By the end of her fifth year of climbing the career ladder, desperately trying to improve her life and the living conditions of our family, she had got by earning $1,000 and the privilege of having a lunch break. Of course, a great salary if she was staying in La Paz, Bolivia, or even in our Kherson. In Istanbul it was not a living, but simply holding on to life. Eventually, she lost her faith in the possibility of having a decent income. The frequent nightmares started, in which she’d wake up in 20 years’ time in the same office, at the same computer, earning only $500 more, and having finally got a legitimate place in her boss’s family – as wife number three or four.
4
The trip to Luxembourg could have been a perfect chance for Lena, my middle sister, to change her life too. She was always tangled in endless-love-forever stories with all kinds of losers.
It would be easier for you to understand Lena’s problem if you could meet her in person. Tall and beautiful, she resembled Drew Barrymore, but with chestnut hair. Her body was fit and flawless, especially since becoming a student of the Kherson Cultural College’s choreography department. She had an extremely soft and friendly nature; she simply never learnt how to say no. This, with her looks, drew men – mostly jerks – like the light draws moths.
She constantly dwelled in a fairyland. The only thing she wanted was marriage and a bunch of kids. What’s more, she was convinced that this was the only way she could ever be happy.
I always wondered when we ‘lost’ her. Was it as early as when we watched Cinderella animations, or later, while she was reading Scarlet Sails by Alexander Grin? We were raised on the same books and movies. Why was it different with her? I guess during one of those screened tearjerkers she felt so comfortable and secure in the fantasy that she decided never to come back to Earth.
All of Lena’s life was built on this one dream …
The first serious relationship she had was when she was in the eighth grade. His name was Serega. Sad, but after that ‘love story’ I will never be able to associate this name with anything rosy. He was in his last year of school, three years older than her, involved with the local youth gang whose members were familiar with stealing, drugs, and who knew what else. We all knew Serega was a bastard, but Lena wouldn’t listen …
I’m telling you, totally in fairyland…
Two years of happily ever after ended with an ugly incident that put me in hospital, caused tons of pain and tears, and Lena’s self-reproach for her unforeseen and non-participative bit in that ‘antisocial behaviour’. Afterwards, unintentionally, I learned how to use her guilt-ridden feelings towards me to my advantage.
Then, there was this Slavic fellow. They met when she was already a college student. Lena truly thought he was the one, and that they would spend the rest of their lives together. Apparently, they didn’t think alike. He was an excellent storyteller. One day, after a whole year of sharing an ‘unbelievably strong’ connection, he disappeared. Then she received the coward’s letter: ‘Sorry baby, but I’ve been lying to you all this time – I have a wife and two kids. Forgive me’. The comeback from this fairyland was as messy as the previous one. Lena tried to kill herself. Luckily, her knowledge of how to cut vital veins was second-rate; the only outcomes Lena achieved were scaring the shit out of us and spoiled wallpaper in the bedroom, which still has dark and awful stains on it.
By the time the trip came up, Lena was in the middle of another drama. I remember that night as if it were today. We were drinking cheap, sweet wine and smoking long and trendy cigarettes on the balcony of our apartment. My sister was sobbing, and smearing the snot and mascara over her face – ‘I can’t believe he wants me to do this! I can’t believe he wants this!’
By ‘this’ she meant an abortion.
In short: they had been together for almost two years, and were often too lazy to use a rubber. She’d got pregnant. While she was picking a name for the baby, the husband-to-be confessed that he wasn’t ready for it yet.
I sipped my wine, drew on my cigarette, and sighed deeply. For a second, I wondered how we could accommodate the prospective baby, considering that the father still lived on campus while Lena and I shared a bedroom in our parents’ small apartment.
