American Gypsy (31 page)

“Just proves your father's head is stuffed with cotton,” she said, upending a bucket of warm water she'd drawn from the raised pool nearby over the suds in my hair.

She picked up the eucalyptus branches and started to gently smack me with them, a traditional massage therapy. Combined with the steam, the minty smell of the plant was sharp inside my nostrils.

“What's the big deal, Mom?”

“You always take his side.”

I had been so used to this kind of scenario that no way was I getting in the middle of Dad and Olga's battle royal.

Walking up the sidewalk to our house, I heard shouting. Behind the living-room curtains, a silhouette picked up a chair and smashed it on the floor. I heard Olga congratulate Dad on breaking yet another Thomasville, her tone climbing into a falsetto. Their voices lashed across the front yard, up and down the empty street.

As I passed Sherri's Mercedes in the driveway, I slowed down. Earlier that day, I'd left her and Dad alone; Annie had invited me over to watch
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
.

The front door burst open and Sherri raced outside, a mixture of tears and mascara transforming her face into a Halloween mask. She was missing a shoe, and the straps of her dress hung off her shoulders like noodles. There were scratches on her arms and legs.

Olga stumbled into the doorway. “
Nu pizdets tebe, suka
(You're fucked, bitch)!”

My stepmother sprinted after Sherri. I'd never suspected such agility.

As Sherri limped to her car, Olga tossed a clump of frizzy orange hair on the lawn before jumping on Sherri from behind, making her stagger backward. “This is what you get for sleeping with my husband,
manda
(twat). Me!”

She pulled another fistful of the woman's hair. Sherri screamed, her hands flying to her head. “You crazy bitch!”

“I'll have you paralyzed. You'll be shitting in diapers when I'm done with you.” Olga's threats slurred and stumbled.

“I'm a man,” my father shouted over and over again. He was outside now, a bottle dangling from his fingertips. “Let her go, Olga! I order you.”

As the struggle progressed, Dad circled around them, shouting things like “Girls, that's enough!” and “I demand you stop!” and “I'm a man, dammit. I can do as I please!”

But they ignored him, falling and rolling on the ground like kids in a wrestling match, flinging obscenities at each other.

The three of them were so drunk that I suspected somebody would end up in a hospital before the night was over. Acting on impulse, I picked up the garden hose and turned it on, covering the nozzle with my thumb and letting it rip. The women screamed and sputtered, and let go of each other to shield their faces. I didn't stop until the water had soaked them through.

Dad wiped at his shirt and sway-walked in my direction. “Hey, that's Oksana.” He gave me a sloppy hug. “My daughter. Hello, daughter.”

“Dad, someone's going to call the police if you don't get her out of here.”

“I'll give them one of my CDs,” he said.

“Great. Why don't we go inside and I'll make coffee. Okay?”

“Premium idea, daughter, premium idea.” He ambled toward the house.

Sherri finally managed to make it to her car and left, the tires screeching with a startled yelp. Olga refused my help as she scrambled to her feet, muttering curses in liquor-tongue all the way to the bathroom.

I took a deep breath as I went inside, locking the front door behind me. The quiet was a good sign. No sirens, no cops. I made Armenian coffee and poured it into two espresso cups. That stuff is strong enough to make the dead dance, Grandpa Andrei used to say. Dad drank his while gazing at the cuckoo clock on the kitchen wall. Olga refused to come out of the bathroom. There was no point asking what had happened, not that I actually wanted to know; but judging by the worried expression on Dad's face, it was obvious that Olga had finally gotten proof of his unfaithfulness.

When Olga came into the kitchen, my father grinned at her.

“Don't even start.” Olga shook a finger at him.

“But it was nothing, my sparrow. I did … she attacked me, you see. I didn't want to but—”

“You fell into her pussy, I know,” she said. “Men are dogs, only dogs don't lie about being dogs. They don't screw the clients, expecting their wives to say nothing.” Olga rummaged through every cabinet, huffing at all of Dad's awkward apologies, until she found a full bottle of vodka under the sink.

I reached for the bottle and tried to pry it from her hands. “Come on, Olga. It's late. Go to bed, okay?”

