‘Your life can’t be any worse than mine,’ she said.
‘Difficult,’ I whispered, not looking at them, not wanting to admit anything aloud. ‘He monitors my calls. I had friends at first, but he ran them off. I thought he was just awkward, but now I think he does it on purpose, to isolate me . . . He told me he was a teacher, but he’s a custodian. I didn’t think he was a millionaire, but I didn’t know he was broke. Nothing I do is right – not the way I dress, cook, or talk.’
The white witch nodded. ‘Stress and an unhealthy home atmosphere. I’ll give you some incense to get rid of the negative energy.’
It would take a lot more than incense to help me.
She pulled a stethoscope from her purse and asked me to take off my shirt.
I looked at Oksana. ‘Can we lock the door?’
‘You can’t even lock the bathroom in this house.’
‘Koshmar!’ I said. What a nightmare!
‘He wants access at any time.’
The white witch put the cold disk on my chest and told me to breathe deeply. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, pointing to the diamond ring.
‘It’s complicated,’ I said, looking at Oksana.
Oksana told her the story. Girl meets mobster. Falls for mobster. Flees mobster. Keeps souvenir. ‘Get rid of it,’ the white witch said. ‘It’s not doing you any good.’ She placed the disk on my back. ‘I am listening and listening and your heart tells an interesting story.’
She put the stethoscope away and stood behind me. I was just about to turn around when I felt her hands on my shoulders. Her fingers worked their way towards my neck. ‘Nu. Nu,’ she muttered. Well, well. She lit a cone of incense in a small metal locket. Rosemary and thyme. Walking around me, she swirled the incense around my head and watched the thin trail billow and disappear. ‘My child,’ she said after a long moment of looking at the smoke that was no longer there. ‘The reason you can’t conceive is because you don’t want a child. Not with this man.’
I put my face in my hands.
‘That can’t be it,’ Oksana sputtered. ‘If a woman could choose when to get pregnant or not there would be no need for birth control.’
‘She is so tight,’ the wise woman said. She tried to loosen my shoulders, but they would not soften. ‘When a woman is this tense, the body closes up. The mind and the body are linked. The body obeys the mind.’
It was painful to hear aloud what I already knew in my heart.
Chapter 21
My Dear Boba
Greetings From Sunny California!
America is all that I thought it would be and more. I have a wonderful job. Tristan is the perfect husband. Life in the country is like already living in heaven – quiet and peaceful.
Despite my avid happiness, I miss you. I miss you terribly. I miss Odessa. I miss our cozy apartment. I miss my job. I miss feeling smart. And important. I even miss David. More than anything, I want to go home. I’ve realized that true happiness comes from being with the people you love. All the things I thought would make me happy – food delivered right to the door, a driver’s license, a house – don’t mean much if
I pulled out another sheet of stationery and recopied the first paragraph then signed, Love and miss you, Dasha. I had joined the ranks of struggling immigrants who write home about American streets paved in gold. Lenin said everything that glitters is not gold. How right he was.
The more I wanted to tell Boba the truth the more I lied. And here is the worst Odessan sin: I wasn’t even original – I stole details from letters written by Soviet Unions clients. He’s the perfect husband. Life in the country is like already living in heaven. Why hadn’t I read between the lines of what our girls had written? How could I have been so blind? Maybe I could talk to some of them here in America.
‘What are our rights? What about us?’ Oksana’s words haunted me. What are our rights? I called some of girls I’d helped and they told me their experiences. Some were happy, some were not, but they said the same things. One had even put a document together called Getting the Love You Deserve: Finding and Marrying a Russian Woman, available on the Internet for only $49.99. She sent me a copy as a thank you for having interpreted for her. I sped through the pages – preparation of documents, waiting, fingerprinting, waiting, interview, waiting, adjustment of status, waiting, green card. She didn’t cover rights or deportation. The bottom line: Couples have to be married for two years before a foreign bride receives a permanent green card. Oksana was thrilled to learn that she was close to becoming a permanent resident, with or without Jerry. I realized I wasn’t even halfway there.
