The Knife Sharpener's Bell by Rhea Tregebov Page A

“We’ll tell.”
    â€œYou’re both getting in trouble.”
    â€œYou shoved her first.” Elena says. Luba stares at Elena, but Elena stares right back. “And you know what? I’m going right now to tell Comrade Ivanova that you were intimidating a new classmate. And that you were making fun of her because she’s American, when you should have been making her feel welcome in the Soviet Union. And that you shoved her right on the ground and she hurt her elbow and she had to defend herself.”
    Elena twirls around, takes hold of my good arm and starts pulling me towards the school. “Come on,” she says, “we’re reporting her to Comrade Ivanova. Luba’s not allowed to taunt you and she shoved first – it’s against the rules.”
    â€œNo, Elena. We can’t. We can’t tell on her.” My elbow smarts. I’m going to have to pick the stones out.
    â€œWhy not? She was pure mean.”
    â€œWe can’t be tattletales.”
    â€œDon’t be silly. She’s not supposed to make fun of you and she’s not supposed to shove you. It’s anti-social behaviour.”
    â€œBut we’ll get her into trouble!”
    â€œShe deserves to be in trouble. They might even expel her from her Young Pioneer troop. She started it – she knows the rules. Pushing other students around is definitely not allowed. And she’s way taller than you, and stronger. And older. It isn’t fair.”
    â€œElena, please. I don’t want to tell Comrade Ivanova.”
    Elena stops walking.
    â€œElena, I can’t.”
    It was the first time I ever got in a fight. Something took over, and I found out that if you pushed me, I’d push back.It was a surprise. Maybe my mother wouldn’t have been surprised. I found out also that I wasn’t outnumbered: Elena stayed. And Sonya vanished as soon as I pushed back. One of those people eager for a fight until it starts, ready to run. I wonder more about the likes of Sonya than I do about Luba. People recur. I met a Sonya much later, when there was nowhere for me to run. Tattletale button-blue eyes, a red curl straying over one eyebrow. Blue eyes with no specific malice, no interest. A guard by a door, a staircase, a locked gate. “Raise your hands,” she told me, no expression on her face. “Turn around.” That was years later.
    In Odessa, my mother was getting very tired of me, my tempers, my moods. Nothing about her city pleased me, not Alexander Park, not the beautiful spring day, not the picnic she’d prepared. I hated Alexander Park and I hated Odessa, even in spring, even under the high blue skies, and I told my mother so, and I told Poppa he should never have brought me there. On this particular day the source of my outrage was that I hadn’t been allowed to invite Elena to the picnic: it was too much trouble, my mother had enough children to look after already. Beside our picnic blanket was a little light building, a roof but no walls, and I walked around it, trying to make myself dizzy, refusing the sunlight. It was a
gazebo
, Poppa told me. Good for a party, nothing serious – a building that was hardly a building. Can a building have no walls? Beside the gazebo was the bronze statue of a monster, lion body, eagle’s head and wings, claws. A
griffin
, Poppa told me, as if by offering me these new words, he could make up for taking me away from everything. A griffin with its monster head. I put my fingers in the open mouth, and when I closed my eyes I was back home, back in the front room in the apartment on Main Street,where it was always dusty, where the light always filtered through the yellowed Venetian blinds. I was standing beside the carved creature whose lion body made up the wooden armrest of the davenport, running my fingers around the open beak of its eagle head, the dark polished wood silky under my touch. Griffin. This was where I