American Gypsy (21 page)

To Mom, magic absolutely existed, just not all on its own. It had to come from within as much as from without. She believed that every person had a bit of magic inside them—some had the ability to apply it; for others it stayed dormant forever. Mom didn't arrive at this point of view all on her own, but adopted it from a clairvoyant friend from Tadzhikistan who used to visit us in Moscow every summer. Her name was Paywand, meaning “connection.” A fitting choice: one day, her parents found Paywand playing by the river, conversing with an imaginary friend who turned out to be her grandfather's ghost. The spirit advised them to buy a certain neighbor's plot of land. Paywand's father—landless, moneyless, but superstitious—bought it with help from equally superstitious friends and relatives. Within several years the land blossomed into a pomegranate farm with the sweetest and juiciest fruits in town, and the poor man became a well-respected merchant.

I first met Paywand when I was six. Her almond-shaped eyes looked like they'd been traced with care by a painter's brush. But it was her hair that fascinated me. She wore it in a multitude of intricate braids down to her knees, as was the Tadzhik custom. During her first visit, as everyone sat around discussing worldwide supernatural occurrences, Paywand braided my own hair in that fashion. For two weeks I pranced around the school in my sweet hairdo. The eventual unbraiding was a two-hour ordeal.

Paywand could walk into any dwelling and sense a supernatural presence. Countless times she was called to haunted sites to discern the type of entity residing inside. Yet she recognized mysticism and spirituality not only with a clairvoyant's sensitivity to spirits or a seer's awareness of the future but also in Rembrandt's brushstrokes and Dostoyevsky's madness.

“Are you some kind of a magician?” I asked her once.

“No,” she replied. “I'm a flashlight, like everyone else, like you. The only difference is that I'm on and you're not.”

“So if I turn on the switch, I can be a magician, too?”

“There is no doubt in my mind that you can shine!”

One of the reasons Mom didn't confront Mama Lola with her suspicions was probably because she hoped that even if Mama Lola had faked it, Rosa might've believed in the spell so much that it would work on faith alone.

“We must support her by releasing our own positive energies,” Mom said.

Roxy and Maria were playing poker in the backseat next to me. My sister looked up and grinned. “I'm releasing my energy right now, Mama.”

“
Yolky-palki
(For crying out loud),” I said, covering my nose. “You're disgusting.”

Mom turned around. “Girls. That's enough.”

But Rosa wasn't paying attention to us. She squinted at the intersection. “Mama Lola said to bury it where two set of track cross. Ju think I'm crazy?” She suddenly turned, and even from the backseat I could see the anguish in her eyes. She got a garden trowel out of the glove compartment and hesitated as if its cool weight had momentarily pulled her to reality.

Mom opened the door and got out. “If you crazy, I more crazy.”

“It has to work,” Rosa said.

“Right there, okay?” Mom pointed ahead, and Rosa joined her on the tracks.

Roxy and Maria jumped out. They weren't allowed on the tracks, so they played in the gravel, gathering rocks to take home.

From inside the car, I watched Mom and Rosa stumble over the tracks to the spot Mom had picked and dig at the base of one iron rail. Each of them had a lit cigarette sticking out of her mouth. After the tongue was safely deposited, they milled around for a bit, chatting.

Eventually they came back, their cigarettes long gone.

“I'm hungry,” my sister said as she got in the backseat. Maria nodded in agreement.

“We have to wait for train,” Mom said.

Maria scooted up and wrapped her skinny arms around Rosa's neck. “But I don't wanna wait, Mama. Take us home and come back later. Please?”

“No,
mija
,” said Rosa. “Mama Lola say I have to
see
the train. It will no be too long.”

It came an hour later, rushing by in a cacophony of horn and metal. I'd never been so happy to see graffiti swish by, and even the girls cheered, jumping up and down on the seat.

“It will work. You'll see,” Rosa said with conviction, looking my mother dead in the eye.

 

VIVA LAS VEGAS

But in Rosa's case, faith wasn't enough. As a result, Rosa and Mom spent days barricaded in Rosa's apartment, drinking tequila.

I began to worry about the kids. Due to our mothers' preoccupation and my failure as a cook, they'd eaten cereal and toast for two days straight.

