The Language of Sisters (23 page)

His words hung heavy in that room. We heard the loneliness. We heard the love for ballet.

“But you lie to me, son. You say you're after school for the classes in the chemistry.”

“I know.” Pavel's voice caught. “I'm sorry I lied. I knew you wouldn't approve. You want me to be a doctor or an engineer or an attorney. I can't do it, Dad, I'm sorry.”

“What else? What else do you have to tell me? Are there more lies? Tell me now,” Uncle Sasho said.

Pavel glanced at me, and I nodded. We had had many emotional calls.

Pavel studied his feet, then studied the ceiling, his eyes filling with tears. “Dad, I'm gay.”

“What?” My uncle Sasho wrung his hands, his eyebrows shooting up again. “Gay?”

“Dad, I'm sorry. I know you don't want me to be gay, but I am. I can't help it. I remember liking boys in kindergarten. I know you're disappointed, I know you hate me, I know you probably want me to move out... .”

“No!” Uncle Sasho stood up. My father rushed to his side, as did my uncle Vladan and Uncle Yuri.

“Sasho!” my father reprimanded. “Sit down. Listen to your son.”

“Be kind, Sasho,” my uncle Vladan said. “It is love between a father and son.”

“Brother,” Uncle Yuri said. “Wait. Still your mouth. No hurtful words.”

“No!” Uncle Sasho said.

“Uncle Sasho,” my sisters and I said together, standing in front of him. Uncle Sasho had been a doting father—he was mother and father to his children since my aunt Yelena ran off with the plumber—but the shock was making him angry.

“Dad, I'm sorry.” Pavel jumped up, too, in tears, his face red, crushed. “I'm sorry. I love you, Dad.”

“No!” Uncle Sasho said again, his huge fists clenched.

“Uncle Sasho,” I said. “This is who your son is—”

“Uncle Sasho,” Boris said. “Pavel's a fine son to you—”

“Stop,” Aunt Polina said. “You must not react like this, Sasho—”

“Please,” Aunt Holly said. “Please sit down. He loves you, Sasho!”

“Uncle Sasho,” Ellie said. “It's about love. It doesn't matter if he's gay—”

“Stop!” Uncle Sasho said, hands up.

“Dad, I can't change. I tried. I prayed. I told myself to stop it. I tried to make myself like girls when I was younger. Nothing changed—”

“I say no!” Uncle Sasho said.

Pavel's whole body slumped, and I blinked rapidly, furious with Uncle Sasho. Maybe I would hit him.

“That not what I meant, Pavel, when I say no.” Sasho placed his heavy hands on Pavel's shoulders. “Son. I don't know about you being ... being the gay. Being the homosexual. I don't know. You ballet dancer, too. I am confused. So much confuse. But this I know.” He pointed a finger in the air as he raised his voice, booming again. “I love you. I love you with all my whole heart and my Russian and my American soul. You are a caring and loving son to me. If you want to be ballet dancer, then you be ballet dancer.”

“Really, Dad?” Pavel's voice cracked. “It's okay?”

“No!” Uncle Sasho shouted. “It not okay.”

Pavel's body seemed to pull in on itself again. I
would
hit Uncle Sasho soon.

“It better than okay.” Uncle Sasho's voice softened. “I know what it like to live sad. To live with no hope. To live when people, what the word? Discriminate. When they don't like you for who you are. You honest. You ballet dancer. I come see you. I cheer for my son. I say, ‘That my son up there.' I proud of you. You talented ballerina?”

“I hope. I'm trying.” Pavel stood straighter, but the tears flowed. “Dad, thanks—”

“Then, my son, you be the ballet dancer. And you say you gay? So, you like the men?”

Pavel nodded. “But only one ... man. My friend Danny.”

“Danny? That Danny.” Uncle Sasho sighed, shook his head again. “So much today for old man like me to hear. To understand. I try understand. This new life, all these years here in America.” His shoulders stooped, and he paused. He thought. His eyebrows went up, down. We all held our breath. For once, all Kozlovskys were quiet.

