Lightning quick, whispers, drifting smoke, a breeze. Bogdan and Gavriil’s training was excellent. Valeria would fake tripping, fake being lost, cry in front of a wealthy man or woman. They would move to help her, and I would move to remove their wallets. Valeria would stop crying, thank them, and before they knew they’d been robbed, we would disappear. The problem came in explaining to our mother where the money came from. The solution came through sewing pillows. We sewed pillows, often using fabrics from our late grandmothers’ dresses, as we couldn’t afford new fabric, or find it to buy, even on the black market, to sell to my mother’s customers. When we dropped off the mending, we showed the clients our pillows, our stitches tight and precise, the pillows pretty with lace, rickrack, ruffles, embroidery. We told her we sold them for more than we did. It was a secret between the three of us. Pillows and pickpocketing. For survival. * * * In the dead of winter, our windows frozen with ice, the heat in the building paltry and sporadic, the hot water gone for weeks at a time, my mother, sewing at all hours, became sick.
What do You think about The Language Of Sisters (2016)?
