At first Mom was adamant about not taking money for readings; in Moscow, a priest at our family’s church, who was also a close friend, had cautioned against reading for monetary gain, warning that it’d bring terrible luck. Dvoeverie was as Christian as it was pagan. The priest was a well-known oracle, or, to use proper churchspeak, he had the “gift of discernment”—a new term to coat an ancient concept. But no one dared call him a fortune-teller because his sight came directly from God. Years later, a number of his predictions in regard to our family came true. He’d predicted my parents’ divorce, an estrangement from family, and even the gambling addiction my mother would struggle with in the future.
But Rosa argued a good point. “Everybody here charge. Even kids who bring newspapers,” she said. “Ju run out of money. How will bills get paid?” When Mom didn’t answer, Rosa nodded with renewed conviction. “Nothing wrong with ten dollars. Later, we charge twenty.”
Truth was, Mom and I had recently discussed the increasing money deficit. She’d come back one afternoon from a job interview at the Russian Market, ten minutes from our place. Imagine my mother, all made up, wearing her best turquoise silk dress and sleek pumps, strolling into a business whose only purpose is to produce the same greasy foods sold in stores back in the old country. And now picture the indignity on her face when the manager tells her she’d have to chop, marinade, and bake in the back of the store for ten hours along with three other Russian ladies (who all used to be somebody, by the way—one of them an engineer). All this for twenty dollars a day, cash. “In America our titles abandon us,” he’d said with a smirk when she questioned his sanity.
“An engineer?” I said when she tossed her pumps aside and reclined on the couch later that afternoon.
“Plus a kindergarten teacher and a general’s wife.”
“Well, it’s better than no job.” My version of encouragement.
“For someone your age, but not for distinguished women like us.”
“Why can’t you ask Grandpa Andrei for help?” I said. Roxy and I hadn’t spoken to Dad’s parents since we’d moved. I thought it was too expensive to call but, judging by the shadows mobilizing on my mother’s face, I’d been mistaken.
“Grandpa isn’t talking to us.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“I don’t know what your father told him, but our lines are cut. Forget about them.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.”
“Not everything has to,” she snapped.
I should’ve been used to cutting lines by now. After all, I had felt the snip of Aunt Varvara’s scissors.
I crouched down and rested my elbows on Mom’s knees. The fragrance of her French perfume clung to her dress. The bottle was long empty, but she still rubbed its lid over her clothes to get every last bit of the vapors.
“He’s their son, honey. Who else would they side with?” She tucked a wisp of hair behind my ear and kissed me on the forehead.
“Would you take their money if they offered to help?”
“No,” she said, and I believed her.
An idea came to me then. “What about Grandma Rose? Aunt Siranoosh? You know they would send us money.”
“They mustn’t know,” she said. “Not yet. Not before I fix everything.”
I was devastated by my grandparents’ choice, but not as surprised as I should’ve been. Was I becoming unbreakable?
* * *
The coffee readings took place inside our kitchen in the evenings, after most kids were sound asleep and the only light outside swam from the bottom of the pool like a smoky blue phantom.
I stayed up, on account of my new job as the fortune-teller’s interpreter. Well, it was more like an apprenticeship, considering I worked for free and with substantial help from my Russian-English dictionary. But at least it forced me to practice my language skills on real people instead of mirrors.
I can imagine how uncomfortable it must’ve been for the clients to open up in front of a sixteen-year-old girl, especially one listening with fascination. But their worries always overcame that small inconvenience.
The readings reminded me of the game of telephone. First, the clients explained their trouble. Second, I completely misinterpreted everything they said. Third, Mom, suspecting difficulty in communication, simply told them what she saw. Good thing she got it right nearly every time.
“Ms. Nora, my wife is acting strange. Is she having an affair?”
“Mr. Kipfer says his wife is crazy.”
“She’s not. Tell him she’s just pregnant.”
“How will I know which man to marry? They have both asked, but I can’t decide.”
“Celia wants to get married twice.”
