The Study Group

On Wednesdays, Sasha's kitchen was not a kitchen.

The small table by the window, where his wife used to sit with her pen and her notepad for the English phone calls, had been pushed into the middle of the room and extended with a folding table from the community centre's old storage, rescued before the demolition. Around it there were six chairs: four borrowed, two his own. On the wall, with tape, there was a map of Canada with all the provinces and territories, their capitals written in Sasha's square handwriting. On the fridge, a list: THE THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION. THE NAMES OF THE TREATIES.

And on the table, five copies of the little book. The citizenship study guide, which Sasha had read so many times in his truck that his own copy was soft as cloth.

Five people came every Wednesday at seven. A young couple who worked at a meat-packing plant and had their test in June. A retired engineer, fifty-one, who knew more history than Sasha and was too polite to say so. A cleaner from a hotel downtown who studied with flashcards on the bus. And Teodora.