by Zhanna Slor
“No. But I could get a job.” It makes sense they can’t relate to my incessant pull toward all things Ukraine. They went through hell to get here. This displacement is something they will never understand. They did have a home, once. Now they have a new home. To them, it is simple: they were there, and now they are here. People they knew then are dead or in jail. The worst thing that could happen now to the people they know is that they become lazy, or Democrats.
It probably goes without saying I avoid talking to them about politics, too.
“You and this Ukraine obsession…” my mom sighs, still rubbing the sides of her head with two fingers. “I thought you were done with it years ago.”
I, too, put my fingers to the sides of my forehead and rub them. When I look up again, I see we have finally stopped in front of my house. Feeling brave for one final moment, I say: “I wasn’t done, I was just done telling you about it.”
“Anastasia, there is a lot you don’t know about life. And about people,” my mom says. “We left that horrible place so you wouldn’t have to.”
“But don’t you ever wonder…?” I start, but I don’t finish the sentence.
“What,” my mom says, flatly.
“Have you ever considered maybe you don’t know everything?” I finally snap.
“Anastasia!” my dad interjects. “Don’t talk to your mother that way.”
I unbuckle my seat belt. I need to get out of the car, now. “Never mind,” I tell her. She seems to feel bad suddenly because her body language changes. It’s like she suddenly remembers I’m an adult and can choose whether or not to call her. Or maybe she’s remembering what happened with her other daughter when they disagreed too much.
“School is more important, honey. Why do you need to go to Ukraine?” she coaxes.
“Because I want to,” I say, knowing I sound like a petulant toddler but unable to help myself. “Isn’t that enough?”
“You don’t know what you want,” is all my dad says. “You’re a child.”
I look out again at my apartment, where I can see Margot working on a terrible abstract painting of a dog for an upcoming art show at the school’s gallery. A part of me wishes so desperately to be a part of that culture, hanging my oil portraits in line beside all the mediocre watercolor landscapes and mixed-media collages, drinking wine and eating cheese until I am ready to pass out. Everyone in the art department gets to do it and most of them have the talent of a shoe. Or maybe I’m simply jealous that they have the ability to try, and I don’t. But why shouldn’t I, too, have this chance? Because my parents told me I can’t? Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe it’s the conversation we’ve had, but a little door starts to open in my heart then. And inside that door is a small voice that is telling me your parents don’t know everything, and it’s telling me if you don’t want the same things, then maybe you shouldn’t do what they say. That should seem obvious, the realization our parents don’t always know what’s best for us—but it’s harder to see when your parents have made so many sacrifices for you and behave like perfect robots.
“Actually, Dad, I’m not a child,” I say finally.
As I leave the car, and watch them drive off towards Highway 43, I’m awash in a feeling more familiar to me than love, or kinship, or even sorrow: an angry, guilty hopelessness.
If I had to name the feeling, it would be this: Family.
ANNA
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
I drag myself upstairs and open the door into the kitchen, where August is at the table drinking coffee and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette while simultaneously rolling another one. The window is open to the crisp, cool autumn air, and it smells like one of our neighbors is having a bonfire. I love that smell. Immediately, I feel more at ease than I have all night.
“Hey,” I tell August, with a nod. I let out a long breath of air and look for where to sit; the chairs are all semi-occupied. A polka-dot road bike leans against one, and a large backpack is open on the other. It’s full of yogurts, bagels, and some bottles of wine. Probably he came home straight after dumpster diving. “Trader Joe’s again?”
“Yep,” August says. “And Einstein’s must have had a very slow day.” When he doesn’t move, or offer me some of his haul, which he sometimes does, I begin to ransack the nearly empty cabinets for snacks, in order to soak up the alcohol and have at least some chance of sleeping later. Drinking too much gives me insomnia, for whatever inexplicable reason. And maybe I could get past the difficulty of falling asleep in a normal setting, but then every little noise wakes me up too, and my roommates are not quiet people. So I find a bag of pretzels and some cheese, and am about to head to my room to eat it, but then August starts talking.
“Hey, Anna! Sit with me,” he says. He takes his overflowing bag and sets it on the floor. I sit down. He hands me the new cigarette, and passes his lighter over too once I sit.
“Oh my god, thank you. It’s like you read my mind.”
August giggles. “Your mind isn’t hard to read, Anna. It’s usually one of three things. Speaking of, whatever happened to Mr. Short, Dark, and Handsome?” He tips his cigarette into the ashtray, knocks the ash off in a way where half of it ends up on our antique wooden table, then brings it back up to his lips to take another drag. “Haven’t seen him around lately.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably got back together with that ex he’s always obsessing about,” I say, then place my hand over August’s mouth. “Do not say I told you so!” but it’s too late, he says it at the same time as I do.
“Fine, fine, you were right,” I admit. August pinches my cheek. “I’m not cut out to be the other woman.”
“At least we won’t have to go to anymore metal shows,” he says, lightheartedly. “I didn’t want to tell you when you were fucking, but his music is awful.”
