MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT

Mentor Commentary:
Katie Strine

Recipient Reflection: 
Maria Odessky Rosen

Chernushka

Creative Non-Fiction by Maria Odessky Rosen

When I was pregnant and on bed rest, Marc and I moved into the bedroom downstairs so that I might avoid climbing stairs. I didn’t miss my bedroom. It was too big - colder in the winter and hotter in the summer than the rest of the house. Plus, I hated our bed. The mattress was too hard. Unlike the rest of the world, I always slept better in other beds. The bedroom downstairs was small and warm and cozy, and the mattress was just right. The perfect place for me to nest while I carried my child. My little womb room.     
 
I was lucky to have the help of my parents and my husband’s parents, who took turns taking care of me for weeks at a time. They fed and entertained me while Marc worked. They prepared my meals and placed them on the coffee table in front of the couch where I spent my days. 
 
Each time it was my parents’ turn to babysit me, they brought yummy Russian delicacies for me to eat. Nothing tastes better than a fresh-baked loaf of Russian black rye bread. Smear some butter and add a slice or two of good swiss cheese, and I don’t need anything else. But one time I was eating some smoked white fish directly from the container, and I noticed it had expired a month ago. My parents must have cleaned out their fridge and, seeing this mostly empty container, brought it along so that it wouldn’t go to waste.
 
“Pa, the label says this fish expired last month.”
 
“So finish it.” He looked at me confused.  
 
“But dad, it’s expired fish. And I’m pregnant.”
 
“Who says it’s expired? Does it smell expired? Does it taste expired? Don’t buy into the dates. You know what I used to eat in the Russian army? Worm soup. Soup with worms. From the cabbage. Sometimes I would move them aside and sometimes not. Expiration dates shmexpiration dates. They’re not a requirement. More of a recommendation based on an overcautious government bureaucrat afraid to lose his bureaucrat job because some American with a sensitive stomach decides to sue.” I rolled my eyes. “I bet you will be fine. You’ll see.”
 
“But what about the time babushka was frying fish and worms popped straight up like nails through thin sheetrock?” I asked, recalling my grandmother’s words.
 
“That’s different. Fresh fish is a lot more dangerous. Smoked fish is very safe. It’s smoked. It doesn’t go bad.” Arguing with my parents about anything was useless, but if the point touched on American customs or values they went out of their way to show the absurdity of that custom or value. This position always struck me as odd because my parents were some of the most patriotic naturalized citizens out there. But then assimilation doesn’t mean complete blending in to the point where the origins are indistinguishable from the host. I dropped the argument and tried not to think of worms in my expired smoked fish. Secretly I didn’t entirely disagree with my parents’ pragmatic approach to what’s edible. The concept that you have to try something before you dismiss it as spoiled was entirely inculcated in them, and partially in me, as a result of the scarcity of food we encountered while living in Russia. 
 
My parents were once house-sitting my grandparents' dacha while my grandparents were away. My grandfather was a member of the Communist Party and periodically received care packages from the Soviet government expressing its thanks for his service. Unbeknown to the government, many people, like my grandfather, joined the party solely to receive the free sausage and cheese. One such package arrived on my parents’ watch. The cheese had the usual mold which, once scraped off, was edible. But the sausage looked questionable. The filling had shrunk away from the casing. My parents decided to try it out on my grandparents’ outdoor cat (in Russia, unlike in America, pets ate whatever they could get their paws on). Neither pets nor humans were picky eaters. All had strong stomachs. No one suffered from Selective Eating Disorder.
 
“Laura, cut a little piece of the sausage. Let’s see what Chernushka (Blackie) thinks,” my dad told mom. Chernushka had a beautiful silky black coat with a small white spot at the tip of her tail, a mark of distinction we always said. My parents weren’t trying to poison the cat. The cat was our royal food taster. If she ate it, then it might be safe for human consumption. If she did not eat it, then it definitely was not safe.
 
Chernushka walked unhurriedly to her little porcelain saucer on the floor, the one with the pretty colorful flowers that babushka didn’t use anymore because of the chip on the side.  The cat examined the grey piece of protein. Judging by her slow approach, Chernushka wasn’t hungry, but she would never refuse food, just in case there was a shortage in the near future. We all watched her next move with bated breath. Chernushka moved her snout close to the sausage, sniffed once, and looked up at us as if to say, “You people expect me to eat this shit?” Then she meowed in disgust and walked away with her tail straight up, pointing her white mark of distinction at us, like an accusatory finger.

As my daughter grew up, I told and retold the story to her for two reasons. First, to train her that eating healthfully requires an open mind balanced with a healthy dose of skepticism regarding food additives and expiration dates and all of this laced with a hint of Russian fatalism: what will be will be. And equally importantly, to remind her of her Russian heritage, grandparents and great grandparents who survived enormous hardships so that the next generations would be better and better off. I hope she thinks of these two lessons as she journeys through life. I think she will. Today, when we go food shopping and we come across an expired item, we break out laughing, remembering Chernusha.

Maria Odessky Rosen

Maria Odessky Rosen is a practicing attorney by day. At night she works on her writing. Her work was published in Literary Mama and she is also a recipient of a Certificate of Honorable Mention for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. She likes to tell herself that she would have had many creative writing accomplishments to her name if only her parents had not forced her into law school.