Blue Glass

Caught

Life in the two-story brown house in Vienna quickly returned to its normal dynamic. With my mother absent, Svetlana and I had more room to spread our wings than when she was home. I tried to spend as much time with Svetlana as possible, although try as I might, I couldn't ignore the fact that she had become increasingly distant around me.
At first, I didn't know why i let it bother me so much. She was a servant girl, and I was her employer. She took care of everything in the house that needed taking care of, and we paid her at the end of the month. Whether or not we became friends in the process was secondary. But the more I let it get to me, the more I realized it was only bothering me because me and Svetlana were, to put it frankly, more than best friends. Each one of us was the most trusted confidante of the other. We had had no one but each other for a considerable amount of time, and try as we might, no amount of arguments or misunderstandings could eradicate the bond that had developed between us during that time.

I remembered the day I first met Svetlana like it happened yesterday, for all the right reasons. I had been traipsing the alleys of Vienna with my friends, looking for a nonexistent thrill in the allegedly crime-filled back roads and alleys of the city that our mothers spoke of. My friends had all gone one way, and I broke away from the group to see what was behind the local bar. I could hear the raucous laughs of the patrons inside, accompanied with the telltale clink of beer mugs being tapped together. Lifting the hem of my skirts clear from the grime and filth that littered the alley, I stepped over beer bottles and crushed cigarette butts. More than once I stepped into a grimy puddle of God knows what and prayed none of it would get inside my shoe or splash onto my stocking. To be honest, I hadn't known exactly what I was looking for behind that alley that day--maybe it was a higher power's way of leading me to Svetlana. I had reached the back of another shop and turned to go in my disappointment when I heard a faint cough a few yards away. I whirled, my hand instinctively going for the razor in the pocket of my dress, yet I saw no one in the space before me.

"Over here...look down."

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I dropped my gaze and saw her: a bag of bones, covered by a tattered, muddy dress, barefoot, the garnet red blood from various cuts and scrapes on her feet visible even against the dark brown of the dirt that stained them.

"Who are you?" I didn't loosen my grip on my razor in the slightest.

The figure snorted. "That's a good question. Sadly, not many people can answer it."

"What?"

"Who are we...without a place to stay...without food...clothing...companionship? Only after we've had those things are we able to say, 'My name is So-and-so', I am So-and-so.'"

Her German was choppy, and she spoke with a swarthy, thick accent. Ignoring the grime underfoot for now, I dropped to one knee before her. Blue eyes blinked in undisguised surprise at me, two spots of color in the otherwise blackened and dirty face.

"Why don't you answer your own question?" She didn't move from her position, huddled against a damp wall, bony knees drawn to her chest, spindly arms firmly clasping them there. "You're certainly in a position to do so yourself."

Even at the tender age of fifteen, I could clearly see that she possessed a certain wit and intellect that was literally nonexistent among people of her station. My first guess was that she was a noblewoman fallen on extremely hard times.

"I'd like to help you answer it," I said with all the can-do attitude of a typical fifteen year old. "And I'm 'certainly in a position to do so myself.'"

Although her face remained passive,the fact that she was taken aback made itself clear in her eyes.

"Are you any good at cleaning? Cooking? Washing and mending?" A minuscule plan was beginning to form in my head--no matter if it had cracks in it; I could mend it along the way. But something inside me told me that I needed to help this woman, just as something else inside me told me to let go of the razor in my pocket.