“Go Get ’Em”

Illustrated by Yana Mihaylova

My boyfriend’s family is supposed to visit and we have to prepare and try to match their lavish dinners and four-course crystal-and-china extravaganzas. They are going to bring a bottle of grappa with a geranium tied around the neck and formally ask for my hand in marriage. There are no diamond rings in our version, just the bottle. I spent the morning looking for at least two plates or glasses or forks of the same kind. I wash and dry everything we own and try to select plates with fewer stains or chipped edges or fork lines. You would think we are starving, scraping plates with a force that leaves marks. I find a tablecloth with only one stain and cover the spot with a vase of oak leaves we brought from the park. They were red yesterday but are quickly turning brown. I don’t know if that’s an omen or not. I spit three times behind my back, just in case, and knock under the table. You shouldn’t knock on the table, because whatever evil is lurking underneath will be served to you. People should be more careful about these things. I arrange the plates in the dining room; some Bounty folded into triangles will have to do for napkins.

When I was first invited to their apartment for a formal introduction, I thought it was inappropriate to go empty-handed. I didn’t have any money, being a student and not working at the time, so on the walk there, I gathered chestnut blossoms. Chestnuts bloom in these graceful, long pine-tree shapes, which look like a symbol of something. My earliest memory is of chestnut blossoms; I was probably about one and a half. I was in my stroller and my grandfather Danko pushed me from the curb to the street, and the moment the wheels hit the cobblestones, I looked up and saw candle-shaped flowers covering the entire street. My rudimentary aesthetic thought was, So here we are! As a result I can never stop myself from plucking chestnut blossoms when I see them and making a huge bouquet. I’ll add the occasional dandelion, or a tulip escaping under someone’s fence.

After seeing Hair at the Friendship Cinema for the first time a month or so earlier, my boyfriend and I decided we were hippies and adopted all the attributes: ripped denim, leather bracelets, beads, and colorful scarves. We parted our hair in the middle and tied leather strings across our foreheads. We also danced in the parks where all the protests around the fall of communism took place. I picked up every chestnut blossom I saw.

His mother opened the door and stared at me, behind my huge bouquet, perplexed, but I’d also like to think pleased. After a minute you could see a thought on her face along the lines of I can work with that. She handed me a pair of fancy high-heeled house shoes decorated with rhinestones, which didn’t match my ripped denim, and sat me next to her at the table, which was covered with a white lace tablecloth and set with tons of fancy dishes and a vase of orchids. Each person had three glasses and five forks and knives to help them through the night.

My three-year-old niece fetches the bag of fried peanuts we bought on the street and, using the same hand she had in her mouth, plops a small oily pile on each plate. I decide to leave them there, no time to wash it all again, and besides, the nuts cover the dark spots and white chips. She then gets out her plastic potty, a red turtle with a sad smile, and starts softly farting into it. The guests ring our doorbell, which also makes a sharp, farty noise, the kind that causes you to snap your head and yell, “What now?” Not like my boyfriend’s family’s doorbell, with its complicated, seven-tone church melody that gives you spiritual chills and causes you to quiver excitedly.

My mother walks in, holding a huge basin of laundry she washed and wrung by hand, since our machine is broken. She wants to hang our clean underwear to dry on the balcony. She orders the guests to take off their coats and shoes in the tiny corridor. Everyone offers their name and kisses everyone else, and women scrape their lipstick off other people’s cheeks. The guests hop up and down on one foot, unbuckling shoes, some falling on the floor, others grabbing body parts or wet laundry for support. Then everyone squeezes out of the corridor and into the dining room, where they take a deep breath of the farty air and adopt the usual shocked expression that our family seems to bring out in people. Some yelp in pain after stepping barefoot on a peanut or toy. My mother opens the balcony door and starts hanging up underpants, talking to the guests with her back to them. Her voice is loud, and thus the entire neighborhood is informed that I am to be asked for my hand in marriage. My father makes a joke: They can’t have just the hand because that would really hurt. Everyone laughs gratefully. He tries to smoke a cigarette outside, the back of his head framed between two pairs of panties, but the cigarette gets wet and he comes back into the room.

My niece has been forgotten in the corner. The grappa is poured, and praised. “Just a little bit for the ladies” is allowed, then some more. We start with a favorite theme from my boyfriend’s side: the taste of the white cheese. It is discussed and compared to the taste of other white cheeses eaten in the past. Out of politeness they rate the cheese my family serves real high, right next to this one cheese they can’t remember the name of but were once happy to buy, and were never able to find another quite like it afterwards. The yellow cheese is cut evenly into one-inch cubes, the salami slices are all equal width, the cabbage salad is shaved so thin, it’s transparent. My father spent the day cutting those things and cooking one hundred equally shaped meatballs, and baking one hundred small fish, each of them exactly three inches tall and with a smile on its baked pearlescent face. Dad studied mosaics, and he doesn’t joke around with his shapes, sizes, or right angles. Meanwhile, my niece is ready and the potty full of pee is passed above the table because there is no room to carry it around the side without spilling on the guests. “It’s just a little kid’s pee,” my mother tells me, since I am the one getting married and maybe can better explain as much to our guests behind the bush of brown leaves, which are now falling in the salad.

More grappa is poured to un-shock everyone and my father diplomatically introduces the theme of the tomatoes, cut in equal half-moons, and how they rate next to different kinds of tomatoes we’ve had in the past. Everyone has something to say about that. My marriage is at stake but for some reason I am calm. If we scare them away my family will have a little more time to perfect our dinner presentations, until I use my hippie tricks again, chestnut blossoms, blue beads, and all, to lure the next clueless candidate and his clan with their bottle of grappa.

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From People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much by Sofi Stambo. Used with permission of the publisher, Restless Books. Copyright © 2026 by Sofi Stambo.