The Language of Sisters

by Cathy Lamb

  My mother was resplendent in a red dress. She hugged me tight when I walked in, kissed both my cheeks. “Ack, Antonia. I could barely leave. Your papa.” She sighed, poor woman. “He cannot resist me in this color, this red. I almost late. I put on my lipstick, see my lipstick, match the dress, but then your papa”—she glared at me—“he kissed me and I have to do it.”

  “Mama, please.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You old enough, Antonia.”

  “No. No, I’m not. I will never be old enough to hear what you and Papa ...”

  “How that saying go? He a lover, not a biter.”

  “Uh, no. It’s ‘He’s a lover, not a fighter.’ ”

  “He a nibbler. You know that word, Antonia? Nibbler. He take a nibbler, but he no take a bite of me.”

  “Oh, my Lord.” I put my head in my hands.

  “Yes, he a man of the Lord,” my mother said, crossing herself. “But the Lord gave your papa lot of the passion in the bedroom. I tell the Lord, give me break, but no! No break from your papa. The Nibbler.”

  “Mama!”

  She laughed and tapped my shoulder. “I think you a prune, Antonia.”

  “A prune?”

  “Yes. I hear that on TV. Husband say to wife, ‘I think you prune.’ ”

  “No, Mama. He must have said, “ ‘I think you’re a prude.’ ”

  “No.” She wagged her finger. “It prune. You eat the prune for the, what the word? Contraception? No. Not that. Constellation? No. I have it. Constipation.”

  “That makes sense to me now. I’m a prune for constipation.”

  “I know. I right.” Victorious! “Give me hug and kiss, Antonia. You have no hug and kiss for Mama?”

  I hugged and kissed my mama.

  She whispered in my ear, “I bring you some lymonnyk, the lemon pie you likie. Same with Elvira and Valeria. In my car. You need eat-y more, too thin, I tell you. Eat-y more.”

  * * *

  My next conversation was with Tati and Zoya, the naughty twins, they of the stripper clothing business. They were dressed in high heels, shiny shirts, sequins, tight jeans.

  “No dates tonight? I thought you both had a boyfriend.”

  “Two boyfriends,” Zoya said, kicking up a silver heel. “Right now.”

  “You have three,” Tati said.

  “No, two. No.” Zoya put her hand up, fingers counting. “You’re right. Three.”

  “Aren’t you exhausted?” I asked.

  “No.” They smiled.

  “It does wonders for your skin,” Tati said.

  “Yes, and for your blood pressure.” Zoya took a drink of champagne.

  “I read the other day,” Tati said, “that sex loosens up your bowels.”

  Was this happening? Constipation and loose bowels in one evening’s conversation?

  Zoya peered at me. “Your skin is porcelain, Toni.”

  “It is. Always has been,” Tati said. “Must be the Jolly Green Giant Sex God we’ve heard about.”

  “Please don’t tell my parents. They’ll name a special after Nick at the restaurant, make an announcement in church, start calling him their future son-in-law ...”

  “We know,” they said together.

  “That’s why we haven’t told our father, either,” Zoya said.

  “We kept it to our twin-self,” Tati said. “One brain.”

  Zoya handed me a box. Red. Gold ribbon, as all their stripper /sexy lingerie clothes are wrapped. “This is for you. It’s to make you feel womanly again.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was red, lacy, flowing. I sniffled. “It’s the most beautiful lingerie I’ve ever seen.”

  “Don’t cry, Toni, or I’ll cry! It was Zoya’s design,” Tati said. “She’s so clever.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I drew a rough outline and Tati did all the rest. She’s the smart one.”

  “Give Zoya the credit ... no, give Tati the credit ... We love you so much, Toni.” They sniffled.

  “Love you both, too.” Three-way hug. I love my cousins.

  The Jolly Green Giant Sex God would love the lingerie.

  * * *

  I visited with JJ, who said, “I’m going to fix your hair, Toni. Didn’t you brush it today? Did you lose your brush?”

  “It looks fine.”

  “No,” JJ snapped. “It does not.”

  She put her hand on my back and pushed. We went to her parents’ huge bathroom, and JJ had my hair up in a ball with a couple of braids in minutes.

