by Talia Carner
It was time she stopped running away from it all and confronted her mistakes. Brooke reached for the envelope. A cardboard piece kept the papers inside from bending. She put it down again, afraid to look.
Olga would have had the courage, she thought. Angling herself toward the window away from Judd, she turned the broken flap of the envelope and slowly pulled out the contents.
There was only one photo, and it stared at her: a light-skinned black woman in a graduation cap and gown. Brooke peeked again in the envelope. Where were the nude pictures? She checked the envelope again, as if someone had made a mistake. There was only a folded sheet of paper. No. Two full lined pages, written by hand in blue ink. She turned the photo over. On the back was written, “To Brooke, from Sage.”
“Sage?” she murmured, disbelieving. Sage? They’d kept the name she had put on the adoption papers.
She turned the photograph over again. The young woman peering at her had magnificently high cheekbones. The wide eyes were sprinkled with hazel. She was beautiful.
“Sage,” Brooke whispered again. With trembling fingers, she unfolded the letter.
Dear Brooke,
Although I often fantasized about what my birth mother was like, I wasn’t looking for her. I have wonderful parents and two adopted siblings: a sister who is three years younger, and a brother who is only eight years old.
In preparation for my graduation from Reed College as a business major with an interest in finance (I’ve managed to graduate in three years instead of four with a grade point average of 4.0), I began looking for a job with an investment firm. I want to gain experience for a couple of years before applying to graduate school.
My mom once told me that all she knew about my birth mother was that she had been a student by the name of Brooke who grew up out East, and that she had wanted me placed with a Jewish family. I concluded long ago that my birth mother must have been white, but that wasn’t much to go by if I tried to find her.
If you are my mother, and if I am like you, you can understand how thorough I was in my job search. As I researched the top thirty investment companies in New York City, the financial capital of the world, I was astonished to come across in Norton, Hills, and Bridwell’s annual report a woman named Brooke Fielding. I know it’s crazy, but I found at the library a Business Week interview with a picture of you standing in your office, and I learned your age and that you had graduated from Berkeley. It all fit, but was still unrealistic.
After some deliberation with myself (do you also use big words?) I asked my parents’ permission to contact the adoption agency. They are okay with my search for my birth mother. The agency representative would not confirm anything, but said that she would contact whoever was the right woman, if she were still alive. I left this letter and photograph with her and told her that if indeed you’re my birth mother, she should send them directly.
What am I like? Probably a typical twenty-year-old, right down to my love of pop music and the suffering over boys. (I don’t have a boyfriend right now.) I love dancing, and while in high school I belonged to a performing jazz troupe. I’m a bit more serious than my friends, though. I volunteer at a nursing home one afternoon a week, and since high school, I’ve been a Big Sister to a girl from a troubled home. She’s doing great. Do you do volunteer work, too? It’s okay if you don’t; you are such a busy executive, you may not have any free time.
If you receive this letter and still decide that you don’t want to meet me, I’ll try to understand, although I can’t say that I won’t be disappointed. The Business Week interview printed nothing about your personal life. Maybe you’re married, have a couple of kids, and no one knows about me. I don’t wish to break your life apart. But maybe you’ll be willing to answer the million questions that buzz through my mind when I think of the woman who couldn’t raise me. I hope that you’ll respond, if only this once. (I know I’m supposed to ask for medical history, but that is only a cover for what I really want to know about you.)
As I said, if you decide you don’t want to meet me, I promise to keep my distance, but I will always be proud that a woman of such accomplishments may be my birth mother.
With admiration and warmest regards,
Sage
(206) 555-1212
Crying, Brooke reread the letter. The incredulity of it all spread through her, filling her with happiness and sadness at the same time. “Sage,” she murmured the name of her daughter, “Sage.” Her tears dripped on the photograph she tried to study but could no longer see. She touched the sleek, cold paper and broke into a sob.
