American Gypsy (41 page)

“We can visit,” I said once. We were up at Griffith Observatory, on the lawn at the foot of the Astronomers Monument. The night sky slumbered above us, and I leaned back on my elbows to watch it take star-sprinkled breaths.

Sprawled on the grass next to me, Cruz teased the fragrant stalks with his fingertips.

“I might be going back to Brazil.”

“Why? When will you come back?” But of course I knew the answer.

“I have some things to take care of.”

I turned to look at him. Was he going back for his mother? In the dimness of the observatory lampposts, his face was that last fragment of light before the camera lens twists shut. Soon I'll never see him again, I thought, and blinked to shake it off.

After we were found out by my father, the weight of guilt and the constant presence of “What if?” had packed on me like wet snow on a tree branch. Like my parents had done, I was going against my own parents' wishes, and the fear of someday telling my children “I could've been somebody” began to draw me away from Cruz.

Throughout the meal, the very last we'd have all together, we conversed in a light tone, as if my move to a different state and his return to Brazil didn't spell “breakup” in capital letters. No one at the table asked what we were planning to do.

After hours of strained niceties, Cruz finally laid down his chopsticks. “Can we talk?” he asked me.

We took the stairs up to the sidewalk and began to walk. The air promised rain, and I breathed the dampness deep into my lungs. The houses on this street looked frozen in the fifties, complete with brick trim and giant porches, but many had overgrown front yards.

“Are you mad at me about Vegas?” I finally asked. “Is that why you decided to go back?”

“No,” he said. “I saw your father earlier today.”

“What?”

“I asked him if we could get married.”

I was so shocked, I dropped down on the porch steps of someone's house. “Why would you do something like that? Without asking me first?”

“You drive me crazy, you know that?” He ran a hand down his face and then gestured at me like I was deaf and he had to get my attention somehow. “
Merde!
Did you hear what I said? Your father pulled out a fucking broom when he saw me.”

I didn't know what to do, what to say, if I should be mad or flattered.

“What did he say?” I was curious. I couldn't believe Cruz was still alive.

“He said, ‘You keep dream, small boy,' and then threatened to call the cops.”

I covered my mouth. I couldn't help it. The first giggle rolled out of me, along with some of the tension.

He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and looked around. “I'm glad I can amuse you,” he said, trying to hide his own smile.

I went to him, wrapping my arms around his waist. I was still laughing softly, my eyes watery from it. “You are brave, small boy. Brave and completely insane.”

“I must be.” He pulled away. “So?”

“What?”

“Isn't this what people do when they love each other?”

“And then they divorce—”

“I'm going back to Brazil for sure,” he said. “After graduation … And I want you to come with me.”

Raindrops began to fall softly around us. Goose bumps covered my arms—whether from the sudden coolness or Cruz's offer, I could not tell. Wouldn't it be something, though? If I said yes, I'd be the third generation of women in our family to defy her parents and run away with a man.

“I'll have my own place—our place. I'll buy you a piano and you can play for me all day.” He ran his hands up and down my arms, palms hot and so familiar. “Come on, we'll be together and nobody will tell us how to live. I can take care of you.”

I closed my eyes against the image. It was dangerously appealing. But could I really go from my father's house to my husband's? Not yet.

“I love you so much,” I said.

“Don't say that.”

I went on, despite him asking me to think about it first. “If we stay together, we'll burn out. One day everything will spoil and we'll hate each other.”

“Why are you talking this way?” He shook me. “This isn't one of your Gypsy voodoo tricks, is it? I don't believe in that bullshit, and neither should you.”

He caught my right hand, slipping it under his shirt to his chest, and held it there.

I pressed my palm to his skin, our fingers intertwined. Spirals of heat tingled up my hand, his heart lunging at me. His eyes pleaded, and I begged him to let me go. Instead, he held me in tight embraces and whispers. These are the things I remember most: his lips imploring against my ear, in my hair, and the silly way I kept kissing him and pulling away at the same time.

