The Language of Sisters

  When we were finally done, and told we could go, my father turned to my mother and said, “Welcome to America, Svetlana. We are here, finally.”

  We cheered.

  My parents, who had endured the impossible, their journeys tragic, held each other and cried and cried.

  Then they kissed. The kiss took too long.

  “Mama! Papa!” we all cried. “Stop!”

  The customs officials smiled.

  “Welcome to America,” they told us.

  My parents turned and hugged, and kissed, on both cheeks, the customs officials.

  We Kozlovskys have never forgotten the gift and safety of American citizenship.

  Not for one day.

  * * *

  Uncle Vladan and Aunt Holly and Anya and Boris met us at the airport, along with Uncle Yuri, Aunt Polina, and JJ; Uncle Sasho and Aunt Yelena, who had not yet run off with the plumber; and Zoya and Tati. The brothers sobbed in each other’s arms. Uncle Vladan looked at the scars on my father’s face, drawing his fingers over them, and cried again.

  “Now, finally, we are together,” my father said. “All the Kozlovskys.”

  Uncle Vladan’s successful landscaping business, plus Aunt Holly’s job as a kindergarten teacher, had allowed them to buy a nice home on the west side of Portland. Not fancy, thirty years old. It had three stories, with a full daylight basement with one bedroom, and a bathroom, where we lived. Two sets of bunk beds were put in the bedroom, and my parents had a couch that unfolded into a bed in the family room.

  Uncle Vladan and Aunt Holly, a woman who could sew or paint anything and make it new and modern, had painted the basement all white. Aunt Holly put red-and-white slipcovers on two couches, found a blue rug to go over the wood floors, and painted two dressers yellow. She added red-and-white checked curtains to the sliding glass doors and the three large windows. Each of us had two blankets and our own comforters and pillows.

  Uncle Yuri put his electrical skills to work and added canned lights in the ceiling, a pretty chandelier over a table, and standing lamps. In our room he installed a pink light shaped like a tulip. We loved it.

  Uncle Sasho, with income from his new trucking business, bought my parents a used truck.

  The basement was far brighter, larger, and more cheerful than our apartment in Moscow.

  When Aunt Holly walked my mother down to the basement, my mother put her hands to her mouth and gasped. I gaped. My sisters couldn’t speak. Dmitry clung to me.

  “I cannot thank you all enough,” my father said. “Ever.”

  “Brother,” Uncle Vladan said, “you never need to thank me. When I left the Soviet Union, you and Svetlana gave me money to survive. Now, a small token of my appreciation, I give to you.”

  Uncle Yuri and Uncle Sasho said the same.

  Uncle Vladan and Aunt Holly also had a sprawling backyard with towering maple and fir trees, a tire swing, a play structure, and a tree house. We were in awe of all of that space to run in, trees to climb, flowers blooming and vegetables growing in Aunt Holly’s garden. She allowed us to take apples and pears straight off her trees.

  Once we dropped off our bags in the basement, we all ate together, after a long, long prayer of thanks from my father, with everyone chirping in with, “Thank you, God.”

  “To the Kozlovskys,” my uncle Yuri shouted, his glass in the air when the long, long prayer was over. “To family.”

  When we were done, I went outside to play in the sunshine with my sisters and my cousins. Dmitry sat and stared at us, in that backyard, his little back ramrod straight, that dead expression in his eyes. He wouldn’t play no matter how many times we asked.

  “The orphanage,” Uncle Vladan said, his shoulders slumping. “That’s what did it. It brought the sadness to his eyes and soul.”

  “Those orphanages are housing from hell,” Aunt Polina said. Uncle Yuri nodded.

  “A disgrace to the Soviet Union,” Uncle Sasho said. “A danger to the children.”

  “They are jails for children,” my aunt Yelena said. She blinked rapidly. I later learned that she had spent years in and out of those orphanages, her mother too poor to feed her.

  My father stared off into the distance, as if he could see the threat from Moscow on the horizon.

  My mother held his hand, a loving couple who had a secret.

