The Language of Sisters (30 page)

We were in a quiet spot, the wind rustling through, a flock of geese flying overhead before landing on a nearby sandbar. We talked about what we often talk about: work; the book we were reading together; history, which we were both interested in; Ellie's wedding plans; my concerns for Valerie; his parents and my “unique” family and how they were all doing. There was the usual flirtation and laughing.

It was normal.

It was fun.

It was almost too normal, and too fun.

I really liked Nick.

* * *

Marty had a cough that wouldn't quit.

Go to the doctor, I told him.

It's nothing, he told me.

His cold clung.

Go to the doctor, Marty.

I'm fine. I'm tired. Long hours. Come here, honey.

He was weak, run down. He actually took a nap on Sunday.

Go to the doctor, please.

He went to the doctor because I called two of his doctor friends and they examined Marty, almost by force, and ran tests. When all the tests were back, Marty said to me, “Be brave, Toni. You have to be brave.”

He told me. He caught me as I collapsed.

I was not so brave.

16

 

“Girls, I am sorry to tell you this,” my mother said, pushing her black hair back with a hand that shook like it was being electrified, “but your uncle Leonid has disappeared.”

We couldn't speak. Uncle Leonid, our mother's only sibling, a happy and cheerful man who brought us candy and talked to us as if we were adults, who made us listen to Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 2 in C Minor because it was his favorite, was missing.

My father took my mother's hand in his and kissed it. Her face crumbled, her blue eyes desolate.

“Mama,” I cried. Valeria's lip trembled, and Elvira burst into tears.

“Where did he disappear to?” Valeria asked.

“The KGB came to get him.” My mother's face was as white as the snow that dumped on Moscow as if it would bury us. She swore in French.

“The bad men?” Valeria stomped her foot.

“What is KGD?” Elvira clung to her doll. “Where is Uncle Leonid?”

“When?” I asked.

“Last night.”

“How do you know?” I was devastated. We were devastated.

“I heard him in my head when they came for him. He spoke to me. He said, ‘They're taking me away, Svetlana.' ” My mother started to weep. She turned to my father, “He said, ‘Get out of the Soviet Union.' ”

“Are we getting out of here?” Valeria asked.

My mother and father held hands. They didn't answer, but I saw my father nod at my mother.

* * *

Over the next month, my mother continued her work as a popular professor at the university, lost weight, and spent her spare time staring out the window as Moscow became colder and more desolate than before.

“Have you heard from Uncle Leonid in your head?” I asked her after school one day.

She nodded. “He told me where he had hidden my marbles when we were children.” She laughed, sad laughter. “Behind our father's bookcase. I kept throwing the marbles at him when he would not look up from studying and talk to me.”

I held my mother's hands as she bent over, in half, the weight of grief forcing her down.

Three days later, as we sewed our miniature pillows, our father at a meeting at the university, she said, “Uncle Leonid came to me when I was making coffee this morning. He told me that inside of a wooden box, under his bed in his room at the dormitory, there was a carved white swan. He had made it for me, for my birthday. I went to get it today.” She held out the swan. It was glorious. Every feather carved so intricately, no detail lost. Underneath it Leonid had carved, I
LOVE YOU
, S
VETLANA
. M
AY YOUR TROUBLES BE FEW
. L
EONID
.

“I'm glad he told you where the swan was.”

“Me too.” She ran her hands over it, her tears soaking straight into the wood.

Two weeks later my parents sat us down again, after school, on our couch that sunk in the middle. My mother's eyes were puffy, my father's shoulders were stooped. “Girls,” my mother said, “I am very sorry to tell you this, but Uncle Leonid is dead. The Communists have killed him.”

“How do you know?” Valeria said.

“Who told you?” I said.

“What?” Elvira cried. “What?”

“Uncle Leonid came to me last night. He woke me up.” She leaned heavily on my father, and he kissed her cheek. “I thought I was dying. My throat closed. The air was gone. I could feel myself being pulled away.”

“He talked to you, Mama?” Elvira asked.

“Yes. The Sabonis gift, the gift from God.” She tapped her widow's peak. “He said for me to tell you that he loves all of you. That he hopes you keep reading books and to listen to Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 2 in C Minor and think of him. He told me he would not last the night.”

