The Language of Sisters (25 page)

“I cannot believe I'm agreeing to do this,” Valerie said. “I'm in a trial.”

“I have an order to fill that will have me up all night now,” Ellie said.

“I have a deadline,” I said.

We headed upstairs to the private room. Fifty people. Noisy. We knew a bunch of them. When the three of us walked in, the ones who knew us shouted, repeatedly, “Kozlovsky! Kozlovsky!”

We laughed, we raked in the tips.

Afterward, my mother served us a salad that she named “Three Daughters. All Trouble.” It's popular, but I often have people asking me what I did to cause my mama trouble.

My mother told us, “I know three thingies today. Three.” She held up three fingers in case we were in doubt about the number three. “One, save your money. You never want to run out of the money, and then you starve to death. Two, women must be boss of their life, I knows this, I do. Don't let the man boss. Three, always put on the lipstick and earrings before you leave the house unless the house on fire. See? And three again, another three, your father. I say this to you now, when will he slow down? I don't know.” She threw her hands up. “You would think, he old man, that I could get peace in the bedroom—”

“Okay, Mama,” Ellie said. “Check that.”

“Mama, please,” Valerie said. “I'm eating.”

“He's a firecracker in the bedroom, we understand,” I said.

“Firecracker? In the bedroom?” My mother was baffled. “Why let a firecracker go boom boom in the bedroom when your father he already boom boom me and I so tired?” She sighed again, so dramatic. “It is this, what can I say?” She waved her hand from bust to hip. “You girls have it, too. The va va zing zing on the body, no?”

I finished my wine. So did Valerie. Ellie poured us another glass.

“I'm going to pretend,” Ellie said, “once again, that I am not hearing about my parents' love life.”

“Cheers to that,” Valerie said.

“Ah, cheers,” my mother said, holding up her wineglass. “To God. To family. To the Kozlovskys. And may those who wish us harm”—her voice rose, vengeful—“be struck by thunder and blinded by lightning and eaten by ants.”

What a vision! We clinked our glasses together.

* * *

Homes and Gardens of Oregon
launched. It went out on a Thursday, and by noon we had tons of names for the bouquet drawing. E-mails streamed in, people loving the magazine, a few hating it. One woman wrote, “I don't need to read about homes. I need to read about aliens.” Another wrote, “I hate the home that was featured. Pink. Really? Everyone hates pink. It's menopause pink. It's little girl pink. It makes me feel like hitting someone.”

But the compliments were effusive, too.

We got a call from Shirl, the advertising lady. “I've finally come up for air. You're getting reams of ads.”

I told Ricki. She said, “I knew we'd kick some tail around here. How could we not with all these high heels and brainiac women running around?”

I had a story to turn in on a home that was built on stilts. I was also working on a story featuring the home of a local actor, who I knew through Anya. His home in the country was almost all glass.

But at six o'clock we closed up shop and went to O'Malley's, the whole
Homes and Gardens of Oregon
gang. Heckuva party. Ricki paid for it, and we toasted her as she yelled, “To the Hooters of Homes and Gobblers of Gardens, let's party, people.”

So we did. I sang karaoke with Kim. I sounded like a frog with a seagull stuck in its throat. She sounded like an off-tune drunk nightingale. Our cohorts on the magazine about fell out of their chairs laughing. We made Ricki get onstage next. She did a Bette Midler song. She had the figure, not the voice. We about wet our pants.

* * *

About ten o'clock that night, I went over to Nick's.

He smiled, handed me a huge bouquet of pink roses, pink peonies, and baby's breath; a fancy gold pen that came in a box because “I love what you write”; and a picture of my tugboat, on a white mat, with a frame. “So you'll always remember your first column.”

He is a manly and masculine cupcake.

 

 

 

In our neighborhood in Moscow, there were the usual kids one finds in every neighborhood. The bullies, the quiet ones, the smart ones, the ones with wild imaginations, the leaders who organized everyone for games.