“Oh, I know,” I laugh. “I could tell from your face.”
“Could you?” he says. “I thought I was doing such a good job hiding it.”
“Not everyone can be Bob Dylan, August.”
“Sure, but can’t they at least be Bob Seger?”
“Who’s Bob Seger?”
August drops his head and shakes it. “Oh boy. Why do I even bother playing you music? You still don’t know the difference between indie folk and progressive rock.” He stands up, puts his cigarette out, and shoves the Drum baggie into his pocket. “Hey, can you keep an eye on my bike for a while?” he asks.
“Which one? That one?”
“Yeah, I sold the other ones,” August says with a hint of a smile. “I’m leaving town for a bit. I can leave you the lock for it too, if you want to use it.”
“Sure!” I agree. We are almost the same height so his bike would fit me perfectly, and it’s much faster than the old Trek hybrid I’d been borrowing from my parents’ house. I could go all kinds of places with August’s bike. “Where are you headed?”
“Gonna hop a train with my friend Rod. We’ll head south and see where we end up.”
“Oh, that’s so cool,” I say. “Rod...the one with all the face tattoos?”
“Yeah,” August says. “I haven’t done the train thing in a while, and I’m feeling antsy. This fucking weather, man.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame you. Although, I really like this weather. I’m a weirdo, I guess.”
“You want to come with?” he asks, then lifts his polka-dot road bike onto his shoulder as if it weighs nothing
“Train-hopping?” I ask, dumbfounded. At times, I’ve fantasized about going myself, jumping on a train as it starts moving, feeling the wind dancing around the steel car, and hearing nothing but a roar for six, seven hours. Going anywhere and nowhere, with no one to answer to. But I don’t think I have the courage for that level of misbehaving, the kind that involves leaving everything behind. Or any kind of misbehaving, when it comes down to it.
“I don’t think so, but thanks,” I tell August, breaking eye
contact. I pick my snacks up from the table and open the door for him so he can get out easier carrying the bike on his shoulder. “Maybe another time. When will you be back, you think?”
“I don’t know. Couple weeks? I would rather not plan it too much.” I fight an urge to hug him goodbye. All of our late-night wine drinking spent talking about our failed romantic dramas had really brought us closer the last few months, and I’m sad to see him go. But I don’t want to come off as cheesy, so I settle for a more casual goodbye.
“Well, have fun, I’ll miss you,” I say.
“Aw, I’ll miss you too, Anna,” he says, then comes over and gives me a one-handed hug anyway. He smells like sweat and patchouli and platonic friendship. Relationships at nineteen are strange; sometimes they feel like train wrecks, the way you can bond so easily and so intensely. How someone you met only a few months ago now feels impossibly necessary to your daily existence. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just luck or if this is how life is for normal people; or, worst of all, if this is a fleeting occurrence that only lasts as long as young adulthood lasts. In any case I return the hug and then carry my snacks back to my room before August can see my eyes are tearing up. I blink them away and light another cigarette, and after a few drags, I’ve calmed myself down enough to turn on my computer.
I don’t like change. It’s only a trip, I know, but something about it makes my heart beat faster and my stomach turn. Of course, it doesn’t help that minutes ago I had possibly the biggest argument with my parents I’ve ever had. That the more I think about my future—two and a half more years of college, followed by working at some office nine-to-five, then marrying a Russian Jew my family would approve of and having kids—the more I feel like jumping off the Locust Street Bridge.
So maybe this will explain why I did what I did next, because this is the mindset I am in when I find another message from Zoya. The second message from her is on Facebook and sounds more urgent. I read it three times in a row to make sure I understand correctly. But even after the third time through, plus an internet browser’s translation, I’m still not so sure that I do.
“Dear Anastasia Pavlova,” it says. “I didn’t want to tell you this way, but I have no choice now. I am your sister on your dad’s side. I would really like to speak with you, if you are able. Please write back as soon as possible.”
Because I read Zoya’s second message in an entirely different mood than her first, I do not ignore it this time. I do not delete it. Had I been anyone else, I would never have done what I was about to do, and nothing that transpired would have ever happened. My life would be normal—at least as normal as it could ever be for someone who does not want a normal life.
But I can only be myself; the girl who once asked so many questions my teachers had to limit me to three a day. The girl who, at age eight, begged the Russian hairdresser to cut off all her hair to see what it would look like (it looked very, very bad). The girl who turned into a woman who eventually learned it was easier not to ask questions.
Maybe that girl never died; she only went away into hiding. Until now. Like Howard Zinn has said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
Of course I was going to answer her.
And so, without thinking any more about it, I write, “Do you speak English?”
FEBRUARY 2008
MASHA
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CHAPTER TWELVE
Outside on Bremen Street, I swivel around, my fists up, ready to use one of the many Krav Maga defensive moves I’d learned in Israel over the years, but then I see whose hand is on my shoulder and stop cold.
“Oh my God,” I say, dropping my hands. “Emily.”