“I'm sorry, Mama.” We all cried, even my father, who rarely cried. Leonid was one of his best friends.

“He is in heaven now,” my mother said, sobbing, then turned to my father. “He said we need to leave, Alexei, right away, we need to go.”

My father nodded. He did not question his wife's and her brother's invisible language. He knew it to be true. Plus, he knew that our family tie to Leonid, an “enemy of the people,” as the Communists had labeled him, would automatically put us in grave danger.

I envisioned holding Uncle Leonid, hugging him, but then he pulled away, farther and farther until only our palms were touching, then our fingers, then our fingertips, then the swan flew between us and carried him off. I cried for Uncle Leonid with my family.

Ten minutes later I saw my mother straighten her backbone, put her chin up. Her face hardened, more furious than I'd ever seen her.

“Those bastards. Those KGB vermin. Those Communist criminals. They will never tell us the truth. They will never give us his body to bless and bury and pray over. When he first disappeared, your father, me, Uncle Yuri, Uncle Sasho, we all went to the police station. They laughed. They refused to help. Protect the people.” She pretended to spit. “They protect no one.”

“Svetlana,” my father soothed.

My mother was not done with her rant. “I curse them all and I hope their intestines break free, wrap themselves around their necks, and strangle them inch by inch, blessed be Mary mother of God, I hope they suffer.”

“Svetlana,” my father said, gently, patting her back.

“I hope they all die,” I said.

“Me too,” Elvira said, hugging her doll.

“I hope that, too, Mama,” Valeria said. “I hope that hawks peck at their eyes when they're still living and a snake bites their toes off. I hope that a cougar's claws rip their bodies open. I hope that worms crawl through their ears and ants fill their mouths. I hope that a vulture eats their bones.”

My mother, father, and I all gaped at Valeria, her braids wrapped around her head, her bow bopping on top.

“I hope that, Mama,” Valeria said, and a vengeful prosecuting attorney was born.

“I'm scared,” Elvira said, shivering.

“Me too,” my father muttered, staring at Valeria.

* * *

Uncle Yuri and his family soon left the Soviet Union, sneaking out through the shadows. Uncle Sasho and his family left, too, quietly, stealthily, off to a new life in America.

I knew we would leave soon, too.

* * *

My father lost his job as a physics professor at the university on a Tuesday.

On Wednesday my mother lost her job as a Russian Literature professor at the same university.

The reason was clear: They had been found out. The meetings at our home where people discussed democracy, free elections, capitalism, freedom of press, religion, speech, etc., made them, officially, enemies of the people.

In addition, they were Christians, not Motherland Communists. They did not talk about their faith at the university. My mother herself even said that faith does not belong in an academic setting, or in politics, that the separation was important. But in our home, they were Christian. That was not allowed.

When we returned from school, my parents were huddled together on the couch. White. Worn out. Sick with worry. We sat with them and didn't say a thing. We knew to be quiet. We felt their insidious fear.

The whispering, the intensity of the conversations, the late-night visits from our family's best friends increased. I heard words here and there. “Get out of the Soviet Union ... they'll take your housing away from you soon ... no jobs except at the factory for Christians ... dangerous ... you're a threat ... political revolution ... you could be jailed ... think of the children, their safety ...” There were long hugs and tears.

“Why are they hugging us, saying good-bye?” I asked.

My mother and father brought us in close, all on our couch. “We are leaving Moscow in two days,” my father said. “You must not tell anyone. Do you understand? No one.”

“Girls, there is no greater secret for you to keep than this one,” my mother said.

“Are we going to Uncle Vladan and Uncle Yuri and Uncle Sasho in America?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Do not tell
anyone
we're leaving.”

We said we wouldn't, we didn't. Not even Gavriil and Bogdan, though my young heart beat sadly for the loss of the handsome and heroic Bogdan.

On Tuesday night at two in the morning, they came for my father.

Three men, in uniform, one with a long gray coat, all with knee-high black boots, pounded on the door, then they kicked it down. My father was in pajamas. He fought, his boxing skills coming out, but it was three on one. My mother jumped in to help him, and one of the men backhanded her so hard, she flew into the wall and passed out, blood splattering.

