Apron And Shawl And Housedress, A Story Published In Supersition Review

These labels are specific to Moldovan goods such as sunflower oil, red wine, and bottled water. Some of the labels are in the Cyrillic alphabet.

From Moldovan Soviet shops during the early 90's, I would sometimes buy bread, rice or sugar, if available. Those shops still doing business were seeing supplies of goods steadily decrease. Eventually, they dried up and the shop pictured below, like so many, closed. Even when shops were open, shelves were often bare. I got to this shop  early one morning and when the clerk's back was turned took this photo as rapidly as possible. 

It surprised me to see how stocked it was. But note how dark. These shops were always dimly lit. To worsen matters, especially in winter, there was seldom electricity throughout the city at that hour. To get my picture, I relied on morning light, shooting with 400-speed film, through the shop's open door. 

By afternoon, all loaves of bread, as pictured, and all the baggies of rice, sugar and kasha were gone. 

Note the abacus, a tool that Soviet clerks, the majority of them women, used with skill. It still boggles my mind that this was in 1993. 

At that time, depending on which city you were in, walking about with a camera and shooting pictures could get you arrested, assaulted or deported. 

Money was in the form of coupons. None of the banks had currency of any kind, and they were often closed. 

It would be another year before Moldova had its own form of currency, the Lei.

For those who are teachers, or want to be, and anyone interested in what life was like for young and old in Moldova, neighboring Ukraine and throughout the former republics during the early years of the  Soviet Union's collapse, Apron And Shawl And Housedress is a story you will, I hope, enjoy. 

It's been included in the book, Off To The Next Wherever published by Fomite. https://www.fomitepress.com/off-to-the-next-wherever.html 

It was first published in Issue #13 of Superstition Review, at Arizona State University. 

This links is to a You Tube trailer for the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oQnVxOA30g

A big thank you to the magazine's founding editor, Patricia Colleen Murphy. 

Patricia is Professor Emerita at Arizona State University where she taught for 31 years. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection.  Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. You can find her online at: at: https://patriciacolleenmurphy.com/

Here below are the story's three opening paragraphs.

 Apron And Shawl And Housedress

 I was a burden. Had nothing to offer. I’d been sleeping in the same clothes for three weeks, sweating through fever dreams and the realization there wasn’t a quick fix to improving my health. I’d started in September as a guest professor in Bălţi, a Moldovan city that had never hosted an American resident. I’d been warmly received, yet in my third month on the job I’d come down with double pneumonia.

I fumbled my way to Elena’s kitchen. Hard afternoon light heated her small table. When there was electricity, Elena liked to make Plov, a mixture of rice, cubed beef and carrots. I found her seated and thumbing through a beat-up copy of Time I’d given her.

It was one of the days everyone under her roof had to speak English, rather than Russian or Romanian. I began to speak but stopped when tinny music came from the speaker of the state radio system wired throughout the building. The electricity was on. Usually, the state played Moldovan folk music. This afternoon was no different....