“Oksana needs a husband,” Olga had told Dad a few days before the Old New Year’s celebration. She had decorated the Christmas tree herself a month back, and ever since then it had remained in the throes of a most festive death, choked with garlands and drowning in tinsel.
“No, I don’t.”
“Be quiet,” Olga said. “Nobody’s talking to you.”
“Stop pestering me, woman. I still have three song arrangements to finish for the Bobrov wedding,” Dad said.
“She won’t stay a virgin forever.”
“Shut up, Olga. I’m not marrying anyone to make you feel better.”
Mom had always voiced her gripes with arranged marriages. Had she stayed in Armenia, she told me, her own engagement probably would go something like this:
A boy in town fancies her. His parents pay a visit to her parents and they discuss the advantages of their offsprings’ union while they drink coffee and eat Belgian chocolate. Mom’s parents pry about the other family’s financial stability, and in return the boy’s mother inquires after the regularity of Mom’s menses to assure favorable childbearing genes. All the while Mom makes, pours, and takes away coffee. Mom’s parents ask for several days during which to consider the offer, and then they decide. Without Mom.
I never thought that could happen to me because my father, happy not to be in charge of much, agreed that an arranged marriage was out of vogue. Until Olga started to whisper her fiendishly outdated notions into his ear.
“Our reputation is all we have, Valerio,” she said. “God only knows what Nora’s doing in Vegas. Probably teaching Roxy about grubbing for tips and dressing in casino uniforms. If you ask me, Roxy’s place is here, where we can raise her properly.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Dad said. “But she won’t budge. What am I supposed to do?”
“Do something for Oksana before it’s too late. Make her obey me. I can teach her the trade. Then pick a family who can provide a large bride-price. Svetlana just bought a brand-new Nissan, you know. You could use new recording equipment.”
That bitch, I thought. Diverting attention from herself by plotting my downfall, using the promise of a TASCAM multitrack recorder to reel my father in. My protests were ignored. Dad listened to her suggestions; his plan for fame involved a recording studio and major CD distribution of original music he liked to call “smooth Gypsy jazz” or “Gypsy fusion.”
A few days later Dad asked me to set the New Year’s table, telling me what an important night this would be. Then he disappeared into the back of the house again to practice, while I felt a cold dread settle deep into my bones.
Clearly January 14, 1992, was a poised guillotine. As I watched our guests arrive, the beginnings of a migraine thrust through my head. They took plates and exchanged jokes. I could well be married by the end of the month, hitched to a freckled Gypsy computer geek with strange body odor.
While everyone was catching up on the neighborhood gossip, I sneaked away and knocked on Dad’s studio door. He opened it only far enough to see who it was and stood in the doorframe, one hand around the doorknob. Behind him a drum machine clipped away at a waltz.
“Tell Olga I’m almost done.”
“Dad—”
“You need to learn to listen. Nobody says you have to marry the guy, but talk to him.”
“I don’t want to talk to him. He smells. And I don’t want to be like Olga, telling fortunes for money.”
“It might do some good, learning the craft. Not like you have so many options. What else are you going to do with your life?”
As kids Zhanna and I used to play at the abandoned church cemetery down the road from our house. The land was overgrown with stinging nettle, the graves grassy mounds we tripped over and then crossed ourselves so as not to anger the dead. Every time we came home, our arms and legs bloomed with hives. As if stung by nettles, my skin prickled once more with my father’s words.
“If you and Mom were together this would never happen,” I said.
He locked himself in again. Nothing new there. As long as he had his music, the world remained a pink-clouded festival.
He was still absent (incredibly rude by Roma standards of hospitality) when Alan moved his chair closer to mine—too close—later that evening. Dad, please stop tinkering with your guitars, I thought. Would you really sell me for a recording machine? The C-sharp scale rang across the house, then arpeggios, then the latest arrangement of “I Will Survive,” with salsa rhythms pulsating in the hardwood floor beneath our feet.
