Volcano — By Irina Stascu

artwork by Daniel Finaldi

‍The road back home is long and dismal. Choking on sobs, I half walk, half run to keep up with Grandma. The stream of pee down my leg has already dried up, but my wet skirt, gathering more dust with each step, gives shape to an ugly gray stain where white once was. I feel like the entire village of Crișcăuți knows. As if all the neighbors’ windows have nestled themselves along the path only to look at me and mutter loud tsk tsk tsk’s.

“Take off your clothes,” Grandma orders as she puts the kettle on and gets the soap. After my bath, she snatches the scissors, barks a don’t move and leaves, her red kerchief quickly fluttering out of sight. I lick the salt off my upper lip and wrap the towel tighter around my body.

Grandma is an impatient woman. She doesn’t tolerate people who move slower than her and like to drink but not work. Her husband is the embodiment of both. Zavodule! she yells at him more times a day than I can count. When she’s done—as if to shield me from all her regrets—she gently tells me what any 8-year-old cares to hear: “Marry a man who doesn’t drink.” I think there must be something to her words, and so I shelve them for when I’m old and need them.

Wobbly on the spring coil bed, I wait for her return. When she walks back in, her steps are quick and her eyebrows are furrowed with determination. She heads to the cupboard and starts rummaging through the drawer. A touch of fear creeps into my chest.

“Lie down. No, no, no. Naked. Spread your legs,” she says.

I silently obey in my discomfort. I drop the towel to the floor and feel my skin cover with a thousand tiny bumps; the moment I part my legs, a chilly breeze rushes in down there. There are a lot of questions in my head, and the more I stay quiet, the more they pile up. But then I see it. In her right hand, she holds a box of matches; in her left one, a small patch of black fur. Volcano’s fur.

She approaches my small naked body. I shrink and reach for the towel.

“Op-op-op,” she stops me.

“What is this?” I whisper.

“This will remove the dog scare. We must do it right away, or you’ll never get rid of the fear. Now open your legs.”

The ritual begins. The dog fur is placed on a small plate and set on fire—a thin line of smoke softly escapes the black fluff. I feel a pungent smell of burned hair so powerful it stings my eyes. I’m shaking, not sure if it’s from the temperature or fear, so I decide to relax my elbows and let myself sink back into the bed to avoid seeing, to avoid feeling. Then, Grandma starts chanting words I don’t understand, rhythms and rhymes, soft-spoken syllables one after another, her voice as low as the bottom of a well, slowly escalating into a soprano and dropping down again, up and down, up and down. As I stare at the ceiling, she moves her hands in circles around and in between my legs. I can see her with my peripheral vision and can only feel the whiff of smoke traveling around my private parts, a tiny breeze of gentle heat. She goes on and on for what I imagine to be five or ten minutes, lighting up more fur when needed and repeating the hypnotizing mantra again and again.

When it is done, Grandma heads off to prepare dinner. I put on my clothes, and we never speak of it again.

Irina Stascu is an emerging writer from Moldova, currently based in Poland. She studies English Literature at the University of Warsaw. As a child, she spent every summer in the Moldovan village of Crișcăuți with her grandparents. Picking Colorado beetles from potato plants was her favorite pastime. Her creative non-fiction explores themes of rural life, growing up in the post-Soviet era, and local tradition. Find her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/irina.stascu