MissV.jpg)
reflections of a russian tumbleweed
I love telling stories.
I think they just somehow know it and keep happenning to me,
thus I always have something new and crazy to share.
Ukraine : matriarchy, potato beetles and husband research.
My first memory is that of a huge livestock yard. Well, of course, it wasn't that huge, but from the height of my three-year-old body, it seemed like a massive puddle of mud that you better not step into without rubber boots. In the puddle, a pig was wallowing, and chickens and geese were running around. I was in Ukraine at my grandmother Nadia's while my mother went to rescue the "pitiful looser" — my father — from Moscow. He had gone there to earn money and broke his leg. Mom went to help, leaving me in the care of two grandmothers, Shura and Nadia.
I. Nadia
Grandmother Nadia lives in the village of Orlovka, in a house with an old stove, where all things are covered with a greasy gray film. There are various sacks, pots, and jars with unclear and sharply smelling contents everywhere. Tables and windowsills are cluttered with dried bouquets of unknown herbs, vegetable peelings, bones, bags, grains, flour... Personally I grew obsessed with a bag of poppy seeds in the barn adjacent to the house; it was so pleasant to plunge hands into it, but I could get scolded by Grandma.
I was afraid of her like fire.
It was difficult to catch Grandma Nadia in a good mood; the expression of severe pain seemed stuck on her face. She spoke rarely and most often to scold her son or husband. Being of a rather important corpulence she suffered from back pain, which made her move around the house groaning and limping.
There was no toilet or bathroom in the house either. Grandma would go to take a shower once a week in an apartment in Svessa, nearby town that occurred around a pump-building factory. And since Grandma dealt with animals and worked in the garden every day, the smells in the house were unimaginable.
It’s her fingers that I remember the most— thick, with the earth ingrained in the cracks of her rough skin.
Besides Grandma Nadia, her second husband Nikolai Sergeevich lived in the house - a thin knotty man with a gray, extremely wrinkled face and blue watery eyes, those of a dead fish. He belonged to the category of enviable bachelors in Orlovka - those who, in addition to alcoholism, also had a job at the factory in Svessa. Nikolai Sergeevich was obliged to immediately hand over all his earnings to Grandma Nadia so that he wouldn't « sweep it all for vodka. »
To me, it all appeared as a sort of weird game where every evening Nikolai Sergeevich aimed to get drunk at any cost, and Grandma had to prevent it. But the game was so old that everyone had long accepted its inevitable outcome : Grandma allocated an old mattress for Nikolai Sergeevich in the corner of the kitchen and waited for his arrival every evening to practice her wit. I found these evening shows incredibly amusing because Grandma was always mortally sharp-tongued. Nikolai Sergeevich would crawl into the house dead drunk, and Grandma would take her favorite position on a stool in front of his mattress. Hands pressing on her knees she’d be leaning over like a big menace of a woman and would discreetly observe Grandpa's movements. I’d always stand behind looking over her shoulder, because without Grandma the sight of Nikolai Sergeevich truly terrified me.
— Oooh, here we go, Your Majesty! The question is, will we successfully make it to the bed this time? How come we are so silent and shy today? Don't be shy, come on in! What a prince! You're a prince of what empire?
The old man mumbled incomprehensibly, trying his best not to fall on the way to the mattress. His legs tangled, and he swayed heavily from side to side. Grandma wouldn’t stop anymore :
— Well, I'm telling you, it’s a stormy day out there in the open sea, huh? Not an easy one even for brave sailors like yourself. As Pushkin said « …storm wraps the sky in snow whirlwinds… » Remember? Of course you don’t. So, what kind of dance are you performing for us here? Show us, and we'll dance together, right? Would you only look at him, Ustim Akimych, crawling on his eyebrows. Don't lean on the walls, everything is fine, the house will stand, after all it’s not you who built it. Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooh... Dock already, captain of long voyages. Damn it, what a scoundrel, just look at him...
Grandpa would melt onto the dirty mattress, curling up into a ball, and Grandma would go about her grandmotherly chores, occasionally clicking her tongue disapprovingly toward the mattress.
***
Grandma Nadia mainly cooked with eggs and potatoes, which grew in the field behind the house. In the morning, she made me scrambled eggs with slices of fragrant gray bread from another grandma who worked at the huge industrial bakery.