I nodded and agreed with Lena’s affirmation of him being a total bastard, but at the same time, praised the fella in my head. I thought that if it wasn’t for him getting cold feet, my crazy sister would definitely keep the baby, and probably mess up her life even more. Come on! Even at seventeen, I knew that babies are a very cute but extremely expensive ‘hobby’ to have. Food, living space, nappies, doctors, medicines, clothes, school fees, you name it!
In the middle of our little gathering Lena’s cellphone rang. It was Natalia. She quickly wiped her face and cleared her throat, trying to sound casual. Then, ‘Hi, Nata!’
I sighed again, and thought that life was so unfair. Lena never turned on the waterworks in front of Natalia. With me, she could go for hours. The fact that Lena used me as her tissue all the time started irritating me.
‘Are you crying again?’ I heard Natalia’s muffled voice in Lena’s brick. I smiled – she knew her sister too well to be fooled.
‘Len, stop moaning, let’s get our visas to Luxembourg and fuck off. You need a break; I desperately need some changes, too.’
Lena snivelled, ‘Are you sure we can trust Irina? I don’t want to get into one of those scary stories about girls being enslaved. They talk about them on TV all the time!’
The voice in the receiver quivered, ‘Fuck Irina and your scary stories! I called the embassy and checked – it’s all legitimate, so the risks are considerably low.’
‘Well, I don’t know ...’ Lena moaned after a pause.
‘Come on, sister!’ Natalia almost squealed. ‘I know it’s scary, but trust me, it will be fine. You know I need you on this one! I swear that if you say no, I’ll kill myself and leave a note: For everything I blame my indecisive sister Lena.’
We burst into extended belly laughter, ending up with tears in our eyes.
The decision was made!
5
Before my sisters took off, Lena had an abortion and Natalia quit her job in Istanbul. During the trip, they called almost every week and reported that they were fine. In the meantime, I was in my last year of school, trying my best to combine my soaked in booze and weed nightlife with school and my damn homework. I still managed to get fairish marks and – more importantly – not to get pregnant.
One evening, a few weeks before my sisters were due to return, my father and I were having dinner at home. It was a typical supper of borsch, a traditional Ukrainian beetroot soup, and potatoes fried in lard with chopped onions. As always, our conversation hardly went further than, ‘How was school?’ or ‘Have you done your homework?’
Then, out of the blue, my father turned his attentive look to me, narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Don’t even think about it!’
Hmm … all I had in mind was how to sponge a few hryvni1 for tomorrow’s night out, so I just raised my eyebrows in return.
‘Don’t even think about going with your sisters!’ he snarled. ‘Jul, you are too smart for this. Remember, when you were a little girl, you always wanted to be a doctor?’
Unintentionally I rolled my eyes.
‘Don’t pull your faces here, in front of me!’ he raised his voice.
‘Pa, please …’ I begged wearily.
Un-fucking-fortunately, the supper had gone from casual to seriously annoying.
‘Don’t “pa” at me! You need to have a degree to become something in this life or to find a good job.’
I flew into a rage. ‘Where is your diploma, Pa, huh? How is your degree helping you now? It’s been almost six months since they laid you off and you are still jobless!’ I uttered and ran out of the kitchen.
The saddest part was that not only my father was canned; the whole post-Soviet belt was in the same jam, too.
Let’s take the Kherson shipbuilding yard, where my
father worked for almost twenty years. In 1991 it closed down and thousands of people, like him, lost their jobs. What’s more, the teachers, doctors, policemen, soldiers, pensioners – anyone who depended on government – didn’t get their salaries for months, even years. So, the educators’ hunger strikes or medics’ refusal to come to work, ignoring the Hippocratic oath in a desperate fight for their shamefully low salaries, were normal, everyday events.
The mere idea of going to the university for at least five years and becoming, let’s say, a doctor, and then getting a place in a local hospital with a salary of $120 per month made me nauseous.
