There is an old lady who lives in a house on my way to school. She is tiny and hunched and has a face like the oldest, gnarliest apple you have ever seen. Sometime during my first year in Klevan, she yelled at me from her yard. I have no recollection what she called me over for, but I dutifully answered her questions about myself and listened to her talk about her heart, her lungs, her feet, her hands, her children who now live far away and never visit etc. At the end of the conversation, she asked me my name. Apparently, Claire was way too difficult for her to wrap her head around and so she brushed my repeated attempts to get her to say it correctly away and told me the closest equivalent was Katya, so I was Katya. Great, I thought, all Ukraine needs is another Katya. Since our first meeting, I often see her on my way to school and we have basically the same conversation about her health, her children, and the weather. She always asks me if my mother has called me recently. If I don’t see her initially, she calls to me from her porch with the diminutive of Katya, “Katucyia.” Not surprisingly, at the beginning I didn’t realize she was trying to get my attention and she would yell louder until I looked over out of sheer curiosity and would realize she, in fact, was calling to me. Now answering to the name Katya it has become just another part of my day.
