Kinga Varga-Dobai
The kitchen table holds the summer. Strawberry jam, apricot jam, a bottle of tomato juice, zakuszka* with eggplants. My grandmother made them. We made them. This summer is still in the jars, sealed with lids that will not open easily, that you have to press down hard with your thumb until something gives.
My mother is holding onto the list. She does not look at me.
Do not get rid of the jars, she says. The jars are expensive, and we will use it again next year. Do not get rid of the jars! You heard me, prücsök**?
I heard you, I say, and I sit down at the table.
The frozen pork, packaged among the jars, has a label in blue ink. Shoulder, 1kg. Someone wrote that so we would not forget what part of the animal we were eating. I look at the word. I think about shoulders, what they carry, what they cannot put down.
Tomorrow I am leaving to the city that’s two hours away to start high school and study English. I will rent a room in a widow’s house. She will cook for me. I am fourteen. These are facts. I sit at the table and watch the two women move around me as if I am already gone, as if the packing is the goodbye, the love, the kiss they cannot give just yet. As if the leaving has already happened and what remains is only the ceremony of jars on a Sunday and all the Sundays ahead. My mother does not look at me. She looks at her list.
Which zakuszka do you want, the one with beans or eggplant, my grandmother calls from the pantry.
The one with eggplants, I say, and I shrug. As if it matters. As if I am choosing between two ordinary things and not between staying and leaving, as if staying was ever a choice.
My grandmother emerges from the pantry with the zakuszka and disappears back in again. My mother makes marks on the list. They are packing the kitchen for me item by item, as if the right combination of jars and frozen meat and root vegetables will keep me from getting lost. As if food will keep me protected.
A raffia bag by the door is packed with something and has a small hole in the left corner. My grandmother says: don’t forget the potatoes. My mother says: it’s done, mother, pointing to the bag without looking at it. There is a hole in the bag, but the potatoes are big and will not fall through, she says. I think about this longer than I should. The hole that is almost big enough, but we cannot worry about it now. Not today.
Is she nice? I ask. The widow?
She is nice, my mother says. A little nitpicky but you don’t have to worry about that. She is a widow, buried two husbands. Your only job is to study. You won’t have to worry about math or science, only languages and literature, all the things you are good at.
She pauses. She is still looking at the list.
Your father and I were not allowed, she says. They called us to the police station. They thought we wanted to flee the country. Only paruski for us, but you, you will learn English. Nobody speaks English here, only Russian. You will learn English and will go to college and become a teacher and make good money with private lessons. You will make more money than us.
Outside the window the garden is very still. The summer is almost over. The summer is in the jars on the table.
I know, I say. I will.
But my mother cannot hear me. She is arranging the jars on the table.
I hope the communists all die in hell, she says, and makes a small mark on the list, as if she has just remembered to add one more thing, as if this wish too is something she needs to pack for me, something I will need where I am going.
The raffia bag still sits by the door. One small hole in the left corner. The potatoes are big. They will not fall through. I am fourteen years old and will be leaving tomorrow. I am thinking about the hole in the bag, and the eggplant zakuszka, and the word shoulder written in blue ink, and the English language that does not exist yet in my mouth, and my mother who is still looking at the list, who has not looked at me once, who is making marks, who is making sure I have everything I need: detergent, dish soap, potatoes, shampoo, the expensive kind. She cannot look at me, not yet, not today. She will wait until I’m gone, and then she will cry.
* zakuszka, preserved vegetable spread common across Eastern Europe
** prücsök, an affectionate Hungarian nickname for a small child: little bug, little creature.
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Kinga Varga-Dobai is a Professor of Language and Literacy Education and the author of Cultivating Care, Wellbeing, and Reflection in Teacher Education (Routledge, 2026). Her creative work draws on her childhood in Transylvania as an ethnic Hungarian under Ceaușescu and after, her immigration to the United States, and the experience of living between languages and cultures.