Ana
The livestock was just waking up when I reached the gate to our vast land, the roosters already spreading the news that a new day was bound to start.
“Hurry up, you silly buffoon, we will miss it!”
My sister, Angelica, was running far too fast for me. Her long blonde hair, like the grain of wheat in the summer, brushed the grass, the tips getting wet.
We should not have got out of the house. Especially since today was the day of the Girls’ Fair.
It was one of the most important events of the year for eligible daughters and sons to find their lifetime partner. For the past five years, I hadn’t found mine.
Every summer, I would put on my best linen dress, braid my long hair into an intricate style, adding some radish juice to my lips and cheeks.
Our mum would cheer me on, saying the next fair would surely be the one when my twenty-three-year-old self would find love.
Or at least, a partner for life. That was a wish of my own, as well.
A family, with all its joy and penance. My heart could hardly contain how tightly I clung to that wish.
I longed for touches under the moon, stolen kisses beneath the sun, for little hands to touch my face and for eternal gratitude.
The truth was, the chances of meeting a kind man were slim. I did not even consider my own father a good man. Indeed, he provided for our family by working hard in the fields. But other than that, we turned our cheeks away.
He used to be happier before my younger sister, Angelica, was born. After, he started drinking at the local inn.
I believe he wanted to have a boy. My mum had a saying: ‘the daughter leaves the home, but the boy stays and takes care of the land, the house and his parents’.
In his eyes, we were never considered capable of doing all the above.
Our parents did try to have more children, but my mum couldn’t carry many of her pregnancies to term, which resulted in my father blaming her for not giving him a son.
“Come on!” my sister shouted from across the hill. “You’ll miss it!”
This was Angelica’s first year at The Girls’ Fair. I was sure she would find a proper man. At the age of eighteen, she was suited to be married and bear children. I hoped she would be happy. She, of all people, deserved to be.
I rushed towards her, climbing the hill, running out of breath.
“A few more steps and you will be in the right place,” she taunted, her hand lifting into the air.
Reaching her side, I clutched my chest, panting. “Next time,” breath, “pick a”, another breath, “lower ground,” and another breath, “please.”
I gripped my shirt and collapsed into the cold weeds.
Her crystalline laughter filled the early morning air. “You should leave reading to those who can see better and move more,” she teased, her tongue pushed into one of her cheeks.
“Hilarious,” I whispered, glancing at the sky.
It was odd seeing the darkness of it fading, revealing the birth of light. Two forces, never meeting, joining in the same sky.
Odd, yet mesmerising.
Angelica’s head was tilted up, her chest moving faster than usual. “You are as exhausted as I am,” I remarked, my breathing slowing.
Her delicate hand slashed the air to dismiss me. “Maybe. If Mum did not give me so much work, I would enjoy the view more.”
In our village, daughters stayed at home with their mothers to keep the household running: feeding animals, preparing food for winter, and even making their own clothes. We worked from dawn till dusk.
We had to. When one of us got married, upon the wedding night, we would receive our dowries. In our case, pieces of land, food, clothing and some coins.
“Look, Ana, it is here,” my sister breathed, her eyes fixed on the sky.
I raised my head towards it and saw perfection.
The sun was coming up behind the next hill, its orange glow cutting through the dark sky. It was surrounded by small stars, the perfect blend of two worlds.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
My sister grabbed my hand and intertwined our fingers. “I want us to be happy, Ana. Will we be?”
I stared at my little sister’s precious face. Her round brown eyes, her hawkish nose scrunching, and her full cheeks were all lovely features, but the most beautiful of all was her heart.
The kindest soul I had ever known.
“Yes.” I nodded, then squeezed her hand and watched as the night made room for day.
Little blades of grass tickled my thighs, and to welcome the sensation, I pressed my skin harder against them.
I was already happy. It did not bother me to still be at home with my family, even if this cast a shadow on my parents’ faces. The books that Teacher Alexandru gave me from the local school kept me company when I had a moment to rest from all the chores.
