American Gypsy (35 page)

He stirred the tea, spoon clinking against the sides of the cup in a rhythmic staccato. It felt like forever before he came back to the table, cup in one hand, pipe in the other.

“I see,” he said, and lit the pipe.

That's it? I'd prepared for a fight, made a list of solid arguments in my defense. But I had no idea how to handle “I see.” To break the uncomfortable silence, I got myself a cup as well, making sure the tea was almost black and very, very sweet.

“Dad,” I said, “this school is nothing like the music schools in Moscow. My teacher
suggested
I perform my own composition at the upcoming talent show. I can play whatever I want.”

“What's this talent show,” he said through pipe smoke. “Next you're going to tell me you've joined the circus. You have to have serious material before playing the stage; it must be exceptional.”

In my father's eyes, I was simply never to be mistaken for a real musician. Who knows: had I been born a man, he might've thrust a guitar into my chubby hands and put me onstage next to him before I could walk. So many times I recall my mother begging Dad to teach me instead of the Soviet music instructors, who, though accomplished, all came off the same conveyor belt. I could hear them argue as I plunked away at my piano. “I don't have the patience” was Dad's favorite answer.

“I only want to play the show for practice, to get onstage again, not because it means anything.” It was a little white lie, but I was trying to pad all corners. “Mr. North thinks I have talent.”

“Oh. Well. If Mr. North thinks so, then it must be true. Don't worry about what I think.”

“Don't say that.”

“It's obvious my opinion counts for shit. I
suggested
you learn the craft of divination, but I don't hear you singing praises for me.”

“Things are different here. We're not in Russia anymore.”

“You're so naïve,” he said, shaking his head.

“I want you to be proud of me, and to trust me to do the right thing,” I said. “We have to take advantage of being in this country, Dad. There are so many opportunities, but the thing is, we're on our own. Maybe back in Moscow, you and Mom could've used your connections to arrange for the best gigs. But if you haven't noticed, we're not living in Beverly Hills. Here, we're just part of a crowd.”

Dad studied his hands for a long time. I'd rarely seen him so contemplative.

“Had I known,” he said, “that my children would so easily submit to brainwashing, I never would've left Moscow. At least there I knew the kind of beast I was dealing with.”

“So we're supposed to live like it's the eighteenth century?”

“I'm all for progress,” he said, raising his fists. “Grab it by the horns, I say. But not at the cost of losing your heritage.”

“It's medieval.”

“Someday you'll think differently—”

“I really doubt that.”

“And it's for that day that I want to prepare you, so you don't blame me for not teaching you anything about the medieval ways of your people.” He pushed the chair back, peering at me as if he'd had a revelation. “By the way, that's the most ridiculous notion I've ever heard, especially coming from my own daughter. You do realize there are many professional Roma out there: scholars, business owners, teachers, and scientists. Just because some of us practice fortune-telling doesn't mean we roam the streets and live in fields like rabbits.”

“I didn't mean it that way,” I said awkwardly. But thanks to Olga, images of colored wagons were never far from my mind.

“You do understand that what Olga and I do is business.”

“But you believe in all that stuff. In Baba Varya's curse.”

“Millions of people believe in God and in aspirin. Do you call them fools?”

“But it's music I want to learn,” I said. “Why can't you teach me that?”

“Oksana, I might've only finished three grades, but I've taught myself six instruments. On my own. I can sight-read any piece of music you put in front of me. If you truly love it, you'll learn with or without me. But I can teach you something more unique, a craft that's part of your heritage as much as the stage. It's what I can leave you. It may not be much. If you want to call my knowledge medieval, that's your choice.”

I was subdued by his words, shamed. Even as I didn't think I fit in with my Romani heritage, it fit in with me. I
was
the clay.

“You're right,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “So. Here's my proposition. I'll teach you the psychic arts, and if at some point you decide they're not for you, I'll respect that.”

“What about my school?”

“You can stay, even though you know I won't like it—”

I jumped off my chair and hugged him. “Thank you!”