Judd, who had been playing with Natasha across the aisle to give Brooke privacy, turned to look at her. Without attempting to wipe her tears, she lifted the letter toward him. This was the biggest moment of her life, the rebirth of her child—and in some way, of herself.
When Judd finished reading the letter, he pulled her as close as the tight space would allow and planted little kisses on her head.
“How selfish it was for me to imagine that these were the nude photos haunting me,” Brooke cried. “Why didn’t I wonder whether my daughter, who was now twenty, would search for me?”
“Why, really?”
A sad smile crept up her face. “I thought I was undeserving of happiness.”
He kissed her again. “You’ll have plenty from now on,” he whispered.
She lowered her head to look at the photograph again.
“Well, what’s the first thing you’ll do when we land in Frankfurt?” he asked.
“Call her.” She laid her head on his shoulder and listened to his breathing. “The timing of it all. One loss, one gain.”
“Sage sounds like the kind of woman who may love to continue Olga’s unfinished business,” he said. “She doesn’t carry your Holocaust mishegas.”
“I don’t know about that. Russia is such a dangerous place—and she is Jewish, after all.”
He laughed. “Maternal instinct already kicking in? You’ll do all right.”
Her eyes were fixed on a pencil-thin gray light on the horizon that bifurcated the sky into two worlds, one above, one below. The top tier melted into the farthest reaches of the universe.
It all came together; it became one. Whole.
Glossary
Note: Russian words used in the novel are transliterated to the closest English-speaking pronunciation.
avoska—string basket
Bozhe moi—My God
chort—a curse
dezhurnayia—hotel matron
demokratia—democracy
keep-ya-tok (=kipyatok)—boiling water
Khrushchoby—Khrushchev’s slums
krestniy otets—Russian godfathers
krysha—private security unit
leemon—lemon
mannaya kasha—semolina porridge
nichevo—never mind, not important
normalno—normal
offshorsky—offshore
pizda—cunt
po gblatu—connections, in accordance with blut
proshchaniye—farewell
Rossiya—Russians’ pronunciation of Russia
sidyet—a “sitting” job
slozhno—complicated, exhausting
spasiba—thank you
tabletka—a pill, a capsule
uzhasno—terrible
vanna—a large laundry tub
vkusno—yummy
yob tvoyu mat—a curse
zhaba—a toad
Acknowledgments
To the hundreds of nameless Russian women in Moscow and St. Petersburg who listened to my presentations, attended my workshops, or sought my one-on-one counseling: Only teachers who touch other people’s lives can understand how much you gave me in return.
To my closest friend, my lifelong gift, Bina Shif Rattenbach, and especially to her late mother, “Tusha” Eibschutz Shif, who told me so much about Nazi concentration camps, yet left unspoken spaces shrouded in shadows. To many other childhood friends i
n Tel-Aviv who are second-generation Holocaust survivors: I watched you and your parents as a child but only processed what I had seen and heard much later as an adult.
To the American Jews who similarly grew up in the shadows of the Holocaust, both friends and strangers, who initiated confessions to me because they sensed that I would understand: Please know that I listened.
To Sasha Chalif, founder of The Alliance of Russian and American Women, who organized a “citizen mission” in May 1993—my first journey into the lives of Russian women—and to journalist Rosalind McLymont, whose inspiring, flowery speeches matched those given by our Russian hostesses.
There is no one to thank at the U.S. Information Agency, now defunct, that sent me on my second trip to Russia that same year, in late September 1993. However, besides the dozens of women I met and whose hugs I still remember, there are David Kennedy Hunter, then at Moscow’s American Embassy, and former U.S. Congressman Gary Ackerman, who helped me leave in haste after the uprising of the parliament against President Boris Yeltsin had run its course.