  The secret keeper went back to climbing a tree with her cousins.

  * * *

  We grew to love living in Oregon.

  No men in uniform ever came in the middle of the night and dragged my father out and beat him half to death, then dumped him in front of our apartment.

  No one ever attacked my mother. There were no bloody cloths to deal with. There was no pneumonia that could not be treated immediately.

  There was always food. The first time we went to a grocery store, none of us could speak. “Where are the lines?” my mother asked. No lines.

  “All this food,” my father marveled.

  “Milk,” my mother breathed. “Alexei, look. Rows of milk.”

  People did not disappear.

  The police were not people to run from, to hide from.

  The schools were safe and bright. Our teachers were kind, not rigid and intimidating, lecturing us about being well behaved so we could become Pioneers, little Communists, wearing red scarves, in the future.

  The streets were clean, the sun shone, the rain poured, the flowers grew.

  There was a library where we could get free books, anytime, stacks of them.

  We could read anything we wanted. We did not need to hide that we were Christians. In fact, most of our classmates were Christian, and a bunch of us went to the same church.

  Our life became, as my mother said, “filled with color, not with the hands of death, praise God, Jesus, and Mary, mother of Jesus, who never got the credit she deserved, and may God strike down his mighty fist on the men of the KGB, and the men of the jails, who have hurt the Kozlovskys, good people. May they be turned to dust.”

  There were things we missed about Moscow. Our friends. Bogdan and Gavriil. Our home country. Our traditions. Being new, not knowing the language, not fitting in, starting over for my parents, not being professors anymore, it was all hard, exhausting, sometimes demoralizing.

  But the safety and freedom here in America, not having a death threat over my parents’ heads, all worth it.

  We never pickpocketed again.

  There was no need. Stealing is acceptable only when you are starving to death.

  There was no chance of starving to death in America.

  The Kozlovsky family was happy.

  Except for Dmitry.

  * * *

  A week later, at one o’clock in the morning, my insomnia clutching me, visions of Nick and his warm body and smile dancing through my banging head, I heard someone knock on my tugboat.

  I actually gasped. Was it Nick? Joy and lust sizzled on through me, and I flipped off my covers.

  Maybe he couldn’t stay away from me! My heart pittered and pattered. I got caught in my covers and crashed to my floor but, undeterred, I pounded down the stairs, spun around the corner, and just in case, my history in the Soviet Union taking over, I peered through the keyhole to make sure it was my lust muffin.

  Whew! Not Nick.

  Shorter. Not my six foot five Nick.

  Smaller. No mountain-sized shoulders.

  A hoodie on.

  I put my hand to my throat.

  The man raised his hand to knock again, strong, loud. It echoed.

  I panted, fear ripping through me. Was it one of the Bartons? Had they looked up Valerie’s relatives? Oh, my God, save me. Were my parents safe? Were Valerie and Ellie safe? Oh, my God, save us. Would he break down the door and attack me for revenge? Would he smash his way in like the KGB had with my father?

  Was it someone else?

  I whipped around and grabbed my cell phone out of my purse, my knees all gooey.

  I did what I had to do. I called Nic
k. I told him who I thought it could be, my voice wobbling and shaking.

  “Do not open the door, Toni,” Nick ordered. “Go upstairs. Lock your bedroom door. I’m coming now.”

  I held on to the phone even when he disconnected. I tucked myself into the kitchen. Within seconds I heard Nick’s voice outside my tugboat.

  “Hello. Can I help you?”

  I heard the man answer. I knew that voice. The cadence. The tone.

  I ran to the door and ripped it open. “Dmitry!” I cried, and jumped straight into his arms. He laughed and twirled me around the dock, as if we were in some cheesy movie.

  * * *

  Dmitry and I lay in my bed together that night holding hands.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Me too, Toni.”

  “You’re staying for a while?”

  “Yes. I thought I’d come for the wedding, but that date didn’t materialize, so here I am anyhow.”

  I didn’t even bother to hide the tears that swam down my face.

  “Aw, Toni.”

  “What? I missed you.”

