Autumn Catalogue
T’S not that I disliked the lady downstairs, but she gave me no reason to like her either. All I knew about her was she liked to watch quiz shows and bellow out the wrong answers.
”Where are the fallopian tubes?”
“Moskow,” she yelled.
It sounded like a make up of transportation, the Russian underground.
Our TVs were stacked on top of each other, her ceiling was my floor. Then, in the foyer, the safe separation between our lives caved. I heard her utter claw at her door.
“Who that? Who there now?”
Her accent interrogated words, but her voice was so brittle it sounded as if it may break if ignored. I poised my catalogue and called, “No one, just a neighbour.” Her door inched open. I saw a mien cordoned off by a chain, a withered cheek spotted by a circle of rouge so tight it looked as if she must use a guide of some kind. A very old woman wanted to know my name. It was too late to pretend I didn’t speak English. She opened her door and waddled towards me, liking heavily on a sweeping brush like a crutch. I stared at the birthmark above her left eye, greyish depressed and shaped a bit like Russia.
