The Twelve Little Cakes

by Dominika Dery

  On December 13, 1982, I was baptized in the Cernosice church. It was a quiet service, avoided by most of the people in town. Even Mrs. Jandova and Terezka didn’t come. The gossip continued through Christmas and slowly died out the following year, and I was gradually accepted back into the local congregation. I planted yellow roses in the graveyard, and kept my promise to the Baby Rose by watering them regularly for the next seven years.

  ten

  THE CHOCOLATE HORSESHOE

  THE NICEST THING about living near a forest is that you really get to see the change of seasons. Leaf raking in autumn was a major event, and in the spring I could look out my bedroom window and watch the whole valley explode with color. The whites and browns of winter were replaced by vivid greens and golds, and the streets and fields were wet with melted snow. The Berounka River, which in winter was a giant ice-skating rink, abruptly came back to life and rolled across the weir like it was making up for lost time.

  My favorite part of spring was Easter. In Eastern Europe, the Easter tradition is so ancient that a rational explanation of its origin is hard to come by. Easter Fridays and Sundays are similar to the Christian holidays of other countries, except that on Sunday, the men in the village go down to the river, find a weeping willow, and fashion themselves long canes made of eight braided willow branches, which are later decorated with ribbons.

  On the Monday morning, men circulate through town, singing Easter carols and attacking the local women. A group of Czech men would knock on their neighbor’s door, and after being invited inside, beat the man’s wife and daughters silly with their canes. Young girls caught in their beds would sometimes be splashed with cold water, which would make their nightgowns cling to their bodies. You always knew it was Easter Monday, because the screaming of women could be heard throughout the valley. Fat matrons ran barefoot around their gardens, squealing for the benefit of their neighbors. Despite the flimsy design of the canes, an Easter attack could often inflict spectacular bruises, which the local women would later display as proof of their attractiveness. None of the women was allowed to fight back. In fact, it was the opposite. Visiting men would be rewarded with Easter eggs and candy.

  On the Easter Monday after my baptism, I stood in front of the big mirror in our hallway and put my hair up in a bun. I was dressed in a pair of brown corduroy trousers and a miniature men’s jacket I had borrowed from the ballet school. To complete the costume, I put on my father’s cap, which I had lined with newspaper. I leaned closer and admired the cheeky little boy looking back from my reflection. He was very small but cunning, I thought. I picked up the cane I had made from willow branches and hit the air, making the ribbons smack against the surface of the mirror. My Easter basket was ready. I wasn’t going to wait for the boys to catch me. I had no intention of collecting bruises, I was going to collect eggs and candy with the men.

  Primroses and daisies sprouted from the lawns, and the sound of birdsong filled the forest. In the distance, I could hear Mrs. Backyard’s rooster crowing. It was very early in the morning, and clouds of mist steamed up from the ground. I took my sister’s shortcut through the forest and emerged through the hedges two streets below our house, where a group of small boys was hanging around Mrs. Machova’s gate. They were summoning up the courage to enter, as the gate was guarded by two yapping dogs.

  “Hello!” I called out. “The dogs won’t bite! They’re very friendly.”

  The four boys watched with relief as I opened the gate. I called the dogs by their names and they immediately stopped barking and started wagging their tails.

  “Here,” I said. “You should give them a pat.”

  The boys hesitantly followed my example.

  “Are you from Cernosice?” one of them whispered.

  “Yes. Where are you from?” I asked.

  “We’re from Mokropsy. We rode our bicycles here,” the boy replied.

  Mokropsy was the next village down the river. Its name translates as “wet dogs,” and it was very prone to flooding. It was one of the poorer neighborhoods in the region, and I immediately understood why the boys had ridden their bikes upriver. Their chances of filling their Easter basket were immeasurably better in Cernosice.

  “Well, I guess you’d better stick with me, then.” I smiled. “I know the best places to look for eggs and candy.”

