I am Cecilia

Chapter 1

As the loud engine of a roaring bus with a glaring number
eighteen on its windshield lagged its way into the abandoned
bus stop, Cecilia couldn’t wait to slip in and escape
the intensifying chill of the progressing winter. She was
born in January, on a similarly unwelcoming, bitterly cold
evening. Whenever she complained about the climate, so
annoyingly characteristic for her hometown of Kosice, her
grandmother would disapprovingly shake her head and say
something witty like:
“Born in winter, hates winter—you never conform to the
obvious. Always sticking out like a sore thumb.”
Cecilia didn’t know where her mother was dragging her
or why. Still, she knew she couldn’t tolerate another Friday
evening in the company of Russian poets with her grandfather’s
tedious stories about the times he had been in the
service of the Communist Party. Oh yes, the Communists—
the only friends she was meeting in books Friday evenings.
Grandpa would always slip off into the not-so-graceful
slumber accompanied by loud snoring in the middle of painting
the picture before he managed to finish his little etude. So
Cecilia would always end up unsatisfied with bits and pieces
of unfitting edges she had to rub down and conjoin into a
puzzle that made sense in her head.

She was on page thirty-eight of the book about the Velvet
Revolution. All she had learned so far was that her home,
Slovakia, apparently used to be a slightly less miserable place
before it decided to separate its tiny, sparsely populated roots
from the Soviet Union. She wasn’t actually sure, as far as the
clarity went. Grandfather had insisted she read it, but the
book was dragging its writing as gruelingly as this bus was
rubbing its semi-inflated tires down the road.
Still, she wouldn’t let her mother leave her for yet another
weekend, to just disappear. She had tried to ask her grandparents
about Danielle’s mysterious trips, but nobody seemed to
acknowledge there were any to begin with. Both her grandma
and grandpa would wave it off, change the subject, or get so
uncomfortable the air would turn into a toxic gas. Could a
middle school principal from a well-established, respected
family like her mother be committing some ominous crime
on the weekends in her free time?
Being born stubborn and persistent, she managed to convince
her mom to take her wherever she went for those last
few weeks of November 2004.
Danielle was apprehensive about the request. Then Cecilia
activated the ultimate weapon—the upper lip pout. Danielle,
having an unhealthy soft spot for her only child, agreed to
take her.
Danielle had wanted to drive them, but Grandpa’s eyebrows
started to twitch in a nervous tic he’d get whenever
Danielle felt like unnecessarily wasting petrol or wasting
his money in any way. Perks of living with your parents in
your late thirties. Although technically, the car belonged to
Danielle. Parent logic.
Cecilia deducted that her mom’s trips were highly unappreciated
for some unknown reason. But rather than getting

through another one of Grandpa’s hissy fits, she pulled her
mom by the hand, and they set off to go by bus.
The touch of her mom’s hand, always so soothing and
comforting, sent ripples of confusion through Cecilia’s spine,
as they were climbing the impossibly steep steps her legs were
too short for, into the warmth of this conduit-in-disrepair.
Their connection, the outlandish, psychic communication
that confounded everyone who wasn’t in on it, was always
there, much like a duvet studded with juvenile images of cars
Cecilia loved so much.
After all, she was only nine, (almost ten, as she liked to
say) she was still entitled to such memorabilia.
“Dobry vecer,” Danielle greeted the uninterested bus
driver who didn’t bother to say hello back. Cecilia studied
his untidy beard and the acid blue shirt hanging on him like
a dead vine from a parched tree.
She wondered whether bus drivers looked as scruffy and
unfriendly before the Velvet Revolution. After all, it had been
exactly fifteen years since the whole separation incident. Slovakia
ought to have given its public transit officers at least a
decent uniform, she thought. Maybe then they wouldn’t look
like unpaid VH1 audience members.
She followed her mom in, fingers intertwined like vines.
Danielle uneasily wiggled through the narrow alley into the
back of the bus, away from the four dark-skinned women,
chatting in a cumbersome dialect Cecilia didn’t speak.
Cecilia felt repulsed by their bleached blonde hair and
giant hoop earrings flapping around, as the bus hit one giant
bump after another.
They finally sat down, the question burning on her
tongue, as she swayed her legs back and forth while fidgeting
in her seat, fearful to ask. She knew the route eighteen’s

