Xhosa and Russian Folktales

Else poisoned her husband as a token of her love for Erika. Alone in her prison cell Else relives who and what had brought her there - Erika and their secret language, Erika's enabling mother, Else's jealous mother-in-law, her abusive husband and his appalling secret, the words of oppression.'Elsechickgorgeousyou you are like a blank white sheet of paper on which I am the Word. You are like the nothingness that I first efface because I have Words to put into the emptiness. Because I am the Word so-to-say.'