Coming up in the world

There was a knock on the front gate. “Mojzna!” A man yelled over the wall. “Keeringeez,” his mother answered, waving him inside. It was Pasha, the man they had hired over the summer to do some ornamental repairs on the house. He stepped through the gate and crossed the parking pad towards the table where the volunteer and his host mother sat, finishing a quick meal of noodles and samsi. Pasha would show up in the mornings, earlier or later depending on the number of juuz-gram cups of vodka he had consumed the night before, and begin his work adding a veneer of cement to the walls and spackling paint with his hand crank spray can. Each day he had worn the same grease monkey blue shirt, rolled up pants and flip-flops, his cigarette papers and bag of tobacco hanging in his front pocket. But not today. Today he wore a clean white cap and a factory made cigarette hung from his bottom lip. Pasha was coming up in the world.