by Emily Rubin
“I am sorry.”
“She was old. I’m going home now.”
“To Russia?”
“Star Lane is home now.”
Mara quickly gathered her cleaning supplies and was out the door. Svetlana made a sound like a balloon losing air as she circled into a pile of warm sheets.
Chapter Fifteen: Home
The motel signs flapped in the wind as we drove past. The clouds looked like exhausted soldiers marching across a field going dark. The worn tires of the Mike’s Taxi Service sedan skidded into the wet curves. To keep from sliding across the plastic seat cover, I held onto a strap dangling behind the driver’s seat. With the window open, the rain on my face diluted the salt of my tears. The air tasted like metal. Everything appears to move in slow motion after someone has died—the clouds, the car, and even my tears.
My mother was there, in the corners of the back seat, lingering in the taxi with me. We were often silent together. Standing on a platform waiting for a train, queuing on food lines, or sitting in our apartment watching a shaft of light move across the room. Little or no conversation, just lingering. She was in the shadows somewhere for sure. Even here in Connecticut, USA, I could smell her soft skin and brittle, angel-white hair. Now that she had abandoned her fragile body, ravaged brain, and creaking cot, she was free to roam. Perhaps she had become a rattling cable car on Nevsky Prospekt, or a thornbush in the garden of Anna Akhmatova’s house. Maybe she traveled across the sea and entered the cuckoo clock on Amalia’s kitchen wall so she could disrupt the silence every half hour. My brain in sorrow and slow motion was a very accepting brain, even for reincarnation. When there is time and no time left at the same moment, we linger, shifting our weight from one foot to the other, our soul seeking a way out. There is a superstition in Russia that when there is a lull in the conversation, another policeman has been born. No wonder there is often discomfort in silence.
When my father died, only the people in Kolyma, the labor camp where he was sent, knew. We received a parcel with his ashes and clothes a year later. It must have taken months in the Siberian cold for his body to decompose. On the shirttail of his prison-issue shirt, almost in tatters, I found something scrawled in charcoal. It was this poem:
Everything here will die.
Never know when, why, or how.
Will the remains remain?
Ashes will float on the air for all to breathe.
The funerals here are defied by our minds.
Never let go. Double-fisted breath.
I transcribed the poem to the back of the photograph I had taken of him when I was young. I stared for days at that photograph, puzzled because I had remembered it differently. I thought he only had one hand on the shovel, but clearly both hands gripped the handle. Every morning I would pull the photograph out from under my pillow where I kept it at night. One day I imagined that his smile had shifted from one side of his mouth to the other. I screamed with surprise, thinking he was still alive in the picture. My mother woke me from the dream and wiped the dust and smudges from my fingerprints on the glass.
45 Star Lane, the taxi will drive…
Just like the last line in the song I made up and sang when I first arrived here two years ago. Moscow, Kennedy, Port Authori-tay! That adventure felt like ancient history. But there I was, again being driven to 45 Star Lane. I really could use a song now, I thought. I’d add something to this old one, like letting out a skirt when your waist has gotten too big. Just another line or two would do. 45 Star Lane is quaint on the outside and shoddy on the inside. When I first came here, it looked like a fairyland of perfect little houses with birds singing on wires and the wind rustling from the tops of the trees down to the blades of grass on the square lawns. Behind all this, the houses had walls so thin that from any room in the house you could hear someone turning the pages of a magazine while they sat in the bathroom. The windows didn’t keep out the wind and the rain, so the sills had gone rotten from never drying out. Lately I’d noticed a mold growing where the windows met the walls. I’d been spraying disinfectant, the same we used at the Liberty Motel, to try to kill the spores, but it had done nothing. Chain-link fences divided the houses into scraggly lawns that were decorated with painted wooden cutouts of plentiful women’s behinds rising into the air. The make-believe gardeners were bent over tending to their pansies and impatiens. Bulging roots of the sycamore trees had come through the sidewalks like arms and legs of waking giants. The neighbors kept to themselves.
