Our Petruška, I don’t know what’ll become of her

She’s just a wee kid, barely five, but she already knows how to lie and cheat like no other child. But I keep an eye on her. And she’s a sly wee devil too.

She’s after Grandad to give her a sweetie again.

“I don’t think I have any,” replies Grandad, but she knows fine well he does. Cos I caught her rummaging about in his cupboard. She even brought over a chair to see into the top shelves.

“Have a look,” she begs him. Grandad goes to open the cupboard, rummages about the shelf for a while – he keeps them hidden at the back behind a box with all his papers.

“We’ve only got cough sweets,” he says, rustling a bag then handing her a sweet. She grabs it without even a thank-you and shoves it in her mouth. She rolls her eyes, slurps – it’s a wonder you don’t see her drooling. Her hair’s a right mess, like a bird’s nest – she still doesn’t know how to use a comb. So it’s up to me, her gran, to bring up the girl! But it’s not up to me – that’s what she’s got a mum and dad for.

“Careful you don’t choke,” I shout at her. This stops her in her tracks for a moment, but then she recovers and runs off.

Where this kid gets it from, we’ll never know. My daughter’s wee girl, she’s better – nice and clever. But there’s no sign of that with this one. It’s just as well I don’t have to look after her very often. That would do my head in. Three days is enough for me. I’ve already told her twice that bad folk go to hell.

“And who are the bad people?” she asked.

“Those who lie and cheat,” I replied. I saw her mulling it over for a minute, but not for that long.

“And what happens in hell?”
“They stuff people into a cauldron and boil them.”

I know you’re not supposed to scare kids, and my daughter-in-law’s had a go at me a couple of times for doing it. But that girl’s tough. She’s not afraid of anything. You could frighten her as much as you like and it wouldn’t make any difference to her.

And then we’re playing Ludo in the afternoon and there isn’t one round where she doesn’t cheat. She throws the dice across the table, knocks down half the pieces, the dice ends up under the table and she jumps down after it. As though she’s being nice so nobody else has to bend down on her account and get it. But as soon as she’s under the table she’s shouting, “Siiiiix!”

The number of times I saw her turning over that dice.

“You cheat!” I yell.

“No, no!” she says, lying to my face.

“But I saw you!” I come back at her.

She’s about to open her mouth to let out another lie when Grandad intervenes. “OK, then, throw again.”

That annoys me. She’s always getting away with things. And that shouldn’t be allowed. But Petruška throws again and the little rascal gets a six.

“Siiiix!” she shouts happily, immediately knocking over Grandad’s piece. She didn’t have to, she could have moved somewhere else, but she does it deliberately. A kid’ll never grow up right that way.

“Tomorrow we’re going to see Gran Kovářová,” I say frowning. I know she doesn’t like going there. She’s afraid of the dog and those big steep steps up to the loft. I even told her one time that the bogeyman was up there. She doesn’t want to go, but she will. I’ve been promised some young chicks. By July they’ll have grown into nice little hens.

The next day I go to fetch Petruška from the nursery. Even though it’s only May it’s hot outside and the sweat’s running off me as I hurry along. Petruška’s running around the classroom, she was first to finish lunch but her face is still a complete mess. She hasn’t combed her hair once the whole morning. They should’ve had it cu, but she wasn’t having it. The only thing that mop is good for is catching lice.

“Do none of you have a mirror here?” I say, frowning at her when she comes storming into the cloakroom. “Go and look at yourself, you’re as black as night!”

“We don’t! We don’t” she says jumping up and down as though she doesn’t care.

“I know you do, so off with you!” I say, ushering her into the washroom. You can see she doesn’t like it. She runs the tap and wets her face a bit, but she doesn’t do it properly, and then she runs back without even drying her face. She’s starting to make me angry.

“Look at the state of you now! You’re all wet and you’ve just smudged it even more.” There’s some more squabbling and then I tell her to wash herself again. She becomes even more stubborn until finally I take out a handkerchief from my apron pocket, moisten it and wipe her face. She yells like a banshee, but it serves her right. “That’s what you get for not listening,” I say, putting the hankie back in my pocket.

While the girl’s getting changed I notice some pictures on the wall. I look to see if she’s done any and it doesn’t take long before I recognize hers: “And what are these scribbles meant to be?”

“They’re princesses.” And she’s already flying out of the door with me struggling to keep up. I almost run into Věruna Vavirková.

“Auntie, do you know if our kids have finished their lunch?” she asks me like she’s thick. As if I’m supposed to be looking out for someone else’s kids!

