In my résumé I wrote that I had looked after two children for three years. I did not give their names, so initially the lie seemed less serious. In reality I occasionally watched my nephew while my sister went shopping. I needed work, and the advertisement required experience I lacked. I stared at the empty section as if it were a locked door and wrote myself a key. When an interview invitation arrived, I wore the shirt I saved for better occasions.
Jasna welcomed me into the kitchen. A mug with dried cocoa marks stood on the table, and a washing machine could be heard through the wall. Nothing resembled the tidy world of the advertisement I had tried to fit. The child was with the other parent. Jasna wanted to discuss schedules, expectations, and how we would get acquainted privately first. I had brought my own pen, unnecessarily solemn, as though neat notes could give me what I had invented.
She asked what had been hardest about my previous family. I had prepared an answer about accommodating different habits, but no particular day. I began describing a little girl who refused her shoes. It was my sister's story, borrowed almost word for word. Jasna smiled, then asked to telephone a parent. I said they had moved away. Even as I spoke, I was considering whom I could ask to confirm the invented job.
Then I stopped. Not because Jasna seemed suspicious, but because she turned her calendar toward me and began offering a stranger part of her real life. I said the previous family did not exist. I laid the pen between us and explained what I had done and what I had added. Jasna closed the calendar. She did not shout, which was harder than shouting. She asked whether I had intended telling her before the first day. I could not convincingly say yes.
The conversation ended without an offer. She said my limited experience was not the problem, but having to separate it from invention now. I thanked her for her time, although I wanted to escape without that ordinary courtesy. Outside, I messaged my sister that I had not got the job. Then I deleted the addition that they expected too much. I called and explained what I had done before she requested my familiar list of unreasonable employers.
The next day I revised my résumé. It remained short and unimpressive. I applied for work I could describe without borrowing other people's days, and sought a chance to learn childcare alongside someone experienced first. Jasna never contacted me again. Sometimes I still remember the proposed schedule in her calendar. I do not imagine getting the job after all. I imagine how many other sentences would have been needed to keep that first one in place.