“It's late,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say at that moment, but I couldn't let him change my mind. “We should get back to the restaurant.”

His hands fell away, carving an empty space between us. The rain fell harder. For the longest time we stood inches away from each other without touching or speaking. I hugged myself, my body shaking.

He shook his head and walked away without a backward glance.

*   *   *

Within a month I lost more than ten pounds; scrawny did not suit me. For days I wore a shirt Cruz had left months ago under my bed. Sometimes I'd stick my nose in it and try to extract a ghost of his scent from the unwashed fibers. His absence drained every bit of fight out of me.

At the end of the school year I found Mr. North in the main auditorium rehearsing the graduation ceremony with the senior class of 1993. The theater boomed with voices. The chatter of those waiting for their turn onstage kicked up to the rafters. Mr. North clapped the beat to “Pomp and Circumstance” for the piano player, a Korean girl whose lower lip jerked every time she popped a chord. I approached the stage, and when Mr. North saw me wave at him, he broke the melody. “Take five, everyone.”

“Why aren't you in cap and gown?” he asked, jumping off the platform.

“I'm not going to the graduation ceremony.”

He cocked his head. “You're not?”

“Yeah, you know, there's so much packing to do still—”

“You have to. What will your parents say?”

We took two seats in the front. I hadn't thought our discussion would last more than a minute. Who could expect a teacher tasked with organizing sex-crazed teens into model citizens to play shepherd to one?

“My parents said they're not coming.”

What a gifted liar I'd become. I had never actually told my parents how seriously Americans took their high-school graduations, that they wore special gowns, and that the wimpier ones bawled, clutching beribboned scrolls to their chests. If I had, who knows, they might've come. But then again, neither Mom nor Dad was big on ceremony.

In Moscow, at age twelve, I went to my music-school graduation. Solo. Mom was nowhere to be found, and Dad was in a “meeting” bargaining down the price of a Carver amplifier. The main recital hall was a blur of festively adorned families. A music-school diploma in the former Soviet Union was essential when gaining entry to any music conservatory, my mother's dream for me, and the administration went out of their way to show how high
their
diplomas measured. The room, lined with snowy-clothed tables, smelled like a bakery. Every which way you turned, another mountain of
piroshki
or crescent cookies soared above rosy teakettles, matching cups, and real silverware. Parents and teachers mingled over dainty serving plates. Students grinned in clusters of joy. One teenage girl with a giant red Mohawk allowed her mouth to split into a smile when her mother squeezed her shoulder at a teacher's praise.

I'd missed the ceremony, by the looks of it. With a pang of regret, I grabbed a potato-stuffed
piroshki
and zigzagged through the crowd.

Marina Nikolaevna, the school director, saw me and softly clasped her fingers over her middle (she always made the
piroshki
). Her wispy blond bun toppled dangerously to one side as she most likely tried to pin a name to my face. “I didn't see you at the ceremony, Lenochka.” And failed.

“Mom and Dad are taking me to Gagri, Marina Nikolaevna, to celebrate the graduation. Could I get my diploma? We're on our way to the train station right now.”

It felt perversely satisfying to hold that little black book in my hands.

Perhaps I should've insisted my parents come to my high-school graduation. I still lament not giving them a chance, as I've only recently grasped the significance of memory. Life is made up of sentiment yoked to flashes of recollection.

I took first place during that year's talent show, the last one I'd ever play. This time, as I crossed the stage to accept the trophy, my feet touched ground just fine. I gave a speech. That part is so blank, I fear it never happened and my imagination was shooting home movies behind my back. Cruz wasn't in the audience, and so I felt unfinished. Soul-split. We should've talked it through, made a gentle break instead of shattering apart as if cracked by an ax. Loss scooped me out, and I bowed to my audience with grace and smiles only for the sake of my father, who sat in the front row.

He stood up and clapped as I received the award.