Olga spit on the floor. She then went outside with the bottle tucked under one arm, leaned the garden ladder against the back of the house, and climbed to the roof. “I'm not sleeping with that man tonight,” she shouted from above. “Throw me a blanket, will you?”

I did.

A few minutes later Dad came outside and stood in the backyard, where the grass grew in bunches terrified of all the barren spots. I think he had sobered up a little after the coffee. He looked lost—an unfamiliar sight to me.

“Stop this nonsense, wife. It'll get cold up there,” he said.

“No colder than down there,” she said. “I'm not sleeping with you. Ever.”

Then she started to sing.

I will flee o'er the mountains

Up the path my moon has painted …

The bottle quickly emptied, giving Olga's lungs more clout. She was a terrible singer. Multiply that by the 40 percent alcohol rushing through her system, and the result would shame a yowling cat. No matter how we tried to get Olga down, she remained unmoved. The threats, the pleas, even the bribes were cut down by ten verses and ten choruses.

Every time Dad spoke, Olga raised her voice. By three in the morning, vacillating between rage and the very real fear that I might see Olga fall, my body demanded a bed, but I settled for a lawn chair. I fell asleep to the sounds of Olga singing and cursing at the sky.

The doorbell rang at seven-thirty. It was our landlord. The neighbors had complained about the inebriated five-foot-three Gypsy woman hollering from the roof all night. Since he also owned the two houses on either side of ours, they were kind enough to call him instead of the police. The house on the right had a neat row of cannabis plants blooming on its patio, and the one on the left contained a large family of illegal immigrants.

“Mr. Roy,” Olga said from the doorway. The landlord's name was Roy Shuck, but she always called him Mr. Roy. She had finally descended half an hour earlier. “Mr. Roy. I go on roof for count stars. Is my job. Come, I do chart for you. Only one hundred dollars. You take off rent, yes?”

Roy was a tall, sinewy man who lived in his bike shorts. I'd never seen men wear such tight outfits, except for the dancers in the Bolshoi Ballet productions, and even then they used codpieces for modesty. The first time I met Roy, I nearly lost my innocence; he showed up to collect rent in the most perversely crowded pair of animal-print Lycra shorts I hope never to see again. This time he had on a canary-yellow number.

Roy patiently explained about roofs and why tenants shouldn't go on them. “You're old enough to know that,” he said jokingly.

Olga took that to heart. “I no old. I wery famous psychic. Clients need hep, so I hep. On roof, inside, everywhere.”

Unfazed by Olga's indignation, our landlord insisted that from now on all stargazing and client support be done from inside the house. They finally agreed, but according to Olga, only because she'd needed to pee since four in the morning and no longer wished to talk to the idiot in yellow underwear.

 

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN

As a child I remember reading an article in one of Moscow's trendier magazines about 7-Eleven stores. It was like peeking into a world in the distant future, created by Jules Verne himself. The glossy photos depicted grinning workers surrounded by brightly colored food and sodas and the kinds of gizmos one might expect to see in a sci-fi movie.

The article described the daily tasks the 7-Eleven employees performed, their lunches, their uniforms. If only I had the opportunity to work at such a marvelous establishment!

By the time I decided to search for my first job, I'd seen plenty of 7-Elevens, and I'd learned that not many people worked at convenience stores by choice; it was a transitional job reserved for those on the way up or down. But I so wanted to work. Mom and I talked a couple of times a week and our phone conversations were chock-full of praise for a steady paycheck. We both knew being a cash person in a casino wasn't a dream career, but Mom's friends were American, her regulars were American, her life was sprouting Americana like a Chia Pet.

She and Roxy drove down to see me one day. They picked me up after school in a powder-blue 1971 Oldsmobile that Mom had bought for five hundred dollars. The body had rusted, the passenger-door handle keened in agony when used, and the plastic air-conditioning vents had breathed their last. Mom called the car her tank. “You'll see,” she said as I got in the front. “If we're ever in an accident, there won't be even a dent, but the other car will fold like an accordion.”

