Vaclav & Lena (5 page)

Happy Family Kebab House has wood paneling and a big glass case full of big trays of food, like lamb kebabs under a piece of Saran wrap and stuffed cabbages that are crispy on the top, and handmade sausages of lamb and onion that are bright pink because they fry those for you right when you order them. Vaclav opens the drink case and takes out one Dr Pepper and puts it on the counter.

“One dollar exactly,” says Zev the owner, and Vaclav puts one dollar exactly on the counter in change. Usually he likes to chat with Zev, especially when Zev tries out new English on Vaclav, but today Vaclav is not in the mood.

Zev takes the Dr Pepper can and slides it into a brown paper bag that is the exact perfect size for one can, and he hands it to Vaclav, who takes the Dr Pepper to the seat by the window. He sits there for a very long time, feeling very sad for himself, although he is at the same time very happy to feel cozy inside of his jacket, and to drink the Dr Pepper from the can with a straw, and to look out the window at the people walking outside on the sidewalk, and even though this soda is almost one-half the cost of a possible trip to Coney Island to see the Sideshow, he thinks sometimes you know that it is a very long road to become a famous magician, and sometimes you have to spend your last dollar on buying a soda so that you have something to be grateful for that day, even if it lasts just one small piece of time.

Vaclav takes a deep breath and reminds himself that these are, in the scheme of things, very small problems. Vaclav reminds himself that there are some things that are, in the universe, destiny. Sometimes a young magician must remind himself that his dreams are written in the stars. He takes the Dr Pepper out of the paper bag and smushes the bag flat on the table. Using a pencil from his bag, he begins an important list on the brown paper bag.

THINGS THAT
ARE:

1. One day being a famous magician

2. Lena being lovely assistant

3. Perseverance toward those goals in spite of any and every obstacle

NO MATTER WHAT
…

V
aclav knows what he will do. He will wait for Lena every single day in front of her house to go to school, and he will wait for her after school, and walk with her, and talk to her and make her many offers to persuade her in some way to agree to work on the show, with or without permission from his parents. Vaclav bounds out of the Happy Family Kebab House, feeling again like an Eskimo who can walk many miles in the cold, and runs home four blocks, with his backpack flopping about on his back the whole way. Vaclav is determined to do his homework very fast in order to have time to think and plan. Just the thought of homework gives Vaclav the idea for the offer he will make to Lena, and he knows at once that it will work one hundred percent.

The very next morning Vaclav is waiting for Lena outside of her house to walk with her to school and to propose the offer he knows she will not refuse.

When Lena opens the door and sees Vaclav, she stops with one hand still on the doorknob, and stands and looks at him and rolls her big brown eyes. She is wearing her hair in a ponytail on the side of her head, which is not a way she has ever worn her hair before. She sighs out loud, and then stomps down the stairs to the sidewalk and begins walking toward school without stopping to talk to Vaclav.

Vaclav feels confident, and trots along after her, and begins to make his pitch.

“Lena, I have idea for you. We will continue to work on the show. We will continue to try very hard to get permission to do the show without trouble.” Lena keeps walking. Vaclav continues, “But if necessary, we will do our show without permission, in secret.” But still, Lena does not slow down, or look behind, even to tell Vaclav no. She just keeps walking and pretending that he is not even there.

So that she will not be run over by cars, Lena stops at the corner of Eighth Street and Avenue R, because that is a very busy intersection. Because of this, she is forced to stand next to Vaclav, but she keeps her face hard and refuses to look at him.

“I will do your homework,” says Vaclav, and he can see from the side that one of her eyebrows goes way up and is making small wrinkles by the fuzz of her hair.

“All of it,” he says, and the eyebrow stays up. “Every day.” Lena’s eyebrow falls.

“ESL?” she asks.

“Even ESL,” he says.

She takes a deep breath and looks him right in his eyes.

