LET’S JUST CALL HER THE OLD LADY, OKAY?
Misery had already come to her. She wore the black veil for her one and only son who drowned in Odessa at age ten. Her husband had just passed a couple years before—an immune system anomaly. They say men leave. They say women mourn. She lived our proverbs.
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?
She didn’t grow bitter. She didn’t become hard. She continued to look fondly at children. Because all children were innocent in her eyes. Even the child who accidently horse-played her son to death that August years ago. Even the one who would grow up to be the poor soul to stab her thrice. Nicky, Nicky.
SOFTNESS
How long must we carry it as affliction?
SPEAK UP
Nicky was fourteen when I was just over a year old. I watched him from my mother’s arms with my globular brown eyes. He was cuffed. He was smacked around by the militzioner, the cop. His mama ran down the stairs, crying.
MAMA’S TEARS
He’s just a boy, he’s just a boy! But boys don’t stab old women once, twice, thrice. That, my dorogaya mamasha, is intentional manslaughter, the cop said. But he didn’t mean it, she’s crying, of course he didn’t mean to, just ask him, she’s spreading her fingers wide into the officer’s face, it was an accident! The cop turns to the boy. He pushes him against the railing. He says, Speak up, malchik. Did you mean it?
BAD BOY
Nicky was a bad boy and he went to prison to become a bad man.
YEARS PASSED
I forgot all about Nikolai from floor five.
AND THE OLD LADY WHO GOT STABBED?
What was her life, lived with such precise values, against ours, unfolding into daylight like a corn being husked.
AMERICA
I grew like a cat being picked up by its skin. I stretched out my baby-chub into loose limbs and a curved stare. My intellect went vertically. Deep and high. On the lateral level, I suppose it didn’t always show. We were part of that Soviet diaspora of ’91. Our immigration papers got approved. We settled into Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED
I got a so-so education. I finished high school with colorless competence. I had flashes of spirit, but mostly doubt, mostly apathy, and so I got to working.
The plan was to save up a bit, then go to college. I could think about what it was I’d study in college as I was saving up a bit.
BUT THE THING IS
The longer I worked, the more intention scared me. And then I fell in love with an angel.
FEVER
Angelina, an American girl. Half Puerto Rican. Pale and dark at the same time. Her brother called her The Flu when she was little.
Her brother, like mine, elsewhere…
BECAUSE IT WAS DESTINY
I met her at the lesbian bar on the East Side. She was one of the girls attending college at UW-Milwaukee. I just had my GED. And my left-foot kind of charm. She was studying to be a nurse. I circled her. I glared and gawked. She had her heavy, dark hair behind one ear. One lobe showing, smooth and earnest, pierced with a large gold hoop. She turned around. Her eyes ran liquid down my throat. She is my angel. I told her so. She didn’t ridicule me. She could have. But she didn’t. She welcomed me as pure and sound.
DESTINY CONTINUED
It was easy between us. Our glances laced up. Because it was meant to be. Because the only thing that makes this body bearable is that we can get out of it.
SO HERE I AM
Living with my Angelina. We share a sixth floor apartment with a small balcony. I’m taking some extra courses, getting my administrative skills up. Otherwise, it’s temp work. Inventory stock in warehouses. I like counting. Some secretarial jobs. Johnson Controls near the Bayshore Mall. The pharmaceuticals company off the highway. The red-brick building with a small parking lot impossible to turn into from the main road. Filing and copying and answering the phone. I play a game where I ricochet off every request.
THE WORST, ACTUALLY
It’s when there are no jobs at all. Every day is like a wounded bird cupped in the palms of Angelina.
THE CALL
Almost midnight. Angelina is already asleep when my phone begins buzzing on the nightstand. I reach over and the screen displays a number without a name. I hold the shaking phone. I put my feet on the carpet and put my weight on them discreetly. I hurry with muted steps into the hallway so I don’t wake up Angelina. There, I touch my phone.
“Privet.”
No one calls me speaking Russian except my parents. And my parents don’t call me anymore.
“It’s Nicky. It’s Nikolai.”
I’m trying to place his tone.
“Nicky? Nikolai?”
“From floor five…”
That old apartment in the Soviet Union. The sound of creaking. The wooden stairwell. Someone running. The lamp, the lump, the lock.
“I’m in America now,” he says.
“In America…”
“I’ve been traveling. I’m near you, Olga.”
“And where am I then?” I call his bluff.
“Off Teutonia Avenue.”
I don’t say anything.
“On the north side. I’m on the south side,” he continues.
“That’s a bad area,” I say.
“I’m a bad man,” he replies.
HELL
Nikolai’s voice takes a dip. He’s murmuring. He’s got a dripping faucet from his childhood that keeps wetting his syllables.
“How the hell did you get my number,” I whisper.
He’s thinking about it.
“Sunrise, sunset…”
He’s thinking about it.
“It was mathematics.”
He’s thinking about it.
“I’m a lone sailboat, I’ve always been…”
“You stabbed an innocent old lady, Nicky,” I interject.
“I’m paying my dues.”
His throat cracks. He pauses, to swallow.
“I’m going to Hell, Olga.”
“Well, what are you doing in America then?” I ask.
“To get to Hell,” he says in a low voice, “they take you through America. There is a door behind a door.”
NONE OF MY BUSINESS
It’s not my place and it’s none of my business.
