Page 22 of Clever Little Thing

I ran out the front gate. There was no one on the street. “Stella!” No sign of her. Which way should I go? Could she have walked somewhere on her own? But she was eight years old and had never gone anywhere alone. She’d never even walked to the toilet in a restaurant by herself.

“Stella!” I screamed. All the houses seemed to contain people who were watching and thinking, Cray-cray bitch. There was no one I could even ask for help. I felt as if cold water poured down my throat and into my belly, at such a tremendous speed I would burst.

Two blocks up, an older woman with Russian-doll hair and adark-brown skirt turned onto our street. “Help!” I screamed. The woman waved. It was Irina.

Then there was Stella, dancing around the corner. I charged up the street and threw myself upon her, pressed my face into her hair, wanting to press her back into my body, into my flesh, where she would be safe. She actually let me hold her, though she didn’t hug me back.

I fought to catch my breath. “Where were you going, darling?”

“To my swimming class. But Irina said I should go home.”

I’d forgotten about the private swim lesson I’d scheduled on Sunday afternoons. Usually, I had to drag her to the pool. But never mind. “You can’t go by yourself. You know that,” I said. I couldn’t get my heart to stop thumping: What if she’d tried to cross a busy road?

Stella said calmly, “I’ve gone out by myself lots and lots of times.”

This was patently untrue—her first barefaced lie. I didn’t know what to do. Should I punish her? I didn’t have the parenting techniques for this. Putting Stella in a time-out would be no hardship for her. Was she openly defying me, trying to get a rise out of me? Was that what the cross was? Her refusing to eat at the table?

I looked at Irina hopelessly. She seemed to understand what was needed. She crouched down so her face was at the same height as Stella’s, and she took her firmly by the shoulders. “Now you listen,” she said, her voice fierce. I stared. I had never once spoken to Stella in a voice like that. I was about to intervene: How dare this woman talk to Stella like that? But something stopped me. Irina made sureshe had Stella’s full attention. Then she barked, “In this country, child cannot walk alone. Understand?”

I waited for Stella to lash out, but she nodded solemnly. I was stunned. Is this what I should have been doing all along? When Stella displeased Pete’s mother, Dianne, she suggested CBD oil, convinced this was the balm for all ills. When Stella displeased my mother, she turned to me and said things like, “She certainly talks a lot,” and “Is that all she’s going to eat?” Stella turned up her nose at Dianne’s CBD gummies, and my mother’s little comments made her worse. But she seemed to take Irina’s words to heart.

“OK,” she said.

Irina stood up and laid a hand on my shoulder. Her hand felt warm and heavy. My eyes pricked, but I pulled myself together. “Thank you,” I said. “Are you going out somewhere?”

She looked a lot better than the last time I’d seen her. Her hair was darker, carefully dyed and neatly pinned back. She wore a white blouse and dark skirt, tan tights and what looked like men’s business shoes. She had the same blue eye shadow as when I’d seen her on Friday, but on both eyelids this time.

“I come to see you,” Irina said. She held up something mummified in cheesecloth. She nodded at Stella. “And Little Wolf, of course.”

Stella howled obligingly. “What’s that you’re holding?”

“Sorry, this is not nazook. This I make for your mother,” Irina said. “This is”—and then she said something that sounded as if she were trying to get a hair off her tongue. Stella and I stared at her, and she said, “In English, I translate as oily bread.”

“I like nazook,” Stella said.

Irina smiled. “Next time, maybe. Today I bring oily bread. My husband’s recipe. Makes mothers feel better.”

It did not sound at all appetizing, but I was touched. “Thank you so much, that’s very kind of you,” I said, meaning it. “I can’t wait to try it.” I reached out for the bread, but she held on to it.

“Blanka’s father has bakery. Long time ago. He teach me many breads. This is how I make oily bread: I roll dough to size of table, very, very, very thin. Then I roll it up and make…” She shook her head. “Shape like snail?”

“A spiral!” Stella said.

She nodded. “And then I roll out to size of table again and again roll up like snail.” She cradled the bread. “This I do seven times.”

“Seven,” I said. “Gosh.” Of course she wanted to watch me sample something she had worked so hard on. It was the least I could do after she had helped find Stella. And now that she had mentioned Blanka, I couldn’t send her away, a grieving mother who nonetheless had found the energy to make bread for me.

“Stella, will you draw me picture?” Irina asked once we got back to our house. “Maybe nice picture I can take home?” Stella beamed and trotted off to get her drawing supplies. Irina sat down on the sofa and unwound the bread from its wrappings. It looked like greasy, greyish pita. I’d written an etiquette column on how to politely choke down foods you don’t like. Charlotte Says: Take a tiny bite, so you can swallow it without tasting it, like a pill.

Then I smelled it, and for the first time in days, my stomach growled. It smelled like funnel cakes at a fair on a summer evening or french fries when you’re drunk. I picked it up in both hands and tore into it. It was rich and flaky and unbelievably delicious.

“This is amazing,” I said with my mouth full. I ate until the bread was gone.

Finally, I sank back into the sofa. I didn’t feel sick. I felt like a scurvy-ridden sailor who had eaten an orange. I was weak with gratitude.

“Where I come from, bread is holy,” Irina said.

“It’s the opposite of here,” I murmured dreamily. Emmy said gluten was bad for you, regardless of whether you had celiac, and Lulu had to bring her own personal “cake” to other kids’ birthday parties: a puck of sunflower seeds and psyllium that was like some nutrient-dense substance you would take on a trek across Antarctica.

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