My mum had always encouraged us to read. She couldn’t do that for herself, so she wanted what was best for us. She was the reason I spent time at school, learning under the guidance of Teacher Alexandru. But every good thing that happened in our lives was always overshadowed by my father.
“I so want to get married,” my sister declared, her hands clenched in fists.
“And you will,” I giggled.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked me as she stood up, already starting downhill.
I followed her on the way home; people were already working around their households.
“Love,” I answered, watching my feet.
She cackled, turning towards me, her blonde hair swishing into the air.
“Do you think you will find love?” she inquired, spinning with her arms open.
I tilted my head, my brows joining. “What do you mean?”
She stopped spinning and placed one hand on her forehead. “I don’t think we need to dream of love, Ana. For me, happiness means being stable. A good husband, not like our father. I want us to respect each other and raise our household together.”
My sister, the practical one.
“Let me ask you this, sister,” I said, walking next to her, “how do you know the man you meet at the fair will not be like our father?”
She pouted her thin lips. “I already have my eyes on someone.”
“Have you?” I stomped forward with a tension in my neck. “Who?” My voice turned into a shout, the cows and sheep prepared pasture, turning in my direction.
Angelica twirled, her index finger pressed to her lips.
I did not want my little sister to end up with a partner the same as our father or worse. When he drank, he would become a whole different person.
One time, he took a few sheep and killed them all in a fit of rage because our mum had not finished sewing his shirts.
Then he hit her.
It was the first time. But not the last.
By the time we got into our village, the roosters were crowing, cows were mooing, and carts were rolling along the pebble streets.
“We should hurry, or people will see us dressed like…”
“Like what? Whores?” my sister cooed, puffing up her chest.
I nodded and hurried my feet to get to our home.
As we reached the wooden gate, our dog Azor started barking, his small paws rushing towards us.
“Hush, dog! You’ll wake them up,” my sister whisper-shouted.
As soon as we hit the porch of our house, we heard the large barn door open.
Angelica darted through the main door of the house, and I followed her to our room.
It was a small chamber with two beds covered in ponevi, their large, complicated floral patterns covering most of the surface, and large feather pillows.
The room was illuminated by a tiny wooden window, though the glass was still dirty as we did not have the time to clean it after the last rain.
The walls were decorated with a wallpaper my mum ordered from one of our neighbours; blue and white swirls rising from the floor to the ceiling.
The door squeaked as I pushed the handle, and the warmth finally settled into my bones. I jumped into bed, high from all the blankets mum had placed on it.
“Don’t get too comfortable, we still have to help Mum with the food and feed the animals before we bathe. We have to make ourselves look pretty for the fair,” my sister chastised, placing her hands on her hips.
“You really want to leave this house, hm?” I asked, raising one eyebrow.
Angelica sat on her bed, just as high as mine, and tilted her head. “I don’t want to leave you and Mum. But… I want to make my own future,” she said, her voice raspy, eyes watery.
I stood up and hugged her. “If you say that this is what will make you happy, then I am fully by your side. And who knows, maybe this year I would meet my fated one, too.”
I felt her chin nodding against my shoulder, her graceful fingers squeezing it lightly.
We allowed ourselves one more minute, and then we dressed. I pulled another hemp shirt over my head, my wide, pleated skirt made by my grandmother and slipped my pointy opinci onto my bare feet.
The rubber shoes were the greatest footwear for any weather. Being sunny, rainy, or icy, they would support our feet during daily labour.
Even if the morning-cool air cut through my skin, in the afternoon, when the sun would be at the top of the sky, the heat would boil us.
Over the shirt and skirt, I added my labour apron, a simple grey fabric, which paled next to the good one I wore for Sunday sermons. That apron was special. The bottom of it was ornate with cipc?, crocheted by my mum, golden flowers decorating the sides of it, matching the waistband.
“GIRLS!”
Speaking of our mum, her sweet voice burst into the house, her footsteps echoing through the hallway.
She opened the door, making a face at the sound of the hinges.