  We knocked on Mrs. Machova’s door, and she opened it with a big smile on her face. Mrs. Machova had dyed blond hair and wore a purple cardigan over her cupboardlike bosom. Like a swarm of wasps, we surrounded the greengrocer, slapping her legs and bottom with our canes. Mrs. Machova appeared to enjoy the attention. She danced around her front room, squealing and laughing. Then she gave us each a painted egg and some candy called “little strawberries.”

  “Aren’t you a bunch of cute little fellows,” she said, chuckling. “If I were younger, I would have given you each a kiss instead of an egg!”

  I couldn’t believe my luck. Everyone in Cernosice knew me, so I wasn’t sure I would get away with dressing as a boy. But the four kids from Mokropsy provided perfect cover. Two of them were even wearing worker’s caps that were similar to my dad’s. And certainly, they didn’t appear to suspect I was a girl.

  “What’s your name?” one of the boys asked.

  I looked down at Mrs. Machova’s dogs.

  “Ferda,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “I’m Marek,” the boy replied. “This is Honza, Jirka, and Peta.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said. “Why don’t we go to Mrs. Needy’s house next?” I pointed at a yellow villa opposite the town’s dilapidated ice-hockey rink. “She works in the pastry shop, so she’ll have the best cakes!”

  We found Mrs. Needy in her dressing gown and slippers. She was fat yet pretty in a voluptuous kind of way, and favored low-cut tops that showed off her massive bosom. She was a regular at the beauty salon and a popular attendee of the Communist drinking nights at the Rotten pub. Protected from our canes by her formidable girth, she withstood our blows with a serene expression on her face.

  “All right, that’s enough,” she told us. “The cakes are in the kitchen. You may have one of each.”

  We ran excitedly to the kitchen table, where a pile of hedgehogs and Little Indians sat on crisp white sheets of pastry-shop paper. The Mokropsy boys had only one Easter basket, so they pooled their resources while I kept mine separate. As I carefully put the little cakes in my basket, I caught a glimpse of someone in the living room. I poked my head in the door and saw a man in an undershirt, pouring himself a glass of slivovitz. It was Mr. Lojda, the local maintenance man and plumber, who was known around town as Mr. Fix-it.

  “Thank you for the cakes, Mrs. Needy!” I said. “Have your pipes burst?”

  Mrs. Needy looked at me blankly. “My pipes?” she repeated.

  “Your water pipes!” I said. “Mr. Lojda is here, so I imagine he’s going to fi whatever it is that needs fixing!”

  Mrs. Needy shook her head in amazement, and then she started to hoot with laughter until her double chin tripled.

  “Don’t worry, little fellow,” she laughed. “Mr. Lojda is very handy indeed.”

  The next house in the street had a roof covered in lichen and a garden full of weeds. It belonged to Mrs. Kapustova, who was a Jehovah’s Witness and a bit of a charity case. Poor Mrs. Kapustova had a schizophrenic daughter who gave birth to two children out of wedlock before her illness was diagnosed. The daughter ended up in an asylum, and the children were eventually sent to reform school. After that, Mrs. Kapustova didn’t leave her house very often. When she did, she would carry old copies of The Watchtower with her and try to convert everyone she met. She opened her door nervously. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting anyone to visit.

  “Happy Easter, Mrs. Kapustova!” I cried

  Mrs. Kapustova looked at us in surprise. Her body appeared to be mere skin and bones, and none of us had the heart to hit her. Her hands fluttered with excitement as she showed us into her living r
oom, and there on the table was a little basket of eggs. She gave us each a plain brown egg with a premade sticker on each side.

  “Tell me, young men,” she said earnestly. “Have you met Jehovah yet?”

  The boys looked at me for help.

  “They don’t know anyone around here, Mrs. Kapustova,” I explained. “They’ve ridden their bikes all the way from Mokropsy!”