I finally manage to catch up with Petruška outside the grocer’s. From a distance I can see her jumping onto the bench beside Lojzek the drunk, pushing her face up against the window to see what’s going on inside. Maruna’s nattering away with Maška.

“Are you going to get down from there?” I bark at Petruška. The last thing I need is Maruna telling me the kid’s made a mess of her window.

“And who’re you, then?” asks Lojzek, laughing at the girl. But that one’s not afraid. Any other girl’d be afraid of that smelly hairy louche, but not her.

“Střechová,” she replies without a care. I can see she’d immediately start chatting away like no-one’s business, but I’m not having it. I grab the kid by the hand and don’t let go until we’re at the other end of the village at the Kovářs’ house. I open the gate in front of their cottage without ringing as her gran knows I’m coming. It’s a little old house they no longer bother to repair. You go across a yard between the outhouses. Her gran keeps this mad old dachshund in the yard. It’s a wild thing that you wouldn’t want in your house, so it’s chained up day and night, otherwise it’d be snapping away at everyone. But it can bark, I’ll give you that.

“See, it would bite you,” I say, pointing to the dog. The yard’s small, the chain’s long, and I can see how Petruška’s afraid that the dog could reach her there, so she keeps close to the fence. Even though she sees the dog can’t get her, she runs over to the cottage.

“Quiet!” shouts Gran Kovářka at the dog. She’s been watching us from the window and tells us to come in. She has the chicks all ready in a box and they’re chirping away like no-one’s business, after all I’m taking eight of them.

“Come and see how lovely and yellow the chicks are,” she says, holding out her hand to Petruška. She breaks free from my grasp and runs to her gran like she was in her own house. She’ll never be a shy one! Her gran opens the box. Petruška looks at how small they are – even I like them.

“What have they got here?” asks Petruška, pointing at a bowl.

“They’ve got a boiled egg, so they’ll grow up fast,” says Kovářka, patting her on the head.

If she only knew what the kid was really like, she’d be more careful. Then she gives Petruška a chick to hold. She’s afraid at first, but then starts to like it. She looks the chick up and down and strokes its head. But then out of nowhere she jerks her hand and the chick nearly falls to the floor. “Urgh, it did a poo!”

“Don’t be squeamish – you have to go to the toilet too, don’t you?” I say, putting the chick back into its box so nothing else’ll happen to it. Before I can turn round, the stupid girl is wiping her shit-covered hand on her T-shirt.

“You wee terror, what were you thinking?” I shout at her as I try to clean her up at the kitchen sink. I leave two hundred crowns for her gran – she won’t take any more – but we can’t go home yet. She’s made us tea and cakes, so we have to sit for a while. She’s always happy to chew the fat with someone.

“Love, why don’t you go into the sitting room,” she says, motioning to the door leading off from the kitchen. Petruška needs no encouragement.

“Make sure you don’t break anything!” I warn her. I leave the door half-open so I can keep an eye on her.

It’s quiet for a moment – all I can hear’s the creaking of the wooden floor. Then there’s a plinking sound.

“That’s Papa’s old violin,” says her gran, “You have a go on it. If you’re any good, you can take it home and she learn to play it.” Petruška brings the violin into the kitchen, sticks it under her chin and scrapes at it with the bow – it’s a miracle she doesn’t deafen me.

“You need to press down on the notes with your fingers so it sounds nice,” advises Kovářka, but Petruška just uses that bow like a saw. Then she tries turning the pegs so violently that before I can jump up she’s broken a string. I could murder that kid! But Kovářka just shrugs it off:

“Well, no-one was playing it anyways.”

Petruška continues scraping away at the three strings for a while then finally puts it down.

“That one never sticks with anything for long,” I say, giving her one of my looks.

The violin’s too big for her anyway. Then she goes back to the sitting room and there’s peace for a while again. So I’m chatting to Kovářka and forget about the wee one for a moment. And then straight away a bang. I jump up from the chair, my heart going like the clappers, and rush to the sitting room. Petruška’s standing there beside a flower pot she’s knocked over. I immediately start scolding her, but Kovářka says nothing apart from: “Oh, well, I didn’t even like that plant.”

But after that I don’t let the girl out of my sight. The trouble she causes everywhere. There’s always something. Last week I let her go out in the village, just in front of the house, or so I thought. And then suddenly I saw old Granny Vavirková running with her axe behind the pond shouting that I should go and get the girl. So the wee one had taken my bowl and was picking cherries from across the fence. From someone else’s garden! But she got her comeuppance – while she was picking them, her hand got wedged between the planks in the fence and she couldn’t get it back out. She screamed and screamed until Vavirková, who was going past on her bike from Heluna’s, heard her. She knocked out the plank with her axe so the girl could get her hand out – nothing happened to her fortunately, but I was totally mortified. Going to pick cherries from a stranger’s garden! And taking a bowl with her! What was wrong with that girl?!