My old best friend squeezes me with all her might, then releases her grip and looks me up and down. “Masha! I can’t believe it’s you. I thought I was seeing things.” She looks at my hand and frowns. “Are you smoking again?”
I shake my head. I hadn’t even realized I was holding Rose’s cigarette. “This isn’t mine.”
Emily continues to watch me, then glances back at the door. She gestures behind her. “Want to go inside and talk? It’s freezing. Is that a leather coat you’re wearing? What are you doing out here?”
“Actually, I can’t, I really have to...”
“Nonsense, woman,” she says, taking Rose’s cigarette, stealing a drag, then throwing it on the ground. “I’m sure you have five minutes for an old friend, right?” Then before I can protest, she is pushing me inside and buying me a drink. The bar is even more crowded now; bodies are stacked right on top of each other like sardines bathing in patchouli. A three-piece band is on stage; a stand-up bass, a gypsy guitar, and a banjo, all sticking out from the heads of plaid shirts and frayed jeans.
It’s a strange sensation, sitting down at a table with a drink; I don’t really go to bars much in Israel. A beer can cost eight dollars, twelve if you’re in Tel Aviv. Plus, David is out of town so much that when he’s home he doesn’t really like to leave the house. I could go without him, but I only have a handful of friends, mostly David’s family members, who are all young, busy parents.
“First question: Have you ever heard of the Internet? You know, Riverwest does have it,” Emily says. “Even if everyone chooses not to accept that it’s the twenty-first century.” She slams her beer on the wobbly table, making it spill all over, then takes off her down coat to reveal a blue-and-red plaid flannel shirt. For the first time since I arrived in Milwaukee, I am amused. At least some things never change. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Emily wearing anything but flannel. She’s from Kentucky and grew up training horses. The way Emily used to mention their names, it took me months to understand she was talking about animals and not siblings. She’d moved to Wisconsin the first year of high school, where we’d met in an English class and bonded over a mutual adoration for Franny and Zooey, then quickly become inseparable. As soon as we turned eighteen, we found a place together in Riverwest because it was so cheap. We didn’t know that it would eventually drive us apart. That sometimes, saving some money isn’t worth the cost.
“Hey, it keeps that DVD rental place in business,” I joke.
Emily frowns. “Masha.”
I shrug. “There’s internet in Israel, too,” I say. I look around in discomfort, and notice there are several people here with iPhones, looking down at bright screens in the middle of tables surrounded by friends. It really is a plague, I think. “It’s not very good, but it works.”
“I guess I thought you were mad at me or something,” Emily says, so quietly I can barely hear her. Her long, stiff hair falls out of her hat like a pile of loose cords, much like her short-lived dreadlocks did the summer before college, when we went backpacking through Europe together, inseparable. Getting lost in Prague and eating gelato in Venice, somehow never getting tired of each other. Who knew that one event could derail our entire history together so easily?
“Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don’t know,” Emily says, shaking her head. “For how I handled things back then, I guess.”
I take a long sip of my drink. I can feel myself getting dizzy again, and look down to steady myself, when I notice I am holding onto the table so tightly my fingers are white. I drop them to my side. “Emily, let’s just not.”
“I just...I feel bad about how everything went down,” Emily says.
“It’s okay,” I say. The band starts playing what I believe to be an Elliott Smith cover—or maybe they’re only trying to sound like him—and half the crowd is listening while the other half is trying to scream over the noise. Which means I, too, have to raise my voice.
“No, it’s not,” Emily says. “I know it’s why we’re not friends anymore.”
“We’re not friends anymore because I live on another continent,” I explain. I finish the vodka soda she bought me and stand up from the chair, Rose’s bed calling out to me. I put a hand over my mouth, stifling a yawn. “Emily, I really hav
e to go. I’m so tired.”
Emily grabs my hand and doesn’t let me go. “You can’t avoid it forever, you know.”
I take my hand back and turn to leave, feeling myself start to get angry. “It’s still a free country. Or did that change while I was gone?” I tell her. A new song comes on, a cover of The Decemberists’ “The Chimbley Sweep.” Emily seems to soften, as do I—we are both remembering, or perhaps trying not to remember, listening to this album over and over one warm summer day between semesters. Back when things were still so simple. Back when I used to think that friendships were easier to maintain than family relationships. Now I think they’re both pretty hard, but it’s way easier when you have a common interest, like Judaism. Even before I’d believed any of it, the bond was palpable right away. It’s what eventually sold me; the connection, the camaraderie. So you have to put aside logic and even science once in a while; it’s not like either of those things were ever my strong suit. I’d always preferred abstract ideas over math, poetry over physics.
“Sorry. We don’t have to talk about it,” Emily corrects. The music continues to blast through the speakers, giving me a headache, because I guess on top of everything else, I am now old and lame. I feel myself sliding off the seat, to the edge, where I always end up no matter how long I’ve been sitting somewhere.
Maybe Liam was right. Maybe I am always looking for a way out.
“What brings you to town anyway?”
Right as she is asking me this I ask, “Have you seen my sister around?”