  For the rest of the morning, we worked our way through the streets. I was pretty sure that no one recognized me, although I did receive a few strange looks. It was nice to be invited inside the houses I

  was usually not welcome to visit, and to see the Communist families in a more friendly light. A lot of them had gone to great trouble painting their homemade Easter eggs. My sister was very good at this, and I always envied her ability to dye her eggs an even color and paint simple, elegant designs on them. My paint jobs were always so sloppy. By midday, the boys and I had filled our baskets and eaten so much candy we could hardly walk. We sat on a bench near the train station and listened to the screams and laughter in the distance. Once the clock struck twelve, there was an official amnesty for the women in town. The men would return home for lunch, and the women would assess their bruises competitively, reasoning that the most attractive women would have received the most attention.

  As we sat on the bench, I pulled from my basket the plain brown egg Mrs. Kapustova had given me. The rest of the eggs I had collected were gorgeous, and I was going to take them home and show them to my parents. The plain egg was ugly and I decided to eat it, so I tapped it against my forehead to break the shell. For some reason, this was the traditional way of cracking Easter eggs. You’d tap them against your head and peel the shell in your hands, and I had done this so often I could remove the shell without looking. But the second I tapped the brown egg against my forehead, I knew that something was wrong. Mrs. Kapustova had forgotten to boil her eggs. The shell cracked against my forehead and raw egg splattered down my face, causing the Mokropsy boys to burst into laughter. I told them to shut up, but they continued laughing, so I wiped the egg off my face and snatched up my basket.

  “If you’re going to laugh at me, I’m going home,” I said with dignity. “You can ride your bicycles back to Mokropsy and tell your parents you wished you lived somewhere nice where it doesn’t flood all the time.”

  “Oh, come on. We were only joking,” the boys protested.

  “I don’t care, I’m going.” I sniffed. “And don’t expect me to help you next year, either!”

  I left the station in a huff and walked around the post office to the narrow laneway that led up the hill. I was halfway up the path when a gang of boys appeared in front of me. There were six of them, and I recognized Tomas Hairy, Mary’s brother, at the head of the group.

  Tomas was three years older than me, and spent most of his time playing tennis on the public court. I put my head down and tried to hide beneath my father’s cap, but it was no use. He had recognized my face. I clutched my basket and tried to edge around him, but he knocked the cap off my head and ruffled my hair until it fell down to my shoulders.

  “Dominika Furmanova!” he cried. “You’re not allowed to collect eggs! You’re a girl!”

  “It’s past twelve o’clock,” I reminded him. “You’re not allowed to hit me!”

  “Check out her eggs!” One of the boys whistled. “A full basket!”

  “It’s after twelve,” I said desperately. “I’m going home!”

  “Not with those eggs, you’re not!” Tomas laughed.

  He grabbed my wrist and started to pry my fingers loose from the basket. I thrashed and fought with all my might, but Tomas was surprisingly strong. A few summers ago, I had been able to hold my own against him, but now he broke my grip with ease and passed the basket to his friends.

  “Give it back!” I shouted. “I worked really hard to collect those eggs!”

  The boys surrounded me in front of Mrs. Fejfarova’s gate. It was the widest point of the lane and had a thick patch of nettles between the fence and the gutter. They chanted an Easter carol and started to hit me with their canes, beating my arms and thighs until they really hurt. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t until they rolled me in the nettles. Then they stole my eggs and left me with the empty basket, laughing as they ran down the hill.

  I sat in the nettles, sobbing with anger. The grip of Tomas Hairy’s hands and his scornful laughter made me realize that the days when I could fight with boys were over. More humiliating, this was the first time a boy had treated me like a girl, showing no respect for the challenge of fighting me. He only used half his strength to steal my eggs, and this was worse than the sting of the nettles and the loss of the eggs combined.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, I was back at school. I limped up the steps and Mrs. Vincentova blocked my way with her broom.

  “What’s that on your face?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Nettle rash,” I replied.

  “Nettle rash?” she snorted, leaning down to look closer. “That doesn’t look like nettle rash to me. It looks like psoriasis. You’ve brought another disease to the school!”

  “But look at my bum, Mrs. Vincentova!” I said, lifting my skirt to show her my bruises. “A gang of boys hit me with their canes and rolled me in a patch of nettles!”

  “Pull your skirt down, young lady!” the caretaker snapped.