On the third day, I determinedly rummaged around the cupboards and in the fridge. Roxy and Maria took turns sashaying down an imaginary catwalk extending from the living room into the kitchen, heads adorned with hair made from Mom's panty hose.

“I hate olives,” Roxy said when I picked up a can.

“Too bad for you,” I said.

I thumped the can down on the counter next to a bag of elbow pasta, a green pepper, and a braided loop of Armenian string cheese made of goat's milk. With the exception of smoked cold cuts, Mom seldom bought processed food. We had neither frozen dinners nor a microwave to heat them in, but we didn't need to. Mom could whip up a meal out of anything.

“I wanna help.” My sister leaned her skinny elbows on the counter next to me.

“And me,” Maria said. “You can make mac and cheese, no?”

The girls seemed excited about the prospect of cooking without an adult. Not me, but it was better that they thought I knew what I was doing, right?

“Grab a skillet.”

Roxy dove into the bottom cabinet and dug out the largest one she could find. Meanwhile, Maria got the task of washing the pepper. We were
so
cooking.

The three of us sat on the floor in front of the twelve-inch TV borrowed from one of the neighbors who never asked for it back.
I Love Lucy
was on, the episode where Lucy and Ethel get a job in the chocolate factory. Steam rose in willowy threads from my invention, piled generously on our plates. We gulped down the mush of overcooked pasta dotted with olives and green-pepper slices and topped with melting string cheese. The girls giggled at Lucy, her mouth stuffed with chocolates.

“What's this?” Maria asked a few minutes into our dinner, pulling something small and black out of her mouth. I studied the fragment that didn't fit the description of any ingredients I had used.

Roxy turned her spoon around her plate. “Look. I have some, too.”

I found several similar pieces in my food, my heart falling at the prospect of having just poisoned two little girls. “Don't eat that anymore.”

Running back into the kitchen, I turned on all the lights, Roxy and Maria chattering at my back like chickens in a coop.

“Maybe they're worms,” Roxy volunteered as I removed the lid off the skillet, hovering over its contents.

“Too hard,” Maria said. “One time, Mom found mouse poop under the sink. It could be mouse poop.”

“Shut up, you two.”

I grabbed the garbage can, poking around in it with the stick Mom used to prop up the kitchen window when smoking. Nothing. Back to the skillet. I snatched the cooking spoon I'd used and dug it deep in the pasta. I picked out more bits and laid them on the counter. As I lifted the spoon for another go, my eyes jumped to its bowl.

“
Mat' tvoyu cherez sem'vorot s prisvistom
(Fuck your mother through seven gates while whistling)!” I said. The plastic edges had shrunk back in thick charred grooves, slicked with melted cheese.

“What? Let me see!” The girls attached themselves to my sides.

“I melted the damn spoon!”

*   *   *

I still sympathize with people who are taken in by the Mama Lolas of the world. Were it that easy, psychics would be in more demand than doctors and lawyers.

To me, mysticism isn't showy ceremony. Agrefina, the old seer, saw the fortunes of others through flashes of vision, not in full pictures, and that imperfection made her real. These natural psychics are the ones I always trusted; the ones who showed vulnerability without fear and admitted freely that the art of divination was unpredictable, as changing as the universe. In my experience only charlatans had all the answers.

After days of moaning and bitching about women whose fucking East L.A. houses should burn to the fucking ground, Rosa knew what to do to make everything okay for a while.

She'd been played, and only one thing would cure it: a trip to Vegas.

In Russia my parents would have had no problem leaving us alone for a couple of days, but L.A. was still an unpredictable beast. We all knew that three straight days with Olga might end in casualties. But Mom had bigger things on her mind, though she wouldn't share them with me. I complained for a few hours before she shipped us off, disappearing into the sunset in Rosa's purple Buick.

That evening Olga made us eat with her and Dad's friends at the dining-room table. Everything in my father's house happened around that table. All the important decisions and arguments, and the socializing. Dad had plenty to say about Mom leaving in such a hurry, though nothing of the kind I'd want to repeat.

“
Kakova huya ona poekhala tuda
(Why the fuck did she go there)?”

“She cares nothing for the kids. That much is clear,” Olga added.

Olga's beef Stroganoff tasted like cat food, but she insisted we girls needed nourishment. In front of several women she fretted over our skinny elbows and drawn cheeks.

