Gray Sea, and the waves under me sparkle in the sun like gold coins from an ancient treasure.
My father is a journalist, and I usually find him at his desk, typing madly away. But some nights, he takes a break. As I lie upside down on a worn armchair and Allie sits on the floor with a book in his lap, our father tells us tales of his home country. Hatun never joins us, as he doesn’t get along with our father. Their personalities are too big for one room. But I love listening to my father’s fascinating stories about his homeland. Even though his country is supposed to be the enemy, it sounds like one big shiny jewelry box, a place filled with rich trinkets.
I steal my father’s words and present exaggerated versions to my classmates. “In my father’s country, the cities are made of gilded towers with crystal-paned windows. Canals of clean, sweet water snake around the towns like little rivers, so no one is ever thirsty. Everyone gets honeyed pastries for breakfast in the morning served on silver trays by people in top hats and uniforms threaded with gold silk and diamonds.”
My favorite part of telling stories is when the other kids say, “Wow!” with eyes so large that their pupils are surrounded by white. They love me for the short time I’m entertaining them with these stories.
My mom says brains have separate spaces for love and hate. One side is cautious of people who look different, while the love side makes life worthwhile. She says many people in our village are stuck on the hate side of their brain because they lost someone in the wars. She says death carved a hole in them as deep as the Gray Sea and as wide as our chopped-up mountain range.
“But why take it out on me?” I ask her. “I didn’t kill them.”
She smooths the curls out of my face, kisses me on the forehead, then tells me not to worry, our lives will be OK. I might be only nine, but I know her words don’t match her eyes. It’s funny how easily you can see the truth inside the words that are supposed to make you feel better.
My insides screw tight and turn upside down. It’s hard not to worry about a butt kicking.