This time, Katya did not translate. Instead, she protested, “A secretary! But you yourself said you are unusual. You must learn what’s possible.” She could see the Grebo epic, on the order of Sundiata, that Patience would never translate if she went to secretarial school. “Patience, your story can open doors! Listen, I’m not a city interpreter. I’m a literary translator. My students at the university are foreigners like you. Their English is also a work in progress, yet they’re in graduate school…”

To the social worker, Katya said, “It’s unjust, ridiculous. Her ambition is to be a secretary.”

She thought again of Brun asking her to declaw farouche. It was a cold afternoon in the walled garden, Brun sipping campari. An aisle of pruned mulberry trees looked like a hospital postcard.

But the social worker wore a chain mail suit of competence and no illusions. Before Katya could promise to bring Patience’s case to the dean of admissions, he preempted her intentions. “That’s a fine ambition, but not an immediate one. She’s got a fourth grade education, and even that was interrupted. She’ll need to take English at the adult school for a year or eighteen months. After that, we can revisit the question of secretarial school. What I’d like to know now is, did she braid the girls’ hair? I know a salon that’s hiring.”

Katya did not relay this. She thought again of Brun asking her to declaw farouche. It was a cold afternoon in the walled garden, Brun sipping campari. An aisle of pruned mulberry trees looked like a hospital postcard. The gardener Nguyen earlier had disrupted an ant colony; and as Brun talked, a file of ants mounted the table leg, encroaching on Brun’s sponge fingers and Katya’s manuscript. After stating that current events never entered her work, Brun leaned in towards Katya. “The cost of others to the self is my sole topic.” Gathering Katya’s sleeve in her hand, the writer said confidentially, “I realize the cost of others is also your subject. Which is why I know I can count on you to do my books justice.”

The sister-in-law brought a tea refill, and Katya drank it agitatedly. In place of fracture and icicle strike, revulsion and tongue burning.