WELL DONE! Sour-Cherries for Mihaela by Ana Doina

Sour-Cherries for Mihaela by Ana Doina

The gate to your garden still squeaks the loud si-do, there still is a wooden bench near the wrought iron table under the sour-cherry tree, and blossoming roses. I thought fifteen years would have been long enough time to forget all the small endearing details.

The sun, an upturned honey jar, glazes the day as it did each July. Your mom comes to the door wearing one of her festive aprons, only this time, her kind eyes are clouded, her fingers knobby. She thanks God for having the chance to see me once more, as if I were her long-lost daughter, not your schoolmate returning home from a long exile. Fifteen years is enough time to get old.

We sit at the table under the young sour-cherry planted after I left to replace the one knocked down in a storm. Your mother brings pastries, my favorites, and apologizes for not being able to make them like before, “Can’t kneadas much ... arthritis,” she says. I look at her and try to guess which age left which mark on her diminishing body.

Alone, we scrutinize each other. You have cut short your blond curls, my waistline has thickened a bit, our voices have ripened. Yet, we can still laugh—loud like unbridled adolescents. The ebullience of shared gossip still delights us as it did in the past. “No, no, no,” you shout, “Sandra put the plate on the bed. Don’t you remember? We were already playing cards when Theo showed up.”

“No!” I say. “You forgot how clumsy he was. We were playing cards when he showed up, that’s why he had to put the plate on the bed, to make room on the table. Only afterward, absentmindedly, he sat on the bed, right on top of all the sour-cherry pastries. Oh God, how we screamed! Schnauzy, the pug, leaped up at Theo’s butt to lick the custard, and you couldn’t stop laughing for so long, I was afraid you were going to choke. Theo, pour soul, was embarrassed to tears!” “Yes, yes, he was crying!”

Above our heads, the sour-cherry tree whispers a blessing of cool breeze. The pastries your mom baked for my return taste as lush as the ones her younger hands used to make, and for once I don’t have to pretend—it feels good to be home.

Ana Doina, Romanian-born American writer living in New Jersey, left Romania during the Ceausescu regime. Her poems appeared in national and international print and online magazines, and textbooks such as War, Literature, and the Arts, Pinyon Poetry, Visions International, Poetica, North American Review, Rattle, California Quarterly, Paterson Review, Crab Orchard Review, American Diaspora, Red White and Blue, Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century She won Honorable Mention in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience contest in 2007, and two of her poems were nominated for 2002, and 2004 Pushcart Prize.