45 Star Lane, the taxi will drive,
A quaint white house with rotting windowsills.
Amalia might not appreciate this new line. I could add something more pleasant.
I live with Amalia, and we both pay the bills.
The taxi arrived at my home.
“Thank you, sir, you are an excellent driver.”
“Mike’s Taxis, you can always count on us, miss.”
When he turned around, I could see that his handlebar mustache had crumbs stuck in the sides and he was wearing a cap with a picture of a fish.
“Do you like fish?” I asked.
“Bass season starts soon. How’d you know?”
I pointed to his hat.
“My girls sent me a year of Bassmaster magazine for my birthday.”
“They must appreciate their father very much.”
“Nah, they just like to get me out of the house.”
The radio started to squawk. He picked up the mouthpiece. “Bassman, over.”
A woman’s voice came on. “Hey, good lookin’, get that junk heap of yours over to Charleston’s Bar. Barry needs a ride home; his wife has to leave for work. Over.”
“That’s Randi; she’s a ball buster,” he said, looking at me in the rearview mirror.
Then into the radio again he said, “Keep your titties straight, mama, I’m on my way. Over.”
“Fuck off, lover, over,” she replied.
“I’m just finishing up with Star Lane, sweet meat, over.”
Then he turned back to me. “She and I have known each other since high school.”
“I live here with Amalia; we’ve know each other since we were children.”
“Are you going to be all right?” My swollen eyes must have concerned him.
“Yes, thank you, now that I am here. It’s my mother; I just found out she died. She was still in Russia.”
“I’m sorry. It’s like that, people and things go away, they end, leave us to ourselves.”
“Yes, they do. Thank you, Mr. Bassman.”
I was still holding on to the strap behind the driver. It was a comfort to hang on to something. I drifted back to St. Petersburg for a moment as I started getting myself out of the cab.
* * *
“It’s just not practical. We are not going anywhere,” Trofim had said without looking in my eyes.
It was a summer night. I was just nineteen and in love.
We met to watch the bridges go up over the Neva.
“Opening the bridges is a practical thing,” I said. “We may not be able to travel to the other side of the river, but it saves the government money. They don’t have to pay anyone to operate the bridges through the night.”
He wanted to end our relationship, not debate bridge operations.
“Stalina, this is not about the bridges,” he said, looking down at the water.
The river was black and oily. Our faces reflected in the lapping waves looked like photographs developing in a darkroom. I watched the light in the sky disappear. It was gone for just minutes, and when it began to get light again, Trofim was already walking across the bridge before it was even fully down. He never turned around. I stood motionless until everyone rushing to get home to change for work pushed me along the canal. He was gone. It felt like someone had died.
* * *
Many years later, in Connecticut, USA, I felt a similar emptiness. As I stood outside the cab, the rain started coming down harder. My cheeks stung with the salt of my te
ars. I leaned through the window to pay the driver.
“It’s been taken care of, miss. Your boss paid for the ride. Go. Get out of the rain.” He shook the crumbs from his mustache.
“Mr. Suri is a very nice man,” I told the driver.
I heard the dispatcher’s voice over his radio again. “Move it along, Barry the Barfly just fell off his barstool.”
“On my way, general, ma’am,” he said to the radio. And then to me he said, “Take it easy, miss. Get yourself inside.” He drove away.
Amalia opened the door and came out with an umbrella over her head. “Stalina,” she said, “come in out of the rain. You’re home.”
It was good to be home.
Chapter Sixteen: Invention
I wondered if the people at the rooming house mourned for my mother, if anyone was there when she died. I’d have liked to know how it was for her. I felt badly that I had not stayed until she died.
“Stalina, I’ve made some tea. Come sit,” Amalia said as she guided me to the kitchen with her arm around my shoulder.
“It’s too early to call St. Petersburg,” I said, looking at the cuckoo clock.