During the day, we ate thick pink borscht, and in the evening, she fried omelets with potatoes and onions.
Most of the day, Grandma Nadia spent in a field about half a hectare in size, where potatoes, beets, carrots, peas, Grandpa's tobacco, and poppy for baking grew. However, Grandma had to remove the poppy due to marauding drug addicts who sneaked into the garden at night and pulled out plants with their roots. Grandma worked manually and without chemicals; she weeded the beds with a hoe, loosened the soil, and watered them. Grandma couldn't stand idleness and immediately informed me that work awaited me if I expected to eat in this house. There was nothing particularly difficult assigned to me at the age of three: I had to walk through the rows of potatoes and collect Colorado potato beetles and their larvae from the leaves into a liter jar. Grandma would empty the collected beetles onto the ground and crush them with satisfaction, they would crunch under her dirty shoes, and she’d go :
— Oh, what a damn pest, filthy parasites... No matter if you crush them or not, we'll have to collect them again tomorrow...
***
After dealing with the beetles, I was free to go tease the geese in the livestock yard or to play with the dog. The advantage of living in the village was that no one objected to having kittens, puppies, and chicks around, so there was never a dull moment. There were times when Andrey, Grandma's elder son from her second husband, would come after his work at the collective farm. In all obviousness, he didn’t fall far from his father Nikolay Sergeevich. Andrey mostly drank, smoked, and lounged on the bed until Grandma found him another job, from which he would soon be fired for drunkenness. And so it went on. Once in a while he’d bring a horse from the collective farm, and we would gallop on it through the village streets that smelled of old melted asphalt. Grandma scolded us but secretly enjoyed being free from me for a couple of hours.
Sometimes Tolya, her favorite youngest son, would come and bring his girlfriends along. It was fun with the girlfriends; I could draw on Tolya with colored markers while he slept and hide in the closet, waiting for his reaction. Seeing the girlfriends embrace and kiss Tolya, I decided back then that he would be my first love. Being overwhelmed with feelings I’d choose the darkest and dustiest corner in the hayloft, press my forehead against the wall and whisper, "I love Tolya, and I want to marry him. I love Tolya, and I want to marry him..." and would quickly run away.
II. Shura
Once a week, I was handed over from one house to another. Grandma Nadia prepared her creaky bicycle, filled a bag with potatoes, containers of fresh milk and eggs, and set off loaded up like that to pass me to Grandma Shura in Svessa. The handover took place at the industrial bakery where Grandma Shura worked. Leaving me to the plump ladies from bakery canteen, Grandma Nadia went to trade milk, eggs, and potatoes at the market. The ladies treated me to chebureks and dumplings, their homemade pickles (I even had to try pickled watermelon once), showed me how machines poured the bread dough into moving aluminum molds, and served me sweet tea while Grandma finished her shift.
It was always delicious ; the place and the people smelled of freshly baked goods.
Everyone pinched my cheeks and exclaimed, « Look how tiny it is, but eats for four! »
***
Compared to the countryside hut, the apartment on Kuybysheva Street in Svessa was the pinnacle of civilization to me. All the walls and floors were covered with various carpets, carpets adorned sofas and armchairs. Along the walls stood enormous lacquered sideboards with glass doors and mirrored back walls; one could catch a glimpse of their reflection through numerous dinner sets and crystal collections. The sets were never used but were displayed for everyone to see as objects of special pride — candy vases, herring dishes, goblets, Leningrad factory tea sets, and, of course, the rainbow-colored eastern-german "Madonnas." The fatty television set, perched on a stand in the corner of the room, was covered with a lace doily « to prevent the cathode-ray tube from fading » as they explained to me. It was crowned with a weighty crystal vase from the Czechoslovakian Moser factory — an object of particular pride in those years — holding lush artificial roses. I particularly liked the roses because I could pluck plastic dewdrops from their petals when Grandma wasn't looking.
Apart from Grandma Shura, the television, and the roses, Anatoly Fyodorovich Komendant also resided in the apartment — he was Grandma's second husband. Of course, I had a hard time understanding why everyone had a second husband, where all the previous ones went off to, and whether this whole procedure with husbands was obligatory.
