Stalina

decompose. On the shirttail of his prison-issue shirt, almost in tatters, I found something scrawled in charcoal. It was this poem:

Everything here will die.
Never know when, why, or how.
Will the remains remain?
Ashes will float on the air for all to breathe.
The funerals here are defied by our minds.
Never let go. Double-fisted breath.

I transcribed the poem to the back of the photograph I had taken of him when I was young. I stared for days at that photograph, puzzled because I had remembered it differently. I thought he only had one hand on the shovel, but clearly both hands gripped the handle. Every morning I would pull the photograph out from under my pillow where I kept it at night. One day I imagined that his smile had shifted from one side of his mouth to the other. I screamed with surprise, thinking he was still alive in the picture. My mother woke me from the dream and wiped the dust and smudges from my fingerprints on the glass.

45 Star Lane, the taxi will drive…

Just like the last line in the song I made up and sang when I first arrived here two years ago. Moscow, Kennedy, Port Authori-tay! That adventure felt like ancient history. But there I was, again being driven to 45 Star Lane. I really could use a song now, I thought. I’d add something to this old one, like letting out a skirt when your waist has gotten too big. Just another line or two would do. 45 Star Lane is quaint on the outside and shoddy on the inside. When I first came here, it looked like a fairyland of perfect little houses with birds singing on wires and the wind rustling from the tops of the trees down to the blades of grass on the square lawns. Behind all this, the houses had walls so thin that from any room in the house you could hear someone turning the pages of a magazine while they sat in the bathroom. The windows didn’t keep out the wind and the rain, so the sills had gone rotten from never drying out. Lately I’d noticed a mold growing where the windows met the walls. I’d been spraying disinfectant, the same we used at the Liberty Motel, to try to kill the spores, but it had done nothing. Chain-link fences divided the houses into scraggly lawns that were decorated with painted wooden cutouts of plentiful women’s behinds rising into the air. The make-believe gardeners were bent over tending to their pansies and impatiens. Bulging roots of the sycamore trees had come through the sidewalks like arms and legs of waking giants. The neighbors kept to themselves.

45 Star Lane, the taxi will drive,
A quaint white house with rotting windowsills.

Amalia might not appreciate this new line. I could add something more pleasant.

I live with Amalia, and we both pay the bills.

The taxi arrived at my home.

“Thank you, sir, you are an excellent driver.”

“Mike’s Taxis, you can always count on us, miss.”

When he turned around, I could see that his handlebar mustache had crumbs stuck in the sides and he was wearing a cap with a picture of a fish.

“Do you like fish?” I asked.

“Bass season starts soon. How’d you know?”

I pointed to his hat.

“My girls sent me a year of Bassmaster magazine for my birthday.”

“They must appreciate their father very much.”

“Nah, they just like to get me out of the house.”

The radio started to squawk. He picked up the mouthpiece. “Bassman, over.”

A woman’s voice came on. “Hey, good lookin’, get that junk heap of yours over to Charleston’s Bar. Barry needs a ride home; his wife has to leave for work. Over.”

“That’s Randi; she’s a ball buster,” he said, looking at me in the rearview mirror.

Then into the radio again he said, “Keep your titties straight, mama, I’m on my way. Over.”

“Fuck off, lover, over,” she replied.

“I’m just finishing up with Star Lane, sweet meat, over.”

Then he turned back to me. “She and I have known each other since high school.”

“I live here with Amalia; we’ve know each other since we were children.”

“Are you going to be all right?” My swollen eyes must have concerned him.

“Yes, thank you, now that I am here. It’s my mother; I just found out she died. She was still in Russia.”

“I’m sorry. It’s like that, people and things go away, they end, leave us to ourselves.”

“Yes, they do. Thank you, Mr. Bassman.”

I was still holding on to the strap behind the driver. It was a comfort to hang on to something. I drifted back to St. Petersburg for a moment as I started getting myself out of the cab.

* * *

“It’s just not practical. We are not going anywhere,” Trofim had said without looking in my eyes.

It was a summer night. I was just nineteen and in love.

We met to watch the bridges go up over the Neva.

“Opening the bridges is a practical thing,” I said. “We may not be able to travel to the other side of the river, but it saves the government money. They don’t have to pay anyone to operate the bridges through the night.”

He wanted to end our relationship, not debate bridge operations.

“Stalina, this is not about the bridges,” he said, looking down at the water.

The river was black and oily. Our faces reflected in the lapping waves looked like photographs developing in a darkroom. I watched the light in the sky disappear. It was gone for just minutes, and when it began to get light again, Trofim was already walking across the bridge before it was even fully down. He never turned around. I stood motionless until everyone rushing to get home to change for work pushed me along the canal. He was gone. It felt like someone had died.

* * *

Many years later, in Connecticut, USA, I felt a similar emptiness. As I stood outside the cab, the rain started coming down harder. My cheeks stung with the salt of my tears. I leaned through the window to pay the driver.

“It’s been taken care of, miss. Your boss paid for the ride. Go. Get out of the rain.” He shook the crumbs from his mustache.

“Mr. Suri is a very nice man,” I told the driver.

I heard the dispatcher’s voice over his radio again. “Move it along, Barry the Barfly just fell off his barstool.”

“On my way, general, ma’am,” he said to the radio. And then to me he said, “Take it easy, miss. Get