Eight hours’ difference. Seven thirty here, three thirty in the morning there. Time changes, but the distance stays the same.
“It will be morning soon. You’ll be able to call in a few hours,” Amalia said quietly. “I’ll sit with you.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind.”
“Stalina, I was sorry to have to tell you about your mother.”
“When I left, she was angry and sad and sick. I wanted her to come with me.”
“She wanted to die in her Leningrad,” Amalia reminded me.
“Yes, probably so. She never did like calling it St. Petersburg.”
“It was her choice. Will you go?”
“The nurses at the rooming house can make the arrangements. Do you think I need to identify her, or sign for her in person?” Suddenly I wasn’t sure.
“I wouldn’t know, but it has to happen soon. They aren’t going to keep her around.”
“I could barely get there in time for everything to happen as it is supposed to.”
“Speak to the nurses first, then we’ll see,” Amalia said. Pulling a small package out of her purse, she continued. “Let me show you my new glass figurine. It’s a terrier; it reminded me of your dog when we were growing up.”
“Pepe?”
“I couldn’t remember his name. Doesn’t this look like him?” she said as she pushed the glass figure across the kitchen table to show me. She collects glass miniatures that she displays on the windowsill in the kitchen. A unicorn, a turtle, an elephant, and a replica of the Cathedral of the Spilled Blood from home.
“I loved that dog.”
“What happened to him?”
“My father had him put down. It was that little wretch Nadia’s fault.”
“I don’t remember the details, Stalina.”
If Amalia wanted to distract me from my sorrow, she was doing a good job. When Pepe was taken away, at first I was very sad, and then I was angry.
“Tell me about Pepe,” Amalia insisted.
I explained how after months of tears and temper tantrums, my parents allowed me to have a dog. As an only child, I longed for a companion. My friend Mina had a canary, and my parents thought a bird was a good idea for a pet. I told them the cage bothered me, and when I visited Mina, it was all I could do to keep myself from letting the poor bird go free.
Pepe came from the cages of a dog pound in Leningrad. All those dogs waiting and barking—I wanted them all. The moment he was let out of the cage, he stayed by my side. He was a full-grown terrier mix and seemed very relieved when I fastened the brand-new red leather collar around his curly brown neck. He loved to dig in our backyard and bury things in the crumbly black soil.
On a warm Sunday in August 1949, Mikhail and Andrei, the twin brothers with identical limps who lived next door, and Nadia and Lara, the two blond-haired sisters, twelve and nine years old, whose backyard faced ours, came over to play. The adults were playing cards and drinking tea in the shade. Nadia immediately began organizing and explaining the rules to the game that would alternately put one of us in the center of a circle reaching to catch a fist-sized beanbag tossed overhead. If you caught the beanbag, you got to choose someone to kiss behind the old cherry tree.
“We all stay seated,” Nadia explained. “That’s what makes it hard.”
Pepe was running around our circle wanting desperately to take part, but Nadia would not let him.
“Why don’t you tie that unruly mongrel up? He’s ruining everything,” she said, just like an adult.
“Don’t be such a big boss, Nadia. He will sit when I ask him to. Here boy, Pepe, Pepe,” I said. He was panting, looking longingly at Nadia’s left hand, which held the peach-sized beanbag with a tight, controlling fist.
“Pepe is spirited,” I told Nadia, trying to smooth over his bad behavior. He’d pull on his leash every time he’d see a pigeon on our walks, and he barked loudly at anyone in a uniform. My mother once had words with the traffic police when Pepe was in the car, and from then on, he became protective and upset whenever a uniform approached any of us. You can imagine in the Soviet Union, this made for a rather stressful existence.
In the backyard, on that afternoon, he was just having a good time, feeling like a puppy again, chasing around our circle, stretching out his front paws, ready to jump and pounce in any direction.
“Pepe, sit! Sit! Good boy,” I told him.