Igor, as the only adult male at the table, raised his glass. Four glasses joined his, one belonging to my potential husband. He didn’t have sexy sideburns or long, beautiful fingers. He was Alan—a cologne-soaked, thin-haired, big-lipped, nail-chewing mess of adolescent hormones.
Since no one was openly discussing marriage thus far, I grudgingly entertained the notion that perhaps I had overreacted. Grandpa Andrei used to say that a teenager’s emotional state resembles a busted compass with the needle spinning. Knowing Olga, the entire thing could’ve been a farce to make me squirm.
I took a pile of dishes into the kitchen, planning on staying for a while, maybe even washing a few plates.
“Hey,” I heard from behind me.
I set my load on the counter, breathing deeply.
He stood too close, and so did his Brut.
“Crazy stuff, huh, this marriage business,” he said.
Relieved to hear a sensible opinion, I turned around. “I know. Maybe we should tell them together.”
“Tell ’em what?”
“That we don’t want to do it.”
“But I do … wanna.” His eyebrows wiggled and he placed a hand lovingly over his crotch. “It’ll be good for us, for both of us. I’ve got mad skills.”
It wouldn’t do to burst out laughing. I stared at his face, unblinking, ignoring the stuff happening below his waist, but the movement of his hand was unmistakable.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Stop it.”
“I’m hung like a horse. That’s why I don’t wear briefs.”
Was he trying to shock me? He didn’t seem intelligent enough.
“Good to know,” I said finally, turning back to the dishes.
He grabbed my arm. The bulbous part of his nose reddened. “You don’t believe me.”
“I’m not interested, Alan.”
“I can prove it.” He reached in the back pocket and took out a scrap of paper.
“What is it?” I said. There were names and numbers of three girls written in surprisingly neat handwriting.
“My exes. They can vouch for me.”
Out in the living room the gossip had moved from local to international. “You remember so-and-so from Moscow? I heard they had one of those surgeries that make a penis out of a vagina.” “Now I’ve heard it all.” “Oh, you think so, do you? Listen to this one. My mother’s neighbor Artem was walking down the street when an icicle broke off the roof of a nearby building and impaled him straight through the skull.” “What a way to die.” “He lived!”
The carefree banter continued even when Alan and I joined the table, though I didn’t miss Svetlana’s knowing nod and a pat on her son’s shoulder as he sat down. I had a sudden urge to run for Vegas, get lost in it the way my mother had.
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
Reprieve came from the most unexpected place. Grandpa Andrei died of kidney failure and my father became a beehive no one dared to disturb. He endured the loss in solitude, even his guitar mute. My own grief, two years after Ruslan’s murder, was like an old cut seeping blood again.
For days, Dad talked about the past. The time he drove his father nuts when he gambled away the old man’s gold cigarette case, and about having to steal it back or get kicked out of the band. Finally Olga put him on a plane to Moscow for the funeral. While he was gone, Olga and I didn’t fight, too worried over Dad’s state.
He came back with two waterfalls of silver down the
outer edges of his beard: his own father’s trademark.
Several weeks later, and without telling Olga, Dad bought a plane ticket for Grandma Ksenia. With Grandpa gone, it was up to my father, as per Romani tradition, to take care of his mother. When Dad informed Olga of his mother’s arrival that very day, my stepmother hurled a nearby vase at his head (one of many airborne attacks to follow).
Grandpa Andrei, with Dad and Aunt Laura, 1953
Out of all my relatives, I would turn out most like Grandma Ksenia. Back in our days of rancor, of course, neither of us had expected such irony; although I was named after her, Oksana being a derivative of Ksenia, she’d been a stranger to me for all of our time in Russia, and I honestly didn’t know the proper way to act around her now that she was coming to America. My childhood memories are vibrant with the faces of my grandfather, my parents, and the many band members. Grandma Ksenia is the only shadow, perhaps because we often seemed to clash—not only over my questionable lineage but also over silly things like the whereabouts of Grandma’s favorite Pavlovoposadsky shawl or how her cold cream ended up smeared all over our cat’s face. I admit there were times I was Dennis the Menace to her Mr. Wilson, but we did have our moments of truce.