“Well. Danny polite. I like that Danny. He come from good family. Not Russian American, though. That too bad.” Sasho pushed his ham like fists together. “So you my gay son and you ballerina on your toes with pink ribbons. Okay. I take it. I take you. What I want, son, is happy son. That what I want. We have much sad in these families. In Kozlovsky family. In Sabonis family.” He nodded at my mother, “Terrible things happen to us! But you happy, Pavel?”

“Yes, Dad, I am,” Pavel said, his face a flood of emotions.

“Then this is well. I love you, my son. I always love you.”

“Life is short,” my father said, in Russian. “Love who you love. We accept and love Pavel as he is. He is a Kozlovsky. We are a family no matter what. Everyone needs to be happy. He is happy, and we will leave this as it is. This is my final word.”

And so it was.

“Will you come to my show then, Dad?” Pavel asked. “The one I'm in? I have the star role. It's called
Bennie and the Music
.”

“What? My son?” Uncle Sasho's mouth dropped. “You have star role? I can't believe. This big news. Yes. I come. We want everyone to be together. All the Kozlovskys. Who else come to the show with my gay ballerina love son?”

“I'm coming!” we all said.

Uncle Sasho hugged Pavel.

“See? We have love, right?” my mother said, hands out. “Kozlovsky love. Now, please. I make my coulibiac with salmon and eggs, and the loaf I made in shape of smile for all the bodies. Who want that?”

We all did. It had been a very emotional event. Many of us wiped tears off our cheeks. We're tough, we Kozlovskys, but we cry easily.

Boris the car stealer, definitely not gay, women in and out of his bed all the time, wiped his tears and followed my mother to the kitchen to help serve, followed by Zoya and Tati, who whispered to each other, “I don't care what they say. We can still make modest outfits and take them to Pavel's school ... another business opportunity ... costumes for school plays ... we need to go to Vegas this year ... they
need
us ...”

There was only one person missing.

* * *

Dmitry is a wanderer. He always has been.

He wandered away for the first time in kindergarten. When the frantic principal finally found him, in a tree, almost at the top, and asked what he was doing up there, Dmitry said he was trying to find a red and purple butterfly.

He wandered away from home in first grade and was found sitting in the middle of a woman's vegetable garden.

He wandered in second grade onto a city bus because he said he wanted to find a blue door.

Third grade he wandered to the woods a half mile from our house and found a trail. He was brought back by hikers, stunned to see a small child alone.

Fourth grade he wandered to a duck pond and watched the ducks for hours.

In fifth grade he was found in the backyard of a neighbor playing with a white dog.

Dmitry was popular in school. Sports came easy to him. He was angry, often, and he took it out on every field, every court he came across. He got in fights with the opponent. He was the center on the basketball team and fouled out almost every game for being too aggressive. He hit baseballs out of the park.

Dmitry also loved art, music, and writing, particularly poetry. Math was a nonstarter.

Sometimes he wouldn't go to school. He would be gone all day and the school would call home, and my parents would go looking for him, until he was about thirteen, and then they gave up. They knew he was walking, wandering, exploring,
searching,
and he was fine, or as fine as Dmitry could be, and there was nothing they could do short of locking him up.

He was always vague about where he went, but mostly he headed into nature. He hiked. He backpacked. He camped. He fished. When my parents gave him a camera, that was it. He loved taking photos. Then they gave him a journal so he could write down information about the photos. He had found his calling.

After high school, at the beginning of summer, he left. He had saved his money from working at the restaurant, and he literally walked out the door with a tent, sleeping bag, and his laptop in a backpack. He started walking and camping and meeting people.

He created a blog called
We Need To Know Each Other
and wrote down what he did, who he met, and their problems and concerns. He wrote about traveling. He wrote about solitude, being alone, but not lonely, and about being lonely while with others.

He wrote poems about not knowing who you were, who you came from, who you could be in the future. He wrote about emotions. He wrote about nature, preserving nature, and tied that back into his feelings.

One of his poems is called “Screaming.” Others, “If Mountains Cried,” “Rivers Who Call Your Name,” and “Coyote Lonely.”

