Semolina

An old one-storey house stood on a street planted with lindens. From mid-May to the end of June, old lindens bloomed. One by one, the old women pulled out stagnant in the sheds, the stove benches that had damped over the winter and, sitting at the gate, discussed the accumulated gossip. Each courtyard kept its stories, its conflicts of local importance, its downfalls and star clocks, which formed the life, and ultimately the fate of its residents.

It is known that with age, childhood acquires brighter colors, convex outlines and a new meaning. As a child, it seems that everything should make sense. why There's an answer. And then it turns out that common sense is absent in almost everything that one has to deal with, and that many questions are better not to be asked at all, neither to others, nor to oneself.

Mantle porridge

My first conscious memories are related to manna porridge. I hated her so much that even as a mother, I couldn’t bring myself to taste the porridge I made for my children. Then, during my poor childhood, it was believed that semolina and a glass of milk are indispensable components of the children's menu, without which the child will not be able to grow and develop properly. When they put a plate of thick, viscous, bulging mixture in front of me, I involuntarily began to vomit from the very smell of it. I asked for sugar, then jam, then butter. After that, I complained that the porridge had cooled. Grandma patiently warmed up this frozen gray-pink mass, poured it back into the plate and once again tried to shove a spoon into my tightly clamped mouth. Tears began to drip into the plate, leaving small craters in a spongy mixture. Grandma ran to complain to Dad, and I was shaking porridge in the trash.

Another trick became possible in the summer, when you were allowed to eat at the table in the yard. There, near the fence separating our yard from the neighboring, grew a tall old maple. In one unfavorable summer, caterpillars ate the leaves. American white butterfly,Before that, it was covered with a vile look and touch of sticky disgust. At first, they tried to spray maple with some poisonous mixture, from the smell of which the neighboring pigeons died. When he began to fall furry, brown, warty caterpillars, the tree had to cut down. The courtyard became decapitated and sunny to indecency. At first, it was strange, coming out of the door, to stumble across a wide stump with a cleft curve, similar to the reproached grimace-smirk of a defeated giant. But the feeling of strange awkwardness passed as soon as I was visited by the thought of using this remnant of greatness to drain grandmother's, with such love cooked porridge. For the first couple of times, I had my conscience tormented me, but my distaste for porridge, as a perceptible but then unconscious form of violence, prevailed. I tried to be careful and poured porridge, measuring its amount with the depth of the hollow and the length of the crevice, methodically shaking it off, then ironing it with a spoon and finally covering it with leaves. Sometimes cats ate up the dread, sometimes they were washed out by the rain. And everything went well: the grandmother was happy - the child eats the right food. But one day in that arid southern summer, the porridge overflowed into its intended space and flowed onto the hot, almost melting asphalt.

The first to notice the sticky, ants-infested puddle was Madame Friedman, a neighbor from the apartment at the gate, a famous snout and gossip girl. It was as if she had no name, at least no one knew it. The children treated her impersonally. youAdults by name only.

- How are you, Madame Friedman? It was a cool evening yesterday. Did you catch a cold sitting at the gate until night?

As soon as the heat of the day subsided, she carried a small quivering bench out of the gate and sat for hours, turning her head with a bunch of rare gray hair from side to side after acquaintances and strangers, sometimes talking to them – mainly about what they were carrying in their avoskas, returning home after a working day. She only briefly left her post for dinner when her son and daughter-in-law came home from work.

Uncle Mil was a very correct and thorough man. He did everything as it should, and it always coincided with what was convenient for him. His appearance – a large figure, a fleshy face with dark eyes under the brightening of the eyelids – surprisingly coincided with the correct speeches and advice.

They speak with genuine faith in what is said. He sincerely tried to change the world for the better: both by his active trade union activity in the factory where he worked as an electrical engineer, and by the education of the tenants of our four-apartment building, among whom he was the only communist, which unpleasantly alarmed my parents and especially my grandmother. (She had an opinion of revolutionaries in general and communists in particular back in the days of Kotovsky, who became famous for ruining private chicken coops.) However, Mil's uncle sometimes came to us "for a few words." On one such visit he saw me at the dinner table, with a spoonful of soup in one hand and a book in the other.