I loved visiting her at Easter. Dad’s family, like most Romani, was very religious. Even Baba Varya attended church services. Romani don’t have a common religion, often adopting that of their country. Their original beliefs were similar to those of many tribal people: the land is the mother and all depends on her mercy. But the people I grew up with were Russian Orthodox, especially Grandma Ksenia.
Every Easter our visit followed the same course: we’d walk up the steps where Grandma already waited, having phoned earlier to make certain we were coming. “Isus voskres (Jesus has risen),” she’d say, and kiss us one by one on each cheek. We took turns replying, “Vo istinnoh voskres (In truth, he has risen).”
Inside the house, the aroma of citrus and vanilla led me to the pantry. I cracked the door and found my prize under the pristine white cloth: paska, a traditional Easter bread as tall as a ten-gallon hat. From its flushed russet crust a fragrant cloud of steam escaped. I wanted to break off a piece and taste the sticky-sweet raisins waiting on the inside. Last time I did that, I was grounded for two weeks, but it was worth it. Grandma was a fine baker.
Now Grandma walked through the door with Dad at her back, and I hardly knew her. She held herself as if making a stage entrance, an action so instinctive that she hardly noticed it. Two years had passed since I last saw her. She had aged twenty. Her short hair lay sparse and coarse, with a generous band of silver at the roots. Time had creased her face, rubbed the pride from her now sunken eyes, pinched once perfectly contoured cheekbones. The only sign of the well-known songstress was the crimson-red lipstick. When I was little, I thought she kissed pomegranates.
“My dear granddaughter,” she said, and spread her arms. All my qualms forgotten, I went to her.
Olga came clinking out to greet her, dressed up in her finest. She must’ve worn all of her jewelry at once.
“Welcome to my home, Ksenia Fyodorovna.”
She led Grandma away, as if showing the house and the furniture couldn’t have waited for later. But Dad’s shoulders visibly relaxed.
Several weeks went by in startling peace. It became a habit for my grandmother and me to listen to the morning radio program in Russian. The first part was a thirty-minute exercise routine accompanied by a crisp piano. It had been created especially for seniors, but I didn’t mind that, so surprised was I at the old woman’s determination to finish each day’s routine. We’d follow the instructor’s voice. “Turn at the waist from side to side! Now stride in place! Get those knees higher! One, two, three, four! Don’t forget to breathe! Chest open! Chin lifted!” We also started taking the bus to the beach every time Dad and Olga forgot their truce and turned up the volume. “Adults have no time for the children or the old,” Grandma would say on our way out the door. Santa Monica was her favorite beach, though she swore her preference had nothing to do with the sweaty guys playing volleyball in their Speedos. We’d sit on a bench and I’d tease her about it. “Grandma, I never knew you liked sports so much.”
Grandma Ksenia could bring an entire theater to tears
“Child, if I were twenty years younger I’d be out chasing that ball.”
“With all those hairy guys?”
“What other kinds are there?” She chuckled at the shock on my face.
Later I found black-and-white pictures of my grandparents on the Black Sea coast where they vacationed every year. Grandma’s legs are ballerina-slender and Grandpa’s legs are not bad, either, quads and calves like rocks beneath a flowing river. She’s propped up on a huge boulder near the water, holding one of those Chinese paper umbrellas with peacocks painted on it, looking like a wartime pinup girl. Next time we went to Santa Monica, I brought a camera. The only picture of us together was taken there, by a man who claimed to have once dated Marilyn Monroe.
On Santa Monica beach
Grandma Ksenia had spent years wading through the gossip and scandal of stage life, and she was an early riser. Both turned out to be bad news for Olga, whose pawnshop trips and disappearances were becoming habitual. When Grandma told Dad that she suspected something shady, an affair perhaps, he confronted his wife.
“Why doesn’t your mother keep quiet and enjoy our hospitality?” she said.
I had just come from school. Grandma Ksenia stood in the living room between Dad and Olga.
“Is it true, Olga?” Dad demanded. “Are you sleeping with another man?”