“Da,”
she says. “But secret only. My friends are not knowing, and we do no talk at school.” She looks both ways, and when she is sure no one is around, she says, “We meet at your house after school. Not outside. And no walking to school at all.”

“Okay! Is settled. Here. After school. We begin practice.”

“First homework,” Lena says. “Then begin. Bye-bye!”

Lena takes off, walking so quickly that Vaclav is left behind on the corner, watching the cars whiz by. He is so excited to have his assistant back, willing or unwilling, that it doesn’t occur to him to feel hurt or sad. It doesn’t occur to him that Lena, who has been his only friend since they were small, does not want to be seen with him. He thinks she will be his lovely assistant forever, and one day his wife. Vaclav doesn’t feel sad on this day, the day he stops walking her to and from school, the day she tells him not to embarrass her in front of her new friends.

TO BE HER SOMEWHERE
…

A
fter school, Vaclav does exactly as is required by Lena. Mostly. Yes, he does some things that are not what Lena wanted. He waits for her outside of the building after school, yes. He gets his backpack all ready before the class even ends so that he can rush outside as soon as the bell rings, yes. He sits and waits, his body electric with anticipation for the moment the bell will ring, yes. He rushes outside the moment the bell rings, yes. He runs in the hallway, ignoring previous no-running-in-the-hallway warnings, yes. He sprints outside and hides himself stealthily behind a tree, where he can see the door from which Lena will exit, yes. He follows her home at a short distance, close enough to hear her laughing with Marina and Kristina, yes. But, but! He stays behind the shrubs and mailboxes and cars so that Lena does not know that he is there, and does not even know that he can hear her.

No, he does not leave Lena totally alone until it is time to practice the act. No, he does not go directly home to wait for her at his house, which is what she has asked of him. Instead, he follows her all the way to the Aunt’s house. Vaclav has done a nice thing, following her, so that she has never really been alone. Vaclav thinks that this is a nice thing, to always be there for someone, even if it is not exactly what Lena wants.

Vaclav watches from the street, but he does not understand exactly what Lena is doing. She is walking home with Marina and Kristina, saying goodbye to them on the sidewalk, laughing, and then she is skipping up the stairs to go inside the Aunt’s house, putting her hand on the latch of the screen door to go inside the Aunt’s house, but she is not going inside. Vaclav watches from behind a big blue mail-drop box across the street as Lena puts her hand on the door and as Lena watches Marina and Kristina turn the corner. As soon as they do, Lena skips down the stairs without going inside the Aunt’s house at all. Vaclav pops out from behind the big blue mail-drop box and smiles and waves. Lena stops skipping.

Vaclav can see that Lena is angry, because she makes her face into a face of angriness, not her usual silly face of concentrating, and because she takes a deep breath and her eyes get big and she stares hard at Vaclav.

Vaclav knows that he did not do exactly as Lena has asked him to do. He is not sure, however, why Lena is angry at him. They always do everything together. He does not consider that Lena might want to be without him, might want to say and think and do things without him, might want to do these things with other people and not with him. He’s thinking only that Lena is now having friends who are girls and this is girl time and is a natural thing, as he sees on television. He thinks that Lena will be excited that she is able to see him as soon as girl time is over, that he is there to meet her and walk with her from the Aunt’s house back to his house, excited that they will waste no time and can start right away with practicing for the act.

Vaclav knows that Lena needs help doing her homework, but he does not know about Lena’s feelings of having nowhere to go. He does not know the reasons that Lena would not go inside the Aunt’s house, not even for one single second to put down her knapsack and to drink a glass of water and to use the toilet. Vaclav knows only the letter, not the spirit of the laws in Lena’s life, and sometimes he doesn’t even know all the letters.

Vaclav does not know that to Lena, he is a place to go instead of nowhere. If he knew, he might be happy to be her somewhere, but he does not know.

