I reached out my hand and held hers. Be careful, Valerie.
“I will,” she said out loud.
What about the kids? What about Kai?
“We’re moving the kids to Mama and Papa’s tomorrow. They’re excited.”
I squeezed her hand. I was scared to death. But Valerie was Valerie, and she would do her job.
“I love you, Toni, love you, Ellie.”
“I love you, too, Valerie.”
“If anything happens to me—”
“Don’t even say it, Valerie,” I said. “We will help Kai take care of the kids.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Ellie said. “Now don’t talk about that stuff anymore.”
“Okay. But you need to wash your hair, Toni.”
“I know.”
“Can I wash it for you?” Ellie asked. “I’m worried about you, too, Toni. Your hair. You’re wearing the same jeans again and again, and T-shirts. When did you ever wear T-shirts except when you’re exercising?”
“I like them.” They knew I didn’t want to talk about Nick.
“Let us wash your hair, Toni, please,” Ellie said.
“If JJ saw you like this ...” Valerie said. “It would be like Mt. Vesuvius.”
“The screech of outrage,” Ellie shuddered.
Valerie and Ellie washed my hair over the kitchen sink, then dried it and brushed it back from my widow’s peak. My head felt a lot better when they were done. They filed my nails, plucked my eyebrows. We all polished our fingernails and toenails. When I noticed Valerie’s hands shaking, I took over for her.
I love my sisters. We put our heads together.
“I’m scared,” Valerie whispered.
“I am, too,” Ellie and I said.
The snake’s mouth was open, ready to strike.
We did not get any pillows sewn that night.
* * *
“Toni, the whole family is worried about you.”
“I’m fine, Dmitry.”
He let the silence hang.
“I am.”
“You’re not fine. I’m sorry about Nick. I heard you’re not washing your hair.”
“I wash my hair... .”
“Be honest.”
“Most of the time. When it needs it. I’ll wash it more.”
“Worse, I’ve heard you’re not wearing your pretty clothes.”
“I wear my pretty clothes.”
I heard him crying.
“Dmitry, stop. Please. You’re making me upset—”
“Toni, I don’t like it when you’re unhappy. When Marty was sick, after he died, watching you in so much pain, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. He was one of my best friends, the whole thing was awful, but watching you cry ... and now you’re unhappy again.”
“I’ll be fine. But I miss Nick.” My voice was a pathetic whimper, which was irritating.
“You couldn’t commit, could you?” I heard him sniffling and hiccupping. “I get it. We’re both broken, aren’t we? Like teacups or a vodka bottle or a rocking horse that rocks on its own... .”
Broken. Yes. I could say that. “Broken but still standing, now that’s something, right?”
“No,” he wailed. “No, it isn’t. I want you to be happy. Very, very happy.”
“I’m working on it.” No, I wasn’t.
“I want to help you.”
“You always help me, Dmitry, by being the best brother ever... .”
Dmitry is incredibly sensitive to other people’s suffering, and when it comes to our family ... he’s a mess.
“I love you, Toni.”
* * *
I had no interest in honing my skills in Keeping The Monsters At Bay: Shopping Defensive Strategies. None. I didn’t want to shop. I didn’t even want to get dressed in the morning.
Moscow, the Soviet Union
My father arrived half dead late on a Sunday night.
We heard a truck outside our apartment rumbling, five floors below us, the breaks screeching, doors slamming, laughter. The snow floated down onto the slushy roads. Minutes later we heard a thunk against our door, then silence.
My mother peered out through the peephole, her hands shaking. She was thin, too thin. She was often distracted, pained. She was nervous, weak, and still coughed from the pneumonia. She worked all hours into the night mending, sewing fancy dresses for the fancy wives of the men who had locked her own husband in jail.
My mother cried out, then yanked open the door. My sisters and I ran out of our bedroom and pulled our father into the house.
I hardly recognized him.