“I see only one man in her cup, with a number seven below him. She should only marry the one seven years younger than her.”
“I want to buy a bakery. Can you tell me if that’s a good idea?”
“He wants to buy a bakery.” Sometimes I did get it right.
“He should.”
How many conversations I botched during those sessions, I’ll never know, but the readings acted as some kind of psychotherapy. People left happier, more focused on hope instead of worry.
As per Rosa’s predictions, the money helped, and we now had enough for a little more than the absolute necessities. I knew that our situation was all wrong, that my father never should’ve let it get this bad. But I was too fond of the fragile peace between my parents to confront either of them about it. That’s why I went back to Dad’s house on the weekends, per my parents’ arrangement. Even while Olga and I kept snapping at each other like crabs, I wanted Mom to think all was well so as not to give her a reason to forbid contact. Also, I didn’t trust my stepmother with Roxy. Although Mom never once asked for a thing, Dad assured Roxy and me that he would help out as soon as the business took off, and we passed on the message, thinking it’d make Mom feel less depressed. It didn’t.
We got home from one of our weekends at Dad’s, and Roxy immediately stuck her wrist in front of Mom’s face. “Dad got me this bracelet at the Venice Beach boardwalk. It’s magic.”
One glance at the bracelet made of thin beaded leather strips, and Mom looked fit to burst.
“I make sure you have something to eat every day! That you have clean sheets to sleep on! But, oh, thank goodness you have a father who can afford to buy you a magic bracelet!”
Even though Mom apologized later, Roxy began to hide her trinkets in her backpack.
Mom was having a difficult time accepting the fact that we had officially joined the ranks of the underprivileged. I knew how she felt. The disparity between Dad’s lifestyle and our own pointed to only one thing: we were poor. The idea didn’t fit into anything I’d ever experienced. There was a time when money held no value for me.
One day when I was ten, Zhanna and I were walking down busy Arbat Street in Moscow. January had frozen the ground into sheets of ice. Our breath clouded and our fingers froze. I’d jammed my hands into the jacket pockets and one of them ripped, sending a scattering of change over the sidewalk.
“Oh God, I can’t even feel my knees to bend down,” I pouted.
“What’s the big deal? Leave it,” my cousin said. We moved on, but as I glanced back, I saw an old woman crouched down on all fours as she carefully picked up the money we had discarded.
And now Rosa was driving us to the Hollywood welfare office, maintaining that one really could receive money without having to work.
Mom refused to accept this. “How anybody give you money? For what?”
“Ju are a single mom in need of help.”
“How will we pay it back?” I asked.
“Don’t have to, mija. Thas why is called public assistance.”
It sounded too simple and not quite right to take money for doing nothing. But the first check came, and it covered rent, bills, and the groceries, leaving eighty-five dollars for the rest of the month.
Since we hadn’t been
able to celebrate my sixteenth birthday in our usual style, or Mom’s birthday in November, or even New Year’s, we split thirty dollars and bought one another one present each. Roxy got a play makeup kit, Mom got a sterling silver ring Roxy and I found at the DollarDream, and I got a pair of gloves.
Mom had never needed to manage money before. Growing up, I’d never heard my parents say, “We have no money.” Whenever we needed something, like a new car, or a monthlong vacation to the Black Sea, they found a way. Often Grandma Rose helped, or my parents just played extra gigs.
In America, it seemed there wasn’t enough money to manage, so like in the old times Mom splurged, baking a giant turkey she bought on sale the day we received the first check, and preparing her famous scallion mashed potatoes with two sticks of butter.
We had meat, vegetables, and bread that night, Roxy’s fiancé serenading us with “Careless Whisper” from a mini tape player we had recently bought. Now all we needed were more people to share our joy. We invited some of our neighbors, and as I watched the people around me dancing, and eating, and joking, for that evening I forgot that the next day we’d be poor once again.
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
Many people upon hearing the term “Romani” or “Gypsy” promptly conjure up tarot cards, nomadic caravans, uneducated children, and dirt-poor families who are either too lazy to work or too carefree to give a damn. In Europe, the words “thief” and “swindler” are synonymous with “Romani,” and the conflicts between cultures often end in violence. The roots of this animosity span centuries, and trying to make sense of them would take up an entire book on its own. Ask ten different people to explain it and you’ll get ten different answers.
While living in Italy many years later, I met Milosh, a student of the Romani who tried to clarify some of it for me. The original Roma nomads, those who didn’t settle in the Middle East and the Caucasus regions, eventually reached medieval Europe. For a while they shared the land with their neighbors and hosts, living in accord. But that didn’t mean that either side wanted to change their way of life to accommodate the other. Paying taxes was a foreign concept to the self-contained Roma; so was submitting to a king they’d never met, considering how they had their own royalty chosen by the Romani and their councils of elders. Like Europeans, Romani considered their race pure. This was reinforced when they, like the Native Americans, began to encounter mysterious illnesses that sometimes wiped out entire caravans. They were convinced that the Europeans were plagued by evil and therefore avoided dealing with outsiders.
In some countries the rich made a sport of hunting Romani for money. “Gypsy hunts” were lawful as a means to drive the nomads out and became so popular that even commoners were encouraged to participate. You got an especially large prize if your kill happened to be a Gypsy clan leader. And if you had trouble telling a Gypsy from the normal folk, the identifying brands on their chests, enforced by most feudal lords and the Church, came in handy. The Romani of medieval Europe were in the wrong place at the wrong time, one of the unlucky groups caught in the war between Church and monarchy. Many a Gypsy was burned at the stake during the Inquisition, along with the mentally ill, those unfortunate enough to anger a neighbor or a city official, or simply because somebody wanted their cow.
One of my friends once asked, “Why didn’t the Gypsies just go back to India?” But that would’ve been difficult to accomplish; after wandering for centuries they didn’t have a country to go back to.
On this side of the Atlantic, a Romani is given the famous Hollywood makeover, and suddenly “Gypsy” means a free-spirited hippie or a bohemian; it’s not seen as a stigma or even a race but as an exotic lifestyle choice. Perhaps this view has to do with the beginnings of modern America, which are to me, like the big bang theory, violent and wondrous. No one was safe from hatred and betrayal. Everyone was fighting to survive. It seemed the American Gypsies weren’t immune to the neck-breaking race for what became the American Dream. Like so many others, they were more than willing to cut their roots in order to stake their claim on prosperity. Could that be the reason the American Gypsies largely escaped the more malevolent prejudices their European counterparts suffered?
One day Dad and I stumbled upon a novelty store in the heart of Hollywood. Olga and Roxy had gone straight to the nearest mall to avoid being embarrassed by Dad. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard was one of Dad’s favorite activities, and he had a habit of stopping in front of his favorite stars with his feet planted on either side, disregarding the foot-traffic jams he created.
“Nu shto B.B. King. Zakourim (Well, B.B. King. Shall we light up)?” he’d say, and flick out his lighter and cigarette.
“Dad. People are looking.”
“Genius must draw attention. It can’t be helped.”
After I dragged Dad away from the lengthy worship of King’s star, we took one of the smaller streets winding up the hill and passed a store called Gypsy Lair, which my father indignantly translated into “Gypsy Liar” until I corrected him.
“It might be someone I know, from the old country,” he said.
But the clerk turned out to be a teenager with rosy cheeks.
“I’m, like, from San Fernando originally, but, like, I’m not at all like my parents.” The girl tossed her blond cornrows out of her face and leaned on the counter littered with “Gypsy” hair clips and gargantuan roses in a variety of the season’s trendiest colors next to a bucket of mood rings. She wore a billowy top and a long skirt with tiny bells that jingled whenever she moved.
“So you not own this?” Dad motioned around the store. It was smaller than our living room and crammed with Halloween merchandise that consisted mostly of varieties of Gypsy costumes. Sexy Gypsy and Vampire Gypsy hung next to long-haired wigs and fake-coin necklaces. There were baskets full of scarves like the ones Stevie Nicks wore and Steven Tyler wrapped around his mike stands, and a table stacked with palm-reading books and tarot cards.
“I wish. That’s how come I love working here, ’cause I’m, like, free-spirited, you know. My parents, they’re Republican, but I’m like a Gypsy. I like to travel. And, like, experience life.”
“You Gypsy?” Dad asked, drumming his fingers on the rustic counter. He was smiling.
“I’m hungry,” I said in hopes of saving the poor girl from what was to come.
“I’m so totally Gypsy. I even belly dance.”
“Belly dance is Arab. You know, yes?”
She squinted.
“You know Gypsy is, how you say?” He looked at me. “Natsyonalnost.”
I had no choice. “It’s a nationality.”
The girl bit her lower lip and stood up straight for the first time. She scratched her eyebrow and I noticed a tuft of blond hair peeking out of her underarm.
“From two hundred of years back,” my father continued. “In imperial Russia, Russian Roma has permission to citizen rights. They to train and sell horses. They pay nalog, which mean tax, and any business they want, they can do. Vot tak (That’s right).”
“That’s awesome,” she said in a voice that had lost some of its free-spiritedness.
Dad turned to me yet again. “Shto takoe awesome?”
My translation produced a clearing of the throat that usually indicated displeasure.
“And this store,” he said, “is no awesome. Is shame. In old Russia we has Gypsy counts and rich families. Gypsy has freedom but also they build big houses to live.”
I knew that if I let him, Dad would go on with the history lesson until the store closed or the girl broke into sobs. I didn’t understand this urge he had to lecture or correct strangers on the subject. But as I grew older I found myself doing exactly that, because the conversation never ended at “I am Gypsy.”
* * *
Grandpa Andrei once warned Dad that if he thought in America everyone would accept him as he was, he might as well find himself a remote island to live out the rest of his life on.
“Remember,” Grandpa told Dad duri
ng our very last Russian New Year’s, “only your homeland will bring you happiness, especially in your old age.”
Mom had joined two long tables and then covered them with a white tablecloth to accommodate several dozen guests. The Christmas-tree lights, along with the candles and the garland lights strung from the ceiling, bounced off the crystal wineglasses and the silverware. The living room looked like it floated inside a burst of fireworks.
Earlier Dad had gone to the butcher to pick up the suckling pig he’d ordered weeks in advance. By the time it arrived at our party it had been seasoned and roasted in the fire pit of a local restaurant. Mom made her famous tort-salat. There was also salted herring with raw onion rings and massive mounds of mashed potatoes next to piles of boiled dill potatoes next to stuffed potatoes and potatoes au gratin. Bowls full of garlicky yogurt sauce nestled next to grape leaves stuffed with ground beef and rice. Armenian basturma (wind-cured beef), Astrakhanskaya caviar made with eggplant, and regular black and red caviar were all present and ready to be devoured by our increasingly intoxicated guests. There was so much liquor, you had to lean around the bottles to speak with the person across the table.
All through the night more food and vodka appeared as if my parents had come into the possession of the fabled tablecloth straight out of a Russian fairy tale that granted your wish for any food or drink you wanted.
According to the Chinese horoscope, 1990 was to be the year of the metal horse, and since every bit of luck counted in our household, everyone was to hold something metal when the TV hosts rang the midnight bell. To increase the New Year’s good fortune, our candles burned inside silver votives, people rested their cigarettes in iron ashtrays, and a neighbor named Timor brought a box of nails in case one of us found ourselves metal-less at the last minute.
“You’re young,” Grandpa said close to Dad’s ear so as to be heard, “so you chase a perfect life. But do you really think there are no labels in America?”
“This land has brought us nothing but bad luck,” Dad said. “For every good thing, five bad ones happen.”
American Gypsy Page 10