TO BE NOWHERE
…

R
ight up until she found out that Vaclav was following her, Lena was having a good day. The popular girls, who had been ignoring her and leaving her out and not inviting her to their birthday parties since forever, asked her to sit with them at the lunch table, and they talked in really fast English about many things, and mostly she did not join with them, but she did laugh and agree. Lena, in general, does not talk, because her English is not good enough.

Marina and Kristina are in Lena’s ESL class because they are also not good at English. They are, in fact, even worse than Lena. The difference is that Marina and Kristina do not have to feel ashamed like Lena, because they came from Russia only two years ago. When someone asks them how long they have been here, in America, and they say two years, everyone, parents and teachers and even other kids, is impressed and tells them what a good job they are doing, and to keep practicing, and that they are so smart.

Lena has been in America since she was a baby. When she came she lived in her
babushka
’s apartment, and she knew only her
babushka
, and her
babushka
spoke to Lena in the only language she knew, which was Russian, and so it became the only language that Lena knew.

When Lena began kindergarten, she spoke only Russian, so for half the day she went to ESL class, which is for students who don’t speak English well or at all. And Lena felt always shy and afraid to talk out loud and to practice the English that she was learning, and when she went home, no one in her house spoke any English, just Russian. At home, it felt so good to say what she wanted to and to go to the bathroom exactly when she wanted to and to not have to worry about raising her hand and remembering what it was she was supposed to say when she wanted to go to the bathroom or, worse, say the wrong thing when she was called on. The worst was when something Lena said made everyone laugh, and she did not know why.

When people ask Lena how long she has been here, in America, and she says, “Since I was a baby,” they do not say anything like what a good job she is doing or “Keep practicing” or anything, because they think she has had plenty of time to learn to speak English, and they assume that she is probably more special-ed than ESL. So even though Lena is a very loud person on the inside, and very funny and smart, and sings songs and thinks big, loud thoughts, on the outside she seems quiet and shy.

No one knows how smart Lena is, because she doesn’t answer questions in class, and the teachers always frown at her, and she is always the last to finish her worksheets. No one realizes that even though numbers are the same in every language, it is very hard to understand long division when the person telling you what is the quotient and what is the divisor and how to carry the one is speaking a language you don’t understand. Everyone has the wrong idea of Lena, except Vaclav.

But today was different; today was new. Today Lena sat at the big lunch table with the cool girls instead of alone with Vaclav in the corner by the garbage cans. She didn’t feel weird and left out because she was the only girl without any other girlfriends. Lena felt happy, because at the lunch table no one seemed to notice that she didn’t speak. In fact, it seemed that the other girls were very happy that Lena was there, that she laughed and nodded at everything they said. It seemed to Lena that there were some girls at the table who were supposed to talk and some girls who were not. If the girls who were not supposed to talk were wanted at the table too, Lena was happy to be wanted. Lena learned that she was wanted because she was cute and quiet.

And then she saw Vaclav smiling and waving from across the street, hiding behind a mailbox, and it was all ruined. She didn’t feel cute, and she didn’t feel quiet. She felt angry and stupid. She felt like an ugly thing, like a person who has only one friend and is so ugly that they are mean to their only friend.

Lena wants only to find a space to be, between Vaclav and the cool girls, between what she wants and what she needs. Lena does not want to hurt anyone, and she thinks that maybe she has found a way.

FIGHTING AND BITING AND KICKING AND SCREAMING
…

“H
i, Lena! Surprise, I am waiting for you!” Vaclav says, and he sees that Lena is mad but thinks maybe if his mood is good enough, if he says enough cheering-up things, she will not be angry anymore, she will forget that she is angry, and she will just be happy to come over to practice the act with him.

Vaclav isn’t afraid to have a fight with Lena. He has been friends with Lena since he was six years old, so of course they fight with each other. When there is someone who is your destiny, someone who you love more than any other person, sometimes you push on them and pull on them and feel like hurting them. Fighting is something that happens when there is someone who is your only other person in the world, someone you have no choice about, which is why brothers and sisters are always fighting and biting and kicking and screaming.