“And I expect you to do your best.”

“So I can play the talent show?”

“Fine, but I tell you one thing. These ‘shows' are gonna fill your head with ideas. In real life, you must fight your way to the top. Just because someone said you have talent doesn't mean you've got it made. Talent is only ten percent; the other ninety percent is perseverance. Never forget that.”

Even as a little girl, I knew to seek Mom for comfort or encouragement. For the longest time I thought that fathers simply didn't do the whole nurturing bit. Then, when I was eleven, my friend Elisa's mom committed suicide inside their Moscow apartment. Elisa and I found her in bed with a cluster of empty med bottles on her nightstand. Elisa's father—a real-life lumberjack—turned into a drunk after his wife's death, but the agony that crippled him during that time didn't stop him from taking care of his daughter. In fact, he smothered her with affection, transforming overnight into a devoted mother hen. After that I concluded that it must be my dad alone who didn't do mushy. But in his way, Dad loved me. I knew it to be true every time he made me honey tea when I was sick, and when he created a set of illustrated flash cards for my fifth-grade languages-class project, and when he remembered to put on music after tucking me and Roxy in for the night.

It had become a ritual for the three of us. Dad would begin with a story that he'd make up on a spot. Something like “There once lived an old man. He liked to smoke his pipe while taking a walk down the village road every night. And on one of these starless nights, he fell through a hole in the ground, so deep that when he looked up, the opening appeared the size of a saucer.” And the old man's adventures took us to magical lands that only my father knew. The music, like Dad's tales, helped my sister and me sleep. Piles of tapes eclipsed our cassette player like plastic mountains above a blacktop lake, but out of all that music I can recall only George Benson's
Breezin'
, Al Di Meola's
Elegant Gypsy
, and, most of all, the home recordings of my own father's music.

*   *   *

Dad and I had made our first compromise. Wasn't that proof that there was hope for us still?

I was sure it was as I waited for my turn to go onstage.

As I took my seat at the piano and broke the silence with the first note, the anxiety that normally jerked through my blood during a performance started to fade. The first few measures I treaded with care, the long pauses like tiny trampolines of encouragement. And soon the melody unfolded from the nerves in my stomach, out my fingertips.

There was absolute quiet backstage as the MC announced the first-place winner in the instrumental category. We listened to that voice like it was about to reveal the formula to eternal life. I dragged each breath through a thick brush of panic. If I've messed this up, I thought, I'll be the youngest person to die of a heart attack. A loss to someone more worthy didn't bother me, but I was terrified of losing to myself. In front of Dad.

“And the first-place trophy goes to…” Paper rustling.

Applause shook the auditorium, coming from every direction at once. A girl who had sung a Vanessa Williams ballad nudged me. “Hey. Isn't that you?”

Stupefied, I nodded and staggered toward the front of the stage through a tangle of curtains and nerves. How could my piece have won against Mozart's “Turkish March” and three impeccable “Moonlight Sonatas”? When I finally found my way into the spotlight, I took the trophy from the vice principal, who grinned at me and clapped. The sound of his voice congratulating me was drowned out by the applause still rushing the stage. Taking a bow into the auditorium, I gripped my trophy, searching for one face in particular beyond the blinding lights.

After the show, I sat on the concrete steps of the theater, which had long since emptied. Streetlights had flicked on, and the roads buzzed with tourists drunk on Hollywood, blaring TLC or Mariah Carey or Tupac as they drove past. I watched the cars, my mind drifting.

I'd put the date and time on the calendar in the hallway between the kitchen and the garage, I was sure I had. It was a Russian calendar with jokes and sayings for every day. Some jokes were hilarious; others Dad or Olga tailored to their own brand of funny, which usually involved ass and the many ways of assaulting it.

He must've not noticed the date. Maybe he hadn't checked the calendar that day.

I'd been so absorbed in my thoughts, I hadn't noticed Cruz holding a sheaf of roses a couple of steps down from me.

