The short-armed girl

When I was a young boy, my grandfather & grandmother and I spent a midsummer week and a half in the sleepy Romanian town of Gusu.

The family home that my grandfather grew up in is a large two-storey farmhouse. It shares the property with a barn and a tangled courtyard full of fruit trees and flowers that my great aunt takes good care of. Nestled behind the house, a deceptively small-looking garden is bursting with vegetables and cooking herbs, all pollinated and protected by the hives of bees that swarm by the back fence.

At least that’s what it was like in those days.

Some things remain: my great aunt, the flowers, the fruit trees, and the stalwart house & barn. They still preside over the central square of Gusu, where the tiny village hides its heart in a watering trough for the pigs and horses and cows. Every morning and every evening, the animals—and their ageing owners—converge on the trough; the former to drink, the latter to exchange gossip. Life is like honey in Gusu, ageless and sweet.

That summer, on a mild evening, when the aroma of garden flowers swirled around the town square, I sat alone in a puddle. Having watched—from a safely antisocial distance—the daily spectacle of cows and herders returning from pasture like every other evening, I ventured beyond the square to the small bridge connecting the town’s northern and southern halves and climbed down beneath it to witness a second evening spectacle: the chorus of river frogs.

As I crouched silently in the murk, hoping to hear the song of love from a hundred amphibian throats, a sweeter voice broke the silence, offering a piece of quiet advice:

“They don’t sing for strangers.”

She said it softly and without judgment, better acquainted with the acoustics of the bridge from which she stared down at me. Then, as if she had not yet sufficiently bewildered my poor young self, she climbed down the bridge and settled into the mud beside me. I looked over, wide-eyed—but only for a moment.

In that moment, I took in a symphony of unfamiliar details: her simple white dress, now stained and wet with mud; her brown hair in languid curls; the smell of fresh bread; and the sparkle of mirth in her eyes. I couldn’t turn away fast enough.

We stayed like that for a time, me staring into the reeds as if struck by lightning, and her watching me.

When at last she made to stand, my gentlemanly upbringing finally ignited and I offered to help her up. She did not take my hand, I noticed, but asked for my name instead, silently insisting that I say it despite her knowing it already—small-town gossip being what it is.

It was only after she left that I realized she had given me her name too, though I couldn’t tell you when.

She was Ana-Maria.

It began slowly. When I hid on the homestead all of the next day (naturally), she climbed the fence in the garden and startled me while I watched the bees. She was far more amused than they were.

Not content to let me hide, Ana-Maria came to the house one morning while I slept and asked my great aunt to get me. Bleary-eyed and defenceless, I showed up at the door and was swept away into town where, alongside landmarks and people, she showed me kindness and patience.

She spoke infrequently but with eloquence, wit, and joy. She loved animals—even bugs—and wasn’t shy or fearful. I had begun speaking to her by then, and I surprised myself by enjoying her company, and by wanting to hear her say more. I told her about Canada, and she told me about the forest and about the town.

One afternoon, I asked her if she had gotten in trouble for dirtying her dress the night we met. In a way I would come to recognize, she handled the uncomfortable subject by holding my gaze fiercely, as if steadying her voice in the integrity of that stare.

“No,” she said, “father doesn’t really care what I do.”

She put a strange emphasis on “I”, but I did not read into it. She was telling the truth though; she had washed her dress and life had gone on undisturbed, which I found strange since at that age I still got in trouble for making messes.

I admired her. In my mind, I imagined that she must live a happy life where she was respected enough to be trusted with her own self-sufficiency.

Children are optimists like that.

A couple of days before leaving Gusu, having spent almost every day together, I awoke one morning to find that Ana-Maria had not come to visit. Thinking little of it at first, I soon realized that she had neglected to tell me where she lived. Further, I became aware of how little she had actually told me about her family. It was with these thoughts (and some berries) that I was perched in one of the courtyard fruit trees after breakfast when my great aunt came to find me.

“I think it’s best if you take this,” she began, indicating a bundle in her arms, “it’s fresh, so bring it to Ana-Maria’s house while it’s still hot.”

When I told her I didn’t know where that was, she nodded and said she would take me there herself. I remember it vividly because it was one of the only times I’ve ever heard my great aunt say something quietly.

When we arrived at the property (only a short walk from the town square, I was glad to discover) we found the place surrounded by townsfolk, most bearing food of some sort like we were.

“Ana-Maria’s mother used to be famous for her baking. Each year, on the anniversary of her death, we all bake one of her recipes and bring it to the house.”

I took an instant disliking to the widowed father. I soon learned that his wife had died several years back and that he’d never remarried. I remember little of the festivities except for a particular conversation I overheard.

He was reminiscing about how much the loss of his wife still hurt, which made me feel guilty for judging him poorly. He was telling the people around him how grateful he was that at least he had his beautiful daughter to remember her by.

But the girl he summoned to his side was unfamiliar to me.

“Have you met Nadia?” he asked. She was older than me, thin and tall. She wore a black and navy dress, a beautiful one, and an expression of austerity. I might have picked up more details, but I was distracted by a glimpse of Ana-Maria in her simple white dress.

She had come up the stairs from a cellar, carrying a tray of vegetables to the kitchen. When she saw me, I witnessed the one and only look of horror that I ever saw on her face. Shame mixed with fear painted ugly colours across her features, and when she put the tray down and ran, I ran after her.

It felt like hours of running, beyond the town borders and up into the fields of wildflowers at the edge of the great forest that extends for many kilometres outside the village. It had begun to rain, and despite her headstart, I finally managed to catch up to Ana-Maria beneath a large oak.

Sheltered from the rain, I took a moment to catch my breath and then waited, anxiously, for her to speak. But when she turned, I was surprised to see her smiling.

“Let’s go play in the woods!” she yelled above the wind and patter of rain on the leaves.

When I began to express confusion, she interrupted me.

“Please. Let’s have fun today, okay?”

And so we did, but not before I managed to ask her why.

Fixing me with her stare, she said, “because it’s my birthday.”

On the night before I left, to return home to Canada, Ana-Maria and I watched the cows come home together. We watched the townsfolk discuss their evening gossip, and we watched them slowly filter back to their homes. Once the town was still, we climbed down from the fruit tree we had been perched in and crossed the square to the little bridge where the river flowed between the two halves of the town.

Climbing down amongst the reeds, I held her hand for the first time, only then noticing that, well camouflaged beneath her sleeve, her left arm was shorter than her right, hanging at an angle. She looked at me intensely but did not pull away this time.

We sat in silence, and before long, the frogs began to sing.