“
Molodets, dochenka
(Good work, little daughter)!” I heard him shout, and the pain that had been suffocating me slunk briefly into the background. His showing up was so monumental that I promptly created an imaginary future where we'd jam during family birthdays and weddings the way many Romani do so effortlessly. Not until later did it come out that Mom had threatened to report Olga to immigration if my father dared skip the concert. For days after, he poked fun at the
samodeyatelnost
(amateur production) of the show. No matter. He was there in the moment with me. And I finally began to accept his nature and his clumsy love.

Later on, backstage, a classmate pressed roses into my hands. They didn't come with a note. I hadn't seen Cruz in weeks and so the flowers filled me with eagerness and anticipation, and I waited until the echoes inside the theater grew cavernous. He never showed. I walked through the dark hallway toward the exit where my father waited to take me home as though I were wading through miles of sand dunes. Cruz was, I was certain, too far out of reach now. But this was also a moment of clarity for me. I finally understood why I hadn't listened to my impulses and followed him to Brazil. Even though I loved him, if I married him I would lose this freedom I was fighting so hard to wrest from my parents. Our independence, our identities, would mesh and soon nothing would be left of me or him. My American goal, I realized quite unexpectedly, wasn't about becoming an American but about doing something I could never do as a young wife. Somewhere in this new landscape I hoped to find just one thing.

 

PIECES OF ME

The morning of my departure basked in the sublime weather that made California so irresistible. It was late May 1993. Palm trees murmured in the breeze and the distant buzz of traffic reassured all that Hollywood was being worshipped right on schedule.

Mom was driving in from Vegas to pick me up. I had only a few more hours before I'd be gone from Los Angeles for good.

Earlier that day Olga, the wicked witch of every direction on the compass, had tried to make conversation. She hinted that if I wanted to talk, she was there to listen. The notion of opening up to my stepmother was like eating a dish I'd never heard of. Was I famished enough to try?

I'd packed my two suitcases with Olga's help, which consisted mostly of her conducting and talking a mile a minute from the edge of the bed as if we were BFFs. I guessed it was her way of putting me at ease. Too bad she'd picked that particular day, though, when I could manage only short, simple responses without bawling like a seven-year-old whose bike has been stolen.

“All those ripped jeans. So unfashionable.” She scrunched up her face at a pair of bell-bottoms I'd placed in my suitcase. “You're a grown woman now.”

“I'm moving to Vegas, not Milan.”

“It's a classy place. Here. I want you to have these.” She shook out a pile of clothes she'd brought in earlier. There were a lot of shiny things with bells and sequins and golden thread. “Look. This one's gorgeous. I got it on sale in Beverly Hills.” It was a dress covered entirely in metallic print.

I chuckled, probably for the first time in weeks. “I swear you were a freaking crow in your past life.”

“If you must know, I was a Hindu prince with impeccable taste.”

“I thought you were a male dancer, or was that in a different lifetime?”

She shrugged and dangled the dress in front of my face as if it were a chocolate bar, and wiggled her eyebrows. “Come on. You know you love it.”

I shook my head and stuffed a Slash T-shirt inside my suitcase.

My stepmother looked disappointed, but only for a moment before grabbing something else, a deep blue skirt with splashes of gleaming beads. “What about this one? The color will look amazing on you.”

“Maybe,” I said carefully, because Olga was being way too nice and I wasn't used to it.

Pressing it against my waist, she said, “You can wear it when you go out to some fancy restaurant with your rich casino-owner husband.”

That was a stab in the gut. Immediately the light mood evaporated and I was back to scowling.

She sat back down, hands in lap, mouth pursed. “You can always stay here with us, you know.”

After a period of silence, I joined her on the bed, exhausted from thinking heavy thoughts.

“I saw him in the cards, you know,” she told me. “Right after he started taking lessons from your father.”

“You did a reading on him? You never told me that.”

“Well, I did one on both of you. It's a professional habit.”

I didn't want to ask, and started to get up in order to resume packing.