But I had no doubt that a husband was necessary, and slowly began my search.
Even as a three-year-old girl with a completely shaved head (my mom firmly believed that it would make my hair thicker), I knew for certain that I would have a better husband than Baba Shura. Anatoly Fyodorovich Komendant was the urban version of Nikolay Sergeevich -— his factory salary was higher, his shirts were cleaner, and drinking binges less frequent. Anatoly Fyodorovich often brought me a small "Korona" chocolate from work. Or a big one. If he was drunk.
I was amazed at how quietly and tenderly Shura accepted the unsteady Komendant, who couldn't put together two words, taking him by the hand and leading him to the room. She gently undressed him and put him to bed. It was an unspoken agreement, a kind of veto right for men when it came to alcohol. No one was shocked by such episodes, and no one brought up the topic in family or social circles.
Life in Baba Shura's apartment was accompanied by a keen sense of loneliness and danger that I felt in the absence of my mother. This mainly occurred when objects around me reminded me of her existence; a child's mind easily gets distracted and jumps from one thought to another.
***
A package arrived from Moscow. I discovered it in the morning when I entered the room with the television. On the couch, a neatly arranged red velvet suit with leopard cuffs was laid out. The suit's pockets were filled with chewing gum and candies, and at the head sat a rag doll named Suzanna, curly-haired and wearing glasses, just like in the commercials where they made her laugh or cry by pressing on her wrists. Grandma sat quietly next to the gift.
"Mama!" was the first thought that raced through my mind, and I began searching the entire apartment.
"Svetka didn't come, don't look for her. She sent the package with the conductor," Grandma said calmly.
The gifts were wonderful, and there were many of them. It seemed like they should numb the sense of longing and worry for my little mommy who was somewhere out there, far away.
I chewed the gum and examined the doll with reverence. Grandma sat next to me.
— Now take good care of her, make sure not to mess her up. It had surely cost a fortune, and Svetka is most cerntainly going hungry now, unable to afford warm tights. She spoils you, of course...
The image of my hungry mama struggling through the storm in her thin coat, barefoot and frozen, struck a chord in my throat, and I firmly decided to save for later the last two pieces of gum that were dangling in the suit's pocket.
They were kept there tenderly until Grandma washed them together with the jacket.
Tile dolphins.
The grandmothers helped each other as best they could. Once, Grandma Nadia sent Grandma Shura a lively and restless milk piglet. Throughout the day, we chased each other around the apartment. But then, the sober and businesslike Komendant arrived, gave me a chocolate bar, ordered me to go to the room and play with whatever my heart desired.
That's where I was when I heard the squeals of the piglet.
Rushing into the hall, I saw Grandma and Grandpa at the other end of the corridor, huddled in the bathroom. The piglet was nowhere to be seen, but behind the silhouettes of the elderly couple, I could make out the popular at a time mosaic tiles in bright blue tones : two dolphins leaping over the sea. Those dolphins had a completely hypnotic effect over me, and whenever I bathed, I would gaze into their small ceramic squares.
The screams were deafening. Fully aware of the forbidden nature of my actions, I, as if enchanted, moved closer and closer through the beige textured wallpaper, getting closer to the bathroom. Standing right next to it, I tried to catch a glimpse of anything through the adults leaning over the bathtub.
Splashes of thick, dark blood crossed the gracefully leaping dolphins. I stood behind grandparents' backs in a state of shock paralysis, watching the trails of blood running down, unable to tear my eyes away.
It seemed they never knew that I had seen everything.
Several months later, my mother came back for me, and we found ourselves in Moscow.
Moscow.
Moscow... enchanting.
Red Square, Baskin Robbins, McDonald's, the Nikulin Circus, my uncle buying me helium ballons and cotton candy.
...and there was also my mother's grocery store on the outskirts of the city, where she took me with her during shifts, and the tanned, greasy loaders with whom she smoked cigarettes by the backdoor.
My mother exuded some kind of crazy energy that made everyone fall in love with her. She had a short, tousled haircut and red lipstick beneath her timid dark moustache. She smoked a lot and laughed, revealing her beautiful, straight teeth. Because of all those smiles and teeth, we often had to run through the backyard windows to escape from overly enthusiastic fiances who were waiting for her after her work shifts. But it seemed she couldn't escape from one of them, as my mother later bound her life to him.
