by Haley Tanner
When he opens the door of his bedroom, she is there, like a wall, his mother.
“You are sneaking,” she says. Her voice is extra-Russian, like she’s KGB. He just glares at her. “You are planning to sneak to Lena’s house, to talk to her.”
“Mom, just let me go.”
“Listen, wait. All I am saying is this is a big knot of problems, yes? You, me, Lena, her family, it is a mess. So don’t think it is just one problem. That is all.”
“Move,” he says.
“Wait,” she says. “Wait. Lena wants to know where her parents are, no? You don’t need to go to Russia for this. We live, Vaclav, practically in Moscow.”
“Mom, why are we talking about this? I’m going to go talk to Lena,” he says.
“Because to go to Russia, it is stupid, when everyone is right here,” she says.
“I’m not going to Russia, okay? I’m going to Park Slope,” says Vaclav.
“If Lena wants to know about her parents, she should ask her aunt.”
“What?” says Vaclav.
“Lena’s aunt, Ekaterina; she lives on Seventh.”
“I know that. I used to pick Lena up for school every day. Wait, she still lives there?”
“Yes. Of course.” Rasia says this like no one has ever moved. Like Vaclav has asked if the Aunt has kept the same head, or if she traded it in for a better, nicer head.
“Lena said she was gone.… Lena said she was in Russia.”
“Lena, she has many problems,” says Rasia. She can see that Vaclav is starting to get a whiff of something. There is hurt on his face.
“She lied to me,” he says. “I’m going to talk to Ekaterina.”
“Okay,” she says, not moving. “Okay. I want you to, I want you to find the truth, and to understand. I am not stopping you,” she says, stopping him. “I just want you to take a deep breath and think about what to ask her, what to talk about, what you want to say. Because to talk out of anger, it is bad.”
“Okay,” he says.
“I want you to know that with this there is no fixing. There is not magic solution. Lena has many problems. You can’t just make this all—”
He cuts her off. “I know, Mom,” he says, and then he pauses before saying, “Thank you.”
Vaclav pushes past her, and his long legs take him to the front door and out into the morning faster than even he expected.
On the street, walking to the Aunt’s house, Vaclav realizes that he wishes the walk was longer. He wishes he didn’t remember exactly where it was. He wishes a lot of things. He wishes he’d realized it was only seven-thirty in the morning.
The same question keeps dropping out from under him like a roller-coaster ride: Why would she not start with the Aunt? Why lie? Why the trip to Russia?
When he breathes in the morning air and thinks about what he now knows, it makes sense. It would be awful for Lena to go find the Aunt; it would be hard to talk to her and ask her questions. It makes perfect sense, total sense, that Lena would not want to go back there.
Lena’s lie is burrowing around in his brain like maggots, turning things to maggot shit, turning solid brain cells into hot puddles of jealousy, of mistrust, of suspicion. He wonders if Lena has lied to him about anything else. How can you know anything, do anything, when you don’t know what is true? He has never lied to Lena. Lena has made him lie for her. She has made him lie to his mother and maybe other times. Maybe. It is hard to say. When lying starts to turn your brain into maggot shit, it becomes hard to say what is up and what is down.
Vaclav doesn’t know what to think, but he feels that if he puts together the pieces of the puzzle, Lena’s puzzle, his mom’s puzzle, then this will get better. He doesn’t really even think it will get better, to tell the truth. He just thinks something will change, which is good, because he can’t stand to have it stay like this.
Finding the truth will stop the big false search, take the steam out of her quest to get to Russia. Russia. It has become a word like … something disgusting. Something stupid and disgusting.
Walking outside so early in the morning feels good, in the same way that he is sure that talking to Lena’s aunt will be good.
He feels that for Lena he is healing a wound; he is closing a door. It does not, to him, seem to be an enormous intrusion, an exceptional violation. Lena wanted something; he wants her to have it. He does not consider that he might be slightly, or completely, off base on the question of what Lena really wanted.