  “Much better. It doesn’t look like you walked through an Iowa windstorm. You’re so pretty, Toni.”

  “Thanks. How’s Chelsea and Hope?”

  JJ wrapped her brown hair into a French twist, rather ferociously. “Chelsea continues to wear black all the time, which is unflattering with her coloring. She pierced her eyebrow again last week and looks like she has a pincushion on her face. She still wears black eye shadow and resembles a ghoul. She won’t let me fix her hair, which is, currently, pink and scraggly. She bought black combat boots last week, so she looks like a biker gang member, and she won’t come in on Friday and Saturday nights until two. She is sneaking into clubs downtown via, get this, the ceiling. Yes, she crawls in through the roof. However, she did sit down with me the other night, and we had a serious conversation about college because she has decided she wants to study chemistry.”

  “Chemistry?”

  “Yes, she is apparently part witch and likes to mix things up. She is taking three science classes this year because she loves it. On the other hand, Hope is getting more and more pregnant by the day. My teenage daughter has morning sickness.” JJ started to cry and perched on the rim of the two person bathtub. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I’m sorry, JJ. I don’t know what to say that won’t sound inane. I love Hope and I love the baby and you and I’m sorry, all at the same time.”

  “Yes.” She rubbed her temples. “I get it.”

  Valerie walked in. We knew she would be late because of the trial.

  “What? You have a mop on top of your head, Valerie!” JJ screeched. “What did you do, run it through a leaf blower and then cut it yourself with a hatchet?”

  Valerie peered in the mirror. “Wow. It does seem I’ve been in contact with a leaf blower.”

  “Sit down right this minute.” JJ fixed her hair. “Valerie, don’t go out in public like that again. You’re disgracing my salon.”

  Valerie nodded, smiled, but she was worried, tight. We would talk later. I knew what it was about.

  * * *

  “How’s the musical?” I asked Pavel.

  He smiled, ear to ear. That kid has a beaming smile. “It’s so much fun, Aunt Toni. I can’t wait until the opening night. But I’m scared, too. I’m glad Dad knows. Now I don’t have to lie and have a secret. I hate secrets.”

  “I hate them, too.” Oh boy, did I hate secrets. “Your dad took it pretty well.”

  “Yeah, I know. Want to see my ballet number for Bennie and the Music?” I did. I clapped.

  “I like what JJ did to your hair, Aunt Toni.”

  “Thanks.” Interesting that he knew JJ did it and not me ...

  * * *

  Hope gave me a hug. “I can’t believe I’m pregnant.” She burst into tears. I took her to Aunt Polina’s bathroom, and we talked on the rim of the tub. I was spending a lot of time in there.

  * * *

  Chelsea came up to visit later. She was carrying a mug. I’d bet it was vodka and Coke. She was dressed in a black dress and black combat boots. Her face did not look like a pincushion. Her hair was pink.

  “You have another piercing,” I said.

  “Yes. Mom and Dad hate it.” She frowned. “But not that much. I’m not the problem daughter anymore.”

  I could see that troubled her, poor thing. “I hear you like chemistry?”

  “Yes. I accidentally started a small fire in the lab on Thursday. It made this loud booming noise ...”

  * * *


  Kai gave me a hug. He was holding Koa, who leaned over for me to hold him. “Aunt Woni!” he said, resplendent in a blue cookie monster outfit. “I yove you.”

  “I yove you, too, Koa.” I talked to Kai about his job. “I’ve had enough of arresting people and rolling around in the dirt or on the street downtown. I don’t want to get shot at again. I’m retiring as soon as I can and Valerie and I are going to Hawaii where we can surf all day. She’s going to wear a bikini and I’m wearing Hawaiian flower shirts.”

  “That’ll be when?”

  He knocked his fists together. “As soon as the kids are through college.”

  “You do know that Koa is three?”

  His shoulders slumped. “It’ll never happen will it? Will it? Will it?”

  Ailani bounced up, hung on her father, and said, “Aunt Toni, I’m studying Jack the Ripper and I’m writing my book report on him.”

  “You are?” I slammed my teeth together so I wouldn’t chuckle. “Well, that’s almost criminal.”