When I asked about my father and why they weren't together, she replied that he had rejected us and no longer needed a family. He had started a new life. However, we did see him once. He gave me a plush teddy bear, pricked all my cheeks with his thorny beard, and then went into the living room, where cigarette smoke tendrils seeped through the doorway, accompanied by angry arguments.
We left in the night : my mother in tears and me, half-asleep in her arms. She held me tightly to her chest, whispering Our Father Prayer, crying and kissing my hair. In the warmth of her embrace, pressed against her breasts that smelled of verbena and puff pastry, I would give in to the rhythmical whispers filled with desperation, and my eyes would also fill with tears. Everything around us would turn into water. We poured ourselves into a river, the river would turn into a sea, the sea into an ocean ; we let the currents wash us away and it was vertiginous, terrifying — me and my mother against the world in dark stormy waters. The magical strange words whispered into my hair and the boundless sorrow of childhood tears plunged me into a deep and heavy sleep. It was the only salvation from the world crumbling around me.
All those tears completely extinguished any shadow of desire to see my father again.
Somehow, very quickly and smoothly, my mother found herself a new man, one of those who frequented the store. We moved in to live with him and his parents in a three-room apartment. That's how I gained a new family: Papa Sasha, Grandpa Vasya, and Grandma Lucia.
But things didn't go well with this new father right from the start...
Kickback.
Summer evening, coolness descends onto the uncut grass of the dacha lot belonging to Sergey, my stepfather's friend. Twelve empty acres with trampled grass and a pitiful-looking, crooked cabin, crammed full of things that might suddenly come in handy. We spent the whole day here: after long and meticulous discussions about who should be entrusted with marinating the meat for the shashlik, after three family scenes and a drive in airless traffic jams with "Autoradio" playing, we arrived at Uncle Sergey's dacha. It immediately became clear that I would have absolutely nothing to do here. The sun, at its zenith, illuminated the empty lot like a forgotten spotlight after a performance.
These were the pastimes of my new "dad" Sasha and his friends.
In winter, they would gather in a gloomy, stuffy apartment with all sorts of questionnable smelly pickled snacks, mayonnaise salads, and vodka andget wasted to a point where everyone falls asleep on their seats, often times face in these mayonnaise salads. With the arrival of warm days, they would go out to drink beer with dried fish on the bench of a kids playground, grill shashlik in the city park, or at the dacha.
Uncle Sergey was a tall, grumpy, and hunched man in his forties, wearing shabby unremarkable clothes that awkwardly clung to his beer belly. He had narrow shoulders, an egg-shaped bumpy bald head, and small, angry eyes that flickered lazily beneath thick eyebrows. His wife Valentina, barely of legal age (they married when she was sixteen), was a naive Kuban beauty with an impressive cleavage, short stature, a complete lack of waist, taste, and intellect in her wonderfully big and empty brown eyes. Sergey mostly talked about his discoveries of cheap groceries at the supermarket, his military service, or how someone had once again failed to fool him, intermingling his stories with arrogantly told vulgar jokes. He strongly smelled of alcohol and tobacco smoke and didn't allow anything. Valentina didn't talk much, but laughed squeakily and sipped from her can of beer.
Sergey and Valentina had two sons, Sasha and Sergey Jr., also known as Kegey Kegeyich, as Sergey always added. It was a surname they gave the boy because his diction problems that no one took care of made him pronounce his own name as "Kegey."
The boys, like wild animals, kept their distance from the adult company and only approached when their drunken father called them, needing to demonstrate a joke on a child or give him a slap.
I felt my mom's stress and shared it. There was plenty to feel melancholic about: cheap milk sausages on the grill, vodka, vulgar behavior of pot-bellied balding men, their drunken stories growing louder...
— When I was studying at the vocational school,— Sergey began, —there was a new Russian teacher, a young one! Must've just graduated. And she greeted us in her squeaky voice : "Hello, I'm Olga Andreevna! Olga Andreevna!" Well, we sat there, you know, big tough guys, what the hell do we care about Olga Andreevna?! So we disrupted her classes, came in drunk and said to her, "Olya, don't fart." And she, in her tiny voice, "I'm not farting..." and burst into tears! It was hilarious!