What was different there, as compared to our new neighborhood in Portland, was how grim it was. We all had so little. Few clothes, cold apartments, worn-out soles on our shoes, not much food. There were loving parents, doting parents, but vodka ran through the block, with the usual and expected problems. Drunken fathers, fathers who hit, mothers who had nowhere to go, mothers who sobbed. Families that struggled.

But kids are kids, and we played hide-and-seek and tag, horses and riders, and Cossacks and robbers.

My mother told us not to hang out with two of the neighborhood kids, Bogdan and Gavriil Bessonov. She said their father was a criminal and muttered something about the Russian Mafia, “may God have mercy on their black souls, and may He strike them down before they get to us.”

We were intrigued by her warning, especially since Bogdan and Gavriil were funny and fun, daring, brave and bold. My sisters and I displayed an early attraction to the bad boys.

We watched them fight back when another kid picked on them or anyone else, we watched them wrestle, and I smiled into Bogdan's eyes. I was nine. He was eleven. I thought he was so handsome with that dark hair and green eyes. Two years of my childhood by then had been dedicated to daydreaming about Bogdan.

We disobeyed our mother and we hung out with the Bessonov boys. We walked partway to school with them, as they waited for us on the corner. We walked home with them. We played at the park together when we could arrange to, secretly, meet.

The five of us were walking home from school together one afternoon, commiserating about my strict teacher who made us memorize reams of information, especially about the Communist government. Valeria skipped ahead of us, her white bow bopping around, eager to get home because Mama had made a bread and apple pie. It was snowing, light, fluffy, but it made the gray of Moscow, the darkness of the river, the dull sheen of cement block apartment houses, less threatening. Whiter. Cleaner.

It was the beginning of winter, and we were young enough to still be excited by snowflakes. Elvira and I hung back with Bogdan and Gavriil, catching snowflakes in our mouths.

In the midst of laughing at one of handsome Bogdan's jokes, I heard Valeria scream in my head.
Help me, Antonia!

“Where is Valeria?” I said, interrupting him, spinning around, trying to find her, people all around, buses, cars. I searched for her uniform, the same one I wore, a black dress, a white apron, a bow.

“What? Why?” Bogdan said.

“She needs help, she needs help!” I started to run toward home, knowing that was the route she would take. I dragged Elvira with me, holding her hand. Bogdan and Gavriil ran beside me, confused, but they were our friends, and they were coming with us to find Valeria.

“She said they're hurting her!” Elvira cried. “They hit her in the face. There's blood.”

“How do you know that?” Bogdan hollered.

“I can hear her!” Elvira yelled back as we ran around a group of people heading to the subway, slipping on the snow. “I hear her.”

Antonia!
I heard her calling me again, but her voice was weak this time, tearful.
Get Bogdan and Gavriil.

“She's telling me, run!” Elvira said. “They ripped her dress! She said to get Bogdan and Gavriil.”

In my head, I said to Valeria,
Where are you? Where are you, Valeria?

Alley. By the bakery
.

“She's by the bakery,” Elvira screamed.

“She's in the alley.” I ran as fast as I could, but Bogdan and Gavriil were faster, whipping around the corner, their faces hot and livid.

It was three older boys. Two of them were holding Valeria back against the wall, one in front, his pants down to his ankles, his butt out. Her dress was ripped in half, her underwear down, her hair a mess. She was crying, blood on her face. One of the boys hit her and told her to shut up, shut up, shut up.

Gavriil and Bogdan had a lot of roving, raging anger in them. Their father loved them, but he was strict and could be scary. More than that, the five of us were friends. As tight as young friends can be.

Gavriil and Bogdan flew at two of the boys like hell had lit itself on fire. I flew at the third boy, the one standing to the side, egging his friend on, making fun of Valeria. That boy was bigger than me, but I caught him by surprise, and my fear for Valeria's safety sizzled through. When we fell, his head hit a rock and bled, and he didn't move for a second, which gave me the opportunity to punch him in the nose.

Valeria, sobbing, but now vengeful, pulled up her underwear, jumped between his legs behind me, and kicked him in the balls. He curled up, emitting a high-pitched scream. I took the opportunity to punch him in the nose again, blood spurting, and Elvira took the opportunity to grab a rock in her small fist and smash it in his face.