We ate lunch at the Pizza Place, in the same booth where Cruz, Natasha, and I had had our first date. Mom went on about the perfection that was Las Vegas.

“One of my regulars owns houses in Italy and France. She vacations there during summers because Vegas gets so hot, but I love the weather.”

“I don't love it at all,” Roxy complained.

Mom went on. “I have another client who buys everything with plastic and credit.”

“I want plastic, too,” Roxy said.

“It's for grown-ups only.”

I bit into my pepperoni slice, cheese stretching like lace. Pizza was now my favorite food, though I'd never tasted it in Russia. I picked the cheese between my thumb and forefinger and stuffed it into my mouth. “Are you saving money, like you said you would?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“You keep it in the bank, right? One of those special accounts?” Earlier that year Annie explained to me the workings of the American banking system, and I sent Mom the instructions in a letter.

Mom took a long sip of her soda. “It's like you're my mother instead of the other way around,” she said. “I needed the car, and this trip is not free, you know. Plus, I've been winning at the slots. You won't believe it, but every time I spend, I end up getting it back. It's like I walk inside the casino and I can feel which machine's about to spill.”

“Mom. Tell Oksana what we wanna get her. Tell her, please, please, if you don't I will.” Roxy bounced in her seat. Grandpa Andrei used a special Ukrainian expression to describe this:
shilo v booley
, or awl in the ass.

Mom clasped her hands with a euphoric smile. “We're going to the mall.”

Roxy took a gulp of air and opened her mouth, and Mom immediately covered it. “Don't you dare. It's a surprise.”

Inside the mall, we dashed through the throng of shoppers. Patience was not one of Mom's virtues. If she had an idea, she lit up like a dynamite fuse. We finally stopped in front of Bob's Music World, where keyboards covered the sales floor.

“May I help you?” said the salesman. He wore ironed slacks, a starched white shirt, and a tie with piano keys on it.

“I like to buy my daughter keyboard.”

“Really, Mom?” I was stuck to the floor. “But what about the money?”

“I make money now from a real job, not a room in the back of my house, so I can get credit.”

What a feeling it was to test those keys, knowing I'd have one of my own. I was already picturing myself inside my room, composing until dawn.

Once I picked the instrument, I hugged my mother until I could force myself not to cry. Roxy hugged the startled salesclerk, who quickly ran Mom's name and gave her a two-thousand-dollar line of credit. My new keyboard was about five years old (ancient in technological terms), and it came with a metallic stand painted black but chipped, shaky like an old man's legs. My own tank.

Mom was making progress in this strange culture, and she inspired me. In Russia work for a girl my age would've consisted of learning to cook and sew ghastly dresses from ghastly Soviet pattern books, but Hollywood teemed with opportunities.

For a while I simply went door-to-door, asking if anyone was hiring; from an Allstate office, to a tattoo parlor, to a Chinese massage parlor, to a place that was called Pussy Parlor but wasn't a parlor at all.

I soon learned that most immigrants in L.A. worked in their families' businesses, and that those who didn't found something in their families' friends' businesses. Per Olga's nagging, Dad kept suggesting I learn tarot cards and channeling and set up shop with them. “This way you could take over when I retire and have something to fall back on in case you fail at everything else,” he'd say.

Dad and Olga's business was booming, and they could spare a few clients if I wished to make a little money.

On several occasions Dad hinted that he'd give me his special porcelain divination plate, or even the photo album Grandpa Andrei had forbidden me to look at all those years ago. Some of the pictures in it were so old, they'd nearly faded into white. I knew how much these items meant to him, but I also knew that by accepting them I'd be agreeing to be the keeper of my family's legacy. And at the time, I believed myself unsuited for that job.

To complicate things, Olga continued to drill Dad about my unengaged status. I started seriously to consider life away from the pressure to follow such outdated traditions. Dad wasn't the staunchest of conservatives, but even he treated girls as if we were a part of the home decor. Were I a boy, I would've been encouraged to go out in the world and get into as much trouble as I could. Romani boys are pampered first by their grandmothers, then by their mothers, then sisters, wives, and eventually daughters. They're passed on from one to the other like a suckling pig on a golden tray.