I can’t count the times I had to endure my father’s lectures on the myth of sincerity. Every time I made a new friend, or raved about a teacher, he’d sigh and shake his head. “Most people will betray you the first chance they get.” Mom would say loud enough for him to hear, “Distrust, Oksana, is as much a part of Roma character as stubbornness. Smart people utilize both in moderation.” This usually produced an argument that was broadcast to the entire neighborhood.
“Sorry,” I said to Cruz. “In my country we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.”
“I’m very loud when I cry, and I tend to get down on my knees and beg if that doesn’t work. Come on. Be nice.”
Everything he said frustrated me because he didn’t react in the logical way. Anybody else would’ve been offended by my hostility. Instead, he looked amused. I was dumbfounded by his behavior. You didn’t just walk up to somebody and say, “Hey. I know you might mash my self-esteem into a pulp, but I have to tell you that I really, really, I mean REALLY like you. What about you? Here’s a mallet in case you say no.”
I glanced around, then back to him. “Why? We don’t even talk.”
“Maybe we would if you didn’t act like a blowfish every time I came near you.”
What was the harm?
“It’s just a rose. I’m not asking for your soul.”
Really? “Fine. I’ll take it.”
“Good.” He handed me the flower, ignoring my bad manners, and shrugged out of his jacket. “Because I have one more thing for you.”
“Two gifts?”
He draped it around my shoulders. “Not a gift. I definitely want it back, but you can’t run around like that. I can see through your shirt.”
I jerked the jacket tighter around me. Could he see my bra this entire time?
“Maybe I’ll get you an umbrella for Easter.”
“I shall not accept it, thank you very much.”
* * *
The more romance novels I read, the faster my English vocabulary expanded. They didn’t disappoint; quite the opposite. Something about the predictability of the happy endings brought me comfort and, as silly as it seems, hope. But there were still gaps in my comprehension, and I wasn’t shy about asking for help. Usually it came from strangers; neither Mom nor Dad took advantage of the free English classes offered by the Russian Immigrant Outreach Program. They had more pressing things on their minds.
Meadow, the horn-rimmed salesgirl at the bookshop off Highland Avenue, kept a stack of fresh historical novels for me to salivate over. Once a week I pleaded with Mom or Dad, depending on my coordinates, for five dollars. Funds acquired, I stopped after school and stayed for hours, reading on the floor in the corner where other kids my age gave each other hickeys. I could buy only one book at a time, and it tormented me to have to pick. Covers, or rather the male models on them, played a key role in the selection process. On this particular day I faced a dilemma between two men so remarkable that my heart sang “Heaven” by Warrant just looking at their flowing locks. I flipped through the first one, decided that I fancied Highlanders over Vikings, and grabbed the other, turning to a random paragraph. I sensed that something incredible was occurring behind phrases such as “burning loins” and “aching bulge,” and I hunted for an explanation in my dictionary. A literal translation produced “flaming pork chops” and “painful protuberance.”
After she finished ringing up a Chinese couple who purchased multiple copies of maps to the stars’ homes, Meadow explained this mysterious combination of words.
“This is juicy,” she said, burgundy lips suspended in a wicked grin. “Nothing like the Harlequins you’ve been reading, right? X-rated stuff.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Sex,” she exclaimed. “In Harlequins they kiss, but here, oh man, this is like soft porn. Cool shit. But what’s the problem? Didn’t your parents talk to you about sex?”
Unimaginable. But I knew a little something about porn.
Adult films, yet another thing that’s illegal in the USSR, couldn’t be purchased in stores. But some people managed to set up clandestine bootlegged showings to satisfy the demand. After eavesdropping on a conversation between Zhanna and me about her crush on our neighbor’s twenty-year-old son, Esmeralda, Zhanna’s half sister, decided the time was ripe to teach us about sex.
