It pierces deep into something that feels like everything.
LOOK NOW
My eyes push out droplets of the poem.
AS IF IN STORMS
It could find peace.
OLGA
Tanya shifts in her bunk below me.
“Quit your fucking screaming,” she tells me, “and go to sleep.”
GOOD NIGHT
Pain without meaning.
IT’S BREAKFAST TIME
The guard brings us two trays. I don’t touch mine. I can’t open or close my hands. I study my palms. There. A strike across each one, swelling like a burn.
Tanya picks at her food diligently. I sit with my two stiff hands on my lap.
MY DAYS
I stay still. They go by.
BIRDS
Tanya swears at me. Tanya threatens me. Tanya tells me that I’m worthless.
HOPE
For a second, I feel it.
There are footsteps beyond our cell.
They have a weight to them.
VISITOR
“Tarasova!” The guard is banging her baton on the bars.
Tanya smiles in a full rectangle. The guard smiles back. On each side of the bars, their smiles are an equation.
I study it. I can’t quite solve it.
MATH
You don’t exist. You don’t exist.
HEY, BABY
The guard puts her baton back against her thigh in one low swing. There is a guy behind her. Tommy Hilfiger hoodie. Jeans bunch around his chicken legs. He lifts his face to the light.
“Brendan!” Tanya jumps up.
“Hey, baby.”
SHIT
I am turning my face away, hoping he won’t notice me.
FACES
They are tonguing each other through the bars. His hands grope her ass cheeks. The guard taps on the bar with her baton. “I don’t want to tell you again,” she says.
“Damn, okay,” Brendan says, “all right…”
He reaches into his pocket and hands the guard a roll of bills. She looks at it, slides it into her pocket and nods.
He leans his face through the bars again and whispers, “You got what I want, baby?”
“Sure do…” she exhales.
They go back to tonguing and I can see Brendan has an erection. He’s squeezing Tanya’s breasts and she’s cupping his package.
BITCH
“Time’s up, lovebirds,” the guard says, twisting the roll of bills in her pocket. She bangs on the bars again for them to separate.
When Brendan takes his face off Tanya, it lands on me.
“Who the fuck is that,” Brendan stamps.
“Who?” Tanya says. “Oh that, that’s my new cellie.”
“I know her, she’s that bitch’s sister.”
“What bitch?”
“You know. That bitch-ass bitch. Misha.”
“It’s Moshe,” I pipe up.
Tanya turns back to me.
“So that’s Moshe’s sister…”
I pinch my eyes at her.
She turns back to Brendan.
“Ignore her, baby,” she says, “don’t waste our time on her.”
“Yeah, okay, just be careful. Heard she real thirsty for cunt.”
“Are you jealous, Brennie…” Tanya puckers her mouth.
“I’m fucking serious, she’s fucking going to go down on you in your sleep, baby, I swear.”
Tanya looks back at me and smiles, then turns to Brendan.
“And what are you gonna do about it?” she says in a baby voice.
Brendan flinches his arm up and bangs the bar with his fist. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!” he screams.
The guard taps her baton into her palm. “Quiet down.”
Brendan turns to the guard. “You gotta switch her out, my baby’s locked up with a psycho dyke!”
“Quiet down, I said,” the guard repeats.
Brendan turns red, squeezing his fists against his temples.
“Breathe, baby, breathe,” Tanya is saying.
Brendan unclasps his hands and lets out a sloppy exhale. He begins to whimper.
“Shhh…” she says. “I’m just kidding, Brennie baby, you know I love dick, especially yours, and as soon as I’m out, I’ll suck you off so good, won’t I?”
Brendan picks up his solemn head.
“Okay, but,” he says in a grave tone, “you stay strong for us both, baby.”
“I will, Brennie, I will,” Tanya says.
They tongue each other again until the guard hits the bars with her baton and Brendan has to leave.
SO WHAT
“You didn’t fucking tell me you were Moshe’s sister,” Tanya says, still looking through the bars where Brendan once stood.
Somehow the sun has already set and we haven’t even had lunch, or dinner.
My stomach is growling and she is turning around.
WAVES
I don’t know if it’s the waves of hunger. Or the waves of nausea. Or the waves, in her eyes. Tanya.
She’s looking at me—her eyes waver like water. Distant upheaval. Her irises reciting that poem. Lermontov’s Parus odinokiy.
THE LONE SAILBOAT
That poem about the lone sailboat that leaves the safe waters and goes willingly into the heart of a storm.
BECAUSE
What is life, if you cannot willingly go into the heart of the storm. What is life, if you cannot willingly storm someone’s heart. What is life, if you cannot willingly leave safe waters.
ACCUSATIONS
“Your brother,” Tanya’s eyes heat up, “is a bad fucking person.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well he stabbed me,” she says and takes a step toward me, “Once… twice… thrice…”
She points to her own body with one curved finger. Stomach. Ribs. Heart.
YOU’RE A LIAR
“Do I have to spell it out? Your brother is a murderer. What a psycho fucking family.”
IT MUST HAVE BEEN AN ACCIDENT
“He didn’t mean it.”
MALCHIK
“He sure as fucking hell meant it. I was there. I was there with my bestie, Svetlana. It was him, your brother, and his weirdo mother-fucking friend.”
SHE WAS SO SCARED
Svetlana.
SHE WAS SCARED TO DIE
My bestie.
SHE WAS SCREAMING SCREAMING SCREAMING
“You wouldn’t fucking get it.”
YOUR BROTHER
“He ruined my life.”
I CAN’T FIT IT ALL TOGETHER
Tanya grabs my jaw with her fingers. Her long nails dent into my cheeks.
“I’m on to you,” she grits.
YEAH
She takes her hand off my face. I stretch out my jaw and rub my chin.
“You expect me to believe you’re dead?” I say real low.
“Don’t give a fuck what you believe,” Tanya says. “I won’t be nobody’s stank-ass joke.”
A MESSAGE
I lift my chin. I look at her straight in the eyes.
“Idi… na… khuyi,” I tell her nice and slow in Russian. Go fuck yourself.
SHE GRABS ME BY THE THROAT
Her thumb is in my voice box.
NOW, NOW
“Now, now, now,” Tanya says.
NOW?
I’m struggling to breathe.
WELL NOW
“So, you think just cause your brother’s a psycho, that makes you a tough cunt, huh?”
NO
I’m grabbing
