by Marion Dess
Trials
Written by Marion Dess
Part 1 of “Revolutions”
Chapter 1
When I stepped off the bus, Myles was sniffing about some coquina rocks that lined the end of our street. At the ends of the other streets in our neighborhood, there were high walls with palm tree ironwork and some cursive script denoting "Las Palmas" or "The Cove". I watched Myle's paws sink into the sandy road and leave dog astronaut footprints as he walked away from them. It was his custom to walk me to the bus stop in the morning and wait for me when I got off the bus every afternoon whether or not my dad was there to accompany him. Myles knew that once we arrived home and into the kitchen, I'd always sneak him a slice of cheese.
He snorted at the ground and then ran quickly ahead the closer we got to the front door which was always kept unlocked. By the time we got to the house, I looked back at my and Myles' footprints that had sunk into the moonscape of the sandy road.
Dad's burgundy Chevy Caprice Classic wasn't in the driveway as it usually was. He must have gone out, but I didn't pay any attention to his absence until I walked into the kitchen and saw his belt curled behind the white cylindrical trash can.
I thought it peculiar that his belt was in such an odd place along with a microwave-sized cardboard box, its top flaps folded underneath themselves. One end of the box looked like someone had attempted to open it. I passed through the kitchen and into my small bedroom where I had recently began sleeping every night. Before that, I had always been at my father's side, on his mattress on the ground, but now that I was getting older, and at his insistence, I was to sleep in my own bed. "After all that is why I got a two bedroom instead of a one bedroom house," he'd say. I'd wake up to my father elbowing me in the middle of the night.
"Stop kicking! God damnit."
When he was gone to work at the hospital some nights, sleeping alone in my room was out of the question. I would sneak into his room, though there was no reason to sneak, considering he was absent from the house. After about a minute, Myles always followed suit. We would curl up together and pass out; much more comfortable now that we were in Dad's bed.
Suddenly, Myles let out a hysterical wail and began baying so loudly that it shook me from my thoughts about my new bed. I set my backpack down on my Aladdin comforter and returned to the kitchen to see what all the noise was about. The belt. That belt. What was it doing behind the trash can? Myles jumped in front of me, snarling at the belt which was, in fact, not a belt but a five foot Indigo snake.
It was by far the biggest Indigo snake I had ever seen. It had had enough of Myles' noise and slithered away. Its long shiny black body slid for what seemed forever around the corner of the kitchen and into my bedroom. I held Myles by the scruff of his neck because he refused to wear a collar. But this time his strength was no match for my six-year old self and he bolted into the bedroom, crashing into my desk. Children's books cascaded off my bookshelf and a broomstick slapped the tile floor loudly. I laughed, jumping up and down in excitement and fear.
"Get em' Myles! Get the bug! Get the burglar! Get em'!"
He didn't understand "get the snake" but "bug" and "burglar" were cause for alarm. He snorted and whined, bayed and howled, long and clear. His claws clicked and scratched against the tile as he wedged himself under my Princess Jasmine clad bed. I jumped up and down cheering him on from a safe distance. His round black butt with a white tipped tail stuck straight up made me giggle. I got on my hands and knees and peered under the bed where Myles gave out a loud yelp and pulled himself out from under the bed. The serpent was nowhere to be seen.
I ran out of the room and climbed on top of the kitchen counter. Once there, I was on the lookout for rescue. My father's Caprice had pulled up into the driveway; the red brake. lights shining brightly. From the kitchen window I watched him open the car door and step out. He shoved the keys into the front pocket of his jean shorts and then slung his gray t-shirt over his shoulder. Once my father walked in the house Myles stood proud and gave another warning howl.
"Daddy!"
He made his way in the kitchen looking down at the cardboard box. ''What's up? What's with all that god-damned noise?"
"There's a snake!"
He laughed hard and made his way into my bedroom where Myles was running from the bookshelf to under the bed and back again wildly. He jumped on Dad, then on me with a wild look in his eyes. Dad grabbed the broom handle and poked it under the bed.