Most of my research was done in 1994, when trying to make sense of the chaotic events in which I had been caught, starting with my interviewing former U.S. and Russian security personnel. They were instrumental in giving me the lay of the land when little published material was yet available: Richard S., National Security Agency; Donna M., Central Intelligence Agency; and Anatoly G., former K.G.B. Businessmen Ury K. and Benjamin D. explained the convoluted Russian international trading practices, and architects Gerry B. and Robert S. gave me photo tours of communal apartments situated in former Czar-era mansions that they began renovating for a new class of rich Russian oligarchs.
Beyond the mountains of information parted by these professionals, there were the dozen former Soviet Union citizens, who were finally free in the United States and Israel to speak and share their stories, giving my story literary texture and depth. At that time, the late author Bel Kaufman (Up the Down Staircase) added her perspective of Jewish–Russian history.
More recently, as I reshaped the material into a novel, editor Rebecca Stowe’s sure-footed guidance was followed by talented writing buddies with red pens: Susan O’Neill and Victor Rangel-Ribeiro. Joining them with constructive suggestions was my writing group, Two Bridges, administered by Walter Cummins. Thanks, too, to Ada Samuelson for correcting my transliteration of Russian words.
Moving a manuscript from the bowels of my computer to the light of day is the triumph of my insightful literary agent, Marly Rusoff, and my brilliant editor at William Morrow, Katherine Nintzel. Kate and her talented team at HarperCollins/William Morrow—Jennifer Hart, Marguerite Weisman, Molly Birckhead, Shelby Meizlik, and Megan Schumann—wove behind-the-scenes magic and midwifed this novel into the world of readers.
And underpinning my literary and feminist endeavors there is always my Ron: You keep showing me by example how fulfilling a life devoted to causes can be, while the ocean of your love allows me to ladle into my fountain of creativity.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the author
Meet Talia Carner
About the book
Talia in Russia
Russia Then and Now . . .
Communal Apartments
Talia Carner Talks with Lucette Lagnado
Reading Group Guide
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Excerpt from Jerusalem Maiden
About the author
Meet Talia Carner
TALIA CARNER is the author of Puppet Child, China Doll, and Jerusalem Maiden, which won the Forward National Literature Award in the historical fiction category in 2011.
Her award-winning personal essays appeared in the New York Times, Chocolate for Women anthologies (Simon & Schuster), Cup of Comfort (Adams Media), and The Best Jewish Writing 2003 (John Wiley). Her short stories have been published in Midstream, Lynx Eye, River Sedge, Midwest Literary Magazine, Moxie, Lilith, Litro, Rosebud, Clackamas Literary Review, Two-Bridges Review, Confrontation, and North Atlantic Review. Before writing fiction full-time, Carner worked for Redbook magazine, was the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine, and founded a successful marketing and consulting firm servicing Fortune 500 companies. She taught at Long Island University’s School of Management and was a volunteer counselor and lecturer for the Small Business Administration. In 1993 she was sent twice by the United States Information Agency to Russia, and in 1995 participated in the NGO women’s conference in Beijing.
Her addictions include chocolate, ballet, Sudoku—and social justice.
For a more detailed bio, reviews of the novel, and the author’s book tour dates and locations, please check the author’s website, www.TaliaCarner.com.
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About the book
Talia in Russia
October 1993: During Moscow uprising (Kremlin wall in the background). (Courtesy of the author)
May 1993: In Moscow’s Red Square. (Courtesy of the author)
Preparing for a women’s business conference. (Courtesy of the author)
At Troitsa-Sergyeva Lavra monastery, the ancient seat of the Russian Orthodox Church. (Courtesy of the author)
Russia Then and Now . . .
By Talia Carner
www.TaliaCarner.com
This essay was written in December 2011, twenty years after the fall of communism.
WHEN THE ISRAELITES fled Egypt, they wandered in the desert for forty years until the generation born into slavery had died. According to God, only a people who had known a life of freedom possessed the strength to overcome the hurdles of building a new nation in the Promised Land, and would enter it.
