American Gypsy (5 page)

“Oh, what do you know? I performed this onstage millions of times.” And she'd continue singing in her scratchy alto as she filed her nails or put away the dishes while I rolled my eyes at her horrifying accent, relieved that no one but Roxy and I were around to hear it.

Mom had indeed sung that song before, though probably in even worse English. When my parents toured the Soviet Union back in the seventies and eighties, their repertoire had consisted largely of Soviet and Romani songs. Everything else, especially American music, had been banned from concert halls ever since I could remember. But my parents and a couple of the younger ensemble members shared a passion for rock and roll, and managed to sneak away to gig the underground clubs, where the managers took bribes in exchange for silence.

Only a year before, Dad had attempted to jot down the lyrics of “Dancing Queen.” In the kitchen of our Moscow house, he stopped the tape and rewound a single line over and over until he could somewhat decipher the words screeching out of his boom box. As neither of my parents spoke English then, the lyrics they performed were usually a nonsensical jumble. But the public loved it anyway and sang along with enthusiasm.

Youkondanz. Youkonjyiy

Haveeng ze tyne ofur lie

Ooh see zegyol, watchatseen

Diging ze donseekveen

There was the ever present risk of someone ratting the place out to the officials; the possibility created an atmosphere of nervous excitement. Perhaps that was why Soviets drank as if celebrating their last day of freedom.

I remember watching from a table in the back on many occasions, my parents crammed on a tiny stage of some dive along with the drummer, the bassist, and the equipment. The musicians regularly complained about everything: the location, the acoustics, especially about the drunks who climbed onto the stage in an attempt to grab Mom's mike and sing along. But they always found more illicit places to play.

Dad and the other guys wore wing-collared polyester shirts and bell-bottom pants, giving the eighties the finger. They played as if there were no audience, tweaking their sound during songs and making appreciative signs at one another by tossing their manes whenever a particularly juicy chord change occurred. But Mom had more fashion sense: her custom-made dresses were enhanced with patterns of sequins she'd carefully sewn on herself. And she had more people sense, too. When she sang, each person believed she sang for them. There was always at least one lush who'd ask Mom to run away with him or to marry him, and she'd let him know that she was flattered but that she'd done both already and no, thank you, but please you must come see another show.

At school, I bragged that I knew the lyrics to many pop songs by heart, and some kids, despite my Gyp status, begged me to write them down. When asked to translate, I'd improvise. Anything to keep them talking to me. Elton John's “I'm Still Standing” was a tale of a heartbroken man lost in a country of joyful people in vibrant leotards, and Queen's “I Want to Break Free” was about women finally getting fed up with housework.

Russia had plenty of great music of its own, but the bulk of the Soviet music on the radio eulogized our country and its working class. There was an immense difference between the Soviet formula and the Russian. Even Soviet love songs were first and foremost propaganda, ballads of metalworkers or farmers who loved their country first and each other second. But there also was another, more authentic community of incredible poets and songwriters who barely got any radio play because they weren't Soviet enough. People like Vladimir Vysotsky, a Russian bard who'd reached amazing underground popularity in the sixties and seventies, despite strict censorship.

Vysotsky sang of politics and love with equal passion, his voice leaving you bleeding for either freedom or kisses. His words eventually got him killed because they made people restless to see change. Some people maintained that he died of a heart attack, while others suggested drug abuse, but my parents, along with many other artists of the time, claimed to know better. To this day, his death remains shrouded in controversy.

Growing up, I never fully grasped the amount of danger that surrounded my family. Their overly progressive political views put them on the secret police's radar more than once, and only money and connections kept them out of the interrogation cells. We lived under a strict regime, but I was too young to comprehend what that meant. To me the Soviet government was inside the pages of my history book, in small print and not very interesting. My parents had a good friend, Albert, who was a doctor by profession. He was also an “extrasense,” a kind of psychic with an ability to diagnose patients by running his hands over their bodies, like an X-ray.

