Under a Red Sky Read Free Page B

of us are alone, he refers to me as his Leah, the name he gave me in memory of my great-grandmother, his mother-in-law.
    Grandma Iulia calls me Evushka, a Romanian endearment.
    Aunt Puica, my mother’s younger sister, calls me Evioar, also a Romanian endearment, but only when she is in a good mood, which is seldom.
    Uncle Natan, Mama’s older brother, refers to me as “the Little Girl.”
    Uncle Max, Aunt Puica’s husband, the only one to whom I’m not blood-related, calls me “the Child.”
    My father is hardly ever home, so he seldom has a need to address me.
    I am the only child in a family of seven adults who live together under one roof along with Sabina, our live-in maid. Before the
Communists took over, Grandma had an entire staff—a maid, a cook, a washerwoman, a gardener, and a footman. Grandma says Sabina is now the one extravagance she refuses to live without. Everyone in our household contributes to Sabina’s upkeep without an argument—one of the few things they don’t argue about.
    Each member of the family, with the exception of Sabina, feels that he or she is my one and only true parent. Every one of my parents loves me, but they don’t all love each other.
    â€œYou took forever to be born and almost killed your mother,” Aunt Puica tells me with great gusto. “You are living proof of why I won’t have children, so you’ll have to do. Your mother was ashen after losing a ton of blood from laboring with you for over thirty-two hours.” Seeing that I am watching every word that’s coming out of her mouth, Aunt Puica does not hold back the gory details of my birth.
    She continues with a smile. “She looked like one of the cadavers I used to autopsy in nursing school. I was so convinced that she would die, I even checked her breathing while she lay there after the delivery, to make sure you hadn’t killed her. I promised myself then that no baby is ever going to do that to me. Max can whine all he wants. You’re all the children he’s ever going to get. Men! After your mother busted her butt to give you life, I called your father to let him know that his wife had just given birth to a baby girl. When he heard that you were not the boy he had hoped for, he hung up without saying a word. What else can you expect from that Hungarian son of a bitch?”
    I don’t know why Aunt Puica despises Tata so much. I am too young to argue with her but feel guilty for not defending my father. Besides, I am afraid that she may be telling me the truth.

    â€œOf course,” she continues, “that didn’t stop you from looking just like him, a miniature Gyuri—with that same jaundiced monkey face, those huge shit-brown eyes, and a shock of hair as black as a raven’s feathers. What made it worse is you had soft facial hair too. Thank God your monkey hair fell out within a week of your birth and your eyes turned out to be blue. You look a whole lot better now,” she says, patting my cheek, the gap between her two front teeth showing as she smiles.
    Uncle Max comes to my defense, his eyes looking over the paper. “Puica, stop upsetting the Child. Eva was the most beautiful baby ever born in all of Bucharest. I was green with envy the first time I saw her pink, wrinkly face. She was so radiant, I wished she were mine.”
    â€œImbecile liar,” my aunt blurts, pounding his back with her fist and coughing uncontrollably between drags on her cigarette.
    Uncle Max knows better than to argue with his wife, especially while she’s having a coughing fit, so the details of my birth are settled.

AT THE DINNER TABLE
    EVERYONE IS ON A DIFFERENT SCHEDULE. Mama and Tata (when he’s home) come and go throughout the day at different times, as do Uncle Max and Uncle Natan. My grandparents, Aunt Puica, and Sabina are always at home with me.
    The day Sabina came to us she appeared seemingly out of nowhere like an