“You’re both thirteen,” she told us. “At your age there are Romani girls who’ve already had their first kid. Not that I approve, but still. Men are not like us, and you need to know how they’re different so they don’t take advantage of you. This is especially important for you, Oksana, because in America, erotic education is a subject taught in schools. If you ever get there, you don’t want those people to think we’re primitive, do you?”
“I know about men.” Speaking from experience. Ruslan and I had had a couple of secret dates by then. When we kissed, our mouths stayed shut like the portcullis of a castle, the same way they did in the love scenes of all the Russian movies. By Roma standards, Ruslan was too old to be a virgin at sixteen. The other band members teased him endlessly and sent prostitutes to his hotel rooms with notes of instruction tucked between their breasts. This irked me. I didn’t know precisely the steps to losing one’s virginity, but I was sure I didn’t want Ruslan to take them without me. Stepan once joked, “After you get the hang of it, it’ll be like dipping your finger in a rainbow.” Ruslan’s answer sent the rest of the men into a roaring fit. “A dip might be fine for an elderly goat like you, Stepan, but I won’t do it until I can dive in headfirst.”
Esmeralda came up with a proposal. We would either watch her with one of her boyfriends through a peephole in her closet or see an educational film. In our culture, parents don’t talk about sex until the wedding night, and even then it’s often just a reluctant instruction on how to lie down when your husband takes you. Esmeralda was determined that we be more prepared than she had been.
The makeshift movie theater was hidden in the basement of a seven-story apartment building down the street where two guys took money at the bottom of the stairs with urgency in their speedy fingers. We joined a slowly moving line of men and teenage boys whose nervous footwork gave them away.
The room was wide and had linoleum floors, disco-era wood paneling, and ceilings veined with coughing pipes. Several rows of folding metal chairs had been arranged in front of a large bedsheet hanging from a clothesline. In the back of the room, a man loaded a film reel onto the arm of a rusted projector.
Zhanna and I scuttled to the last row near the wall, our eyes everywhere but on the other people filing into the room. Esmeralda took her seat next to us and crossed one leg over the other under her stylish black skirt, her shoulders shaking from laughter at our behavior. Her wavy hair hung past her waist, shiny and soft: once a week she soaked it in olive oil. Her complexion was dewy, eyes coquettish and bright. A few men tried to get her attention with winks and nods. I remember unfolding myself in my seat and trying to mimic Esmeralda’s effortless poise. Might as well learn something.
The film was poorly dubbed and not easy to follow, but from what I gathered, the two main characters really liked each other and took off their clothes to prove it. Their only hindrance was the lack of suitable places to get naked.
“Now pay attention to the missionary position,” Esmeralda whispered. “As a rule this is the best one for the first time.”
Zhanna leaned over to me. “They have rules for this stuff?”
I stared in fascination at the man on the couch, the bedsheet screen sending ripples through the image. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned to his waist, one shirttail carelessly slung over the top of his black dress pants. His eyes were at half-mast, and his fingers drummed a slow rhythm on his glass of bourbon.
“Hike up your skirt,” he orders the woman perched on the edge of the ottoman with her legs spread wide.
“Yes.” She complies. Centimeter by centimeter. The higher the hem travels, the closer to her he tips, a
s if an invisible string attached from her skirt to his head pulls him onward. She halts only when her thighs and the shadows between are exposed. The man exhales and rubs a shaking hand across his lips. He points at the shadows accusingly. “That, right there, is what rules the world.”
“Wasn’t that great?” Esmeralda asked as we walked home that night. “Kind of artsy, and didn’t feel the least bit amateur. And the acting! Usually these types of movies don’t have good stories, but this one really surprised me.”
“I bet it’s against the law to get naked in public,” Zhanna said.
“Half the things they were doing are against the law,” I said. “Why do you think we had to sneak into a basement to watch them?”
“Please,” Esmeralda said. “That means every Soviet over the age of sixteen is a criminal. This is natural and beautiful. Especially between a husband and wife.”
“But you’re not married,” I said.
“Well, no. One can only wait so long.”