Albert's skill was considered witchcraft and therefore was illegal. Still, people sought him out. A year before we moved to America, his body was found floating in the Moscow River. Soviets didn't advertise their special abilities or anything that could be labeled unpatriotic lest they end up like Albert.

I heard stories like Albert's often enough that I began to wonder if this was the reason people hid themselves inside luggage in the cargo bays of planes to get out of the USSR.

Dad relentlessly and foolishly clashed with the Soviet government. So did Mom, by association. Once, Dad spent a night inside a
militzia
interrogation room for calling the director of the Ministry of Culture
khren morzhoviy
, or walrus dick. As always Mom came to his rescue with bribes. Our house was searched, attic to basement, for American propaganda after an anonymous “good” citizen tipped off the secret police about having seen my parents receive suspicious-looking packages from America, which turned out to be nothing but my uncle's presents.

But my parents managed to navigate the political circus of the time without letting Roxy or me feel the threat. Thanks to Mom, we were now far away from it all. And though our present circumstances screamed downer, one thing I knew for sure: Mom had survived the Soviet Union, and she would survive America, too.

 

WHEN IN DOUBT, COOK!

Roxy, as could be expected from a nine-year-old, seemed oblivious to our predicament. She made friends with most of the Hispanic kids playing in the courtyard with no regard for the language barrier. One day she was sitting on the stairs watching the kids cannonball into the pool, the next she was getting into trouble for splashing pool water at the neighbors' windows right along with them.

She knew where everyone lived and what kind of food they had in their fridge, and soon the neighbors started to send gifts back with her: a basket of a sweet bread called
pan dulce
or a plate of homemade enchiladas. At first, Mom was wary of eating things prepared by strangers. In her mind it was “stuff that looks like food but is made entirely of millions of germs from unwashed hands.” But she eventually grew too curious. She'd often pick the food apart to see how it was made and then try to make it herself.

Roxy's chirpy mood bounded in counterpoint to my own. We were surrounded by foreigners like ourselves. Where had the Americans gone? Sometimes I braved the world outside the gate to see if I could spot one. Little by little, I wandered farther until I found the DollarDream Market, a convenience store owned by two Hindu brothers. Their parents, Raj and Shubi, spoke as little English as I did, but they always grinned. They ran the business, but their only responsibilities seemed to be ringing up customers while always keeping one eye on the Bollywood musicals blasting from their TV.

I strolled through the aisles, amazed at the crowded shelves and the abundance of products made in China. I began to notice things I'd seen before, inside the packages Uncle Arsen sent when we lived in Moscow.

Every time I'd gotten a package from Los Angeles, I gained new friends. They loved the gum that came in crinkly, see-through wrappers, and the shiny hair clips with Disney characters. I had clothes with Michael Jackson and Elvis and Marilyn on them. For my seventh birthday, Uncle sent me the “Thriller” jacket, like the one in the video, red with black stripes. My friends drooled over it. Having an entrepreneurial spirit, I took reservations for the privilege of wearing it and charged ten kopeks a day.

Inside the DollarDream those gumballs sold at ten per dollar, and the hair clips inside the giant buckets by the cash register were a mere quarter each. There were the three-dollar watches with grinning Mickey Mouse dials, and the celebrity T-shirts, a bargain at three for ten dollars.

Had everything Uncle ever sent us from America come from the DollarDream Market? Later I discovered that wasn't so. The “Thriller” jacket was from a swap meet two blocks up. As an expert bargainer you could get it for twenty bucks.

When I told Mom, she didn't seem surprised. “It's the effort that counts, not the cost of things.”

I remembered with how much care Mom had wrapped the antique tea service in terry-cloth towels and crumpled-up newspaper, the fight she put up when the Soviet customs officer fussed over it. “Why didn't you bring a couple of
matryoshka
dolls for Aunt Varvara, then?”

“That would've offended her,” she said, “and I have more class than that.”

*   *   *

I'd learned long ago that food is a beautiful language.