Maybe also, a little bit, he knows that if he does this, then Lena will talk to him, definitely, no matter what.
Vaclav charges up the stairs to Lena’s aunt’s house, and knocks hard on the door.
There is no response for a while. Vaclav checks his watch and then knocks again. He resolves to wait two minutes and then knock again. After his third knock, after six minutes, there is a rustling of the blinds next to the window. The door opens a crack, and the Aunt pours herself into this crack, slinks into it like a cat. She looks directly into Vaclav’s eyes, not just at his eyes but into them, way too far. She looks at him in a way that tells him that she will have sex with him right now. There is no other way for him to describe this look.
She does not say hello, she just gives him this look. He is taken aback. He would like to speak. He would like to run away. It takes him a moment.
“Can I talk to you?” he asks.
“Talk,” she says.
“I know you. I know Lena.” There is a gigantic pause. There is a pause like Superman is holding the world still.
“Come in,” she says, and she turns into the house.
TRINA
…
Vaclav follows her inside. He has never been inside before, even when he was younger. It’s dark inside, and it smells stale. Everything is a mess; there are dirty dishes and take-out containers and empty cigarette packs everywhere.
“I’m sorry, did I wake you up? I know it’s really early.” Vaclav is standing just inside the door, and Lena’s aunt is fumbling inside the kitchen. Putting on tea. He doesn’t know what else to say.
“Wake me up? No. I’m not going to bed yet.”
She’s wearing a lot of makeup, heavy nighttime makeup, but it looks used, slept in. Her hair looks slept in. She’s wearing gray sweatpants with big yellow-ringed white bleach blotches on them, and a tight black top with mesh parts, exposing her lower back, a portion of skin above her belly button, the cleavage between her breasts. She smells terrible, like old milk and cigarettes.
“You want tea?” she says.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
“Fuck you, ma’am. Call me Trina,” she says, from the kitchen. “Sit down,” she says, sounding angry.
Vaclav sits on the couch feeling out of his league. His hands don’t know where to go; he doesn’t know where to put them.
She brings him the tea and sits down at the other end of the couch. She curls her legs underneath her in the same complicated way that Lena does. Vaclav’s teacup is dirty, but she is looking at him, so he drinks. There is nowhere to put his tea bag. She takes out a cigarette and lights it, and Vaclav is acutely aware that there are no windows open, no fan, nothing. He wants to smoke one of her cigarettes, take it without asking, to show her that he is a man and not a child, that he is not afraid of her. He eyes the pack of cigarettes. He cannot do it.
She drops her tea bag into an ashtray, an ashtray that has another desiccated tea bag in it already.
“What is this about?” she says, glaring at him. She is like a cat, this way her eyes never leave him.
“I want to know about Lena,” he says. She looks at him for a long time. A very long time. She is like a computer full of memory, loading information. Sorting files. She knows everything I want to know, he thinks.
“I know nothing,” she says. “I haven’t seen her for years.”
“That’s not what I care about. I care about before. When she lived with you.”
“I will not talk about this,” she
says.
He knows that what she will not talk about is the man, the boyfriend.
“Before that,” he says. “Before she went away. I don’t care about that,” he says. “I want to know what happened to Lena’s parents. To her mother. To her father. How she got here.”
“Why do you want to know?” she says.
“She wants to know,” he offers, by way of correction. “Lena wants to know.”
“And you give her what she wants.” How is it, Vaclav thinks, that these people, prostitutes, crazy street people, homeless men on the subway, they see sometimes straight to the truth, no matter what?
“Why does she not come and see me herself?” Trina asks. Wouldn’t it be obvious, to anyone, why Lena would not want to come back here?
“She doesn’t know that I’m here.”
The Aunt nods. He seems to have met all of her prerequisites, so she can tell him this story. She has decided to tell him, but she will make him wait. Vaclav can see that this is a story that part of her wants to tell but that she will tell it only on her own terms.