He could not be contained that day. When Nadia finished explaining the rules, she too sat in the circle. Pepe ran to her side, still panting over the beanbag. She twisted her body toward Pepe, confident that she had the power to control him.
“Sit, you sweet mutt,” she said. “Now lie down, lie down.”
Sitting was all Pepe could handle, but Nadia began pushing his head down toward the grass.
“Lie down.” She pushed again. “Lie—”
Her forceful hands and controlling spirit brought out something ugly in Pepe. He snapped and lunged at her. It was a motion of protection, but his sharp side teeth caught the fleshy part of her soft, pale, fourteen-year-old jaw. I watched as the blood spurted through her shaking fingers.
Amalia had heard only rumors about this story. When I finished telling her about this last part, she stopped me.
“Stalina, the story I heard was that Nadia smacked Pepe because he was misbehaving, and that you tried to bite Nadia, but Pepe got to her before you did.”
“Rumors. I wonder what they would have done to me if I did bite Nadia. She certainly deserved whatever she got.”
Amalia added, “She never wanted to play with me.”
“She was jealous that you got to wear makeup,” I assured her.
“She thought I was a horror with this mark on my face. She couldn’t stand to look at me.”
“Spoiled brat.”
“Did the bite leave a scar?”
“Plastic surgery. There was only the slightest line along her jaw.”
“What about Pepe?”
“The rest of that day was like a bad dream.” I continued the story, and Amalia made more tea.
“Nadia rolled on the ground holding her face with her hands. The blood seeping through her fingers looked like worms slithering into the ground. The grass moved beneath my feet; my voice was gone. The adults ran in all directions like a bomb had gone off. I stood in the middle of the lawn, fixated on Nadia. The twins, Mikhail and Andrei, chased after their parents as they ran next door to call an ambulance. Pepe was cowering under the pine trees at the edge of our yard. I could see he was sorry and scared for what he had done.”
“The poor dog,” Amalia said as she poured the hot water over the tea.
“My father screamed at me, ‘Stay away, he’s gone mad!’”
I told Amalia how my father rolled a newspaper and grabbed one end like a club. My grandmother held Nadia’s bawlin
g sister in her arms and started singing to calm her down as she brought her inside. The emergency medicals came and took Nadia away. I followed my father as he walked silently toward Pepe. The dog’s eyes were deep, dark pools of fear.
“I wanted to comfort Pepe, hold him in my arms and let him know I understood it was not his fault. The rage in my father’s arched back frightened me. I watched his biceps engage as he raised the paper like a thug with a nightstick. I still could not speak, but my brain screamed at my father’s unflinching raised hand. ‘Don’t hit him. He’ll never do it again, I promise!’
“When his arm came down, the newspaper made a hard crack against Pepe’s spine. The poor dog made no sound but crawled further under the pine trees. With his back swayed, he looked up at my father’s raised arm, waiting for it to fall again. It was my father who had gone mad. Rage and pain had overtaken him.”
“Powerless,” Amalia said as she stirred her milky tea, “as children we were powerless.”
“Helpless, I felt so helpless. My mother grabbed my father’s arm, and he looked at her strangely. I thought he might hit her, but he stopped.”
I remembered how the tightly rolled pages of Pravda loosened from his hand and rolled along the ground. Pepe crawled to the coolness and shade of the apple trees. My parents stood together, their heads lowered.
“Have a sip of tea,” Amalia said, pushing the cup and saucer closer to me.
I continued, “Hearing my grandmother and Lara laughing in the kitchen brought me out of my state of paralysis. They were slapping and kneading the bread Lana Lana had left in the cupboard to rise earlier in the day. I felt invisible. No one saw me going to Pepe. I stood over him; he growled and bared his teeth pathetically. My voice came back. ‘It’s all right, boy. I’m not going to hurt you.’ I spoke until his body relaxed. I touched his soft pink ears and caressed his furry chin. He liked being tickled there, and he closed his eyes with relief.”