I continued to fight the static and party lines to talk to Boba every Sunday. Unfortunately, Tristan had become one more thing I fought. He stood in front of me and pointed to his watch. More and more, I fantasized about going home, even for a visit. I wanted to see Boba. But there was only one way I could afford a ticket. The ring. My hand flew to my chest.
Maybe the white witch was right.
After I hung up, Tristan took my hand. ‘I’m not trying to hurt you,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you that we can’t afford it. Money’s pretty tight. I didn’t tell you, but that San Francisco trip cost over 500 bucks. A ten-minute call to Ukraine costs forty dollars. Can you please try to talk less? We’re really in trouble here, money-wise.’
‘I can try,’ I said. ‘I just miss my Boba.’
‘I know you do.’ He took me in his arms and kissed my temple.
Monday morning, the second he drove off, I dialed my old number. I needed this connection. I needed to hear Boba’s voice.
For once, the line was clear.
‘Tell me about your mother, Boba.’
‘Mama was a beauty, but after she was widowed, she never remarried. That meant we were poor because we only had one salary. I went to work at the factory when I was sixteen. Life was hard then. We were always struggling, always hungry. My sister Stasia and I fished with string and a bit of wire for the hook. We were always proud when we caught something.’ Boba and I spoke for hours, like when I was back home, in our kitchen. Only this time, she talked, and I listened.
‘Boba, one thing I never understood, about religion . . .’ I didn’t know what I was asking exactly. Perhaps how she had gone from a Jew to a Ukrainian in Odessa. Perhaps I was asking why. Perhaps I was asking who she was. Perhaps I was asking who I was.
She sighed. ‘Where to start, my little rabbit paw? My neighbor Izya and I entered the factory on the same day. We worked near each other, the only Jews in the whole place. He fell in love with a girl named Inna. His parents weren’t happy about it, but it was right after the war. Everyone had lost someone, everyone was hungry, everyone was suffering. They allowed him to marry his Ukrainka. Weddings were small in those days – families couldn’t afford to feed many guests. He married on Saturday and came back to work on Tuesday. Only Izya was now Igor and he’d taken his wife’s surname.
‘He wasn’t the only one. This is how I knew it was possible to have documents changed. Izya and I worked together all our lives. He was heartsick my brilliant daughter didn’t have the right to go to college because she was a Jew. He heard me brag about how smart you were and suggested that I have my papers changed, so you’d stand a chance of going to university. His wife’s cousin, the one who’d altered his documents, was retiring in a week. She would do the deed for a thousand rubles; Izya offered to pay half. I didn’t have time to think. You were still young, but I wanted you to have opportunities. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t know. But you did go to university and you did get a degree.’
‘But do you believe, Boba? What do you believe?’
‘Believe?’
Silence.
Did she hear my question? Or did she not want to answer? Should I just let it go?
‘What was it like, growing up a Jew?’ I tried again.
‘My sister and I didn’t have any religious education. Neither did our girlfriends. Maybe if we’d been boys it would have been
different. Growing up, I didn’t think about religion or faith. It wasn’t something we ever discussed. Mama was reserved, and Stasia and I could only respect her feelings.’
‘And you, Boba? What about you?’
‘Maybe in America it’s different,’ she said, her voice low, almost a growl. ‘Perhaps there you’re an American first and a Jew second. Here you are not a Jew and a Ukrainian, you are either or. I was born here, yet not considered Ukrainian, not considered a citizen. Not until I changed our papers. That’s what I think. That’s why I wanted you to leave this insane asylum for good. I don’t want you surrounded by people like Olga, who smile to your face, then stab you between the shoulder blades the moment you turn your back.’
‘What about the icons? Why do you have so many?’ I pressed. I didn’t want to think about Olga ever again.
