Fiction Manya Treece

Flight

We dreamed of forgetting our language. The signs around us said Two Bags Only in stenciled Romanian, but it was English we craved as we stood in line, drenched in airport fluorescent. You held our bribe, all those crinkled lei, and I held our bags tightly, two in each hand, as though each were a child we had avoided making.

For a year and four months since our wedding, we'd been cautious, making love only during your period. Afterward, you’d tell me you were grateful I’d entered the mess with you, and that’s just how I felt that morning as we waited for the military guard to approach. When he finally arrived, we showed him our passports, passports we hoped would someday be relics for our children's children in the States, a place where we'd never have to choose between your jewelry and the occasional black market condom.

We were told we would need seven hundred lei for each extra bag, but our guard looked hungry. He was old and decrepit, just like his uniform, which hung loose at his knees and shoulders. It was 1989. Maybe he knew he was nearing irrelevance, or maybe he resented the way our bodies pumped sweat towards each other as we huddled together in that damp security line, anesthetized by flight. Maybe he knew we weren’t prepared for what was coming- bad jobs, public schools, the stench of a ghetto we thought we were leaving behind- but nothing would sate him. He smirked at the money we offered, fourteen-hundred for the two extra bags. Pick one, he commanded in his countryside tongue. We stalled as best we could, staring at the luggage I'd put down on the ground, silent as we frantically clutched hands. Here, you finally said, offering the suitcase that seemed to be the smallest. Then you took one bag and I took the others. As we walked through the terminal that morning, we knew we had no idea what we’d left behind.

 

 

Manya Treece lives, works and writes in Chicago. Her writing has been featured in Pindeldyboz, MrBellersNeighborhood.com, The Society of Mutual Autopsy (SoMA): A Review of Religion and Culture and the World Jewish Digest. Please contact her with love, hate or job offers in the greater Manhattan area.