Grandma implored him to sit. “Calm down.”
Olga’s face, her bulging eyes, spit hatred at the older woman. She stood in the kitchen doorway, her normally braided hair a thick black foam of curls down her back. She jabbed a finger at Grandma Ksenia.
“Buy her a ticket back to Moscow.”
Over Grandma’s shushing, the argument inflated until Olga stormed into the kitchen. I’d thought she went in search of her keys to get away, but she ran back with a ten-pound sack of oranges, which she heaved over her head and flung at the old woman. The sack sailed across the living room. I scrabbled to intercept it, and Dad shoved Grandma aside as it crashed into her shoulder.
“Nou suchara, podozhdi! Ia seychas boshkou tebe otorvliu! (Just wait, you bitch! I’ll rip your head off!)” Dad lunged at Olga, with me and Grandma dragging him back.
“If she’s not gone in a week, I swear, Valerio, I’ll destroy all of you,” Olga shouted.
She was gone for four days. My father found a home on the other side of town, owned by a bedridden Russian immigrant, where Grandma Ksenia was to live from now on. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t stood up to Olga, and I am not sure I do now.
As soon as Mom had a couple days off from her nonstop overtime shifts, she and Roxy drove down to see Grandma Ksenia—the woman who’d hated her, who’d cut off all contact after the divorce.
While she and Mom talked in soft tones so as not to wake Grandma’s landlord from his nap, I studied the grout between the tiles and the dull green curtains, the kind you’d see in motel rooms. The clinical-looking tile floors throughout and the smell of a dying man in the next room made my skin break out into goose bumps. I listened to the metallic moans ensuing from Grandma’s bed every time she moved, and picked my nails with topmost dedication; anything to spare me the bedraggled sight of my once elegant grandmother.
My sister was saying things I tried to follow but failed.
“Oksana. Oksana. Oksaana!”
“What?” I turned to Roxy, oddly grateful.
“I was saying that my school looks like a flying saucer and the playground gets so hot that it burns the soles off my shoes. I hate it there.”
“Nora. Dochenka,” Grandma was saying. “Never in my life would I have imagined this. But perhaps it’s my punishment for being so cruel to you. I regret every one of those days.”
“Don’t thin
k about the past, Mother.” Mom was leaning close, holding the old woman’s hand. “This home looks lovely. Very quiet neighborhood.”
“It is. It is.” But giant tears spilled from her eyes.
“Mother. What is wrong?”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“Do what?”
“Oy, dochenka. He’s so heavy. It takes me an hour to get him out of the bed and to the toilet. Most of the time he doesn’t even make it that long and soils himself right there in the hallway. Good thing it’s all tile.”
A cold weight was lodged inside my throat, and I looked at Roxy, who thankfully wasn’t paying much attention, picking out an outfit for her Barbie instead.
Neither Mom nor I had known that Grandma Ksenia was the old man’s live-in caretaker, that she woke up nearly every night to clean the excrement from his behind and change his filthy bedsheets.
Mom did ask Grandma if she wanted to move in with her, but she said, “My place is here with my son.” But soon after our visit, per Olga’s demands, Grandma Ksenia went back to Russia. She would die there a few months later.
* * *
Olga had calmed down for a while. Did she feel guilty for sending the old woman away to a lousy end? I hoped so. I did, though there was nothing I could’ve done to improve the situation. The way you knew Olga’s conscience was stirring was when she spent more time doing the dishes, a task she executed rather poorly. This meant that my father was also in the kitchen constantly rewashing them. He had more time on his hands now, since he barely saw his clients and had canceled most of his gigs. “The fibers in the rope of our family,” he said once, “are splitting one by one.”
During this time a man came to see my father, walking with shoulders hunched as if preparing for an air raid. Bob’s newborn daughter was dying and he begged my father for help. He had heard about Dad from a friend who avoided knee surgery after a regimen Dad prescribed, involving a compress of dried horse sorrel and garlic. That same day the three of us, me as a translator, drove down to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena.
American Gypsy Page 21