I suddenly remembered that I'd never mentioned him to my father during our talk. But maybe just as well. He hadn't looked like he was paying much attention, anyway.

Cruz joined me and put an arm around my shoulders. We stayed there for a moment not saying anything, and I lay my head in the crook of his neck. It was one of the many things I loved about him, his easy way with silence.

Later he said, “You know, I recorded the whole thing. In case you want to show it to anybody.”

I started to sob.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's go home.”

 

COMRADE PUSHKIN

When I was twelve, three of my Russian classmates, Lena, Galya, and Valya, had found it necessary to perform a séance. These girls normally didn't associate with Gypsies, but in this case they'd come to me for help. Back then, though the physical attacks had stopped (Nastya had transferred when her military-pilot father accepted an assignment in the city of Vladivostok near the Chinese border), I was still the official class freak, the Soviet Wednesday Addams, and therefore the only person who might know how to contact someone who'd been dead for a few centuries. I had never actually performed a séance, but it had to be done. For school and a shot at popularity, so elusive.

My parents were away that week, and they had taken Roxy. I was staying with Esmeralda, but she was hardly around, busy trying to get her boyfriend back after breakup number five. In light of all that, my house was the perfect place to convene with the netherworld.

The girls wanted to talk to Alexander Pushkin, the great Russian poet who'd died in a duel for his wife's honor, and whose
The Captain's Daughter
was an assignment in our Russian literature class. Our teacher, Evgeny Vasilyevich, who wore the same brown suit every day, was expecting a three-page essay on the significance of the main character in relationship to the political climate of eighteenth-century Russia. Since none of us had a clue, we had decided to ask the author himself.

After school we ran to my house. Our uniforms, brown with black aprons, created a woolly sheen of sweat on our backs from springtime humidity and excitement.

My stomach swam. I shut the windows, drew the curtains, and locked the doors.

“You sure it'll work?” one of the girls asked as I lit candles around the immediate area.

“I can do this in my sleep,” I lied. The girls were very influential in my class and I hoped this favor would be repaid in time.

We sat on the floor in a tight circle in a darkened room. Flickering lights tossed off by the candles reached up to the ceiling and cast an eerie glow, sizzling on occasion. It seemed they made the only noise in the room full of awed expectations (girls) and camouflaged panic (me). I concentrated on the materials: candles—check; spooky, dark atmosphere—check; a piece of white paper with an alphabet circle in the middle—check; the plate, which Dad had strictly forbidden me to touch—check. Dad's divination saucer was marked with a pencil-thin arrow. The girls passed it around, the proof of my family's nuttiness right there in their hands.

“We must begin,” I said. “Make sure nobody leaves before we're finished. We don't want the spirit following us around because we forgot to send it back. Do you have the questions?”

Lena handed me a paper. “Copied it straight from Evgeny Vasilyevich's assignment sheet.”

I laid it out by the plate and took a deep breath, then exhaled. If I were observing myself from afar, I'd say I was in the zone of deepening spiritual awareness, movements deliberately slow, eyes downcast and heavy. But in truth, I was stalling.

“We are calling to the spirits of the ether world,” I said finally, trying to remember the things Dad usually said on such occasions. “Please convene with us.”

Nothing. I, for one, was glad.

“We're calling on the spirit of Alexander Pushkin,” I said. “Comrade Pushkin, we seek your guidance.”

I had always wondered why mediums used such formal language during a séance. I wondered especially because it was difficult for a twelve-year-old to find enough words in that category. After several attempts to convene, and at least a dozen requests for guidance, the girls became restless.

Until a door somewhere in the house, unseen by us, opened. And shut. The candlelight bowed low, never a good sign. No one spoke, always a bad sign. My heart hammered behind my ears.

“Something just brushed against my back,” Valya whispered.

That's all it took. The four of us scrambled up at the same time, screeching, arms flapping. Panic squeezed us in her tight fist. Bumping, elbowing, we ran for the front door. Never mind that it was only ten feet away. We crossed Hell to get there, and sprang upon that doorknob.