‘Ah, the icons,’ she said, her voice hardening. ‘I didn’t tell anyone I’d had our papers altered. But people found out. Odessa is like a village. One evening, when I got home from work, there was a small package lying in front of the door. I picked it up and took it inside. It was an icon, a small wooden square with a saint painted on it. Her face was so calm and peaceful. There were words of old Slavonic painted on the bottom left-hand corner. The person put it on the landing in the same way one would hang garlic on Dracula’s door. As a warning or a reproach, as if to say, I know all about you. But that’s not how I took it. I looked at the cool beauty of the saint and thought, she knows something about suffering, about loss, and I put her in a prominent place on our bookshelf. Another, then another arrived, usually with a message. Liar. Hypocrite. Fraud. Who left them I don’t know. I only know looking at these faces soothed me. And now they remind me of why I wanted you to leave this place.’
How could I tell Boba that I wanted to come home?
A month later, when he received the phone bill, Tristan slammed it on the kitchen counter. Hide-hid-hidden. ‘How could you?’ he yelled. ‘I tell you we don’t have any money, and you go behind my back and call even more? A four-hundred-dollar phone bill! That’s double the usual. Man! You’re crazy. Or stupid. I don’t know which one. I don’t get it.’ Leave-left-left.
He slammed paper after paper onto the counter. Bank statements. All in the red. Phone bills from when he courted me. Credit card bills. ‘Calls to Ukraine. Plane tickets to Budapest – mine and yours, restaurants, and the hotel there. The laptop and fare to Odessa. Your ticket from Odessa to San Francisco.’
He’d spent thousands. Before we even met. Of course, I knew he’d paid a lot for me, but to see my debt in black and white . . . I stood there, stunned and sick with the realization that I could never pay back all that I owed.
‘You cleaned me out. I had to borrow money from Hal after I maxed out my credit cards. There’s no more money to pay for your fucking phone bills. Or your five-hundred-dollar visits to San Fran. Hotels cost money. Gas costs money. We’re broke. Do you know what that means?’
I nodded.
‘I gave up a lot to get you here, now it’s your turn to sacrifice. I know it’s not anyone’s idea of a dream job, but they need nurses’ aides up in Paloma. They’re always looking for help at the café. If we’re going to have a family, we’ll need a nest egg.’
He tugged on my chin. ‘No more phone calls, right?’
When he left for work the next morning, I called David on his direct line. Tell-told-told. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe I was crazy.
‘I’m listening,’ David answered briskly like an Odessan. One word. Slushiyou. That surprised me. I felt a moment of pride. He was adapting. He liked our language.
‘Slushiyou,’ he repeated.
I didn’t say anything. I was listening, too.
‘Who is this? How did you get my number?’ he barked in English.
I sighed. ‘David.’ I couldn’t help it; I missed him.
‘Daria,’ he whispered. ‘Is it you?’ Tears streamed down my cheeks. ‘Daria, wherever you are, come home.’
I sobbed.
‘Do you need money? I can get it to you, if you’ll just tell me where you are. Come home. I miss you. I need you.’
Home. I miss you. I need you. I hung up, afraid that if I didn’t, I’d repeat his words. Tristan was right – I needed a job, something to do before I went even crazier. I left the house, knowing that if I stayed near the phone, I would dial his number again and tell him everything.
I couldn’t stay at home any longer. I’d cleaned every surface of the house, including the windows, several times. I’d cooked every recipe in the Low Fat and Lovin’ It cookbook. I’d watched all his movies (Die Hard I, II, III; Star Wars I,II, III; Indiana Jones I, II, III; Rambo I, II, III, Rocky I, II, III, IV), I read my books dozens of times. I paced. I wrote Dear Jane, Forgive me for my silence. You were so right and I so wrong, and I simply did not want to admit it. Then I ripped up the letter and threw it into the fireplace and watched it burn.
Jane had written to the closest universities for information on master’s classes; I looked through catalogs from Berkeley and Stanford, touching the smooth, shiny pages of happy students. But if we couldn’t afford to pay the phone bill, how could we pay for schooling? Even if I could get loans and grants like Jane said, he would never let me out of his sight.
I walked to the town’s only café before I made any other insane phone calls.
