Free The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons

pasture.”
    Dasha took the pails off Tatiana’s shoulders. “Berta and Blanca fed you, didn’t they?”
    Tatiana rolled her eyes. “They fed me, they kissed me, they sermonized me. And it’s not even Sunday. I’m fed and cleansed and one with the Lord.” She sighed. “Next time you can go get your own milk, you impatient heathen.”
    Tatiana was three weeks from fourteen, while Dasha had turned twenty-one in April. Dasha thought she was Tatiana’s second mother. Their grandmother thought she was Tatiana’s third mother. The old ladies who gave Tatiana milk and talked to her about Jesus thought they were her fourth, fifth and sixth mothers. Tatiana felt that she barely needed the one loud exasperated mother she had—thankfully in Leningrad at the moment. But Tatiana knew that for one reason or another, through no fault of her own, women, sisters, other people felt a need to mother her, smother her more like it, squeeze her in their big arms, braid her wispy hair, kiss her freckles, and pray to their God for her.
    “Mama left me in charge of you and Pasha,” Dasha declared autocratically. “And if you’re going to give me your attitude, I won’t tell you the news.”
    “What news?” Tatiana jumped up and down. She loved news.
    “Not telling.”
    Tatiana skipped after Dasha up the porch and into their house. Dasha put the pails down. Tatiana was wearing a little-girl sundress and bouncing up and down. Without warning she flung herself onto her sister, who was nearly knocked to the floor before she caught her footing.
    “You shouldn’t do that!” Dasha said but not angry. “You’re getting too big.”
    “I’m not too big.”
    “Mama is going to kill me,” said Dasha, patting Tatiana’s behind. “All you do is sleep and read and disobey. You don’t eat, you’re not growing. Look how tiny you are.”
    “I thought you just said I was too big.” Tatiana’s arms were around Dasha’s neck.
    “Where’s your crazy brother?”
    “He went fishing at dawn,” Tatiana said. “Wanted me to come too. Me get up at dawn. I told him what I thought of that.”
    Dasha squeezed her. “Tania, I have kindling that’s fatter than you. Come and eat an egg.”
    “I’ll eat an egg if you tell me your news,” said Tatiana, kissing her sister’s cheek, then the other cheek. Kiss kiss kiss. “You should never keep good news all to yourself, Dasha. That’s the rule: Bad news only to yourself but good news to everybody.”
    Dasha set her down. “I don’t know if it’s good news but…Wehave new neighbors,” she said. “The Kantorovs have moved in next door.”
    Tatiana widened her eyes. “You don’t say ,” she said in a shocked voice, grabbing her face. “Not the Kantorovs !”
    “That’s it, I’m not speaking to you anymore.”
    Tatiana laughed. “You say the Kantorovs as if they are the Romanovs.”
    In a thrilled tone, Dasha continued. “It’s rumored they’re from Central Asia! Turkmenistan , maybe? Isn’t that exciting ? Apparently they have a girl—a girl for you to play with.”
    “ That’s your news?” said Tatiana. “A Turkmeni girl for me to play with? Dasha, you’ve got to do better than that. I have a village-full of girls and boys to play with—who speak Russian. And cousin Marina is coming in two weeks.”
    “They also have a son.”
    “So?” Tatiana looked Dasha over. “Oh. I see. Not my age. Your age.”
    Dasha smiled. “Yes, unlike you, some of us are interested in boys.”
    “So really, it’s not my news. It’s your news.”
    “No. The girl is for you.”
    Tatiana went with Dasha on the porch to eat a hard-boiled egg. She had to admit she was excited, too. New people didn’t come to the village very often. Never actually. The village was small, the houses were let out for years to the same people, who grew up, had children, grew old.
    “Did you say they moved in next door?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where the Pavlovs lived?”
    “Not anymore.”
    “What happened to