Valeria stumbled over to the other two boys, who were on the ground, straddled and being repeatedly pounded by Gavriil and Bogdan. She kicked them in the balls, too, as hard as she could, holding her dress together with one hand.

When the boys were beaten and curled up on the ground, Gavriil and Bogdan both pulled out knives. Short, sharp, jagged-edged knives. Those three boys froze, on the dirt, blood all over.

“If you ever,” Gavriil said, almost calmly, “come near any one of the Kozlovskaya girls again I will kill you.”

“I, too, will kill you,” Bogdan said. He dug his knife into the boy's neck, enough to draw blood and make his point. He smiled, almost sweetly. “And I will enjoy it.” Bogdan moved to the other boy, straddled him, knife to throat, a small cut.

The three of us sisters stood still, all of us panting with fear and fury, behind Gavriil and Bogdan. We had never seen them like that. With us, they were kind, protective, funny, always goofing off for the Kozlovskaya girls. This time, there was not an ounce of humor in them. I knew they would do what they said. Gavriil and Bogdan were capable of murder, even then, as young men.

“Do you understand?” Gavriil said, his voice steady.

The boys grunted through swollen lips. They sure understood. The Bessonovs yanked the boys up, shoved them, and the three hobbled off, two crying.

I tried to pull Valeria's dress together, my hands shaking. Her face was bleeding in two places, her hair a mess. Gavriil and Bogdan wrapped us up in their arms, and there we stood. Three crying girls, two boys who'd acted like men, in a dirty alley, in Moscow, the snow fluttering down.

“You heard Valeria in your head,” Bogdan said to me.

“Yes,” I said. I couldn't help but enjoy Bogdan's warmth.

“And you, Elvira?” Gavriil said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Valeria told you where she was,” Bogdan said.

“Yes,” Elvira whimpered.

“We hear each other sometimes,” Valeria said.

There was a silence.

“Okay,” Gavriil said.

“Strange,” Bogdan said, “but I like it.”

“It's like magic,” Gavriil said.

“It came down the Sabonis line,” I said, “Like our genes, through our widow's peaks.” I pointed to my widow's peak.

“Maybe there's a witch in your past,” Bogdan said.

“Oh! I like that idea,” I said.

“Me too,” Bogdan said, smiling at me. I smiled back.

They hugged us closer. I enjoyed that, too.

* * *

Valeria had not been raped, but it was quite clear that she would have been within seconds.

Bogdan and Gavriil walked us home. My mother and my aunt Polina were there. They were out of their heads when they heard what happened. They cried, they shook, but they were strong women. Valeria was hugged and held. Bogdan and Gavriil were invited in and fussed over, hugged and held, too.

My father and my uncles were called. Uncle Yuri and Uncle Sasho and my aunts and cousins would soon leave for America, but they were still in Moscow at that point. Uncle Leonid came, too.

My father and my uncles, the former boxers, went to the boys' homes. It was ugly, I heard about it later from the neighborhood kids.

“They will not bother the girls again,” my father said when he came home that night.

It was true.

“It was the language of sisters, wasn't it?” my mother asked.

We nodded.

“Are we from witches?” Elvira asked.

My mother laughed.

* * *

I went with my mother and father, along with Valeria and Elvira the next night, to the Bessonovs, Bogdan and Gavriil's parents' home. Valeria's face was bruised and cut, and she was pale, but she wanted to come.

Stas Bessonov opened the door, Irina Bessonova behind him. She was a well-dressed and coiffed woman.

My father took one look at Bogdan and Gavriil, who each had a bruise and a cut on their face from protecting Valeria, standing behind their parents, and he could not speak. My father is a courageous, resolute, well-tempered man. He was used to the deprivations and fear in the Soviet Union. But when it came to his daughters, that heart melted.

My mother's lips trembled, her hands shook. She whispered, “Your boys, Stas, Irina, how can we ever thank them? They saved our Valeria.”