  After Dmitry put me down, I had introduced him to Nick.

  “We’ve met,” Dmitry said, smiling. Nick smiled back.

  “He told me he was your brother, but I didn’t believe him until you came flying out of the tugboat.”

  Being that close to Nick set my body on slow sizzle. I smiled at him, smiled more. Gave him one more smile....

  “Well, I’ll let you two go inside,” Nick said. “It’s late.”

  “Do you want to come in and talk, Nick?” I couldn’t believe I said that. I couldn’t believe I was that brave. Or desperate. Probably the latter.

  For one second, his expression opened, like a tiny door, and I could see his emotions, raw anguish and hurt, and then it slammed shut. “No, but thank you. I have to get up early.”

  “Nick, I’m sorry I woke you up—”

  “I wasn’t asleep.”

  “Are you sure, man?” Dmitry asked. “Love to have you over. We’ll call it a one o’clock in the morning nightcap.”

  “No, not this time. Next time.”

  “I owe you, man. Thanks for not beating me up.”

  “No problem.”

  We said good-bye, I smiled, smiled, smiled, Nick turned. I lusted after his body, his mind, his laughter, and the way he made burritos and margaritas.

  “Come on in, Dmitry.”

  We had chocolate chip cookies, then headed to bed.

  “Toni,” Dmitry said, soft, caring. “You need to get past Marty so you can get to Nick.”

  “I’ll never get past Marty.”

  “Marty will always be a part of your life, who you are, but you have to get past the pain so you can live.”

  “I’m living.”

  “You’re living in a numb way.”

  “Numb insulates me from crying all the time.”

  “Does it work?”

  “No. Not at all. My crying doesn’t appear to like to limit itself to a time schedule.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, thinking about you, and I have a solution. I think you should go on a kayaking trip.”

  “No.”

  “Entertain the idea for a sec, sister. Embrace the music of the idea.”

  “Too painful. Kayak alone?”

  “No. I’ll come.”

  “You would go with me on a kayaking trip?”

  “Yes.” He handed me an envelope. “But let me rephrase this. I am going with you on a kayaking trip. Already paid. Valerie and Ellie are coming, too. We’re all going to embrace the music together.”

  “What?” I opened the envelope. A brochure fell out. A confirmation sheet. Pictures of kayaks in an ocean, green islands, orcas, birds, a tiny town next to a dock.

  “It’s all arranged. We’re going as soon as Valerie’s trial is over. The four Kozlovsky kids.”

  “I don’t understand. You planned a kayaking trip and all four of us are going to the San Juan Islands?”

  “Yes. We’re going to kayak our way to you smiling again. We’ll kayak, eat, sing songs, write poetry, drink wine, the works. Peace and paddling.”

  I sniffled. “I love the islands, but I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “I don’t know if I can pick up the paddles.”

  “I’ll put them in your hands.”

  “I don’t know if I can sit in a kayak in the ocean.”

  “I will help you. I’ll be in the ocean with you.”

  “I’ll think of Marty and get upset and depressed.”

  “I know you’ll think of Marty. That’s why we’re doing this. We’re reaching into the grief and dealing with it. It’ll be cathartic. I think you’ll cry. And I think, sister”—he patted my hand—“it’s what you have to do to heal and see where things can go with Nick.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I’m scared a lot.”

  “You are?”

  “Sure. I have problems. You know my problems. But what I am most scared about now is that you are still grieving so deeply, that you’re not moving into your future. Especially with Mr. I’m Going To Bash Your Face In, who was so protective of you. I want to see you happy again. I want to know you’re happy. It hurts me when you’re not. So”—he grinned—“it’s selfish. I want my old sister happy so I can be happy, too. What do you say?”

  My eyes filled. “You’re the best brother.”

  “That’s because I have the best sisters.”

  “I love you, Dmitry. I loved you from the first second I saw you.”

  “I love you, too. And same with me. So what’s your answer? Yes or no to the kayak music?”

  “Yes. For sure, yes.”

