Camelia Popescu
The teachers and my mother called it homework. My father never asked me. But to me they weren't homework, they were doors to other worlds. I learned curiously about either and neither, I marveled at how you can put letters in different strings and have the mind enter new realities. And numbers and geometric figures fascinated me. That's how I sometimes dodged sounds, my mother's groans, my father's hoarse voice, cries and thumps. Other times my mother would take me with her and I would run away from home. Even today I like homework, but not musical homework and not running away.
Mihaela Palaloga
No meal without fish, her father used to say as he tossed the day's catch into the broken stainless steel sink. She'd do her homework and couldn't wait for her mother to carefully peel the fish, spread the corn on the top shelf on a newspaper, and then fry the gobies in boiling oil. If she was lucky, sometimes they had bigger fish with bones and ossicles that she wasn't afraid of. And the math seemed easier to understand in the choking smoke of oil and the swirls of cornmeal. She had already learned multiplication when her father drowned.
Ana-Maria Butuza
God, how handsome was the boy she saw at recess in the schoolyard. And she, the fool, was so ashamed when his gaze became insistent. She'd get annoyed, look for something to do elsewhere, even show interest in some friend's totally uninteresting stories, just so he wouldn't guess her thoughts. She didn't even know his name, but what did it matter, he had stirred up some unknown emotions in her. Now, integrals and limits from minus to infinite plus equaled his face.
(Translated by Diana Caragea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.