So I get up and me and the girl quickly head off home. The chicks are crammed into the box and twitter the whole way, but it’s not far so they’ll be fine.

“And you’ll look after them, cos if you don’t, they’ll die,” I say, putting the chicks down in the hall in front of Petruška.

Not a peep from her. Well, what would you expect? So then I tell her, to make sure she understands, that the chicks are still young and I can’t have them among the hens. I’ll be leaving them here till tomorrow and Grandad’ll make them a pen under the shed.

Petruška runs off somewhere but then after a while comes back to see the chicks. At first she just watches them, but as soon as my back’s turned a chick’s out of the box. She plays with it for a while, so at least a bit of peace. But then she gets fed up, leaves the chick on the floor and dashes off somewhere. Not that it’d occur to her to put it back in the box! Do I have to think of everything? I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. So as I’m walking across the hall to the cupboard and the chick jumps out in front of me. Before I can do anything, I’ve stood on it. And it makes such a horrible crunching sound, I feel sick. Now I’m really furious.

“Petruška!” I scream, running to fetch the girl. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, messing around with some tea in a mug. I yank her by the arm so hard that the tea spills all over the tablecloth, but I don’t care. I drag her into the hall. She doesn’t know what’s happening, so she doesn’t even struggle.

“Just look at what you’ve done!” I shout at her.

For a moment Petruška’s tongue-tied. She looks at the flattened chick and then, like a moron, asks: “Why does it have blood?”

“Because it’s dead!” I yell at her. “Because of you!” I can’t control my fury. I see her gaping at me open-mouthed like she doesn’t understand.

“And will we dig it a wee grave if it’s dead?”

The blood boils in my veins: “No, we will not! We’ll chuck it onto the compost! It could have been a hen, but now it won’t!”

Petruška starts to whimper. That makes me even angrier. “And don’t snivel or I’ll skelp you one!” I bawl at her. Then I send her to the kitchen for a shovel to scoop up the chick. Petruška brings the shovel and is now blubbing. I can’t stand it! I smack her on the bottom to give her something to cry about. She finally pulls free and runs to the sitting room. But I know where she’s crawled to. When we moved the wardrobes there was a wee space left somewhere between them in the corner where she could crawl into. I think she’s even taken some things there with her. Anyway, she can stay there for all I care.

“And you can give me thirty crowns from your piggybank,” I call out to her, “So I can go and get a new chick.”

I leave her there and tell Grandad to go into the house in case she crawls out, and then I go into the garden. In the spring you’re always having to dig up the weeds to stop them spreading.

I return to the house in the evening, change the chicks’ water in the hall and then go to get out of my dirty old clothes. I can hear Granddad in the kitchen talking to Petruška. So she has crawled out then. The door’s half open so I stop to listen for a moment.

“And I painted this when I was still doing my apprenticeship,” I hear Grandad say. He’s showing Petruška his pictures again. She likes that, even though she’s seeing them for the umpteenth time.

“And who is that?” she asks. But I know fine well she’s doing that deliberately.

“That’s Masaryk,” replies Grandad. He also knows Petruška’s just putting it on, but he pretends he doesn’t mind. I watch as the girl moves her hand across the paper. “That’s how you do shading,” explains Grandad to her. “I’ll show you.”

Then he takes a pencil, leans it at an angle and scribbles away for a while. The girl tries to copy him, dropping her pencil a couple of times, but Grandad praises her.

“And now colour in again for a while. Finish off this horse,” he says, handing her another piece of paper. A horse, right(!) I say under my breath. It’ll be another mess just like at the nursery. “But don’t go too fast, you need to go slowly,” Grandad reminds her.

“Like this?” asks Petruška, slowing down with her crayon. Grandad nods.

“Look how nicely you’ve done it,” he praises her while stroking her hair. If someone saw her like that, they’d say she was such a quiet kid. She just acts that way in front of Grandad. It’s only with me that she’s a wee imp. I remember the chick and feel my anger return. I get changed into clean clothes in the bathroom and go into the kitchen.

“So you’re here?” I glower at the kid. Petruška peeks over at me and sees I’m still angry.

“Leave her alone for once,” mutters Grandad. “She’s being good – look at the nice horse she’s drawn. I could never have done that at her age,” he says showing it to me. I have to admit it was good for a five-year-old. Different from those at the nursery. But I don’t tell her that.