When my parents first got married, Grandma Ksenia, dad's mom, hated my mother, and she measured that feeling with food. In Romani culture, multiple generations live together, and for a long time Mom found herself under a hostile roof. Ksenia avoided her daughter-in-law, refusing to eat at the same table with her. (To be fair, she scoffed at eating with the rest of the band when touring, always requesting a tray of food be delivered to her dressing room.) If they saw each other by chance around the house, she'd say things like “You're getting fat. I'm not here to support a leech, so make sure to stay away from my pantry.”

During the first months my parents were together, Dad often sneaked sandwiches into the bedroom. In the morning, Grandma often noticed the missing loaf of rye or the pitcher of milk half full, and she never hesitated to comment on it. Mom's solution was to start cooking for herself. The first time she made
kotleti
Armenian-style, with lots of onions, potatoes, and dried basil in the minced beef, the aroma beckoned Grandma into the kitchen. The second time, Grandma waited until my parents had left for a show before swiping a
kotleti
. The third, she said, “How do you make them so juicy?” It took years for Mom and Grandma to get along, but the first step was made over a plate of savory minced beef.

My favorite of Mom's dishes was
tort-salat
, or cake-salad in English: a salad composed like a layer cake. Every time Mom made it, I'd be in the kitchen. Mom never used cookbooks or written recipes, and she eyeballed the ingredient portions and estimated the cooking times.

“Mom,” I'd say, “let me make
tort-salat
this time. Write down the steps and I'll follow.”

She'd hardly look up from her cooking, hovering like an alchemist over potions. “The best way to learn is by observing the cook.”

But that proved more frustrating than not knowing. When asked how many potatoes to use in
podzharka
, Russian beef stew, she'd say, “Enough to last four people two days, because it's always best the day after you make it.”

“When do I place the chicken into the frying pan?”

“Not until the melting butter stops hissing at you.”

“How do I know when the borscht is done?”

“When it smells done.”

Mom picked up many of her cooking skills on the road from other Romani women, and maybe that's why her methods seemed so chaotic. Soviet hotels didn't come furnished with kitchenettes, and no performer could afford to eat out while on the road for six months at a stretch. Even if we had the means, restaurant fare in most of the towns we played would make a dog puke. But cooking in hotel rooms was strictly forbidden. I remember Esmeralda, Zhanna's older half sister, hurling a perfectly good pot of chicken and potatoes out the hotel-room window while the hotel manager banged on the door, shouting, “I smell meat!” As she passed me on her way to the door, Esmeralda pressed a finger to my lips and pinched my cheek. “Our secret, okay?” She opened it, relaxing her curvy figure against the doorframe like a star of the silver screen. The manager's Brezhnev-like eyebrows unfurrowed, but his nostrils flared as he tried to sneak a look past her shoulder.

Like Esmeralda, the women in the band hid hot plates in their luggage; a single burner and a pot was all they needed to throw together mouthwatering dishes. And they made quick work of it. Onions had to be chopped with mad speed, eggs fried until just runny, toast buttered and swallowed before we were discovered. Mom and I spent many an afternoon watching some Romani do her magic over a tiny electric stove. In fact, it was the reason I'd started keeping a journal in the first place.

I was nine and my first entry described the way Esmeralda made tea and how she'd managed to turn the brewing process into a magical spell.

“To make proper
zavarka
(essence), you need five tablespoons of loose-leaf Ceylon tea in a white teapot.” The leaves formed into mountains as she measured them out. “Then, hot water to just below the spout.” After this step, she'd fetch a tall heatproof glass and fill it halfway with the essence, pour the liquid back into the pot, and repeat it thirteen times.

“What are you doing now?” I asked.

“Marrying the essence with the water,” she explained. “If you want to catch a good man, pay attention.”

“Oh, is this how everybody does it?”

“Smart women do whatever's necessary. It's simple. The leaves won't infuse the water if both are standing still and not putting effort into it. Leaves by nature are lazy, and water's too proud. So you, the tea-maker, help by creating motion between them. Every time you pour from one vessel to the other, the liquid gets stronger, richer. That's what every relationship needs.”