Zhanna and I were still getting over the fact that we’d left our innocence back in the room fitted with disco paneling.
The next time I mentioned the neighbor’s son, Zhanna threw her hands up in the air. “So over him.”
“But why?”
“I’m not ready for the natural and the beautiful.”
AT THE DELI
Months after I last saw Uncle Arsen and my cousins, Mom came home very late one night. I was waiting for her outside by the mailboxes, but knowing I’d get in trouble for snooping, I had hunkered down in a spot shy of the security lights. This way I could sneak back inside unnoticed.
She wasn’t alone as she stumbled out of a car—my uncle’s car. I didn’t know why she’d gone to see him; perhaps to make up? Or not. Walking together toward the building, they looked as irritated with each other as the last time. Mom swayed and Uncle caught her by the elbow and shoved her through the gate. They began to argue. I was too far away to discern their words, but knowing Mom, she was probably insulting him. Then she swung at him and lost her balance, nearly falling onto the metal gate’s decorative spear points. She caught herself in time, but when she straightened I saw a dark splotch on her left cheek. I forgot all about hiding, and when Uncle saw me shuffling toward them down the concrete walkway in my slippers, he jumped into his car and took off.
Back at our place I helped Mom onto her cot, fully dressed minus her pumps, and pulled a tissue from a box nearby. Next to us my sister lay sprawled over her blankets, mouth open over a round spot of drool on her pillow. I covered Mom with a sheet. The smell of vodka and blood invaded my nostrils. I’d never be able to forget this combination.
Mom’s lids shuddered. “You’re so strong. I never worry about you.”
“That’s great, Mom.” I wanted to clean off the blood, but I was too scared to see it spread to the edges of the tissue like a living thing, to have the scent cling to me.
“Not worried about Roxy, either,” she mumbled heavily. “I wish I was her. Too young to understand anything.”
But I think she was wrong about that.
* * *
When we first got kicked out of Uncle Arsen’s house, I wrote a note on the back of the phone directory I found under the kitchen sink of our new apartment:
We are a broken bottle, jagged edges rising from what used to be whole.
I was not really sure why I didn’t write those lines in my journal. After I finished, I ripped out the scrap of paper and flushed it down the toilet. When Roxy walked in on me hovering over the toilet bowl as if I held a grudge against the L.A. sewer system, she wrapped her fingers around my wrist. “Why are you always so sad?” she asked. “Makes me wanna be sad, too.” I didn’t answer, as had become my habit. I must’ve made her feel invisible countless times, so involved was I in my own world. An older me often thinks about the inaccuracy of that note. I still had a family to preserve: my sister. Instead, we started to ever so slowly drift apart.
Roxy practicing for stardom in one of Mom’s altered costumes
* * *
In our apartment, life was a rotten potato lost between the fridge and the counter. No matter where you went, the stink followed. But at Dad’s, too much excitement and novelty made our troubles invisible. Olga proved a riveting distraction, a mischievous sprite out to grab your soul. I understood why Roxy shot down the stairs like an arrow every time Dad came to pick us up, but I was still avoiding his house as much as possible.
“School is out for the summer and you have plenty of free time. Don’t you want to spend it with your father?” Olga would say every time I tried to get out of visiting. A question that could be answered in only one way. It wasn’t just Olga’s presence; after that first channeling session, she’d been trying on “nice.” Mostly my reluctance had to do with the habitual way Dad and Olga used me, like my mother had, as their interpreter. The ironic part was that they didn’t really ask but embarrassed me until I volunteered.
At a doctor’s office once, my father got down on the floor and started pumping push-ups to convince the man that he had the heart of a lion.
“Quit acting like an imbecile.” Olga hunched over him, shouting.
The doctor clutched his file with both hands and retreated into the corner.
Dad jumped to his feet. “You call me names in front of the good doctor?”
“I’ll call you whatever I want. We’re married!”
“They’re always this loud,” I said, in case the poor guy wished to take notes. “Eastern Europeans always sound like they’re arguing.”
