American Gypsy (23 page)

“But you're terrible with money,” I said.

Her smile fell. “I thought you'd be happy. We'll be living in Las Vegas.
The
Las Vegas. Can you imagine how jealous everyone will be? Can you see their faces when they hear that Nora has opened her own booziness?”

“Business, Mom. It's called a business. And I won't go,” I said. “I like my school.”

“Look at you. First I have to force your ass back in school, and now you're suddenly Miss Devoted. We're going, Oksana. I've already decided.”

“You can't do that. I'm sixteen.”

“Watch me.”

Mom had good reasons for wanting to get out of L.A., where hundreds of émigrés lived comfortably on their welfare checks.She was eager for something better. Nobody in Russia knew the truth about our circumstances. Where we came from, senior citizens and the disabled received pensions and veterans' benefits. The rest were considered capable of taking care of themselves.

“We could start fresh. Save money. In a bank,” Mom said, pinching my cheek playfully.

“Why can't you find work here?”

“And make shit the Russians call ‘pay' for baking bread in the backs of their markets all day?”

I tore into her optimism like an angry paper shredder. We talked long into the night, but nothing swayed me, which, to be honest, surprised us both.

As a kid I hadn't minded moving around. I grew up in train cars, watching Russian pine forests give way to the pebbled shores of the Black Sea where maples and spruces greened the countryside. I loved the stern Armenian mountains crested with the ancient observatories of Karahunj and Metsamor and riddled with the Christian monastery caves of Geghard, and I loved the villages of central Asia where people kept homemade wine in cellars beneath mud huts and marinated fish in barrels filled with sour milk. They all belonged to me, the entire fifteen republics with all their curiosities.

But now it seemed I was recalling someone else's life. Those places lay far away, and I'd begun to grow fond of my new surroundings. I liked the idea of belonging. In the past months, pride and a sense of accomplishment had filled me like water fills a well. Now all of it could evaporate. Did I have the strength to start over again?

The closer it got to the end of the summer, the more Mom and I argued. She had a month to relocate, and by God, nobody, not even her stubborn daughter, could stop her. I begged Dad to intercede, even though the idea of living in the same house with Olga gave me instant heartburn. More and more people were coming each day to have their fortunes read, and Olga was smugger than ever: “Not bad for a country girl, huh?”

When I started threatening to run away, Mom finally stopped pushing. Not that she gave up her mission; more like she changed her tactics. For days, we didn't exchange a word. Every time Dad called and asked to speak with Mom, she locked the bedroom door. Both my parents rock-climbed life, but instead of spotting each other as partners, each went solo to see who'd summit first. Dad took Mom's new plan as a direct challenge to his psychic business endeavor.

“Your mother has always tried to outdo me. In business, in our relationship, she always had to prove she did things better. But this time, this whole Vegas business is gonna be her downfall. This time she has reached too high,” he said, also pointing out her inability to take on something that required commitment and less drinking. Dad and I both knew Mom tended to run from trouble instead of facing it. Always she was filled with blind hope that things would work out as long as she could start fresh.

But she refused to give up on Vegas.

Finally she conceded that I could stay with Dad until graduation, two years later, but only if I'd give Vegas a go for one year after that. Roxy, though, was going with her. I readily agreed, certain they would be back in L.A. by then.

For the next month, Mom packed continuously. Between the curbside sprees and the neighbors' donations, we'd accumulated a three-bedroom apartment's worth of stuff. Mom refused to give away anything, even the plastic flowers she'd found on our very first excursion to Beverly Hills.

On the morning of moving day Rosa went to pick up Mom's U-Haul. I helped pack the loads of sheets and skillets Mom wouldn't hear of leaving behind. My stomach clenched. When I walked into the bedroom, stripped of its George Michael posters, I did so with lowered eyes. I'd tried to spend more time with Roxy, knowing I'd miss her outlandish humor and the way she got excited over our trips to the DollarDream or when she swiped one of Mom's lipsticks. She was still at that age when love was an unconditional thing she passed out to people like balloons. She was the only good thing our family had left.

My sister had stuffed her Barbies and bottles of nail polish inside a hot-pink princess backpack Maria had given her as a parting gift. Going to Vegas constituted adventure, and she couldn't wait to get on the road.