Elvira screamed. Valeria froze, as if she’d been hit. I stared, shocked, then ran and got the towels, soap, and bandages my mother yelled at me to get.
My father was bloodied, bruised, broken, unconscious.
Later, after my mother cleaned him up, bandaged his wounds, and we all hauled him into bed, I saw her leaning over the sink, rinsing my father’s blood from her trembling hands, stooped, sobbing, shattered.
* * *
My father’s recovery was slow.
His humor returned on the fifth day, when he woke up, no longer in another world, fighting a fever, fighting a demon. He peered out at my mother from the one eye that was not swollen shut.
He did not see his three daughters perched on the other side of the bed. He saw only my mother, kneeling, their heads close together.
“Ah, Svetlana,” he said, his voice raspy. “I dreamed of you, during the day, during the night, every day. You were with me. Are you real?”
“Yes, my love, my Alexei. I am real. I am here. How are you?”
“Do not worry. I will be fine. I am here with you again. I will heal. And then we will leave. We have to get out of here, Svetlana. I am afraid they will come for you. I am surprised they did not.”
“Your father. How is he?”
My father’s eyes filled with tears. He shook his head. “He is gone.”
“Oh, my God and Jesus, Mary, mother of God.” My mother crossed herself, crying with my father. “I am so sorry, my love, so sorry.”
“What?” I said. “Grandfather is gone?” I loved Grandfather Konstantin! His smile, his songs, the treats he brought us when he visited, the way he could cut animals out of paper. “What do you mean? Is he dead?”
Slowly, as if every inch pained him, which it probably did, as he was covered in bruises and lashes, my father turned his head.
“Hello, daughters. I love you. How I missed you.”
We bent to kiss the one cheek that wasn’t bashed.
“Grandfather’s gone?” Elvira asked, her tiny hands clenched together.
“Yes, my angel, I am so sorry. He is dead. He is with Grandmother now, in heaven.”
“But what happened?” Valeria said, her face crumbling. “I want Grandfather!”
“A bad man killed him.”
“What?” Elvira wailed. “What?”
“Why did he kill Grandfather?” I asked.
“Because your grandfather spoke against the government. He spoke for God. He spoke for Jesus. He spoke for freedom. That is why.”
It is surprising that the tears we shed did not drown the poor man when we kissed him again.
“Everything will be fine,” our father croaked out later, holding my mother’s trembling, weak hands. “You have kept up with your educations, your reading, mathematics, and science?”
We nodded that we had. We did not mention the pickpocketing or the trip to the police station for my mother and me or the bloody cloths.
“I knew you would. I love you all. So much.” He turned back to our mother as his eyes started to close. “Svetlana, you are my gift.”
“And you are mine, Alexei,” she cried. “Always mine.”
“We will leave. We will save our family, God help us.”
He closed his eyes and went back to a comatose sleep.
Two nights later I saw my mother, with such tenderness, take off my father’s shirt in
their bedroom. My mother pressed a kiss against every whip line on my father’s back, his head bent. My father was a muscled man, large, he had boxed for years. And yet, there he was, bent, beaten, and only showing his weakness in his bedroom, to his wife.
I would never forget my father’s injuries. I would never forget the enduring love I saw between my parents that night.
* * *
The whispering started again immediately, a few friends who slipped in and out of our apartment at night, slinking through the shadows, hats and glasses disguising their faces as they took the stairs up to our apartment, the home of people who had been declared “enemies of the people,” who would soon lose their apartment and might be arrested or forcibly moved to another part of the Soviet Union, my parents learned.
“You must leave,” we heard them say again and again. “As soon as Alexei can walk, you must go, Svetlana. Go, go right away.”
We were going, I knew it. I heard my parents talking. My father said he had to do something before we left, when he regained some strength, but then, immediately after that, “On to America, Svetlana, as we have dreamed about.”
“When are we going?” Valeria asked.
“What is happening?” Elvira asked.
