Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Duda

Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, 2011

    Sometimes Duda’s mother would get lucky. She would get a piece of chocolate-covered candy from a customer in the bank she worked at. She would smile thankfully at the customer thinking about the joy in her children’s eyes when she would come back home with the candy.
    At three-thirty she would stand in the door and say, ‘Children, slice the candy into three pieces, so that all of you can get some.’ Duda’s eyes would cloud over with that stern look of disapproval then. ‘I will slice it into five pieces. There are five of us here. The candy is for mother, father and for ourselves.’
    Duda would drag her artificial leg, pick up the sharpest knife in the kichen and slice the candy very thin into five identical pieces as her mother was watching her little girl not to hurt herself should she suddenly have an epileptic seizure. ‘I am blessed with just children,' she laughed.