“Oh,” Babushka shrugs. She thumbs a crumb from her chin and then folds her hands across her lap. “I don’t remember.”
Inwardly, I breathe a sigh of relief. My dad, on the other hand, grips the wheel with an intensity that was definitely not there before. Then he turns the radio back on and doesn’t speak for the rest of the drive.
ANNA
________________
CHAPTER NINE
Later, I’m standing on the balcony of my uncle Marik’s house with my fourth glass of wine when someone comes outside to smoke. For a moment I think it’s my dad, wanting to confront me about my grandma’s question, but it’s only Marik.
“Privet, Annushka,” he says, starting his cigarette with a shiny gold lighter. “How are you?”
“Horosho,” I respond. Uncle Marik is really my dad’s cousin but in our family everyone’s just an uncle or aunt. It took me until I was quite old to work this out; when I was young, I assumed my parents had tons of siblings, but they’re both only children. Marik is married to one of Baba Mila’s nieces, my great-aunt Rachel’s daughter Marina. He owns a painting and remodeling company and is super rich, judging from the location of this brand-new riverfront condo, replete with string lights and perfectly assembled patio furniture that is very clearly not from IKEA. I can’t begin to imagine what any of it costs. All I ever do, when it comes to money, is think about how to not spend it. “How are you?”
“Good, good,” he mumbles back, about as bored with my question as I am asking it. Below us, a few tiny boats buzz down the Menomonee River, transforming the water into icy white streaks. Beyond the river is an unimpressive constellation of skyscrapers; further on, lights of factories burn yellow. “Life is good.”
I watch as Marik takes another long drag of his cigarette. Maybe it’s the four glasses of wine, but for a second he no longer looks like my uncle—a tall, muscled man in his late forties, always dressed in outrageous silk suits and pointy leather shoes at family functions—and instead seems like some old-timey Russian gangster. I wonder if this is how others see him: like a person to be frightened of. I really have no idea what he did for work before we immigrated, besides spend three years in the Russian army. It’s possible someone mentioned it before, but if so, I no longer remember. This happens to me a lot; the way I didn’t realize I was losing my native tongue until years after it was already happening, I somehow managed to misplace everyone’s histories too. I wonder how much farther I can stray before it all disappears entirely, forever. Is heritage a lighthouse, blinking in the night, always prepared and preparing you for an eventual return? Or is it an unmapped land, a place that, if you leave, you may never find your way back to? Look at any immigrant family once it’s had a generation or two of kids. Histories fade into anecdotes; foreign words are buried along with elderly grandparents. Every year that passes we are closer and closer to losing everything that makes us what we are. It’s the shadow that lingers behind every American dream. The one you don’t even realize is there because you never see it.
But I see it. I see it all the time, like a sixth sense, a different kind of ghost.
“Marik, what did you do in the Soviet Union?” I ask aloud. Because why the hell not? “For work, I mean?”
Marik glances at me in his periphery, then looks back out onto the river warily. “Oh. This and that.”
“That sounds shady,” I respond. “Were you in the KGB?”
Marik lets out a surprised chuckle. “No, no, not the KGB.”
“Were you in the mob?” I ask, knowing of course that if he was, he would never tell me. Not that I could picture him in the mob. He’s too nice. His kids are such squares they don’t drink the wine set out on our table at family functions.
Marik turns to look at me, suddenly serious. “What is this about?”
I shrug. I should probably just shut my mouth, but I’m a little drunk. It’s hard not to get drunk around my family; at nineteen, it’s hard not to get drunk, period. It just seems to be the thing everyone is always doing. “Just wondering,” I explain.
“It isn’t interesting. I didn’t have a real job, Annushka, not like I do here.” He exhales a long line of smoke, looking like an angry bull. “I had a lot of friends, though. I helped when I could.”
“Oh,” I say. I know without asking that this is as much information as I’ll get out of him on the topic, though now I am even more curious than I was when I originally asked. Like an itch that only gets itchier when you scratch it: this is the summary of my familial relationships. In general, it’s better not to scratch at all. “Did you ever work with my dad?”
Marik nods indifferently. “Sure.”
We’re both quiet again, as another boat swims by, slicing a line through the pitch-black water. Marik is almost done with his cigarette. It is possible he is rushing it so as to get away from me quicker, but maybe that’s my imagination. It has often felt to me like no one in my family really wants to talk to me. That they don’t really know how. And it’s not only the language barrier, there’s something else too. I inch closer to Marik, inhaling his smoke, which is as close as I am going to get right now to a cigarette. He mistakes my interest as disgust, and switches the hand he’s holding it with so that it is farther away from my nose.
I decide to ask him one more question. “Did he ever work with anyone named Zoya Oleskin?”
His head snaps to attention. “What?” he asks me. I repeat my question.
For a moment my uncle’s face goes blank. He’s probably thinking about all the bread lines and bribed police officers he’s left behind. The divided apartments that smelled like cats, working on the collective farms in summer, friends mysteriously disappearing. I’ve heard about these things, but it’s like listening to a tape that’s a copy of a copy of a copy; you can barely make out the words, so your imagination fills in the rest. God knows I’ve tried, anyway.
Marik clears his throat, without giving anything away. “Annushka, that was so long ago. What are you getting at?”
“Oh, nothing,” I say, searching my brain for what I can use to cover up this blunder. The only way out of this trainwreck is to turn and crash it in another direction. Good thing I have several tricks in my arsenal to vex family members. “You know what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?”
Marik sighs. “What’s that, Pochemushka?” my uncle responds in Russian. Pochemushka is a slang, cutesy term that comes from the word pochemu: why. I probably deserve to be called one today, but it still irks me, as it is generally used in a sort of a derogatory way.
“Going back to Ukraine,” I say. It’s an easy target because it’s also true.
Marik turns to look at me, and his entire body is trembling with laughter. “Why?” he asks in Russian. “What did you forget there?”
ANNA
________________
CHAPTER TEN
Back inside my uncle’s condo, I’m gratefully packing three Tupperware containers full of leftovers (a very exciting development when you’re living mostly on instant oatmeal packets), when Marik sees me and relays to everyone what I told him on the porch. He starts laughing again. He thinks it’s the funniest thing.
My dad is quiet, and my mother is furious. “Are you crazy?” she asks me when we’re back in the car. The mix of her perfume and my grandmother’s immediately makes my stomach uneasy, on top of the fact that sitting in a car always feels to me like being trapped in a moving death cage. And did I mention the wine? There was a fifth cup consumed inside, while I was waiting for my mom to finish showing off her purple studded purse from Japan to my aunts. “Everyone is killing themselves to leave that country, and you want to go back?”