I take some milk from the fridge, tear up some pieces of bread into a mug and sprinkle them with sugar. I warm up milk in a pan on the cooker and then pour it over the bits of bread.

“Here’s your dinner,” I say, clearing away her crayons and putting it in front of the girl.

She turns her nose up at the mug and pushes it away: “I don’t want it.”

Once again I see that stubborn expression.

“There’ll be nothing else after.”

“Doesn’t matter!” she retorts.

“Eat it up or the postwoman’ll come and eat it,” I say threateningly.

“Why are you telling her such nonsense?” snaps Grandad. He’s always taking her side.

“What nonsense?” I start off, but then just brush it aside. Well, if she doesn’t want it, I’ll eat it myself. I take her mug and start eating. Petruška stares at me and pretends as though she doesn’t care. As though she deliberately wants to irritate me.

“Clear it up and then bed,” I say motioning towards her crayons. “Or your mum will be onto us again for letting you away with murder.”

The wee one, again wilfully: “I’m not going!”

“You certainly are!” Again she stares at me with that defiant look. And I don’t like her forehead one bit – high and ugly.

And then the stupid girl sticks her tongue out at me. Just a little bit. To see what I’ll do. And by now I’ve really had enough. I leave the mug where it is and charge after her. As soon as she sees this she leaps from her chair and scarpers. But in her hurry she runs straight into the doorframe to the sitting room. I’m slightly worried at first because she falls over like a ninepin, but then she gets straight back up and starts bawling her head off.

“Serves you right!” I shout at her.

“You should have left her with her crayons when she was being so nice and quiet,” chips in Grandad.

“Don’t you start,” I say, interrupting him.

Petruška has a split lip and her mouth’s bleeding. I want to take her into the bathroom and wash her, but as I go to grab her arm she wrenches free, snaps at me, and runs off to the living room. She crawls in between the wardrobes and starts blubbering.

“Stay there then, but you’ll soon come crawling out!” I shout at her. I wasn’t going in there to haul her out. Anyway, she’s crawled into the corner where I can’t get at her.

Grandad and I are sitting in the kitchen, the TV news has finished and Petruška’s still in her hidey-hole. I wonder if something might have happened to her, maybe she has concussion.

“Go and have a look,” I tell Grandad. Grandad gets up and disappears into the sitting room. I wait a bit and then go in too.

“Pass me the torch,” he says, turning round to me. I take the torch out of the sideboard and Grandad shines it between the wardrobes. “She’s fallen asleep in there.”

“Petruška, wake up,” I call into the hole. She just mumbles something and snorts.

Grandad tries, this time louder: “Petruška, come on, bed time.” He gropes for her arm, pulls her by the leg and the girl finally begins to wake up a bit.

But then she starts putting up a fight. We’re standing there, thinking what to do.

“Oh, well, we’ll just have to move the wardrobe,” decides Grandad. We really have to lean into the wardrobe – it was my mum’s old black one. The things it has seen! For a while it doesn’t budge, but as we put our backs into it, it starts to move. When Petruška sees there’s no escape, she retreats into the corner, holding on to the central-heating pipes that run along the wall, refusing to let go. I wrestle about with her for a while – she’s wide awake now and bawling her head off again, but I can’t pull her off the heating. I’ve no longer got the strength for it.

“She’ll go with me, won’t you, Petruška?” says Grandad, reaching out to the girl, and she grabs him around the neck. He lays her down on the quilt on my bed and the girl falls fast asleep. We go to put the wardrobe back in its place and, good God, the junk that girl’s taken into that corner, you’ve never seen the likes! All of those toys, colouring-in books, even that wooden spoon I’ve been hunting for. And some kind of rag, everything covered in dust. I reach for it and as I lift it something falls from the rag and jingles to the floor. Some kind of stone, but I can’t tell what it is without my glasses, so I grope for it and stick it in my pocket. I’ll have a look at it afterwards in the light. Grandad helps me put the wardrobe back, we turn out the light and return to the kitchen. I take out my glasses and sit at the table to look at what fell from the rag. And it’s an earring – a really nice one! A red stone set in gold. Grandad puts his glasses on too.

“That looks genuine, it has a hallmark. That’ll be real gold.”

“Who knows, it might even be a real garnet,” I say, taking a good look at it. Where did that little magpie get it from? It didn’t just fall into her lap. I knew she wasn’t a good kid. She wouldn’t have got it from home, I know that, my daughter-in-law wouldn’t wear gold.

“Leave it for now and we’ll ask her in the morning,” says Grandad. “Maybe she found it somewhere.”

Not likely! That Petruška has him wrapped around her little finger.

(…)

Translated by Graeme Dibble