“I’ve told Anghel a hundred times to repair this.
But all he ever does is…” She peered at us, the small frown between her blonde eyebrows disappearing.
“Girls, let’s make haste! We have a lot of work to do!
” She was dressed simply like us, but her hair was tucked beneath a batik.
I rushed to lace my opinci and kissed her on her cheek.
“Your lips are cold, Ana. Have you two been out again?” She placed her hands on her hips, her blue eyes moving from me to my sister.
When we did not answer, she shook her head and scratched her nose. “I do not have the time for this today, we will talk about your early walks after the Fair!” She pointed one finger at us, then turned to leave, but not before giving us more chores than it was planned.
“Ah! We won’t have time to braid my hair!” Angelica cried.
“We will if we hurry!”
I rushed to the yard, taking all the empty iron buckets from last night’s milk collection and walked towards the barn, where my father was cleaning the cows’ stables.
“Good morning, father!” I quipped, getting ready to milk the first cow.
He grunted, the smell of duhan filling my nostrils.
I started working, the cow a little too impatient.
“Calm down, please,” I whispered to it, its tail wagging.
The buckets were filled in no time, and I carried them one by one to the kitchen, where I had to store the milk in large aluminium cans. With the milk, we would make butter and fresh or smoked cheese to sell in the village or different markets.
Afterwards, Angelica and I fed the chickens and roosters, spreading wheat and corn all around their small coop. Both of us then went to help our mother with the food for the Fair. The smell of m?m?lig? and fried sausages filled the air as we stepped into the steaming-hot kitchen.
The wooden oven worked continuously for the last two days since mum started baking different types of sweets: sugar candies, milk candies and her famous waffle dessert filled with buttercream.
“Go and stir the m?m?lig?, so it doesn’t burn,” my mum instructed Angelica while she was cutting the tomatoes.
“What is it that I must do?” I asked, eyeing the sugar candies.
“Start preparing the cheese for the bulz.” Her head tilted to the cold room where we kept all the dairy products.
The house was made of dirt, wood and clay, enabling us not to die from the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter. It allowed us to keep sensitive heat products in the shadiest room, without altering their taste and form.
I brought the fresh batch of cheese and sour cream from the c?mar?, our coldest chamber.
The large wooden table was filled with str?chini, intricate designs painted on the brown clay, ready for the bulz to fill them.
Angelica brought the steaming hot m?m?lig?, placed it in each of the str?chini, being careful not to burn herself. I added meat, cheese and sour cream.
“Do you remember the story our grandmother used to tell us when we were ?anci?” Angelica asked, pouring the second layer of m?m?lig? over the mixture.
I shook my head. “No. There were too many, anyway.” I finished with another layer of cheese and let that melt over the hot dish. My mum handed me a plate filled with fried eggs, her eyes wary between us two.
Angelica assessed our work and, with a nod, she placed the pots into the iron cart. Her hands moved more slowly than usual, careful not to break the bowls.
“The story about the Goat Man,” she recalled, placing a finger on her lips.
“DO NOT MENTION HIM!” my mum yelled from the threshold of the door.
We both stared at her red face, widened eyes and tense shoulders. Then we looked at each other, not knowing why she was reacting this way.
I, for one, did not remember a single word from the story.
My mum stepped closer to us and put a hand on our shoulders. “This day is as special for it as it is for us. Believe me, I do not want to even hear a word about that creature!”
Her eyes looked vacant for a second, as she remembered something from the far past.
“Mum, what is it?” I asked, her pale face scaring me.
She shook her head and squeezed our shoulders. “Just don’t think about it, and we will be fine!” She was trying to smile, but it didn’t reach her sky-blue eyes.
“Enough with the superstitions, woman! And get to work!”
My father stood at the door, one hand on the threshold, his fingers tapping on it. His long nose was scrunched in disgust. His dark eyes spoke louder than his hurtful words, making my body shake.
We resumed our preparation, but I still wondered. What story about the Goat Man can make my mother react that way?
Who was the Goat Man?