“Wait,” I told them. “Don’t tell anyone.”
The silence began after that.
People did not come and tell us, “You have to leave.”
I knew then. They did not tell us to leave because we were leaving.
“When are we leaving?” Valeria asked.
“What is happening?” Elvira said.
“Wait,” I told them. “Don’t tell anyone.”
* * *
My grandfather Konstantin’s body, my father’s father, who had been imprisoned with my father, beaten and starved, was delivered to us in a can. Yes, a can. The prison cremated him. The official notice was that my grandfather had died, unfortunately, of a heart attack.
The letter enraged my father. I have never seen him so livid. He ran a hand over a shelf and knocked all of his books off, then another shelf, then another. My mother pointed at us to go to our room, so we did but, as always, we cracked the door so we could see. My father yelled, low and primal, his face a twisted mask of utter grief.
“A heart attack?” he screamed. “A heart attack?”
My mother, calm, tears slipping down her cheeks, let him rage until he could rage no more, then he fell to the floor, his body still battered and bruised, his mind still reeling from the trauma of his own imprisonment, of watching his father die, and my mother rocked him, as she rocked us when we cried.
“A heart attack? Rurik Nikonov killed him. He killed my father. I saw him do it. I was there, Svetlana. I will get revenge for my father.”
“No, no, darling,” my mother said, not bothering to hide her alarm. “We are leaving here. We will have a new life. We are getting out. Do not risk it.”
“I will. I must, Svetlana.”
“Alexei—”
“This is my final word.”
And so it was.
My sisters and I crept away, crawled into bed, and hugged each other, crying silently until we went to sleep, our father’s words, “I will get revenge for my father,” echoing like the lash of the whip marks on his back through our minds.
* * *
My mother told each of us to pack one bag the next morning. “One, no more, girls. We must be ready to leave.”
I packed my two pairs of pants, two skirts, and three sweaters, almost all I had. Mostly I packed my books and notebooks where I wrote stories.
Valeria packed a pair of old, high red heels that my aunt Polina gave her before she left and a blue ballerina skirt that Uncle Vladan had given her.
Elvira packed her two stuffed animals, fabric scraps, and her sewing kit. We would each wear coats, as it was winter, and two pairs of pants and our boots with three pairs of socks, as there were holes in the boots.
“When, Mama, are we leaving?” I asked.
“Shhh. I will tell you when. Do not say a word to anyone, Antonia. Do not forget.” She tapped my lips. “We could die if someone knows who should not know.”
Three nights later, I woke up to hear my mother begging my father not to leave the apartment. Crying, holding on to him, clutching at his coat, his hand on the doorknob.
My father was standing again, much stronger. He was eating. He had a look in his eye that scared me, but it was never directed at us. The cuts and new scars on his cheeks glowed, it seemed, in the darkness. I was scared of the scars, scared of how he got them, but not scared of my father.
“Go back to your room, Antonia,” my mother snapped when she saw me. I started to cry, but instead of reacting with a hug, as always, she said, “Now, Antonia. Do as you are told.”
I pretended to shut the door, but I listened, Elvira and Valeria beside me, holding hands.
“Do not do this, Alexei. Please. For the family, for the girls, for us.”
“Svetlana, I must. I cannot let go of what has happened. It is for my father, for our honor.”
“Honor? What is honor if you are dead? We cannot, we will not, leave without you. We are ready, you know this. They will come for me soon, I’m sure of it.”
“I will do this first. If I do not return by tomorrow night, you are to go without me.”
“No. I refuse. I will not leave without you.”
For the first time in my life, I saw my father get angry with my mother. He grabbed both of her arms and yanked her in close. It was at that moment that I realized that my loving father had another side. He was a Russian man born in a hard time, brought up with hard knocks, with a father who had suffered the same. “You will do as I say, Svetlana.” I had never heard that tone. “You will leave with the children and begin a new life as we have planned.”