"Give me that pillowcase."
I peeled off my Rajah the tiger pillowcase and handed it to him.
"Now, when I say go, you grab the tail just like you do with the little ones."
He slid the end of the broom handle back under the bed and kept it close to the tile. Sure enough, the Indigo snake came out after feeling the broomstick push against him. Myles barked louder than ever and began snapping at the snake, careful not to get in striking range.
"Myles! Get back god-damn it. Get back! Go!"
I squealed, my eyes focused on the tail. As the length of the snake escaped between my father and me, I reached for five inches above the tip of its tail and pulled the snake as high as I could into the air. My father swung the pillowcase under its suspended head and I dropped it inside. He twisted the open end of the pillowcase while the snake writhed inside. There it couldn't catch onto anything to propel itself except for the friction of being on top of its own body. Myles barked once, then began sniffing and whining around the pillowcase.
All three of us went into the front yard. My dad opened the pillowcase and he and I peered inside.
"I thought you'd wanna see it."
It was dusk. It was just Dad and me, barefoot in the yard. The snake was grand. It was about an inch and a half thick and almost as tall as my dad. It looked like a large shiny black garden hose neatly curled up on itself in the pillowcase. Its two beady black eyes seemed to stare back at us. A delicate little red tongue flicked out once. This tiny movement woke me out of my trance. My dad handed me the heavy pillowcase and picked Myles up in his arms so I could release the snake without any interference. I took it to the edge of the yard where some sable palms and pines grew thick. Myles whined and wriggled in my dads arms; his white tipped tail frantically wagging back and forth against my dad's bare stomach. I set the pillowcase on the ground with the opening towards the woods. Once the snake felt a solid surface underneath it, it slithered out and under the.brush. Myles howled all night, still in pursuit, still on the scent.
Chapter 2
In Kazakhstan, when guests enters a house for the first time, the host throws candies at them for a sweet and long life. The first time I ever entered someone's home in Kazakhstan, it was to meet Bauka' s mother. We arrived at her house on New Years Eve straight from the airport. It was still pitch black outside despite it being seven in the morning. When Bauka and I walked across the threshold into the tiny entrance of his mother's apartment, we were bombarded with candy by two smiling middle-aged women and a third around my age, her beautiful face dotted with acne. All three were smiling, laughing and crying as they threw the sweets at my soon-to-be husband and me. I only focused on the woman for whom I had flown halfway across the world to see, to get her final approval of our union. In her face, I saw the mold of Bauka's features, the same eyes and the cheeks that I adored in him were visible in her.
My soon-to-be mother-in-law took me into her arms. She was short, thick, and sturdy. She wrapped her arms around me tightly; my chin sat on the top of her head. She looked up at me with wet eyes and kissed my cheeks; hers were warm with tears. She spoke softly to me in Russian and Kazakh. I began to cry. I cried out of fright, though everyone thought I was crying out of happiness. I knew Bauyrzhan and I had gone too far. We were betrothed. I was his and h
e was mine, but not in the same sense, as I was now his mother's.
Betrothed is an interesting word. It sounds stately and important. It also sounds terrifying, with a hint of Jane Austen. lt just means engaged or committed to being married. In Kazakhstan, there is no commitment prior to the wedding. You just get married. No year long wait. No moving in before mairiage, although Bauka and I had been living in sin for months by the time I met his mother. Why is it that we make a commitment to be committed in the future? We reserve each other. Table for two, please. No others may join our party. It is ours alone. It is what we think is ours but really, what I've learned is that we are engaged to our families. We are committed to not fucking up what the family has put together for us. We are saying to the family: "Hey! Take us seriously!" We want everyone to know what it is we are up to. It is so public that there is a cost if this pre-commitment commitment is ever broken. I should know; three years earlier, I broke it off with my first betrothed. He was devastated. I was devastated (and yes, the one breaking it off is allowed to be miserable too). His mom went from calling me 'daughter' to calling me a bitch. I remembered this as I wiped off my new Kazakh mother-in-law's tears off my cheeks. I realized how in I was at this moment.