Trina knows from stripping about negotiations, about power struggles. She knows how to give a customer everything he wants, so that by the time she does, he wishes he could give it back.
She lights another cigarette, uncurls and recurls her body on the couch, arranges her bleached hair on top of her head. She’s trying to make him uncomfortable. She is succeeding. He decides to speak.
“Where are Lena’s parents?” he says.
“Dead,” she says, without hesitation. She says it loud, and mean, and it startles him.
“Where?” he asks.
“What do you mean ‘where’?” she says, finding humor in it. “They are dead! There is no place, it is not geography, no? Once you are dead you are nowhere, everywhere, yes?”
“I mean where did they die?” Vaclav asks. “Here? In Brooklyn?” he asks. She smiles.
“You know nothing of anything,” she says. How could he know anything? Of course he knows nothing. She is taunting him, and he hates her.
“They were never here. They died in Russia. Both.”
“How did it happen? They died together?”
“Listen, if you are wanting Romeo and Juliet, it is not happening. They were never together. They were fucking. Enough to make Lena and some dirty sheets. She didn’t even know his last name.”
“They were not in love?” he says, grasping. He’s made many faulty assumptions. Already this is falling apart as a solution, as a story to take to Lena, wrapped up like a valentine.
“They were high,” she says.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“They were junkies, you know what this is? Criminals. Drug addicts. And stealing, she stole things. That was why she was killed. The street.”
“She was killed on the street?” he says.
“She was killed in prison,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says, hating the sound of the words, because he wanted to interrogate her like he was a detective on television, like she had the information and it belonged to him; he would beat it out of her. But instead he was coddling her, being nice, apologizing, and it’s just like him to do this. “Please tell this to me from beginning to end. I need to know the whole story. Please.”
She nods.
“Okay, okay, it is fair. I start from the beginning. In Russia it was a bad time. It was, what, 1991? No, Lena was born in 1993. The country was coming apart, every day, the government crumbling. Everything was a mess. There was not food or jobs, and there was crime everywhere, and with the rationing, everyone was, what they say, dirty? You pay for this, you get this, you pay with vodka, with fuck, with whatever. Right?”
“Corrupt,” says Vaclav.
“Right,” she says. “So there was nothing. In our family, there was sadness and failing, and our father could not work, and he drank and sat with the other men. He was not bad. This was what was. Like your depression in this country. It makes men into nothing, into dogs or criminals or girls. Our father was like this. He was nothing.
“There was crime everywhere. To go out, to go to school, it was dangerous. Lena’s mother—her name also it was the same as Lena’s, but we called her Yelena—Yelena was older than me ten years. There was a dead baby in between us, a boy. He was born too soon. My mother, she would yell his name and offer us, her daughters, to have him back. A bloody lump who never spoke or cried or shat, but still, she would trade us in for a child with a dick. She would say, ‘God, I would give you willingly these two little girls, if I could only have back my Aleck.’
“Yelena, with her it was a bad situation. There were girls who had things, clothes and food. And fun places to go where everyone was excited to see them there. And at home, it was like what I just told you. And me. I was at home, and anytime Yelena was there, my mother would make Yelena take care of me while she drank until she slept like death. Yelena would do her best to keep me happy, to make dolls and play around and enjoy ourselves, but she was sad. Even as a little girl I knew this. You know this about your sister.” Trina takes a deep breath.
“So she went with the girls.” The Aunt says this like it is the final word on the subject—like there is nothing more to say. Vaclav waits for her to continue, but she doesn’t, she just smokes and looks at her fingernails.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means,” Vaclav asks.
“She stopped going to school; she went to the street with these girls, to sell her pussy for money, to get nice things. I have to spell it out for you?” the Aunt barks. It isn’t easy to say that your sister became a whore, Vaclav reminds himself.
