It was New Year’s Eve when I first caught a glimpse of the little god, the people’s god. That’s what I called it, anyway, even though gods were banned, as nothing could exist without the Party’s official approval.
The electricity had cut out again and around the dinner table my parents and I sat plunged in darkness. A lot happened by candlelight in those years behind the Iron Curtain; my entire childhood was one long baptism by deficit.
At fifteen, I saw bullshit everywhere and felt compelled to point it out. “We live like dogs,” I muttered under my breath.
The slap rang out, cracking the silence. The chemical smell of Dad’s cologne filled my nostrils as the imprint of his palm smouldered on my face.
“I didn’t raise a spoiled capitalist pig,” he said through his teeth.
Above me, Mom’s voice hovered, placating. “Really, Georgi. You know she didn’t mean it. Right, Nevena?”
Dad was strict, but he’d never struck me before. What did he want me to say? That we should thank the Party because the blackouts strengthened our spirit? That staying in the cold inoculated us against the rotten morals poisoning the west?
Only later did I understand the implacable machinery of survival that governed my parents’ lives. What the wrong words could cost you. How much—peace, education, a home—silence could buy. At that moment, though, all I wanted was for Mom to stand up for me.
Instead, as usual, she took out the candles and placed one at each end of the table. Her lips moved as if in a silent prayer, or an invocation, and four golden tongues flicked in the dark, tips dancing mischievously on the walls, halos glazing the surface of the good china. Everything looked ethereal and alive in the flickering light—the smoked beef, the baklava, the bananas I’d queued for that morning for hours.
Dad poured himself a shot of Rakia and downed it, smacking his lips as if nothing had happened. Mom sat down and took a sip from her cup of brewed chickpea. Coffee had once again disappeared from the shelves. Resolutely mute, I stared into my glass of watered-down apple juice.
The flame closest to me swayed and licked a wisp of my hair, even though there was no draft. I looked up, alarmed. Across from me, Mom glowed: a wild glint in her eyes, a wicked curl on her lips, a gleam of bared teeth. I blinked and she was her old, drab self again.
She tipped her head towards my glass. Something dark was quietly fizzing in it now. My stomach pinched with longing. Coca-Cola? I’d had it only once before, for my birthday. How did it end up in my glass? I took a wary sip. The cola went in smooth, sharp, a sun’s kiss on my tongue. I felt warm, woozy. Out of time.
Dad stopped murdering his beef shank and squinted at my glass. Muttered, confused, “Well, I swear.” Then he sighed and shoved a piece of cow into his mouth. From the bookshelf behind my parents, the bronze bust of Lenin watched through narrow slits. From behind her cup, Mom winked at me.
* * *
Mom kept lighting the candles, each bright-orange tip the twinkling eye of a god that saw into my soul and rejigged the world just a little, just enough. Banned books materialized in my hands. Our silenced VEF Spidola crackled to life with broadcasts of Radio Free Europe. Audio cassettes—Judas Priest, Kreator, Metallica—plopped onto my lap. I brought them over to my friend Ivan’s and the two of us howled to the buzz of distorted guitar chords spilling from his smuggled Hitachi.
My dad could sense the moments when reality flickered. But whenever he said he’d seen something, Mom suggested it must be the candlelight playing tricks on him.
As for me and her, we never talked. She kept going to the canning factory, reading the Party’s newspaper, praising the Leaders. Sometimes I glimpsed a puckish smile, a lick of orange flames brightening her eyes, but she was careful, like witches everywhere learned to be.
The night before the 1st of May manifestations, the blue jeans appeared on my bed. They were banned in schools and although I was saving for a pair, Dad would never let me be seen wearing such a brazen symbol of imperialist evil. As I held the cool, thick denim under the table, my hands trembled with excitement. A stupid grin itched to sprout on my lips and I had to screw my face into its characteristic sulk, so Dad wouldn’t get suspicious.
The next day, I put on my navy skirt, my white shirt, and my red tie, and joined the giant snaking rows of the May Day parade. Before the mausoleum, thousands of schoolchildren marched in neat, soldierly lines like a colony of ants, while the Leaders stood with puffed chests above us all and waved from the tribune.
Drums thumped, trombones blared, shoes pinched toes and pounded cobblestones. I looked around at the churning crowds. In the corner of my eye, slowly at first, the uniform mass was cracking. Streaks of denim blue punctured through the sea of white, red and navy. Blue jeans were popping up everywhere, marching shamelessly before the State, tight buttocks swaying, back pockets flashing impish grins.
My mom wasn’t the only one, then; many women had crawled out of the shadows for their children.
The Leaders kept waving. They hadn’t seen a thing. They couldn’t. Not then and not until it was too late to stop us.
The girl marching next to me turned and laughed at my astonishment, bright as a bell. Her skirt was gone; blue jeans gleamed in its place in the early summer sun. “You know, I don’t really mind the blackouts that much,” she said. “All that darkness sure helps you see the light.”
* * *
Ⓒ Elitsa Dermendzhiyska