“So they’re not?” he asked quietly.
“If you want to stay married, you’ll get the hell out,” Dad was saying.
Olga yanked open the door. Some of the nurses had gathered outside, pretending not to appear curious or worried. Dad and Olga hollered things about each other’s mothers loud enough to make me want to hide in the cupboard under the sink until Olga stormed out.
Our first trip to Santa Monica, Dad drove up to a man on the corner of Highland and Sunset to ask for directions. He rolled down the window and said, “Excooze me, sir. You know vay to bitch?” At a drive-through, Roxy or I would beg to order, to stop Dad from saying things that could land him in jail. Things like “I hav six penises of change to that dollar.”
Only one thing granted me the get-out-of-jail-free card: getting my period. As long as I blamed “female problems” for not coming over, Dad left me alone; he had great fears of anything concerning childbirth, menstrual blood, and especially tampons. In Romani culture, men don’t usually participate in female matters. A woman on her period is unclean and to be avoided. Even in marriage, the wife is encouraged to keep her menstrual and childbirth issues to herself. Roxy and I would work out a story, and once there, she’d go into detail describing the cramps rendering me bed-bound.
One day Olga called and pleaded with me to come by. She wouldn’t say why over the phone, but it sounded serious.
“Oh! You’re in love,” Olga said almost as soon as I’d stepped through the front door.
“What?” I said. “Don’t be crazy.”
I began to defend myself against her silliness when I noticed another person in her kitchen, and I went silent; I had too much dignity to discuss this in front of a stranger in a pink velour jumpsuit. Olga’s guest was roundish, with short red spiky hair and a rat face.
“So what do you need?” I asked, crossing my arms and avoiding eye contact with my stepmother.
Hands on hips, Olga clucked her tongue. “Oksana. You know I’ll find out one way or another. You can fool your father but not me. All I can say is that it better not be some pimple-faced gadjo.”
“Stay out of my business.”
Narrowing her eyes, Olga sat down beside the woman and put an arm around her shoulders. “Svetlana’s husband is cheating on her, so we need to go to the deli up on Highland.”
No other explanation was offered; Olga often assumed that other people read minds, too.
As
if on cue, Svetlana pressed a napkin to her forehead, mopping sweat from under a shock of red bangs. Normally Romani women wear their hair long, but Svetlana had reinvented herself after leaving her first husband, a drunk from Siberia, for a sober Russian Jewish accountant.
“Oh, my Igor, my sweet Igoriok,” she moaned. “How could you do such a thing? Cheating! Damn your black soul. May your balls dry up into raisins, you bastard.”
As Svetlana continued her lament, Olga tried to comfort her with Twinkies. I felt for Svetlana, but more so for Igor.
“Oksana, please. Can’t you see how the poor woman suffers?”
“And how is this my fault?”
All of a sudden, Svetlana was on me, squeezing my hands. “Oksanochka, sweetheart, he must return to me,” she wailed.
“And I’m supposed to make that happen how?”
“The witch works at Giuseppe’s Deli,” Olga said.
“Ashley,” Svetlana said, looking like she’d tasted a rotten egg. “American.”
Olga patted her client on the shoulder. “Oksanochka, we need you to go inside and get one of her hairs.”
I pried my hands from Svetlana’s, slowly, so as not to disturb a woman who was clearly insane. “You want me to steal a hair.”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“From a deli. With customers and meat and stuff.”
“Yes, yes, what’s the matter with you?” Olga said. “I need one of her hairs for my spell. That’s all I ask. I’m not an evil stepmother. I don’t make you scrub floors. This one simple thing is all I need from you.”
“If it’s so simple, why don’t you do it, then?”
Svetlana grabbed me again before I could protect myself. “Sweetie, she’ll suspect something if one of us goes. She probably knows what I look like. He’s my husband,” she moaned. “Please, I beg of you. Go in, buy a pound of roast beef, and on your way out, pluck one of the bitch’s hairs.”
American Gypsy Page 13