Rosa walked in through the front door, her white sneakers beaming in contrast to a brown sweater and aquamarine sweatpants. “I parked the truck in back,” she said, taking a seat on one of the two remaining chairs.

Mom came in from the kitchen with two steaming cups of coffee, handing one to Rosa. She'd been washing the last of the dishes and still had the kitchen towel slung over one shoulder. “I so tired, so tired I cannot speak.”

“Relax,
mija
. The drive will probably take seven hours.”

“You okay to drive big truck? How you think?” Mom had gotten her license two months before, but still said no to the freeway.

Rosa accepted the coffee and waved a dismissive hand. “Easy. We get to Vegas tonight, rent a car tomorrow.”

“Oh,
Slava Bogoo
! Thank God. How you drive on American freeway, I never know. Is scare me.”

Mom and Rosa exchanged one of those meaningful looks people always assume go unnoticed by others.

“Ju should go, Oksana,” Rosa said. “Is a great place for a teenager, no?”

“She can't leave her Brazilian boyfriend.”

I had forgotten all about Roxy until she opened her big mouth.

“Oksana, is that what this is all about?” Mom asked in Russian.

“I want to graduate from a decent school where they know me. We agreed, remember?”

Mom nodded knowingly. “Very good. You finish school, then you live with me. If not, I'll send you back to Moscow.” Then she added, with a no-nonsense wag of a finger, “And none of that boyfriend rubbish. I didn't suffer all those years in Russia and move our entire family here only to see you marry some rock-star wannabe.”

“Why not? You married one.”

I raced out of the apartment when Mom swiped at me with the kitchen towel. She chased me down the stairs, shouting at the top of her lungs, with Rosa and Roxy at her heels. We raced around the pool fence, one lap, another. My mother ordered me to stop so she could whip me with the towel. Her slippers kept falling off and Roxy kept picking them up and handing them back, laughing loud enough to attract an audience.

On the ride to Dad's house, Mom tried to make peace, but I was having none of it. If she wanted a battle, she'd get a war. As I got out of the car she tried to hug me, but I wriggled out of her embrace.

She and Roxy drove away with the Vegas lights bright in their eyes. I held my breath as anger was quickly replaced by something heavier. Our life on Lexington was really over. I'd never go back to the apartment or the people who had propped up our shaky beginning.

Just like that, we had moved on again.

 

THINGS UNSEEN

During my first months living at my father's, our conversations ran in shallow streams of dinner talk (helmed mostly by Olga), discussions of the supernatural, and music-related topics, where it was safe. We'd been strangers for so long, Dad and I. The reasons are sharp and at the same time fuzzy inside my head, like memories I might've stolen from the life of someone I used to know. What had made us like this?

According to my sources, aka relatives who get sloshed at parties, one reason might've been the fact that Mom became pregnant with me the first night my parents spent together. Perhaps Dad married her only because he had to.

The problem with beginning as my parents did is once the heat subsides and two people realize they'd rather join the Communist Party than spend a minute in each other's company, their child becomes a padlock that keeps them in that cold place.

Of course, growing up I had no inkling that I was the whisk that truly stirred my parents into chaos. Oftentimes Grandma Ksenia called me a “child of sinful passion” when I misbehaved, which naturally made me think she was alluding to my wicked temperament. As I matured, my father's tough love bared its roots. In our culture, a child conceived out of wedlock brings bad luck, as it belongs to the dark spirit that rules our darkest impulse: lust. Little good is expected from it, but evil is assigned naturally. To some, I might as well have stepped out of
The Omen
, as Damien's female doppelgänger, and once I knew that, my honorary title made sense. And never more so than on the day I revealed to my parents a terrible secret.

When I was seven, our next-door neighbor was a beautiful blond man with a beautiful blond family: his wife, Brigita, with a voice as fragile as the spring buds of a pussy willow; his daughter, Gala, who was my age; and a toddler boy who went by Ponchik (“Doughnut”). Peteris was in his mid-thirties. I remember watching him cook for his family in their tiny kitchen, peeling potatoes for a farmer's omelet and feeding all of us kids the raw slices before tossing the rest into a skillet that sizzled with butter. I never knew that you could eat raw potatoes, but he assured us that in the old days Slavs used to eat them this way. I loved playing with Gala, who kept a burlap sack full of her brother's old baby clothes for us to dress our dolls in. I'd bring my own bag of Roxy's cloth diapers and onesies. We'd swap outfits for hours. On the nights my parents were gone performing, Peteris and Brigita often stayed at our place to watch over us kids.