  She seemed confused. She brushed hair back from her widow’s peak. “It’s not criminal to write a report on Jack the Ripper. I’m reading a biography on him. Four hundred pages. I’m going to get one of those five feet by three feet bulletin board thingies and I’m going to make a time line of the murders with all the photos I can find. Then I’m going to draw a huge picture of Jack the Ripper from the back because they don’t know who he was, not exactly, and I’m going to paint the edges red. Do you know why red?”

  “For the blood?”

  “No.” She was baffled by my ignorance. “Because then the picture will pop out way better. It’s important to consider color.”

  “Your teacher will be surprised.”

  “By what?” She was, once again, confounded by my question. “I like what Aunt JJ did with your braids.” She skipped off to give my mother a hug.

  * * *

  My father gave me a hug and a kiss. “Ah, Antonia. You are movie star. JJ did pretty job with your hair. Now, you tell me everything. I haven’t seen you since Monday. So. Start at the beginning. What you do on Tuesday? Ah, I see ... what about Wednesday ... Now you tell me, Thursday?”

  * * *

  “I think, I do truly think,” Anya whispered to me over veal ragout, served on white plates, with crystal glasses nearby filled with wine, “that I have chips of bones in my neck. I think my spine is deteriorating. That can happen. I studied it on the Internet. Listen to my neck when I move my head. Are you ready? Lean in, lean in closer ...”

  “I’m so close I could kiss your neck.”

  “Take this seriously, Toni. Did you hear it crack? It crackles, pops, scratches. What do you think that is?”

  “I think it’s normal.”

  “It’s not normal. I think I’m going to go to the emergency room.”

  “Don’t go for a disintegrating neck. Go to the doctor’s in the morning.”

  “My doctor said I’m a hypochondriac.”

  “Do you think he’s right?”

  She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “No. Duh. I think he’s sick in the head. I told him that. I told him that I was seeing signs of dementia in him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said he was going to forget I had come in for another appointment.”

  I laughed.

  She glared. “I do have a disintegrating neck, Toni. That is not in dispute.”

  Of course it wasn’t.

  “I like what JJ did to your hair.”

  “Why do you think JJ did it? Maybe I did it.”

  She made a no-one-believes-that sound in her throat.

  “How’s the play going, Anya?”

  * * *

  Boris swooped on in, hugging everyone. He saw me and made a beeline.

  “How’s the car stealing going?”

  “I don’t steal cars, I fix them. And if I do steal them to fix them, it’s only from the spoiled and the wealthy. You’re going to lose your head over this one, Toni.” He flashed two tickets, underneath his coat, grinning like a banshee. “I have two tickets to Carmen. Will you go with me? Please? You’re the only one in the family who won’t laugh at me when I cry at the opera.”

  “Happy to go, thanks, Boris. But don’t steal a car to get to the opera. If you were arrested, it would be embarrassing.”

  He was appalled. “I don’t steal cars, but that would be my nightmare. Missing ‘La Fleur Que Tu M’avais Jetée.’ ” He shivered. “Don’t even suggest such a thing.” He studied my hair. “Man, JJ can do anything with hair, can’t she?”

  * * *

  I asked Uncle Sasho how he was and he said, his short, frizzy hair seeming to move on its own accord, “Two daughters, make clothes for the stripper, can’t believe it. But—” He paused, raising his bushy eyebrows in acceptance. “It a business. They make the money. And I have one boy, dancer. Gay.” He paused again, the eyebrows shot back up. “But, he talented. No sign of wife who left me. She no call. Maybe, soon, I get another wife. You think someone have me? I don’t know. I not handsome. But”—those eyebrows shot up once more—“I be a right husband. How are you, my Antonia? Pretty hair. My niece, JJ, she knows the hair.”

  I asked Uncle Vladan how he was, and he said, “Woe on my life. My daughter. Anya. Actress. No husband. No babies. Thinks she sick all the time. Last time, she say I have to listen to her knees. Thinks a bee in there or something. Tonight she think her neck disappearing. Boris, his mechanic business, it thriving. Many cars. What you doing, Antonia? So beautiful with your hairs like that. JJ can fix any hairs.”

  I asked Aunt Holly how she was. “I’m fine. Remember, I teach kindergarteners. Two boys had a squirting war in the bathroom on Friday. One girl asked me what it was like to have dinosaurs around when I was younger.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her I liked to ride on their backs. I had a number of them as pets and I put leashes on them.”

  “Did she believe you?”

  “Those little sweethearts believe everything. One girl told me that her mommy said she got a baby in her stomach because she drank too much wine. But how are you, Toni? Love your hair, by the way. I have to go and see JJ again soon, too.”

  Why did everyone assume I hadn’t done my own hair? Okay. I knew that answer.

  * * *

  Ellie, Valerie, and I met on the rim of the bathtub with our wine for a few minutes away from the Kozlovsky cacophony. Ellie needed a break from Gino, too. He was by her side, attentive. She was nearly nonbreathing, her bag to her face.

  “One of Tyler Barton’s cousins was obnoxious in court today and the judge kicked him out.” Valerie took a long drink of wine.

  “What did he do?” Ellie asked.

  “When I walked up to question a witness, he whispered, ‘Dead woman walking.’ Security was all over it, hauled him up and out. Then he shouted, ‘Dead woman walking,’ three times. He smirked at me. He went to jail. Threatening a prosecutor.”

  “Geez, Valerie.” The chilly, squirming snake of fear wound around my spinal cord again.

  “What about the other Bartons?” Ellie asked, bag away from her face for ten seconds.

  “They’re allowed to stay. They didn’t do anything.”

  “When I went the other day I couldn’t believe it. Police, security, suits,” I said.

  “They’re on it. The Bartons are rabid. Thanks again for coming down. You, too, Ellie. I liked having you both there.”

  “I’m worried,” I said.

  “So am I,” Ellie said.

  “The trial has me up at night, I’ll tell you that,” Valerie said. “This is a whole different breed of human.”

  “Let’s have a bath hug,” I said. The tub was huge, the three of us lay in it, arms around each other.

  Our mama walked in. She was not surprised to find us in the bath together. “Tsk. I cannot have tub like this, because I never be able to work. Your papa”—she pointed a finger upward—“he would—”


  “Mama!” we shouted.

  * * *

  Uncle Yuri and Aunt Polina stood in front of all of us, straight shots of Russian vodka in hand. Uncle Yuri made a speech, in English, following the Kozlovsky family’s motto, “Speaky the English,” and ended it with, “Polina is the love of my life. My life be nothing without Polina.”

  And Aunt Polina ended her speech with, “Yuri, we not divorce because I have patience of saint, thank you Lord. Many times, I want to hit you in face with pan. My silver pan, not the special new pan from JJ. I like that red pan. Don’t want no damage. You drive me crazy in the head”—she tapped her head in case we had forgotten where her head was—“but I love you, old man.”

  “Ack! What? Am I not good husband, Polina?” Poor Uncle Yuri!

  “You okay, old horse. You could be worse, could be better.” She kissed him. “So, next two decades before you die like old rat, you be nicer to me. More flowers. You buy me nicer car, too. I want car that goes zoom, like on the commercials on the TV, you cheap skater. Is that the word, cheap skater? And you no give me bad time when I buy the new dresses. You get it now, old man?”

  Yuri nodded. “Ya. Okay, Polina.”

  Well now! That was romantic enough for the Kozlovsky gang! We cheered, “To Yuri, to Polina ... to family ... to the Kozlovskys ...” Bottoms up.

  * * *

  My cousins/spouses, etc., and I ended up at a bar later.

  As Boris said, “We’re all going out. We want everyone to be together.”

  We were noisy, laughing, playing a light drinking game once we were all crammed around a table together.

  There should not have been a bar fight, but a man was too aggressive with Zoya and she swung her purse at his head and conked him. That pissed him off, and he charged Zoya, but Boris, who is not unfamiliar with street fighting, and Jax, who has a tough side, jumped in, along with Tati, who screeched in outrage and jumped on the offender’s back. One of the conked guy’s friends joined in, and Kai tried to break it up, along with Gino, who is sweet but no wimp. Another of the conked guy’s friends jumped in and so, too, did the rest of us Kozlovsky women.

  The police came. We knew a bunch of them, but we scooted on out, laughing so hard I wet my pants, a tiny trickle.

  We called taxis and the Kozlovskys scattered into the night.