The only people who had a halfway decent life those days (except for the greedy, corrupt politicians, other officials, gang members, or the blessed ones who were lucky in some way to be close to the trough) were the ones who didn’t look back, left behind their ideas of a cloyingly planned and secure Soviet past, and adapted to a new life full of risks and surprises. Among them were suitcase traders who knocked about in Poland and Turkey; sailors who managed to find jobs on foreign ships; men who did rock-fall reconstructions in Portugal or harvested crops in Spain; older women who usually looked after the elderly in Europe, Canada or the United States; and the younger ones, like me and my sisters, who took care of more-capable-of-action clients in the ‘entertainment’ business.
The memories of a three-litre glass jar full of evenly cut squares of pork fat, preserved in thick layers of coarse salt, with skin that was impossible to chew, will stay with me forever. This was often the only item in our fridge for months. The image of our mother’s constantly worried eyes, the shame on our father’s face each time he came back home with the same nothing as the day before, will never be erased from my head.
Even when they found a few hryvni to buy 500 grams of rice and some bread for that day, or the rare occasion when one of our mom’s friends who worked at the kindergarten helped by bringing some scraps that even the not-so-picky staff would not take home, the misery wouldn’t disappear – the question of what to feed to their three children tomorrow still hung densely in the air.
Eventually, our mother didn’t have a choice but to go abroad to work. Thanks to her fearless and adventurous character, and later to Natalia’s great desire to swim out of that hopeless and depressing puddle called life in post-Soviet Ukraine, my unemployed father and I could afford borsch and some fruit for dessert that evening.
In addition to finding a job and making some money to help us to avoid complete deprivation, our mom also taught us to be brave and always to look for a way out – even if you could not see one.
So yes, instead of discouraging me, my father unwillingly nudged me to the realization that no matter what, I had to leave Kherson. There was no other way for me. The only thing I had to do was to announce it to my sisters. Something was telling me that it could be a bump in the road.
6
Lena and Natalia had been back in Kherson for four months when I decided, finally, to take action and talk to them. It was my birthday, too, which was a part of my strategy for persuading them to take me on their next trip.
Oh yes, of course there was going to be another trip.
They’d spent half the year in Luxembourg and managed to earn an astronomical amount: about $20,000 each! But because their income was the only source of finance for our family, and my sisters were, to some extent, hooked on shopping and partying, the liquid assets evaporated pretty quickly.
They decided to go back.
Unfortunately, they had to wait another two months. According to Luxembourgish immigration law, entertainers were not allowed to work and stay in the country for more than six consecutive months. They also had to have a break between trips, out of Luxembourg, that had to be as long as the time they’d spent there. Fortunately for me, this meant that I still had time to finish my school exams.
I knew there was going to be a problem. Both sisters had always been overprotective of me. They wanted to make sure that I had the best opportunities – me becoming a hooker was obviously not one of them.
Natalia, as the eldest sister, had a persistent urge to stick up for me. Lena was driven by the guilt I mentioned earlier. I could get whatever I wanted from my kin by manipulating their feelings – I know I am a spoilt bitch – but this time my advantage actually played against me.
We had finished the cake, and our father had left the three of us in the kitchen for his quiet moment with the TV and the beloved ten-year-old couch.
It was a really special night – Baileys and cigars. Natalia had generously forked out to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. The sweet liquor made us pretty tipsy, and our chat more upfront and revealing. The girls went on about the memories of their trip.
‘We were scared shitless when the airplane touched down at Luxembourg International. It was night-time too...’ Natalia sipped from her glass and continued, ‘Max, our talent agent, picked us up. He was suspiciously quiet and uneasy. The five kilometre drive to the club felt like the longest trip ever. No wonder he gave us goose bumps: a few weeks later we found out that he was a total junkie.’
‘He was supposed to get us a contract at another club for the next month,’ Lena jumped in, ‘and also to renew the visas, which had to be done every month. Guess what – this fucker disappeared! We didn’t know what to do. Luckily, we managed to find another agent to sort it out. But still, it was a troubling story for us and for Max, too. After all, he was found dead in his apartment from an overdose. Apparently the guy didn’t have family, because they started looking for him only when the stink of his body reeked through the walls.’