So, 6,356 miles away from everyone I knew, having candy thrown at me, I knew. I knew I was in deep and that there was no mistaking it. This is how I got married. I took a plunge, a real plunge. Metaphorical, yes, but the physiological reaction is the same as if I had swallowed a drink from an unmarked bottle and regretted it. I knew immediately I was not marrying him but instead marrying her.
Bauka, was after all her only child, and in a country where on average people have five children, I was under more pressure to be an active daughter. When a Kazakh son brings home his wife, he literally brings her home to the mother where she becomes kelin, forever covering her hair and responsible for cooking, cleaning, and child rearing.
We took our shoes off at the door. Thank God. The awkwardness of catching candy while not coming over the threshold with shoes on was awkward logistically. I broke down again after I broke my embrace with his mother's warm body. A woman. A mother. A mother that stuck around. Mine had never stuck around long enough for me to feel her presence, so the only way I knew how to be a daughter was with a man, my father.
My mother had me when she was in her mid-thirties, and far into an opioid and alcohol addiction. She never laid a hand on me, only threatened to punish me with a wooden spoon. However, her drug use became more important than raising a family, so slowly but surely, she turned her attention to another life•, leaving me with my father.
While I should hate her for dipping out on my brother and me, I didn't; in fact, I even felt I was betraying her, standing in front of my mother-in-law who kept telling me to call her "Mama."
We walked into Bauka's mother's small but modern and tidy apartment. It was sparse, not from a lack of money, but from a minimalist and obsessive personality.
Everything had its place. Near the TV, the remotes sat lined up next to each other along with a pile of perfectly stacked books by Joel Osteen. No picture frames hung on the walls. Two small frames of a young Bauyrzhan were propped up against the wall on either side of the TV. Opposite the TV was a huge deep couch neatly covered in traditional fabric with Kazakh patterns of red, and green, blue and yellow. In the center of the living room, a table had been set up with enough food to feed a dozen people. To our right was the bedroom where Bauka and I would sleep.
We set our stuff down beside the closet in the bedroom. Red and white Valentine's Day balloons floated above us. Silver and green tinsel hung from the door frame and on one wall. The garland over the bed was in the shape of a heart. A pink and silver tinseled heart. On the opposite wall there was a giant window with a radiator and a full body automatic Korean massage bed which I would later learn the benefits of heated jade rollers moving up and down my spine with a push of a remote. Outside the window, it was still dark. Dawn had yet to break. We were tired and hungry from the long flight from Brooklyn.
Beautiful white lace was laid beneath a clear plastic tablecloth on top of the dining room table. AII tables in Kazakhstan, I would later learn, were covered with plastic on top of cloth, so that food could be eaten directly from the table. A huge tray of bishparmak, the national dish of horse meat, was in the middle. There were symmetrical dishes of sliced cucumber, tomato, salted fish, sliced boiled horse sausage and white cheese set all around the bishparmak like a mandala. My eyes were drawn to a hot-pink fish salad moulded onto a plate from a bowl.
Beets and fish. Boiled horse meat. Dark brown boiled horse sausage with thumb-sized chunks of white fat. Bishparmak. Boiled horse meat, carrots, potato, and big flat origami paper-sized boiled dough. Salted fish. Salo: pork fat in minced raw garlic, cut up into slabs and laid on top of each other like a fallen row of dominoes. Crispy fried rings of dough. Non: hard round Uzbek bread. Mandarin oranges, apples grown in Almaty. Bowl of candies and chocolate. A plate full of food and a hot cup of sweetened bergamot tea was placed before Bauka and me. He popped a slice of horse sausage and bread in his mouth and nudged me to eat. My father had told me once that hunger was the best seasoning. I reached for an apple and my mother-in-law moved my plate of bishparmak towards me. It was the first time I had tasted horse. It was salty and tasted like beef but didn't smell like anything I'd eaten before. I smiled and said thank you.
I was told to eat.