He shared his day and his life and his thoughts. He took photos of people, arching bridges, barren deserts, soaring mountains, thriving cities, destitute slums, tragic situations, victorious celebrations, poverty and extreme wealth, art and books, bookstores and museums.

He walked from Oregon to New York City—in a roundabout way—over the course of two years. A small press saw his blog and photos, and picked it up. Dmitry titled it
The Loneliest Walk Together
. They were hoping to sell 3,000 copies. It became a cult classic type of book. He has sold over a million copies. His blog gets endless hits a month, and people walk the same trail he walked—Oregon to New York.

After the U.S. wandering, he started wandering the world, and he started volunteering his time, and his well-read blog, to raise money to preserve and protect forest land, meadows, mountains, and rivers. Because, as he said, “A wanderer needs a natural place to wander.” He also started volunteering in poverty-stricken areas of the word, in orphanages, schools, and villages, because “we need people healthy enough, and safe enough, to wander.”

His readers lived through him, vicariously, on the beaches in Mexico and the jungles of Vietnam and in the mountains of Spain. They read about living the simple life in Thailand and the isolated life in the northern wilds of Canada. They were with him roughing it in Montana or with a backpack in Guatemala. India. Pakistan. Kenya. South Africa. Remote islands.

He has posted photos of migrant workers, young girls rescued from the sex trade, drug traffickers, desperate immigrants, war victims.

When he's been in one place long enough, and it is unpredictable how long “long enough” will be, he “moves on.” His next book is coming out soon.

His wandering has not cured him of his depression, though, that comes and goes, the nightmares and flashbacks scraping at him, reminding him of something, but not enough, shadows flitting in and out, never giving him enough to hold on to.

* * *

I called Dmitry on a Saturday afternoon from my tugboat, the river choppy that day, rushing faster than usual, the clouds gray and white, full, ready to burst.

He asked how I was, and how everyone else was. “How are you, Dmitry?”

“Fine. But I had another blond woman episode happen to me. I was on the beach, late. It was quiet, no one else on the beach, and I swear I felt my mother around me. Or that blond woman, whoever she was to me. I felt her presence again. Soft. Loving. Like she was hugging me.”

This happened now and then to him. Dmitry said he could feel “her” around him.

It started to rain, but I didn't go in. Maybe the rain could help ease my pervading guilt.

“The Garden is back, too. I can't stop thinking about it.”

Ah. The Garden. Usually The Garden was a cheerful image he had, but he had at least one terrifying image of the garden being demolished by some invisible force and him screaming, a dark shadow hanging over it. “What are you seeing in The Garden?”

“I see beets and potatoes, and they make me feel almost ill. Why do I hate them? Why have I never been able to eat either? I swear it has something to do with my childhood, but then sometimes I think I'm imagining the whole thing.”

“I believe you, Dmitry, and I think it's all from your past, too. I'm so sorry.” I'm sorry I've kept the secret. I shouldn't have. I tilted my head back and the raindrops slid down my face, cool, wet, blaming me.

“I'm sorry I talk about this all the time now, Toni. The visions this last year are getting stronger, more detailed. I feel like they're trying to tell me something, which makes me feel like I'm possessed or something. ”

“You're not possessed.” The skies opened up. The rain poured. I was drenched. I didn't move.

“Part of me thinks it's all in my head. That it's something I've dreamed up. That I'm not mentally healthy.”

I heard his anguish, his confusion. “You are mentally healthy. Your memories are real. They're too specific. They evoke too many emotions not to be. What you're seeing has to be a part of your childhood. You asked for your mother when you were a little boy. Come home soon, Dmitry. Please. We can talk it out more.” I was worried about him. He was sinking into his depression, I could tell.

“I'm headed that way. And I'm going to ask Mama and Papa some questions. But enough about me. What story are you writing now, Toni ... how are you really doing? Tell me, please ... and how is Valerie with that case ... what about Ellie? She's still hyperventilating, isn't she ... why is she getting married when she can't breathe when she thinks about Gino and a wedding dress ... I asked her that the other night ... and Mama and Papa?”