‘That’s another story, Len. Stop interrupting me!’ Natalia exclaimed with childish excitement. She’d won back a turn to speak. ‘When Max pulled up in the middle of the narrow and murky street, right next to the lone, dowdy neon sign – “Platinum Triangle” – I thought we were in the middle of some horror movie!’
‘I promise you Jul,’ Lena broke in again. ‘The letter P was flickering on and off while sending off sparks!’
‘It was nothing like we imagined it would be. You know, we had this Las Vegas-type of place in mind.’ We burst into laughter.
They entered the dark and smoky place, which had a long passage with a bar that stretched along the right and sank into a big square lounge with low couches, red curtains and a small stage in the corner. An old, awfully tall lady with a gloomy face behind the counter looked at them and solemnly nodded at Max, who was pulling their luggage in and missed the ‘mafia move’.
The place looked weird. It had about twenty dressed-up, heavily painted girls: a few of them moved lazily on the stage; the tipsy one at the bar was persistently soft-soaping the only customer, who had a terrorised look on his face; and the rest were sitting on the row of stools all the way along the left side of the corridor, which looked really funny opposite the elevated bar.
When my sisters stepped inside, all the girls (even the drunk one) turned to look at them in the hope of seeing more clients at the door. As soon as they recognised Max and figured that my sisters were the new dancers, the expressions on their faces changed to ‘Fuck! We can’t believe this old, giant bitch is featherbedding, when the club is empty every night!’ Their last hopes of making some money in that shithole evaporated on the arrival of those two.
The giant bitch was Rosy, the owner of the club. She stepped out from behind the counter and, without saying hello to the new arrivals, called one of the girls.
‘Show them around’, said Rosy, levelling a distinct misanthropy at the pretty blonde she’d called, before going back to the bar.
The excessively friendly and energetic girl reached to shake my sisters’ hands. ‘Hi, my name is Angel,’ she said. After a brief pause, she smiled and added in Russian, ‘That’s my stage name. My real name is Olga.’
When Max had eventually settled their suitcases and hotfooted it away, Olga took them on the tour, explaining their duties and club’s utilities. When they went upstairs to see
the private rooms, their bleached usher abruptly turned and said, with a knowing smile on her face, ‘You are not allowed to have sex with the customers,’ then kept moving onward.
‘We both sighed with relief,’ Natalia carried on, as Lena nodded.
Suddenly father walked into the kitchen. We fell silent, exchanging glances on our blushing faces: we had never spoken to him about what my sisters did and always tried to keep our voices low to make sure he would not accidently hear us. Clearly, the reality in which Natalia and Lena had being working as pros was ‘slightly’ changed to a version in which they were waitressing.
It was common for working girls to lie to their families. How could one tell her mom that she was nothing but a whore? Of course she would come up with a more palatable interpretation – that she was working as a babysitter or a cleaning lady. And even though the money she earned was freaking huge for such a short period, and for a four-dollar-an-hour job, her mom, of course, would disregard the obvious and swallow the comfy colouring. How could a mother admit that her girl was nothing but a whore?
‘Come on, girls. How many times have I told you not to smoke inside?’ Our father went on, bawling us out: ‘Go onto the balcony! There is so much smoke in here you can hang an axe in the air!’ He pulled his usual disappointed face, opened the window wider, and went back to his beloved.
We cracked up as he left, but decided to move anyway. Natalia grabbed the bottle while Lena and I took the ashtray and the glasses. We parked on the old brown pleather corner seat, which for a typical concrete Soviet-realism-style apartment building was a real luxury. The night was warm and quiet, as it is in the Kherson summer; the shrill chirping of crickets accompanied our straight talk, which we didn’t start until we’d made sure that the door behind us was closed.