Chanel on School Infrastructure

Year 1B group dynamics were complicated.

One thing, however, was obvious.

The most desirable position of all was to be Marina's best friend.

I held the office for exactly one recess.

We had a whole-school assembly that day, and Marina, a tiny blue-eyed queen bee with a long blonde braid, had forgotten to wear white socks.

This was impossible.

Unthinkable.

Nobody could appear at a full primary school assembly without white socks.

Fortunately, I lived close enough to school to run home unnoticed and return before anyone realised I had disappeared.

Barely able to contain my excitement, I offered to rescue Marina.

I would fetch the socks.

It was the high point of my entire Year 1.

For one glorious recess, I ate my sandwich with Marina while the other girls looked on.

Then Lena decided she wanted some of the limelight too.

Lena was the tallest girl in our class and my neighbour. 

Living next door to Lena felt like having a distant relative on the Moon.

I had been to her apartment.

Her mother, Lida, spoke French and owned imported make-up. 

I had seen it.

Even touched it.

It belonged to the same category as Moon rocks. 

At school, summer meant playing outside during recess.

Behind the building, near the fire escape, we had claimed a shady corner for ourselves.

Marina decided it would become our summer house.

Nobody objected.

Once the property had been secured, Marina made it clear that the house required decorating. 

There was already plenty of furniture.

Three broken chairs rescued from the back of the schoolyard.

A couple of little pillows someone had borrowed from the sewing room, a place we weren't allowed to enter until Year 4.

Even a few chipped plates from the school cafeteria.

The house looked perfectly livable.

Marina said the house looked boring.

The old metal windowsill formed one wall of the house.

According to Marina, it needed decorating.

This was Lena's chance. 

The next day, when the whole group was standing in front of that windowsill, Lena produced a bottle of Chanel nail polish.

The bottle itself seemed magical.

Small. Heavy. Bright red glass.

We simply stared.

Paris. Luxury. The future. 

Schoolyard. Kyiv, 1977.

"Exactly what I want," said Marina. 

Marina unscrewed the bottle.

She pulled out the brush.

No one stopped her. 

Marina worked with solemn concentration until no Chanel remained in the bottle.

We watched without speaking.

Half the windowsill remained rusty.

The other half was brilliant Chanel red.

Then Lena remembered she had a mother. 

And that she had to go home after school. 

Catastrophe was inevitable. 

Lena burst into tears.

Her broken heart echoed across the schoolyard. It travelled all the way to the top floor and brought our principal down from her office.

Anna Pavlovna, our communist history teacher, showed no appreciation for Chanel or Marina's decorating ideas.

She didn't have to shout. She simply pointed us towards the Principal's Office.

That day was the greatest tragedy ever witnessed by anyone in Year 1.

Not politics.

Not shortages.

Chanel applied to school infrastructure.