It was a dark place. Dark paneling and carpet, and it smelled as if the cook had fried chicken for thirty solid years. The man behind the cash register wore chewed-up jeans and a T-shirt and had long hair and a handlebar mustache. When he smiled, I noticed he had more tattoos than teeth. I asked him who I should contact for a job.
‘I’m the owner,’ he said. ‘Name’s Skeet.’
Americans often asked impertinent questions. I loved this. I longed to do it. ‘What is Skeet short for?’
‘George.’ He guffawed and handed me an application.
I filled it out, requesting evening shifts. As defeat spilled over me, I did what Boba would have instructed – I looked for the positive: the job would give me room to breathe, it would give me my own income. I didn’t let myself resent the small town. Didn’t remind myself that there was a reason I hadn’t been able to find Emerson on a map, that only a fool doesn’t look before she leaps. I went to the bathroom to put on the brown sweat-stained uniform Skeet handed me. And felt my childhood dreams die. Buck up, I told my reflection. A job is a job. Money is money. You’re in America. That’s what you wanted.
Skeet taught me to take orders and how to carry five plates at the same time. ‘This’s a tough job. Ya have to be strong.’
I was strong. I could do it.
I went home and told Tristan my news.
Waitressing wasn’t so bad. I enjoyed talking and joking with the customers. I grew accustomed to the job and even looked forward to it. It got me out of the house. Of course, after the first time, I never ate at the restaurant. Never. The bagged salad tasted like formaldehyde. The potatoes were bought already peeled and boiled. Where? And by whom? The cooks soaked the steaks in large tubs of mayonnaise to tenderize them. They prepared a large pan of lasagna and kept it in the refrigerator for weeks. And I saw Skeet drop a slice of buttered toast on the floor, pick it up, and put it back on the plate.
The cook’s name was Raymond. He worked double shifts because his wife was sick and they didn’t have insurance to cover her ‘meds.’ The evening dishwasher was a high-school student named Rocky. He loved his truck, shop class, and a girl named Pamela Anderson.
I loved this feeling when I was with Americans. They would say anything, absolutely anything. Even intimate details about their lives. On a slow night at the restaurant, I talked to Pam, another waitress. She wore the same uniform as me, a knee-length polyester dress with a large white collar. Right away, she told me she’d gone through a bad divorce (which made me wonder if there was such a thing as a good divorce) and needed a place to ‘recoup.’ She was about thirty and had eyes with watery whit
es that were actually pink – she scared me a little because she looked so sad, I thought she would burst into tears.
‘So where’d you come from? You talk all funny.’
I failed to see what was humorous, but answered, ‘Russia,’ because no one here knew or cared about Ukraine. I continued to ladle the ranch dressing from the white bucket into the plastic squeeze bottles. She refilled the salt shakers.
‘Well, you sound prissy.’
I shrugged. I couldn’t help how I sounded.
She looked at my hands. ‘So you’re married?’
I nodded.
‘Got kids?’
I shook my head.
‘I got two,’ she said. ‘It just happened. Don’t know what I was thinking. I should’ve been like you and waited.’
It seemed she was seriously telling me she regretted having children.
‘So how long you been married?’ she asked.
‘Nine months.’
‘I heard he comes around.’
‘Yep,’ I said, trying out a new word I heard people use all around me. I’d had a week of freedom at work in the evening. Then he came in ‘just to see how things were going.’ He asked for a Coke, so I served him and he sat there for an hour, just watching me. He came in the next night and the next and the next and glowered at anyone who talked to me. In these moments, I hated him.
‘Think he’ll come in tonight?’ she asked. She started filling the pepper shakers.
How I wished I had the courage to say, ‘God I hope not.’ But I remained silent.
She nudged me and winked. ‘So how’s your sex life?’
I wanted to talk ‘casual’ like a real American, to use phrases like ‘you don’t know shit’ or ‘she works her butt off.’ More than that, I wanted to be honest and forthright like Americans. I wanted to tell her what I was unable to tell Jane, to tell myself. I closed my eyes and screwed up the courage to be honest about just one thing, then looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘It sucks. It really sucks.’
Moonlight in Odessa Page 31