My mouth was packed with the putrid flesh of the hoof. Too repulsed to resort to “de cherry”, I brought the napkin to my face, and out of true desperation, narrowed my lips and blew it out, hoping the sound resembled someone sneezing. My napkin bloated. Ursula cringed.

“Mótina! Can’t she go to the bathroom to do that?” urged Cecilia, adding again, “Yuck!”

This time she was pinched for it.

I dropped the napkin in the toilet and as soon realized my error. A film of finely chopped pink expanded over the water surface and remained stagnant and unsightly. My mother lived as though we were in some European war. In the United States, in a time of prosperity, she cut paper napkins in two, forbade reading at night, and would not let us go in and out of anywhere, the refrigerator, the house. The temperature could rise one degree and it took energy, thus hardworking money, to cool it down. Flushing the toilet more than once a day made her scream, “You don’ use twenty litres for jus’ a teeny yellow water!”

It wasn’t like we were poor. We lived on the water. My mother had two jobs, making her money work and full-time penny-pincher, both of which she took seriously. Trembling, I filled the waste can with water and thrust it into the bowl like I had seen my mother do to change the water in her toilet that she used as a bidet to save water during the week. She was stealing lima beans from my plate as I returned to the table. I slowed down before she saw me.

My cold lasted some time. To make it more realistic, I sneezed between meals, too, and had occasional coughing fits. I shouldn’t have overdone it. Doctor Kreushkin checked the thermometer and glued his palm to my temperate forehead. I, in most likelihood, let my eyelids sag much more than they really would for a common cold. Doctor Kreushkin lifted them and examined my normal pupil dilation.

“Wha’ is it??” my mother questioned, worried his silence signified disease.

“I suspect … Could be allergies …”

“Allergies?” my mother’s voice rose, as though it were his fault. Allergies sounded expensive to her. She would argue her way out of it. “Her nose! It is a’ways full! I give her fresh squeeze orange juice! I keep her from de school! An’ still, her nose is a’ways full! De poor chil’, her ears, dey hurting her! Now you do sometin’!”

My mother always forgot to say “please”. Doctor Kreushkin tried to explain how disturbances of the respiratory tract could be due to many different causes. I feared my mother would explode any minute.

“I’m feeling better. Look.” I jumped twice. “It’s just a runny nose!”

“Keep quite, you! Nobody pays you!”

Dr. Kreushkin took offence. My mother threatened not to pay unless something more medically competent was done than putting his hand for five seconds to my forehead. Under pressure, he signed a prescription for antibiotics and told her to call him in ten days.