“It sounds like she didn’t have a choice,” Vaclav says, by way of softening things. Trina doesn’t like this either; she makes a face like there is a turd somewhere in the room that she can smell but cannot find.
“There is always choice,” she spits.
“When did she get into drugs?” he asks.
“Selling pussy, drugs, it comes along with the territory, no?” She says this like Vaclav must be familiar with the situation. Vaclav has never before heard the word pussy spoken by a live woman in his presence. Never. The Aunt says it like poo-see.
“Girls need the drugs to keep selling themselves, and then they are selling suddenly only for the drugs.”
Vaclav has a terrible thought.
“Was Lena’s father one of these men? Who paid her, for …”
“For pussy? Probably he gave her drugs, not money. He was a drug dealer, a thug in a gang. Maybe he gave her nothing. Maybe he just took.”
“So they were not together. Dating. Anything?”
“No.”
“Okay. Did you know him?”
“No. Only from the trial, and when they were arrested.”
“They were arrested together?” he asks.
“There was a bust of this drug ring. He was there; she was there. There had been a murder. A rich girl, the daughter of an important man. They were both arrested together for her murder.”
“Did they kill her together?”
“Someone did. Who knows. Maybe they did. Yelena said she had nothing to do with it. Wrong place in time. At the trial she cried the whole time, but he never said a word. The police, they said that the two of them killed this girl for money. A mugging.”
Vaclav is confused. It seems that the Aunt won’t give him a straight answer on whether Lena’s mother killed this girl, whether she was innocent or guilty, and it all seems so important, so huge to him. Every detail seems close to the one that will make sense, that will close the case, make the logic work.
“Wait … So she was innocent? And she was executed?” Vaclav’s eyes are wild with fear that this could happen anywhere in the world, ever. Trina is used to this look on the faces of Americans. She is tired of this look, exhausted by it.
“No, not executed … It doesn’t matter. She committed many crimes. Prostitution, theft, drugs. She could have been tried for any of these things. S
he was a criminal; to them she was dirt. It did not matter.”
“Were you there? At the trial?”
“Yes. I went because my mother would not go. Yelena was dead already to her.” Trina stands up and looks Vaclav directly in the eyes, and he does not understand how, but her look tells him that she will not answer any further questions about the trial, that there is something there that is still hurt.
“You want tea?” she says.
“I have tea, from before,” he says. He looks at his cold tea.
She picks up a dish from the sink, runs water over it, and puts it back down.
“I did not know that she was pregnant then, at her trial. They didn’t let me talk to her.”
“So did you go see her in prison, after the trial?” Vaclav asks.
“No. There was the trial, she was guilty, and then they told me to go home, but there was no sentencing. They said she would be sentenced later. Now I know they were just waiting for her to have the baby. She delivered in prison, and then they kill her.”
“Wait, what do you mean? When did you get Lena?”
“I was called to the prison; I am thinking Yelena asked to see me. I go in, expecting to see Yelena, and they give me this baby. I say, ‘What is this baby and where is Yelena?’ and they say, ‘This is her baby; she is in hospital.’ I ask to see her and they say this is not possible.”
“They just gave Lena to you?”
“Yelena requested that the baby be released to me. I did not know even that there was any baby.”
“And then they killed her? Yelena?” Vaclav is trying desperately to put together the sequence of events.
“Yes, I know they did this. Six weeks later a letter comes that she is dead from tuberculosis. But that day at the prison, when they gave me this baby and say no, I cannot see Yelena, I know she is dead already.”
“Do you think someone killed her, like executed her? And lied?”
“I think she is dead. Giving birth or with tuberculosis or with a gun to her head, doesn’t matter. They wanted her dead; she died. They said there were prisoners dying with tuberculosis then. Maybe true, maybe not. Maybe it is true they have tuberculosis, maybe it is also true that the prison lets it spread and gives no medicine. Either way, someone wanted them dead, and they are dead.”