  * * *

  Dmitry told me the next morning over coffee on my deck, the river blue and gray and cool, that he had rented a small house.

  “You’re kidding. Where?”

  “Here. In Portland. About four blocks from Mama and Papa.”

  “Whooee! I can’t believe it. You’re finally going to settle down for a bit?”

  “Until I want to wander again. I don’t know when that will be. Could be in a few weeks, could be months.”

  “I am thrilled, Dmitry, to have you around again. You’re going to tell Mama and Papa today?”

  “Yep. I know you have to leave for work in a few minutes, so I’ll walk out with you and surprise them at their house for breakfast before they go to the restaurant for the lunch rush. Then I’ll surprise Valerie at the trial, give her a hug, then Ellie, while she’s sewing up her pillows.”

  “I’m so glad you’re home. I can’t believe you’ve rented a house.”

  “I can’t either, Toni, but it feels ... right. That’s the word for it. I want to plant a garden.”

  I thought of what my parents had said about Dmitry and a garden. “You’re kidding. Mama and Papa said that you would like that.”

  “They know me.”

  “I’ll help you. I’ll get a floppy hat.”

  He smiled, high-fived me. “Thanks, Toni. We’ll plant carrots together.” His face shut down, but only for a sec. “No potatoes, no beets.”

  “Absolutely not.” No to his nightmare vegetables.

  “It’s so odd that a couple of vegetables could cause me such anxiety... .”

  “Potato and beet anxiety.” Sounded funny; it wasn’t.

  “I think I’ll write a poem for my blog today about anxiety. It’ll be called ‘The Debilitator.’ Everyone hates anxiety, that’s what I’ve learned. And so many people are chased down by The Debilitator, including me sometimes.”

  “I’ve been chased, too.”

  He gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze, then Maxie flew overhead.

  “Look at that!” Dmitry pointed. “A golden eagle. It’s a sign I should stay in Portland.”

  “I’ll take it.” I hugged him.

  As Dmitry and I left my tugboat, I snuck a peek back at Nick’s houseboat. No Nic
k.

  23

  On Saturday, the Kozlovsky gang was invited to Dmitry’s new home for a barbeque. It was a yellow bungalow with a sprawling backyard, fir and willow trees, and a huge deck. He made ribs.

  I walked to the end of the backyard with my father in my sloppy jeans and T-shirt. I did give myself credit for being clean. He put his arm around my shoulders and pointed to the sunny spot of Dmitry’s yard. “See? Dmitry needed a garden. I knew it.”

  “He needs a garden, and he needs the truth, Papa.” My father’s scars on his face had faded over the years, but they were still a reminder of the hell he’d been through.

  “The garden will be better for him.” He answered in Russian. I knew it was because my question brought him back to Moscow. “The garden will bring him peace, his truth will not. It will hurt him and I do not want to hurt my son.” He rubbed his face. “But I will tell him, Antonia, you are right, he needs to know. We will wait until after the kayaking trip, okay? Let him have that. Let the four of you have that time together.”

  “He may hate me when he knows what I didn’t tell him,” I said, also in Russian.

  “He will not hate you. He will understand. But I am sorry, Antonia, for putting you in the position that we have all these years, with that secret, I truly am. You have always been a beautiful daughter to me and to your mama. I want nothing more than for you, and your brother and sisters, to all be happy. You four are our lives.” He thumped his chest, and two tears slipped down his cheeks. “Our whole lives.”

  My father makes me emotional sometimes.

  * * *

  Everyone had a plateful of ribs, coleslaw, hot bread, and salad. My father said a long, long prayer of thanks for bringing his son home to him, then Dmitry raised his glass. “To family,” he said. “To the Kozlovskys.”

  “To the Kozlovskys!” we shouted.

  Then we all sat down and ate. We Kozlovskys are talented at eating.

  And secret keeping.

  Never tell, Antonia, never, ever tell.

  We would be telling. Soon.

  * * *

  Valerie won.

  Tyler Barton was convicted for all four murders, and there were other unsolved murders that would surely be pinned on him in the future.