stops roughly, only as far as Dandelion Street in the north
part of Kosice. Her grandpa drove her everywhere she
needed to go, and the northern part was kilometers away
from their house in the countryside called Peres, or from
her school.
Whenever she took this bus with grandma, she would
always end up in an objectionable situation—whether it
was the doctor’s office by the end of Dandelion Street or a
Catholic service in the Saint Elizabeth Cathedral. She would
always end up having to sit through a nuisance she didn’t
enjoy or understand.
The rash covers of the bus seat digging into her delicate
white stockings only reassured her that life would often
throw her into situations she would rather avoid. The itchy
skin only added to her growing anxiety.
Fear of her mother’s annoyance wasn’t what stopped her
from asking where they were headed but the dread of learning
an answer she wouldn’t like.
She preferred blissful ignorance, a silent suffering.
She was acutely aware that Jessica from school would
probably be peeling the flies off of the bus window with her
long, demonic nails, demanding an answer. But she wasn’t
Jessica.
Cecilia would never cause a public scene. She knew better
than to embarrass herself or her family like that. But the bus
either rerouted, or they finally reached the outskirts of town
near the railway station. The moment it turned right and
yawed away from the Dandelion Street allied with birches,
she no longer recognized her surroundings.
The realization of not knowing where she was made the
veiled curiosity drop like an overripe pear from a tree. If her
mother wasn’t squeezing her hand so tightly she was almost

cutting the bloodstream from flowing into her palm, she’d
be terrified.
“Where are we?” Cecilia asked, laying her hand on the
dusty window no one had probably cleaned in thirty years.
She shivered in disgust.
Her mother failed to provide an answer. Cecilia looked
down on their joined hands, admired the long elegant fingers
of her mother, the at-home-made, pink manicure on
her nails, soaking in every gentle crease, every rough fold.
Gentile hands of a teacher, a respectable, intelligent woman.
One day, her hands would grow as big and elegant as her
mother’s.
“We’re almost there.”
Cecilia’s head snapped to the side, averting her eyes and
attention from the poorly lit neighborhood filled with rusty
apartment buildings, to her mother’s loving stare—chocolate
irises drowning in a feeling, which tapped beyond Cecilia’s
vocabulary.
“Grandpa was angry,” Cecilia remarked, hoping to spark
a conversation and maybe squish her mom’s uncooperative
tendencies.
“Grandpa’s always angry,” Danielle said with trepidation.
Cecilia registered that the nervousness didn’t come as a result
of Grandpa’s aggressiveness, but she couldn’t pinpoint why
her ever-transparent mum, who she dearly admired, would
speak so unaccustomed.
Route eighteen finally came to a halt at the final stop—
Underhill. Cecilia scanned the premises. Amid mental somersaults
about her mom’s odd behavior, she failed to notice
that they were the last two people getting off the bus.
Everyone else would have either gotten off three stops
before to shop for a pepper spray, two stops before to buy

weed and coke, or one stop before to get home by walking
the Railway Bridge, effectively avoiding direct contact with
the gypsies.
Anyone who got off at the Underhill stop lived in the part
of town called “The Den of Gypsies.”
Unbeknownst to Cecilia or her comprehension of why her
mother brought her to a place that looked like it had been
ripped straight from the pages of the Oliver Twist book—she
stepped off the bus and onto a curbside ruffled with unevenly
laid concrete.
Cecilia gave her japanned shoes a distressed look. Walking
on this crooked ground would for sure tarnish the heel,
or worse, scratch the platform.
She spun in an uncoordinated pirouette to examine the
place, but the streets were silent as death.
The dawn had already come when they reached the Underhill
after more than thirty minutes of suffering through the
public transport system.
Cecilia was unsure if she believed in God, but since the
church on Sunday was mandatory, in her family anyway, she
might as well thank him for getting her out of that musty bus
alive and untouched by mold.
Cecilia scooched closer to her mother’s side, barely
reaching the hem of her black fur coat. The familiar scent, a
mix of flowers and tobacco, helped manage Cecilia’s spasm
of cluelessness.
“Come on, buttercup.”
The tension in her bones was growing exponentially as her
mother checked both sides of the road before crossing and
pulled her toward the small, ignoble-looking building with
black grating on almost every ground window.