—And when I was serving in the army there was this corporal…
— Army ! You must have forgotten how to shoot by now, you old bones ?
—Oh, we'll see about that! Look, right across from the lot, there's a small pond with otters in it. They often come out onto the shore. Let's go there now and see who has forgotten...
—You better make sure you don't wet your pants!
Sergey went to the cabin to load the rifle. Mom stared at her weathered chosen one with reproachful eyes.
—Sasha, what's going on? Why a rifle?
—Oh, come on, Svetkaaa, Svetulyaa, everything's fine!
—I can see how fine everything is with you.
—Oh, you're such a moody one, Svetka. A real shrew! Why are you sulking? Stop sulking!
He tried to hold her tightly in his arms and kiss her. Mom struggled, like a trapped bird.
—Oh, that's it, Sasha, do whatever you want. I'm tired,— she said.
—So why aren't you having fun? Come join us,— he replied.
—And what do you consider fun? Getting drunk on vodka and shooting from a rifle?!
The chosen one swayed, staring into Mom's eyes. Then he suddenly got angry and threw a fit.
—Alright, Svet, what's starting now? Do you want to ruin everything for everyone? What's with these pointless arguments? Don't you have anything better to do?
Valentina awkwardly murmured, "I'm going to get more cigarettes," and delicately retreated to the cabin. I completely forgot the anthill I had been poking at and watched the argument from a distance. Fear paralyzed me, spreading through the body like cobra venom, weighing it down with lead. I saw how Mom tried to leave, how he grabbed her by the wrist and forcefully pulled her back :
—What are you doing? Are you crazy? Where do you think you're going?
—Don't touch Mom!
I gasped in horror, pressing myself against my mother's thigh. The fiancé spat loudly to the side.
—Oh, well, there we go now. You're raising another shrew.
—I'm raising her just fine."
—Tell your mom she's a troublesome witch. — That was directed at me.
—I won't say it! You're the one who's a jerk! Don't touch Mom, go away!
—So, what is all this fuss about, Polina ? Alright, come on, leave the adults alone. Do you want to take a shot? — Sergei deftly raised the air rifle to his shoulder.—This is how you position it on your shoulder, look through the sight, and wait for the little creature to emerge from the water. When it does, aim for its head, move your eye away from the sight, and shoot.
Boom! The water in the pond splashed loudly.
—Missed... I'm getting old. Alright, you take the rifle now. You need to know how to shoot from a rifle.
He placed the heavy weapon on my four-year-old shoulder. It pressed me into the ground with its weight and power.
—Go on, aim, young sniper! Just keep your finger off the trigger for now! Val, come here with the camera, let's capture this soldier! Oh, wow, look how she handles the rifle, like she was born to shoot, damn it!
Valentina took pictures while I clung to the sight, searching for otters.
—Oh! Oh! One popped out over there! Go on, shoot it! Got it in your sights? Squeeze the trigger smoothly! Come on!
A deafening gunshot, darkness, a painful jolt of recoil in my shoulder, and a sharp, gaping pain around my eyebrow.
I sat still with my eyes closed, unsure if I was alive or not.
—Oh, well, what are you doing! You've gone too close to the sight, you can't just approach like that! Oh, this scar will be a battle scar, for sure...
—Mooom, where are you?— I timidly called out, still afraid to move. Sergey and Valentina bustled around and nervously tried to suppress their awkward laughter. Mom rushed over and grabbed my face.
—They cut your eyebrow! You're all monsters! She's a girl! Why did you give her the rifle, Sergey? You've completely lost it! What if she lost an eye? Bring the hydrogen peroxide, a bandage!
—Sweetheart, everything's fine, you can open your eye. It's nothing serious, we'll clean it up and it'll heal,—Mom reassured me in a gentle whisper. I saw her huge frightened eyes, tears shimmering in them, and started crying bitterly.
She hid me in her arms and yelled towards the cabin, where the fiancé and Sergey were frantically searching for a first aid kit.
—What kind of horrible people are you! Are you done playing with your rifles?! Drunk idiots! And the thing is we can't even leave now...
They washed my cut eyebrow, gave me a dusty wrapped candy, and took a photo of me wearing a pirate bandana with the rifle slung over my shoulder.