For me, as a five-year-old, reading while eating was common. Favorite complex lunch was fried potatoes, juicy tomato and a slice of gray, 16 kopecks of bread with "The Wizard of the Emerald City." But for some reason this peaceful picture caused an unexpected reaction in Uncle Mili. He forgot why he had come and, having interrupted his conversation with his father, went to me. Suddenly hovering over my curly head, he said, Haven't you been told that reading while eating is harmful? No, not harmful - archival. And you know why? First, for proper digestion of food, each piece must be chewed at least thirty-three times. And how can you count when you are busy with all sorts of things, he looked at the cover, fairy tales? Secondly, reading while eating is not only ugly, but also dangerous in that it distracts from the awareness of the digestive process, thereby reducing the release of gastric juice and - he vigorously shaking his index finger in front of my nose - hampering the activity of internal organs. After all, as it happens, you look at a person, say, at you – you are also a future person – seemingly healthy. What he really has inside is unknown. Maybe it was a long time ago. ?

- And I also like to read, lying on my stomach, for some reason I added frightenedly.

- What, on the couch?

- Yeah, and the book's on the floor.

Uncle Mil took a heavy breath and looked at my parents.

- I didn’t notice that. my mother was confused.

- You know, Milya," my father returned to the interrupted conversation, "I just wanted to ask you once again to stop hanging your underwear in front of our kitchen. And he nodded at the kitchen window, through which a panorama of fluttering panties and bras of all colors and sizes opened. - I think this picture spoils digestion to a much greater extent than a children's book. Why can't you use the rope on your side of the yard?

- And I'll tell you, Mile's uncle started from half a turn, this yard belongs to everyone, and I can hang whatever I want and wherever I want. Especially since this rope - he shook his finger in the direction of his underwear with renewed force - hangs in a better, sunnier place. In fact, I'll just leave it as it is out of principle. All weekend!

He walked around the yard without speeding up, then stopped under a rope, adjusting his satin bra in a businesslike manner and walking to his home.

- You heard, they principles! — My grandmother cried, slamming bowls. - They have it!

As a consistent person, Mil's uncle kept his word and took off the rope under only by Monday, despite the fact that his daughter had to wear underpants without changing, since Friday, which she told me, turning circles around the bench with her grandmother. And in the evening of the same day, my father, having collected his dark blue, old, “family”, satin underpants, hung them at the gate, from the kitchen of our principled neighbors, and, despite all my mother’s persuasion “not to mess with these hums,” left them there for a week.

As children, we did not engage in adult relationships. But given the current situation, it would be foolish for Madame Friedman not to use the sprawling semolina puddle as a goal against the opponent. She knocked on the door and said, “Madame Zuckerman, don’t you think your granddaughter is hungry in the morning?” Grandmother, offended in her best feelings, proudly replied, "Since when do you, Madame Friedman, take care of my granddaughter's food when you have your own?" Immediately changing her expression to mournful, she suggested to her grandmother “walk to the stump – it will take a minute.”

I watched what was going on out of our gazebo. Through the leaves of wild grapes was clearly visible – grandmother did not need much time to identify the morning porridge in the gray mush. She turned and walked silently to the house. Madame Friedman, disappointed by the failed spectacle, bewildered after her, saying, "How do you like it?" Who would have thought such a well-behaved girl, and such Do it! And so Fuck!

I continued to sit in the gazebo, and when I got out of there, my grandmother stuck a scoop with a broom in my hands and promised to complain to my parents. Until the evening, she did not talk to me and, clenching her lips, stood in the kitchen by the stove, with all her appearance emphasizing the unjustly inflicted offense on her. And in the evening there was really a noisy trial.

- What do you mean? my mother screamed. Grandma is standing at the stove and doesn’t know what else to make for you! And you throw her work into the stump that you have adapted to the garbage!?

The grandmother sang along about the shame she felt when "that old gossip girl dragged her into the yard." My dad told me not to feed me for a couple of days until I asked for porridge. This idea was immediately rejected by my grandmother. I did not feel remorse and therefore remained silent, trying with all my might to contain the coming tears. To do this, there was a tried and tested way, acquired in communication with the neighboring children. It was necessary, staring at one point, to hold the eyelids with the first and index fingers. This gave the face a slightly moronic expression, but in most cases guaranteed a good result.

- Stop grimacing," said my mother, "or better answer, will you still do that?

I replied, and taking advantage of the sudden pause, I explained: “I will never again in my life eat semolina and drink milk.”

- What are you going to do? my grandmother asked.

- "Bread with doctor's sausage," I replied, shocked by my own courage, and feeling that my fingers could no longer hold back my eyelids, which were heavy from the accumulated tears, I left the room.

And in the morning there was a long-awaited, thick and noisy summer rain. He washed away the remains of porridge, rinsed the burnt out, grayed from the sun underwear, and then ended as suddenly as he began, forever turning another page of childhood.

Zoe Master.