“You poor girls,” she said in Russian, ladling more slop into Roxy's bowl. “Your mother should pick up a skillet once in a while.”

“Mom went to Vegas to start an American life, not sit here pretending we're still in Russia,” I said. “And so you know, she's a great cook.” Just not lately.

Dad noticed Olga's scowl and turned to me. “It's the recipes, not her skill, that made the meals so good.”

I was about to say something more in Mom's defense when Roxy kicked me under the table. “Stop making trouble or she'll send us home,” she said in English, trying to whisper but not really succeeding. “I'm tired of eating Cheerios.”

“See?” Olga jumped in. “Nora doesn't have time for you girls with all that drinking to keep her busy. You'd be much better off with us in India.”

I stood, dry of the anger I had felt at my mother. “We're fine, so why don't you shove off!”

My father's fist came down on the table. The thud reverberated inside my stomach.

“Leave this table—now.”

I hoped Las Vegas would turn out to be the miraculous city so many Soviets claimed it to be. A place where impossible things happened to immigrants. I envisioned Mom coming back to L.A. in a shiny Rolls-Royce crammed with money. We'd buy a mansion, uptown from Olga. If she and Dad came to visit (as they would, to swim in our Olympic-size pool), Ken, our buff security guard, would refuse to let her past our Gucci wrought-iron gates.

 

CONVERTING SHERRI

Olga's company consisted of women who started off as clients. She read their palms and tarot cards, and performed occasional cleansing or binding rituals in the séance room. Since Olga was a social creature, eventually they all ended up gossiping in the kitchen. Soon these women came by at all hours to drink tea and sometimes ogle my father and his many long-haired musician buddies.

The women were loud in the way birds are during the early-morning hours. When they sat in that kitchen together, they seemed to manage several conversations at once.

One of these ever present characters was a Russian hairdresser named Sherri (Russian name Elizaveta), who made the
Real Housewives of Orange County
look like the Singing Nuns. Every time Sherri and Dad were in the same room, her boobs pointed in his direction like radar dishes. Having almost no chest to speak of, I secretly wanted to ask her how to make mine more noticeable.

I couldn't imagine Olga didn't notice Sherri's interest in my father; perhaps she chose to ignore it, appearing to be content as long as the clients, and their money, kept coming.

Sherri paid in hundred-dollar bills but only for tarot readings. She avoided all other types of divination until one night Olga finally convinced her to join us for a channeling session. If I didn't know better I'd say she had agreed only because my father would lead the séance. Roxy had gone to bed earlier, but I was allowed to participate. Though I was still afraid, that didn't mean I wasn't curious. Plus I trusted my father with the board.

Dad laid the board on the kitchen table and fetched his plate from the bedroom. Sherri sat next to me with an expression of boredom, one side of her mouth pinched up, the same look you get from people who think you're lying and want you to know they know. Dad began chanting, and in a few moments, we were ready to go.

“We have someone new with us tonight,” he said into the air. “Her name is Elizaveta. Will you answer her questions?”

The plate slid to “Yes.”

Sherri shook her head. “No, no, I'll pass.”

“Why?” Olga said.

“They're dead. Dead people can't talk.”

“You think we're faking,” Dad said.

Sherri crossed her legs nervously, the heel of her left pump nearly touching my pant leg. Suddenly she grabbed my hand. “Fine. But let Oksana go first.”

Dad chuckled, but Olga wasn't as pleasant.

“Next thing we know, you'll say Oksana is in on it. That we trained her to ask certain questions.”

“If this is real she doesn't have to ask the question out loud, does she?” Sherri said triumphantly.

Lately I'd been skeptical myself, because Dad's connection with his guides appeared unbroken. Any time he called, they responded. Mama Lola was to blame for my misgivings, and I hated her for it. Dad wasn't like Agrefina; he had no visions of his own the way a seer does. If anything, he was more like Paywand; instead of predictions that focused on a specific individual's energies and thoughts, he connected with entities who delivered “knowledge” through him. But what if he was like Mama Lola and I'd been unwilling to notice the signs? Though I wasn't a big fan of Sherri's, she presented a unique opportunity to find out if Dad was indeed a true medium.