One night I woke up.

My parents' bedroom overlooked the backyard, where birds sang even at the latest of hours. We had so many trees, they probably assumed we were part of the forest that spread around our neighborhood like a mantle made of pine needles. I felt safest in that room, in my parents' oversize bed, curled in their sheets, surrounded by their scent. To my left eight-month-old Roxy slept in her crib. To my right the moon peeked through Mom's curtains. Above me the ceiling whirled between light and shadows cast by the trees outside. And below me was Peteris. He'd pulled me on top of him, and the fingers of his one hand were inside my underwear, the other tugging my shirt to my chin.

“What are you doing?”

“You're dreaming. Close your eyes.”

“I'll tell Mom.”

“No you won't. If you do she'll be mad, and you and Gala won't be friends anymore.”

“I'll tell.”

He rolled me off him, and I drifted back to sleep.

The next morning I sat on the kitchen floor dressing Sipsik, my favorite doll, while Mom swirled a whisk through a pan of farina on top of the stove. She was humming a song from
Ironiya Sudby
(
The Irony of Fate
), a famous Russian romantic comedy.

“Mom, Peteris woke me up last night.”

She leaned an elbow on the counter and continued to stir with the other hand.

“Why,
sladkaya
(sweet)? Did he have the TV on too loud?”

“He touched me.”

I felt my mother vault through the kitchen and crouch before me. The farina will be all ruined now, I thought, black clumps and everything. She lifted my chin, and as Peteris had predicted, she was angry.

“What are you talking about?”

I said no more. Sipsik needed a change. I made to get up, but Mom planted her hands on my shoulders.

“Where? Where did he touch you?”

With each place I showed her, her fingers ground me harder into the floor.

“He said it was a dream.”

I told her even though I knew I'd get in trouble. But I wanted to prove Peteris wrong. He'd sounded so smug. By all accounts I was a child who routinely defied orders. (Grandpa once told me I was lucky to be a girl, as I'd make a poor foot soldier.)

I was more scared of her reaction than of the actual incident. Why was she ripping the covers from around my sleeping father's body, exploding with threats of dismembering his good friend? Why was she dragging him half naked down the stairs and out the back door, and hollering for Peteris and Brigita to come out? Within five minutes the five of us stood in front of the wooden fence with our neighbors on the other side. Mom was shouting and cursing, Brigita crying. She asked me over and over, “Did he really touch you there?” And every time I said yes, her face cracked as if I'd put a hammer to it. I also wanted to cry, not for me but as an instinctive response to Brigita; her hysteria indicated something awful had happened. I wished I could understand what it was. In all this confusion and melodrama, Peteris and my father, who insisted that I dreamed the whole thing, were calm.

“I wasn't in the bedroom, Oksana.” Peteris winked at me, and I lowered my head. Something made it difficult to meet his eyes.

“You were.”

“She's a kid,” my father said. “We don't need to make such a big deal of this. Why destroy a great friendship over a child's imagination?”

My mother's hands flew to her face. “What kind of a child imagines something like that?”

Dad looked down at me.
A wicked kind.

Soon after, Peteris and his family moved away. Having nothing to compare the incident to, my mind quickly pushed it down the basement stairs and locked the door. For years I never thought of that night. Not until I saw Peteris again when I was fourteen.

A month after Ruslan's death, our doorbell rang at close to midnight. Mom wasn't home and I thought it was her. I peeked out of my room and saw a tall figure in a black wool coat embracing my father. Even from behind I recognized him, and my breath grew shallow like I was breathing through a thick layer of gauze. I hurriedly shut my bedroom door, blasted the TV, and sat in the corner on the plastic chair I never used. The voices outside that door were cheerful, the way they usually were when we had company. My fingers clawed the chair's hard edges, and I pressed my knees together so tight it hurt. I had only two thoughts: