The Language of Sisters (43 page)

The sneaky binoculars were black.

I felt myself go hot.

He had seen me. I knew it. He had looked right at me. Maybe there was a glint on the binoculars. Maybe the curtains moved. He was a trained DEA agent. He would notice stuff like that.

I was pitiable.

I didn't even bother turning on the lights. I slithered like a snake into bed and pulled the covers straight over my head. I was an awkward goose. A poor excuse for a woman. A spying disgrace.

* * *

Three nights later Boris and I went to
The Pirates of Penzance.
During the opera we cried our eyes out. Opera does that to us. Then we went to Henry's. It's a fancy restaurant. Fancy tableware, fancy wine list, fancy food. Boris loves all that stuff.

“To have someone who understands opera, to her soul.” Boris patted his chest. “It means everything to me.”

“Me too, Boris.”

We then discussed the next opera coming to town.

He steals cars (though I yell at him) and he loves opera.

* * *

“Antonia,” my father said. “I cannot believe. Three waiters out sick. Flu. Please, can you come in and work? Eh? I'll make sure you have your favorite dinner when you are done. You tell me.”

I was in the wheelhouse. I was not exactly trying to spy on Nick with the sneaky binoculars. I was trying to find Anonymous or Maxie the golden eagle, or the Sergeant Otts. If Nick came out and I saw him, it was purely by coincidence.

“I'll come in, Papa. No problem.”

“Ah, my daughter. You are loving to your mother and I.”

* * *

Ellie was there, too. Valerie was swamped with the trial. We waitressed, and afterward my parents brought us the special—Russian stew, one of my favorites. The name of the special was “Dmitry Come Home To Mama.” We had hot bread and wine.

My mother said, “I know three things today.” She held up three fingers so we would not be confused by the number three. “One, always have extra food. Maybe one day the government go bad, like it was in the Soviet Union, and you want some hidden. Two, put money underneath the mattress sometimes, to keep it safe. Three, a woman, she should kick a man out of house with boot if he not right to her. And three again, I love you, Alexei.”

My father smiled, they kissed. Too much kissing.

Ellie poured me another glass of wine. We clinked our glasses while our parents acted like teenagers in the back of a Chevy.

“It's not even embarrassing anymore,” Ellie said.

“They're almost R rated though... .”

 

 

 

On that black night in Moscow, the moon covered by rolling gray clouds, my father limped through our door, his face bruised and bloody, blood on his shirt, blood on his hands. He was carrying something in a blanket. When he saw me, he said, “Go to your room, Antonia, now.”

“But, Papa, you have blood on you and who is—”

My mother stood in front of my father. “Now, Antonia. Obey your papa.”

“But who is that kid? He has blood on him! What happened?”

“We will tell you in the morning.” My mother grabbed my arm and put her face close to mine. “Do not tell anyone, ever, what you saw tonight, do you understand?”

“Mama—”

“Antonia, you must not tell.”

“Go, Antonia,” my father said, sinking into our sofa. “I will talk to you in the morning.”

I went to bed and shook and cried, a vision of my beaten father, and the blood, charging through my mind. Valeria woke up and I pretended to be asleep, and then I fell asleep, a little girl who had had enough trauma in the last year to last a lifetime.

I was sure, when I woke up the next morning, that I'd had a bad dream. That my father had not had blood on him, that he had not carried a kid into our apartment with blood on him. But, in our cramped family room, that same kid with blond curls was sitting up on our couch, no blood on him now. He was staring straight ahead. Quiet. There, but not there.

My father took me aside when Elvira and Valeria tried to play with the little boy.

“Antonia,” he said. “Your mother told you not to tell anyone what you saw last night, do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“If anyone asks, ever, you are to say his name is Dmitry, and we adopted him from an orphanage.”

“From an orphanage? At night? But why did he have blood on him?”

My father squeezed my arm, not hard. “Dmitry was adopted from an orphanage. Say it.”

“But, what happened—”

“Do not argue with me, young lady.” His face was so haggard, bandaged now in two places. “Dmitry was adopted from an orphanage. You and your sisters wanted a brother, so we adopted him.”

“But why were you bleeding last night?” Tears burned behind my eyes.

“Antonia, forget what happened last night. We will not be talking about it again. Do not talk about it with anyone, including your sisters. What is important is that we are leaving for America later tonight for a better life.”

“Papa—”

He put a finger to my lips. “This is a secret. Can you keep a secret?”

I nodded. Yes. I already had a ton of secrets.

“Say it: Dmitry was adopted from an orphanage.”

“Dmitry was adopted from an orphanage.” I thought of one more thing. “How old is he?”

“He's three or four, I'm not sure. He told me his name, and he held up three fingers when I asked how old he was, then four fingers. You will be his big sister now. Can you do that? Can you be a big sister to Dmitry?”

Yes, I could. This was something to be happy about. I smiled. “I've always wanted a brother.”

He smiled back, hugged me. “And you have one now. I love you, Antonia.”

“I love you, too.”

My sisters and I went to school. When we came back, we tried to play with Dmitry, but he wouldn't say anything at all. He stared straight ahead. He didn't cry, smile, or laugh.

“Is he alive?” Elvira asked.

“Why doesn't he talk?” Valeria asked.

“What's wrong with him?” I asked.

“Give your new brother time,” my father said.

“And hug him,” my mother said. “He needs our hugs and love.”

So we gave Dmitry time and we gave him hugs and love.

* * *

My parents woke us up in the middle of the night and we quietly left our apartment, snuck down the stairs, and headed to our small car. It used to be my grandfather's. It usually didn't work and we couldn't afford gas, but obviously my parents had had it fixed. As enemies of the people, my parents had to sneak out of the Soviet Union. We did not have permission to leave.

I held Dmitry on my lap, the black shadows whipping by, the petrified silence stifling.

At one point tears ran down Dmitry's face and he whimpered but didn't say a word.

The first night we fled Moscow, we stayed in the country, in a barn. Same with the second night. We met people, our parents talking quietly, furtively. Dmitry didn't speak.

The third night we stayed in a home outside of a village. The fourth night a garage in an industrial area. The fifth night behind a building. Dmitry still didn't speak.

My parents' fear zinged the air around us. For once in our lives, our parents kept telling us to be quiet. We were only allowed to whisper short prayers.

On the sixth night, out in the country, in a cottage with no electricity, our parents let us talk. My sisters and I played cards, whispering, our parents lying on the ground, on blankets, beside us. They were so tired, they looked dead.

“Where is Mama?” Dmitry said, his voice soft, like cotton. “Where is Mama?”

My parents sat straight up

“I want Mama. I want Mama.” Dmitry's voice rose. “Mama by the trees.” He pointed into the darkness. “He took her to the trees.” He started crying, his sobs wretched and piercing, right from his young soul. My parents started to panic. Sounds carry in the night.

“Be quiet, son,” my father hissed.

“Darling, please,” my mother said.

“Stop crying, Dmitry,” my sisters said.

He kept crying. My parents exchanged a look, resolute, hardened, saddened. I knew that one of them was going to do something drastic.

I pulled Dmitry onto my lap and rocked him, then I sang a song. He quieted, then went back into his semi-comatose state and finally fell asleep. My parents sighed with relief, then we all went back to being petrified.

* * *

After we left the Soviet Union, we went to Germany via Poland. We were crammed into one small room in Munich, the six of us, for a year. My mother went to work as a maid, paid under the table, cash. My father worked as a laborer, paid with cash. Two college professors with doctorates, but neither complained. Not a word.