Cecilia could hear her petticoat shuffling underneath her
velvet skirt as she forcedly towed her feet behind her.
When they crossed the road, a man came into her view,
sternly standing by the building’s main entrance with his
hands locked behind his back. Cecilia stopped in her tracks,
ready to grow roots on the spot if necessary to prevent her
mother from dragging her over to the guy currently wearing
a condescending look on his face.
“Don’t be afraid. We’ll just say hello,” Danielle reassured
her daughter. All the agitation Cecilia felt oozing from her
before was gone, replaced with excitement.
Cecilia’s pupils widened in horror. Her arm started to
hurt from being stretched out, her mother pulling in one
direction and Cecilia’s instincts in the opposite one. She
started shaking her head in panic. She overheard enough
stories from her teachers, talking about flaky mothers who
abandoned their children.
“It’s okay, Danielle,” the man spoke. Nothing about the
way he uttered those words seemed okay to Cecilia. His raspy
voice caused her stomach acid to boil and climb all the way
up to her throat. She swallowed hard, biting on her tongue
to stop herself from puking.
“Mom, who is this?” Cecilia asked, insisting on staying put.
Danielle looked over to the man for help, but he left her
hanging, asserting the upper hand by the stoic posture. He
noticed Cecilia’s jolty movements, raking her up and down
with his filthy, slighted look.
Cecilia was familiar with the dark undertone of his skin,
the same shade of creole those women had on the bus from
hell. She knew enough from her grandpa’s grotty, picturesque
descriptions to recognize a gypsy when she saw one.
“This is your dad,” Danielle said proudly. Cecilia yanked
her small hand out of Danielle’s. Her back hit someone’s side
of the car parked by the pavement. Her breathing gained an
uneven pace sickeningly fast.
Danielle gathered her in her arms, picking her up in one
swift, graceful movement. She had two options: act out, run
off, and die in the streets… or comply and regroup later.
Get ahold of yourself.
Her brain started spinning a million miles an hour. She
could recite by heart Pushkin’s work. She learned how to
divide and multiply a long time ago. This new British pop
group Blue was on the rise, and she’d memorized all the
lyrics to all their songs (in a foreign language, nonetheless). If
she ran off into the night now, she’d get murdered, or worse,
have some freakish gypsy curse put on her. Which meant,
all the talent for possibly becoming someone important one
day would go to waste.
So she gave in and let herself be carried with a quiet promise
in her heart. If everything else in this world, in this town
of torment as she loved to call it, were to lose all sense, this
would always remain true. This stranger—who her mother
called “your dad,” would forever stay just that—a stranger.

Chapter 2

Two years later

Cecilia used to think that being born to a small fortune,
accompanied by chrysanthemums on the way from the
hospital and surrounded by exploding fanfares of affection,
would set her up for a never-ending life of lottery wins,
parades without rain, and smooth slides on the slopes of
adoration.
She never realized how slippery that slope of adoration
was. Maybe money was not the root of all evil. Family dysfunction
was.
At least that’s what she had learned over the last two years,
watching the dynamic go from a pianissimo arrangement to a
Piano-Godzilla rock concert. She had been ungainly chewing
on the concept of having “a dad,” (though she never once
addressed him as such) spitting it out and putting it in her
mouth again, only to certify that the word still tasted worse
than Grandpa’s illegally distilled plum brandy. Meanwhile,
her mom blossomed like a cherry tree at a dawn of a spring
afternoon.
“The strive for greatness has ultimately destroyed him…”
She looked up curiously to check whether Miss Francisci,
(or Miss Wet T-shirt, as Cecilia secretly nicknamed
her) still opaquely mumbled through her history lecture or

finally picked up the tempo. The Slovak national emblem, a
double white-red-blue cross skewered on the highest hill out
of the triple mountain chain, lingered on a dusty portrait
behind her head.
Now that she was older, she understood the crippling
obsession these people of Kosice had with God. She never
equated or identified with it.
This town, whose only excitement occurred during May
when the world hockey championship ravaged the streets
with enthusiasm and patriotic spirit, was otherwise so freaking
boring Cecilia felt like stabbing herself with a hot rod
most days.
No wonder folks turned to faith for help. If she believed in
God (now being twelve and having read through the Scripture,
she concluded with certainty she didn’t), she would also
pray three times a day for something to happen in this town.
She longed for drama to disrupt her routine. She ached to
transform into a heroine from those simplistic Latino stories
to pump a new dose of adrenaline into her veins.
“His quest for glory, and riches, it all came down to a halt
eventually…”
And every weekend, when Danielle left for the Underhill,
an invisible thread that attached her to her daughter thinned
down tremendously.
This isn’t forever, she reminded herself patiently, as she
crafted an elegant D with a heavy, lopsided tail in her notebook,
where scribbles about Alexander the Great were supposed
to be. She still wasn’t sure if the D stood for Danielle,
Daemon, or Dysfunction.
She was trapped in a family threesome with her parents
and their unfinished business from the times the Backstreet
Boys were still making hits.