  “It’s true!” I said. “They hit me really hard!”

  Mrs. Vincentova gave me a black look. Then she shook her head and swept me inside the building.

  In class, I had a hard time sitting on my bench. My legs and bottom were itchy and sore, and I scratched all morning. I noticed that a lot of the popular girls, especially the twin sisters Monika and Alice Rabbit, were looking at me with admiration and envy. They were very jealous of my Easter bruises. Only Marinka Novotna, the third-grade teacher, was not impressed by my scruffy appearance. During the history lesson, she gently tugged one of my pigtails and told me to wait behind after class.

  “Listen,” she said when the other children had left. “I saw you walking around Cernosice yesterday, dressed as a boy. Look at your legs. They’re always covered with adhesive strips. Look at your fingernails. They’re always dirty. Do you think any of the boys in the village will want to marry you if you keep fighting with them all the time? You’re a young lady now. Isn’t it time you started behaving like one?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “What you need is some friends,” Mrs. Novotna smiled. “How are things working out at ballet?”

  “Okay,” I replied. “But I’m the only one from Cernosice. Everyone else is from Prague.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Novotna said. “Do you play after school with any of the girls in your class?”

  “Not really,” I shrugged. Most of the girls were from families that didn’t like my parents, and the ones who went to church were still recovering from my baptism scandal.

  “Well, you should try,” Mrs. Novotna advised me. “There’s more to school than just learning, you know. One of the things it teaches you is how to get along with other people.”

  I loved Mrs. Novotna and wanted to take her advice, but the truth was, it was hard to make friends. I went to ballet three afternoons a week, and had a piano lesson and choir practice when the other children were out playing. All the kids in my street had either outgrown me or were disinclined or not allowed to play with me anymore.

  As I peeled my orange during the snack break, I surreptitiously observed the other girls in my class. Many of them were in love with horses, and a few of them went to Mrs. Backyard’s farm in the afternoons and helped feed the horses in exchange for the privilege of riding them. These were the tough girls from the bottom of the valley. They didn’t want to dance in Swan Lake. They wanted to be farm girls and have lots of animals around them.

  Dana Bukova was the leader of the horse-loving girls. She was small and willful, with bangs that almost covered her eyes and a mocking smile that she coul
d use to great effect. I watched her enviously during the snack break as she sipped milk from her plastic bag and expertly sketched a horse’s head from memory. I couldn’t draw a horse’s head even when I tried. It always ended up looking like a sausage or a dog.

  The bell rang for class, and I got up and walked over to where Dana was sitting with Helenka Vesela.

  “Hello, Dana! Hello, Helenka!” I said. “Can I look at your drawings?”

  Dana looked at Helenka and grinned.

  “I didn’t know you liked horses,” she said. “I thought you were too busy reciting poetry at Red Cross reunions.”

  “I love horses,” I said. “I ride them all the time at Mrs. Backyard’s farm.”

  This was a lie, but I had a habit of believing my lies as I told them. “Mrs. Backyard lets me ride the baby horse and the black horse with the white dot on his forehead,” I continued. “Do you know which horses I mean?”

  “Sure, the black horse is Sandy.” Helenka rolled her eyes. “But Sandy’s not a he. She’s a her.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “And the baby horse is a pony,” Dana laughed. “You’re a terrible liar.”

  Her eyes shone bright beneath her bangs and I could see that they were full of scorn. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I retreated to the classroom, and I distinctly heard Helenka behind me, “I bet she doesn’t know the difference between a gelding and a stallion!”

  “Are you kidding?” Dana said. “She couldn’t tell the difference between a donkey and a goat!”

  I felt humiliated and discouraged for the rest of the day, but when the bell rang at the end of school, I hurried home and collected my milk pails. I had been visiting Mrs. Backyard’s farm twice a week for the past two years, and it had never occurred to me to ask if I could ride the horses. My Tuesday afternoons had become free, and I was fiercely determined to show Dana and Helenka that I did know the difference between a gelding and a stallion. I was good at schoolwork and dancing and piano. I would become good with horses as well.