My sisters and I were taunted and teased at school for being from the Soviet Union, for our clothes and braided hair piled on top of our heads and for not speaking German, for about two weeks. Kids can smell weakness, they smelled ours, and they attacked. We Kozlovskaya girls decided to fight back. One punch, two punches, down they went. Our father had taught his girls to box. The teasing stopped enough for us to learn German and make a few friends.

We didn't pickpocket again, though. My mother had talked to us about it, realizing the extent of the stealing that we had done in Moscow. I knew she did not tell our father, not wanting to hurt him, but she told us what would happen if we were arrested in Germany. “We could be deported back to the Soviet Union, do you want that? For us? For your father?”

The threat of returning to the Soviet Union, where our grandfather had been murdered, our father near murdered, our uncle Leonid “disappeared,” was enough to make us keep our hands in our own pockets, as was the searing memory of what happened to my mother when she came to get me in jail. Plus, though we were very poor in Germany, we weren't starving. We had food. We had electricity, heat, hot water, a refrigerator that worked all the time. Our parents were with us and healthy. There was no need for survival stealing.

Uncle Vladan and Aunt Holly were officially sponsoring us from America. When our interviews were over, the endless paperwork filled out, and with help from three professors in the United States whom my parents had been friends with for years, we finally left Munich.

Dmitry still hardly spoke. He cuddled up to me most of the time. To my mother, to Elvira and Valeria, but mostly to me. He did not warm to my father. He often cringed when my father said hello. He pulled away from his hugs. He was scared of him. It hurt my father, I could tell, but he didn't force Dmitry to hug him, to talk to him. He gave him his space.

The same questions kept coming. “Mama? You know where Mama is, Antonia? By the trees?”

“I'm sorry, Dmitry. I don't know where she is. I'm your sister. We're your family now.” I was almost eleven. I said this over and over, as my father and mother had told me to do. “I don't know what happened. I don't know where she is.”

“I thought Dmitry was from an orphanage,” Valeria said.

“I thought he didn't have a mother,” Elvira said.

“The past is in the past,” my father said. “Let it lie. Dmitry is from an orphanage. I am his papa, your mother is his mama. That is my final word.”

And so it was.

Dmitry cried, but silently, tears streaming down his small face. He would stare vacantly for hours, sometimes hardly moving, as if he was staring at something, or someone, we couldn't see. Other times, he would rock back and forth, the tears flowing, and he would repeatedly say, “Mama, Mama.”

The paperwork came through. The interviews were over. We dropped our meager belongings into beaten-up bags and climbed on the plane, my parents terrified, waiting to be stopped, to be denied, to be deported back to the Soviet Union. Instead, smiling flight attendants greeted us, this ragtag bunch.

The flights to JFK, and then to Portland, Oregon, felt luxurious to us. My parents both slept, conked out, for the entire trip to JFK. Once the plane took off they not only knew we were safe, they also knew that the four of us weren't going anywhere.

Dmitry, Elvira, Valeria, and I were spoiled by the flight attendants. I will never forget that. They brought us meals and snacks. We were starving and when we ate everything they brought more food. And pop. We loved the pop. Our parents slept, we ate.

We had to be “processed” when we landed at the airport. Customs, paperwork, stamps, much that I did not understand as a child, except that we had to wait and it made my parents nervous all over again.

We officially became the Kozlovskys then, in that airport, not Kozlovsky and Kozlovskaya. The paperwork that we filled out had only Kozlovsky on it. There would be no more feminine and masculine separation. We would do what my uncles' families had done before us. One last name per family, like the Americans did.

When we were finally done, and told we could go, my father turned to my mother and said, “Welcome to America, Svetlana. We are here, finally.”

We cheered.

My parents, who had endured the impossible, their journeys tragic, held each other and cried and cried.

Then they kissed. The kiss took too long.

“Mama! Papa!” we all cried. “Stop!”

The customs officials smiled.

“Welcome to America,” they told us.

My parents turned and hugged, and kissed, on both cheeks, the customs officials.

We Kozlovskys have never forgotten the gift and safety of American citizenship.