I understood that wisdom when I journeyed to Russia twice in 1993 to teach women entrepreneurial skills. And I am reminded of my impressions at that time today when Russians are supposed to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of democracy. Instead they are taking to the streets to protest the autocratic regime that is all too similar to the totalitarian Soviet rule it had replaced.
In late April 1993, merely sixteen months after the fall of communism, I joined a group of American businesswomen to meet courageous Russian women who traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg from areas as far as the Ural Mountains and from far republics whose names I had never heard. Suddenly we were no longer The Enemy. They watched with awe how we walked tall, strutted about with confidence, and punctuated our talks with smiles. (They asked why so many of us were in mourning or else why would we wear black when all the colors of the rainbow were available to us?) At the edge of their seats, they clung to every bit of information we could dole out. As we spoke through interpreters to groups and individuals about business plans, marketing strategies, and pricing policies or as we lectured about advertising, promotions, and selling tactics, they took furious notes. In turn, they asked tough questions to which we had no simple answers: from how to export their homemade, poor-quality products “to America,” to how to launch a women’s political party or start a women’s bank
As hopeful and valiant as these women were, we hit a wall when we introduced the concept of networking. “Both of you. face the same problem motivating employees,” I said to two students who had found themselves running bed and beer barrel factories, respectively, after a lifetime of working on the conveyor belt sawing and gluing lumber. But the two women glared at each other with suspicion. “Look, you live over six hundred kilometers apart,” I explained. “There is no risk, and you can both benefit if you share ideas about ways to deal with business problems. You are not even selling to the same consumers!” But the women only shook their heads at my naïveté.
In a city that had never published a phone book, one’s Rolodex equivalent had become a cherished commodity. It meant survival in a country that had never had aspirin or toothbrushes in its few stores. We soon learned that expecting our students to share any information—from a reliable printing shop to the name of an English teacher—was doo
med. They balked at the notion that they should help a friend, let alone a stranger. They also asked why Americans smiled so much, finding this basic human gesture incomprehensible. And the idea of attempting to connect with strangers was outright frightening. It involved eye contact! Who could imagine what disaster a stranger might bring upon you?
It did not take long for me to grasp what had happened to the Russian nation on a deeper lever. Under a regime that glorified children turning in their parents to the authorities, where neighbors in hellish communal apartments spied on one another, where life’s basic needs were in such short supply that stealing had become the norm, Russians had been conditioned into deep distrust. For seventy years, stripped of not just the right to practice religion but the social and moral values that we refer to as Judeo-Christian, Russians were unprepared for democracy that respected the rights of others, that set boundaries between the individual and the collective, that held random kindness in high regard, and that viewed cooperation as the route to strength. Russians had become adept at navigating the system without ever negotiating truce between individuals. Taking a cue from the corruption that invaded every Soviet institution, where apparatchiks openly enjoyed preferred treatment and flaunted their leather shoes and Rolex watches, the Russian masses emulated the only methods proven to work. Thus the curator of a geological museum invited me to her cramped apartment and, over a table laden with Russian delicacies and vodka, proceeded to offer me a business partnership in which we would privately sell the museum’s semiprecious stones and rare geological rocks to American museums.
Privatization meant that formerly state-run large and small manufacturing plants gave ownership vouchers to all employees, who were wholly unprepared to operate these ventures. In a coat factory where I was training a small, newly elevated team, I explained the math of pricing a single coat: the cost of materials, the number of hours it took to create it (based on the seamstress’s hourly salary, including benefits), and the fixed cost of running the place divided by the number of products expected to be manufactured. The suggested price I arrived at was by far lower than the thousands of dollars these women had expected me to pay for a coat. When I expressed to the interpreter that I was not buying one, she explained the team’s dismay: What other reason had propelled me to spend two hours “negotiating” a price? It dawned on me that these women had never imagined volunteerism. Why would anyone do something for strangers without expecting to gain something out of it?