"Eat. Eat. Eat. Too skinny. Eat. Many baby. Eat. Eat. Eat. Many baby. Too skinny. Many Baby. Eat. Take care you, my data. You give mama many baby. Eat. Eat. Too skinny.
Americanski too skinny for baby make."
I watched Rahila, and the other middle aged woman whom I liked very much and would learn later was Lizat, watch me eat. They looked at me and smiled, called me zhanum, which in Kazakh means 'my soul'. They poured more bergamot tea into my empty cup.
"Eat. Eat," the three ladies consoled me. I felt a million miles away from home and already a part of Bauka's family at the same time.
***
It was hot, already summer in Miami before I left for Kanagawa prefecture to live in the ultra-efficient world of the Japanese. The sun was like an iron on an unsuspecting belly. I was stoking a fire. Not the one I should be stoking, if you catch my drift. I had a love; he was decent, but controlling, and I wanted out. My out wasn't Japan "per se" but it was just far enough from his clutches that I could think for myself. A coworker of mine, R, a tall handsome middle-aged former executive turned ESL teacher, who always wore Tom Ford and Chanel Egoiste, had applied to a company in Japan. On break one day, I looked over his shoulder at his laptop screen to get the details and later applied at home. He didn't get interviewed and later worked in Seoul. I did, however. I got the Skype interview and then the work visa, and then the plane ticket to Narita International Airport. On April 20th, you bet I got to Japan right after cherry blossom season.
On the plane ride over, I sat next to a woman named Toni, who told me her life story, being a lesbian mom serving in the U.S. military. She was headed to the Philippines to see her girlfriend's family. They'd been before, and looking back now I never asked if her parents were cool with her being a lesbian. When I first sat down, nervous, dying to get to Japan, I noticed how she was a classic beauty. She had smooth coffee brown skin, sat in gray sweats, and had her hair up in thick cornrows that trailed a bit past the nape of her neck. Her smile was so big and her teeth so white, I was embarrassed to show my own. I smiled with a closed mouth as she took her seat beside me. Her girlfriend sat up two rows on the aisle. She turned around and flashed me a mean look the entire flight. I aspired to give up my seat but I was selfish. I have to look out the window during take-offs and landings or the flight is damned. I never offered her girlfriend my seat and felt guilty most of the way over for not having done so but don't regret it to this day. Besides, Toni had stories. I listened to her smooth quiet voice; her breath smelled sweet. I don't ever remember thinking of
the controlling man I left behind in Miami. I fled. I had gotten the freedom I didn't know I was missing, and time with Toni, whose story I might never have otherwise heard; not in a million flights.
Toni had been a prostitute.
As we rubbed our hands and faces with hot fresh towels served to us with tongs, she told me she had grown up and worked in the Bronx. The images were in my head without my mind's consent. Images of her sucking unsought dick. Of having her hair pulled when she doesn't want it. Her giving it to a man who thinks he's doing her a favor. Her in the shower after the deed is done, washing between her legs, under her breasts. I had less control of my thoughts than I thought I had.
"How'd you get into that? Like--how does a you know--a girl--get to be a prostitute?"
"It's good money." "Really?"
"Some dude robbed me. I had no money. My friend, she came up to me and she said we could make like three grand in a week. So I did. We made 3,000. Each. Then I was hooked. Pun intended." I tried to chuckle, but felt too sad to react.
"How did you get--didn't you have dudes you didn't want?"
"For real? You kiddin' me? Every damn one. But drugs help. I'd pop a few pills and it was alright until you got a mean one."
"A mean one?" "A rude dude."
"I'm sorry to ask. I'm just curious."
"All good. You 're alright."
Toni had a grown kid back in New York City named after his granddad, Trevor. She and her girlfriend, Christine, got full custody of him when he was 13. Once he grew up, Christine had the idea that they'd both enlist. Christine, it also turned out, was the friend that had hooked Toni up with her first prostitution gig.
"The Army, Christine, my kid saved me. "Aren't you scared?"
