by Terri Dixon
Part IV
The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.
-Amelia Earhart
Virgil tried to convince me for a while that I should take the trip to Russia, but he went home weary and unsuccessful. The whole mess left me unable to sleep. The flyer was sitting on the kitchen counter, and I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from it. I wanted to go so badly I could taste it, but I was too scared to just do it.
I hadn’t changed a thing since grandma died. One of those things was her liquor cabinet. I wasn’t much for drinking, but once in a while I had that urge. Grandma didn’t keep beer around which was my normal choice of forbidden fruit. I looked in the cabinet and tried to decide what to drink. After much deliberation, I decided that I should try some Vodka. I had orange juice, and I knew the two went together.
After a couple of Vodka and orange juices--I didn't know that was a Screwdriver, I figured that the stuff was weak or something, because I didn’t feel a thing. I was getting very annoyed with my current mood and place in the universe, and I needed to talk to somebody. I wondered if Tania was online. It seemed as though she never slept, so I thought I would give it a try.
“Tania, are you out there?” I typed into the messenger. I looked at the message and started to wonder if maybe there was something to the Vodka after all, because the message sounded really funny to me.
Seconds later, she replied. “Of course I am. What’s up?”
“Need to talk.”
“About what?”
“I have a chance to do something really amazing, but if I do my mom will completely freak.”
“From what you’ve told me, that could be just about anything. Could you be more specific?”
“I’m looking at a flyer that Virgil gave me for a Jan Term trip to Russia.”
I waited for a moment, but there was no answer. I looked at the conversation. I was starting to feel the vodka and orange juice, so I was just making sure that what I typed made sense in English and all. It did. I didn’t want to ask her if she understood me, because she probably did and then I would sound like a moron. I hated those types of situations. I had some slight self-esteem issues that made me worry about little things like whether or not I sounded like an idiot.
Finally, she messaged me back. “Do you mean the class about the Tsars at Moscow University?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I got that flyer too. It looks great, but I didn’t sign up either.”
“Why didn’t you go for it?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I said, my mother would go batshit.”
“That sounds like a wuss out to me.”
“Oh yeah, well why didn’t you sign up?”
“I’m chicken shit. Not to be mistaken for wussing out.”
I started laughing. “Are you laughing too? Cause I feel like a fool.”
“Me too,” Tania replied. “Aren’t we a pair? Two Russian history freaks that are too scared to just sign up and go to a class in the country that we’re fascinated with to study something we love. We’re sad.”
She was right. That was sad. At that moment, I looked into my future and saw a scared little girl that never did anything great with her life, because she was too much of a wuss to try anything. What would the rest of my life really be like if I didn’t ever take a chance? Where would I end up? I would probably become some old spinster living with my mother. I would probably have cats. I didn’t really like cats. I realized that in what had become a drunken stupor, I had let my mind wander into some pretty frightening territory.
Then it hit me. “You know, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life not doing things, because I’m chicken.”
“Me neither. What’s your point?”
“I should do this, shouldn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“And you should do it too.”
“Say what?”
“You said that you would love it. Come with me. We can be chicken shit together.”
“Girl, you have lost your mind. Russia is dangerous. They are talking revolution every day over there. They hate Americans. They hate their own president. No way. I’m not ending up in a war just because you want to go to some class.”
Tania was right. Every time I looked online at the news, there were reports of violence and protests all over Russia. There was this huge movement to return to a Tsarist government, and the current president, Yuri Kostov was determined to keep his job. It seemed like a big mess.
But, the one thing that I hadn’t heard was that anything had actually happened. I remembered my grandma telling me about the August Coup at the end of the Communist era. That had turned Moscow upside down. They’d blockaded Gorbachev by blocking his building with trams for heaven’s sake. I also remember that my grandma had always warned me about the media. She said that they made everything look more dramatic for the sake of their jobs. I remember this story that she told me about a time that the news had reported food shortages in Moscow right after the fall of Communism. They showed these horrible lines in the GUM, the main department store in Moscow at the time, and they said that they were waiting in line for bread. She told me that it turned out that they were waiting in line for Nike sneakers.
“Remember the story I told you that my grandma told me about the Nikes?” I asked Tania.
I waited a while for an answer.
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“What if that wasn’t the only time that happened?”
“Are you trying to tell me that all of the stuff we hear is exaggerated?”
“I don’t know. What if it is? What if it’s all just one big line for sneakers metaphorically speaking?”
“If it is then I would be staying in the US for no reason, and I would be missing out on the adventure of a lifetime.”
“True.”
“It can’t all be about Nikes.”
“Do you really think that campuses all around the country would be advertising classes at Moscow University if it was that dangerous?”
“Great, now you’re making sense. It must be too late, or it’s the beer.”
“You’ve been drinking too?”
“Yeah, Corona.”
“I had Vodka and orange juice.”
“So, here we are. We’re drunk. It’s like two in the morning. We are decision making impaired. You’re telling me that angry people in lines in Russia are trying to buy sneakers, and that the people who run our schools are taking the time to put up flyers in the unions in hopes that we will go irregardless of what we see in the news? If we do this, we are idiots.”
“So, what do you say?”
I waited for a moment.
“I’ll sign up if you do,” Tania finally replied.
“I’m going to sign up tomorrow morning. Right after I recover from my hangover.”
I talked with Tania a little more after that. We made plans for me to fly to Boston and then the two of us would fly to Moscow together. We were both scared to death to do something like go to another country. Neither one of us had ever been much of anywhere, and neither one of us had ever been out of the country. We did both speak Russian halfway decent, although Tania insisted that my Russian was way better than hers. It was the only decision that we could make. We were both scared to do it, but we wanted to do it. The only solution was that we do it together. Look out Russia, here we come.
It was four in the morning before I managed to go to sleep. I woke up at ten and puked a little while before getting myself together and calling the number on the flyer. It was easy to sign up. It cost an arm and a leg to go, but I thought that it was going to be worth it. After all of the terrible things that had happened to me over the last year, I thought I deserved a real adventure.
I got my reservation number, ran to the Post Office to apply for a passport, and got a hold of Tania. She had hers too.
It was all set. We were going to go to Russia and go to school at Moscow University for three weeks to study the Tsars. It felt like a dream. I wanted to go out and see the city and see all of the sights that I’d read about and seen pictures of online and videos of on YouTube. I couldn’t wait. I had so much that I wanted to learn. I had so many questions that needed answered. I wanted to know everything about Russia.
I looked at my hand as I chatted online with Tania about all the great things we were going to do. Isaw the ring that my grandma gave me. I wondered if it really came from Russia. This was going to be my big chance to find out.
The Ring of the Queen