Elvira ran to my mother, sobbing, holding her against her chest.

Enraged at what they had done to our mother, what they were doing to our father, Valeria and I leaped on their shoulders, yelling at them to let go of our father. The soldiers did not hesitate. They tossed us—
children
—across the room. Valeria knocked clean out, exactly like my mother.

“Valeria, Valeria!” I crawled to her, my body splintering in pain, while my father fought and Elvira screamed. He gave in when one of the men put a knife to his throat and said, so calm, as if he were asking for tea, “Continue struggling, comrade, and I will slice open your neck and you can die before your family.”

“Let me check on my wife, my daughter!” he shouted, and the man dug the knife into my father's neck. Blood spurted out like a fountain.

“Arguing does nothing now, does it? Come with me, Professor, and we will get this straightened out. Perhaps your Jesus will help you.” He glanced over at my mother, my beautiful, black-haired mother, collapsed against the wall. “And do not worry, friend, I will look after your wife for you.”

My father took a swing at the man and clipped him, hard, on the chin. He stumbled back, and the other two jumped him, beat him, then dragged his limp body toward the door.

We were traumatized, stunned. I glared at the soldiers from my place, against the wall, holding Valeria, dizzy and sick and broken, then spat on the ground. “I hate you.”

They laughed again, as if our family's misery was the most amusing thing that had ever happened to them.

“You will be a sexy young woman,” he said. “In a few years I will return for you. Would you like that, Professor? I will come and visit with your wife and your daughters.”

My father swore, something we rarely heard, and the soldiers threw him through the open door of our apartment. I heard him smash against the wall.

* * *

My grandfather, my father's father, Konstantin, was arrested the same night we learned later. My grandmother, Ekaterina, had died suddenly, the year before, of a brain aneurism. My mother said later that it was a blessing that it happened, as our sweet grandmother would not have been able to live through the sheer agony of our loss. “She will be their angel,” my mother said.

Father and son, jailed together. Tortured together. They would need more than an angel.

* * *

“I saw your blog today, Dmitry. I liked it. As always.” I was in my wheelhouse watching the sun go down, propped up against the red pillows.

“Thanks, Toni. I thought people might like to know what it looks like to be jammin' and singin' with people on a Mexican beach at night.”

“I liked the song you wrote along with it.” Dmitry had a ... well, how to describe his voice? It was low, baritone, husky.

Was his singing always in tune?

No.

Always at full force?

No.

He admitted it. He wrote about it, wrote about how he couldn't sing well, that he could think of a “billion” people off the top of his head who sang better, but that he wanted to sing, so he did.

What people responded to was the combination of his singing, his guitar playing, his poetry, and how he would talk, before and after, and sometimes during, a song. “It's storytelling with music and poetry and an occasional note that's in tune,” he wrote.

He also never hid his tears. Tall, tanned, blond-haired Dmitry—100 percent raw, American male—and there he is, tearing up when he's singing and playing his guitar in front of an ancient ruin, or reading his poetry from a mountaintop, or talking about destitute people in a poor village in Guatemala and how they are struggling to make it. When he was in front of waterfalls or forests or a hidden mountain lake and he became emotional about the beauty of the earth, he told people to embrace their emotions and share them with others.

The number of people following his blog had ballooned again, I noticed, and his insightful, introspective, and funny book continued to sell.

We chatted about Mexico, the people he'd met, the poverty he'd seen, and his volunteer work in the schools while the sun sunk further on the horizon, like gold candy, stretching its wings out in magentas, purples, azure blues.

“Last night I saw a house in my dreams, Toni, with a blue door.”

“Did you recognize the house?” A flock of geese flew in front of the sun, almost down now, the clouds turning pink, a touch of yellow.

“No. Yes. Maybe. I think so. I don't know.”

“How did you feel about the door?”

“It felt like it was open, like I was supposed to walk through it, and I wanted to, but I was scared, too, as if I didn't want to see what was behind it.”

We talked more. He wanted to know how I was doing, if I had kayaked, how I was feeling. What was I working on for
Homes and Gardens of Oregon
?