“ No. ”
My father cupped my mother’s face with his hand, yanking her closer, his face flushed. “I will not listen to this, Svetlana. I am your husband. Do not disobey me.”
My mother burst into tears, and my father’s searing, surprising anger faded.
“Be strong, Svetlana. Be brave. I love you.”
“You stupid, stupid man.”
“I need your love, Svetlana.”
“No.”
“Please. I need to hear it, Svetlana.”
“Stupid man.”
“No, not that.” He smiled.
“I am so mad at you, stupid man.”
“Not that, either.”
“I love you, Alexei.”
“Yes, that. It is what I needed to hear. I will see you soon. Tomorrow night.”
He kissed her. A long, passionate kiss. I closed the door before it ended.
* * *
When I woke up, the sun barely peeking over our frozen horizon, the streets of Moscow slushy and gray, I saw my mother in a chair by the window, sewing. She was leaning forward toward the front windows, bent over, stiff, her fingers shaking over the fabric.
“Good morning, Mama,” I said.
“Good morning, Antonia.”
I sat by her feet. She absentmindedly patted my shoulder with a trembling hand, a bird in flight, a frightened dove.
“Will he be home soon?”
“Pray, Antonia. You pray. Hard as you can.” She turned back to the window. “Lord God, Jesus, Mary, mother of God, please protect my Alexei. Antonia, are you praying for your papa?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Do not stop.”
“I won’t.”
“Valeria? Elvira? Are you praying for your papa?”
Valeria and Elvira sat beside me.
“Yes, Mama,” Valeria said. “To Jesus and God and Mary, mother of God, who didn’t get enough credit for her sacrifices, right, Mama?”
“I’m praying to Jesus,” Elvira said. “He’s nice.”
My sisters and I went to school. The Bessonovs gave us food to take home when we went to their house to play after school. Mr. Bessonov said to me, “All will
be well, Antonia.”
I hoped so.
We waited.
* * *
My father limped home late that night, the moon covered by rolling gray clouds. His face was bloodied again, bruised, swollen. There was blood covering his blue shirt underneath his jacket and on his hands. My mother cried out when she saw him. She hugged him close, not minding the blood, then quickly pulled away, a cry escaping her lips.
My father was holding something.
“Alexei, what?”
“Ours.”
“ No. ”
“Ours.”
“But where—” My mother’s eyes widened. “Oh no, Alexei.”
“Yes. This is the way it will be.”
My father held something in his arms. More blood.
My parents lied about where it came from.
* * *
I heard a bloodcurdling scream about eight o’clock on Tuesday night. I shot out the door and stood on the dock. Another scream, cut short. It was Lindy. I sprinted down the dock, then noticed that Daisy was running beside me. “Call the police, Daisy!” I yelled, and sped up.
I burst through Lindy’s door. A hulk of a gargoyle man was leaning over her, where she lay on the couch like a crumpled doll in a pink negligee. “Get away from her.”
He spun around, and all I saw was evil. Evil in his bulging, packed body, the weird shape of his rectangular face, his mouth a slash. “Get out. This ain’t your business, bitch.”
“It is my business.” Lindy’s face was swollen and bleeding. She was trying to roll off the couch.
“I’m warning you, tight ass, leave unless you want this to become a threesome.” He charged toward me as Lindy opened a drawer next to the couch. I knew she had a gun in there.
“And I’m warning you!” Daisy flew past me and pointed a. 45 at that gargoyle man, a foot from his chest. She was wearing a pink-flowered daisy robe. “Get out. Now.” She cocked the gun, both hands on it, steady as could be.
He put his hands up as Lindy collapsed back on the sofa. I thought she might be dying. Daisy kept the gun pointed right at his chest.
“Hey, take it easy.”
“Shut up, pig face.”
Daisy stood her ground as he backed away, toward the door.
I stared at his crotch. He was peeing on himself, his face pale with fright.
“He’s peeing himself,” I said, almost amused.