“You have grandchildren,” I say, pointing to myself.
“I’m old! I’m going to die soon!” my grandma says.
“You’re not going to die soon,” I say in English. My babushka has a penchant for languages, knew five of them before moving here, and now she’s the only one in the family above fifty who can technically understand me though most of the time she chooses not to. “I’m not going to start having babies with random people because you have a headache or whatever.”
“Did I say random people? You should only marry a Russian Jew,” Babushka continues to lament. This part she emphasizes as if she hasn’t been telling me the same thing my entire life. I still can’t understand why it’s so important to her. They may have a mezuzah next to their door now, but we don’t even celebrate Hanukkah. I find the concept of religion very creepy. Who needs more orders, let alone from made-up things who live in the sky? I have enough people telling me what to do, thank you very much. Unless it’s coming from Leonardo DiCaprio, and the order is to kiss him, I prefer to make my own decisions about whom to date.
“Leave her be!” my grandpa says, sitting down on the couch beside her.
“Did we move to America just to marry Russian Jews?” I ask, switching back to Russian, which gets better and better as it approaches a subject that it is so familiar with. “Why didn’t we stay in Chernovtsy, then?”
My grandpa starts to laugh but then stops himself when he sees my grandma’s face. She continues along in her speech, now on the part where everyone hates the Jews. It’s some version of this rant every time I see her. “Everyone. They all want us dead. Believe me, I know.”
“For the millionth time: this is America,” I sigh.
“It’s all the same everywhere,” my grandma continues, shaking her head. “Oh, you’ll see one day, Anastasia. Just because no one is trying to kill us now doesn’t mean they won’t again.” She stands, looking suddenly agitated, but doesn’t go to her room. Or take any clothes out of her closet. I am starting to see why my dad sent me up here instead of going himself. “Not that it matters to me. I already have one foot in the grave… but for you…”
“Mila!” my grandpa yells. “Enough!”
“It’s okay, Dedushka,” I sigh. “She’s allowed to have her own opinions.” It’s true, but I have wondered how their opinions could diverge so much on the same issue. Is my grandmother more stubborn, or does she merely have a better memory? My grandpa escaped a concentration camp on his own two feet, after watching his entire family die. Baba Mila spent most of the war hiding in a farmer’s shed. Not that it’s so much better to sleep on a pile of hay and wait anxiously to be caught, but you’d think of the two of them, my grandpa would be more pessimistic. The only reason for the disparity I’ve come up with is that maybe some people choose to hold on to their traumas while others throw them out like a worn-out coat. Maybe you can decide between it making you weaker or making you stronger. Or maybe the decision gets made without your input at all, and you have to live with that. The most traumatic thing that ever happened to me was moving to America, which is nothing in comparison. I don’t even remember it. Just the shadow of a feeling I can never put my finger on.
Babushka turns back to me, ignoring her husband of over fifty years. “Have you spoken to your uncle Pyotr lately? I’m supposed to be buried right next to my brother Nikolai, and he’s trying to take the spot from right under my nose. My own nephew!”
“That can’t possibly be true, Babushka,” I say. I stand up, and look towards her bedroom door, hoping she will get the hint. When she doesn’t, I take off my coat and place it on the chair. It’s close to eighty degrees in their apartment, so I might as well not pass out from heat exhaustion.
“It is true. You don’t care. You’ve forgotten all about us.”
“I didn’t forget,” I interject.
“Yes, you did. You’ve forgotten us old people. You’ve forgotten Russia,” she complains. “Good luck to you, devotchka. It won’t work. It’s in your soul forever, it doesn’t matter where you go. You may be in America now, but you cannot merely cut off your roots and continue to walk.” She looks away into nothingness then starts shaking her head in disbelief. I don’t entirely disagree with her on this point, so I stay silent. “In Russia, I was so happy. I had my whole life ahead of me. Now I just sit around waiting for death.”
The way she emphasizes the word death—smerta—makes me start laughing, I don’t know why; it’s not like I haven’t heard it before. I’ve heard it all before. I simply never realized how funny it is. I laugh so hard tears rush from my eyes. Only then do I remember I’m still a little high.
“Oh, she’s laughing at me now!” Grandma Mila says, staring straight ahead. “Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. I’m funny to her.”
“What a funny shootka, Baba,” I say, laughing even harder.
“I’m a joke now?” she asks, slowly, looking at my grandpa.
“No, Babushka, I said you made a joke. It was funny.”
“I’m a joke, she says.”
“That’s not what I said.”
My grandpa claps his hands together. “Mila, come on. Let’s get dressed.”
“Yes… I was happy in Russia,” she continues. “Even with Stalin, and the war, and all the lines.” She sits back down, swaying forward and backward, almost as if the last conversation didn’t even happen.
“Are you really missing Stalin, Babushka?” I’ve heard this all before, but I never fully considered what she was saying.
“Of course she isn’t,” my grandpa says, gruffly, no longer looking at either of us.
“We all thought he was a great man,” Baba Mila is saying, a hint of pride in her eyes.
“But you know that he wasn’t, right?” I ask, incredulous. I may suck at history, but they lived through this. Shouldn’t they remember?
“You wouldn’t understand,” she says, with a brief, disapproving glance at my unwashed hair and ripped jeans. “You weren’t there. You never had to wait in line for bread.”
“Mila,” my grandpa snaps. “Enough already!”
“You’re not happy here?” I press on. Sometimes I don’t know what she wants from me, except maybe to go back in time and be my age again. I’m sure it doesn’t help that they never leave their apartment and have nothing to do now that we don’t need them anymore. “You’d rather have Stalin?”
“Phoo. I’m not talking about Stalin,” Baba Mila grunts, even though she was indeed just talking about him. “You’re too young. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“When I was your age, I didn’t believe the old people either…” she says.
“Who did you know in the USSR that was eighty?” I’m no history buff, but I know it’s very unlikely she knew many people above sixty; not in her time anyway. Most who survived the war still died young from so many years of starvation and stress; and in our family, hardly anyone survived the war.
Babushka shakes her head. “Now I have one foot in the grave…”
“Mila!” my grandpa yells.
“What! We’re not newlyweds anymore, skipping down the beach!” she says.
Dedushka starts to laugh. “Ha! You, skipping down the beach? That’s something I’d like to see.”
I look at my grandpa. “Dedushka, are you not happy here?” I ask, suddenly really wanting to know.