When we returned to Wisconsin, my parents agreed that one day back in Russia was more than enough for them. On future trips they traveled to China and Australia and London; they had no interest in returning to Russia, or anywhere near it. Had we moved to LA or New York like many of my cousins, perhaps I would not feel whatever deep, deep longing had nestled its way inside me where homesickness once was. But I could not change the past any more easily than I could change myself.
“Hi,” I tell Zoya, once her face appears in front of me. Despite our previous internet correspondence, I feel nervous, so I take out another tiny nugget of pot and put it in Sylvia Plath and smoke it. Soon, my emotions dissipate into the air. It is hard to hold onto a thought, let alone a feeling when you are high. I’m not sure I am ready, nor am I sure what exactly you’re supposed to do when you see your potential half-sister for the first time, but I no longer feel so nervous about it.
“Hi,” a pixelated Zoya tells me from the other side of the world. From my hometown. The place I wanted to go more than anywhere else for years and never could. Even though I can only see her pixelated face and half a wall, I suddenly ache with the need to be there in person.
“Hi,” I say again.
Zoya giggles a little. “This is weird,” she admits. The lousy resolution resolves itself, and I am able now to study her face, which I do. The first thing I notice is her eyebrows, light brown, plucked too thin for her broad forehead. Then her small blue eyes, which appear a bit sunken behind her full nose. Her upper lip is slim, but her bottom lip is full. Her lips are quite pleasant. As are her shoulders, which are compact and narrow. I expand my vision more outward to try and understand what combination they make, and I conclude quickly that these attributes in no way combine towards something familiar. She is pretty, but she looks nothing like me or my dad. There’s nothing in her appearance that would make me think we are remotely related.
This is both a relief and a disappointment.
“So… how’s it going? How are you?” I ask, unsure of what to say. If I knew this was, in fact, my sister staring back at me, I would maybe act differently. I’d be dying to know all the details of her life, what her interests are, and what she is like. Even if she were simply a new friend I would want to know these things. Because I don’t know, and she is not a random person but someone who believes something that could potentially be very damaging, I am not sure if I should be more cautious or more welcoming.
“Okay,” she says, also nervous. I continue to scrutinize her face a bit more: though she looks nothing like us, nor does she seem very Jewish, she most certainly looks Russian. I can quite often spot a Russian person before they even say one word; my whole family can. Though if someone asked me what exactly makes a person look Russian, I don’t think I could answer. I just know.
“Alive,” she adds, letting out an uncomfortable giggle.
“I’ve been thinking,” I eventually start. “Why don’t you move to America instead? It might be easier, at least with the whole Jewish angle.”
“America is no longer an easy option. It hasn’t been since the nineties,” Zoya explains.
“Oh. Really? Why?”
“After the Berlin Wall fell, the prime minister of Israel urged Europe and the States to stop granting refugee status visas to Soviet émigrés, because they were not refugees, they already had a homeland in Israel, and were only moving to America for economic reasons.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that,” I say.
“Yeah. It’s okay. Israel is fine too.”
“You really want to go there though? With all the crazy religious people and everything?
“What’s your issue with Israel?” asks Zoya, picking up on something I barely register myself. “Israel is great. I went there for three months, and I didn’t want to leave.”
“Really? Why?”
“The food, the culture, the buildings. It’s so… alive. There are people out all the time, eating and drinking and smoking, laughing. They have that here too, but it’s mostly tourists. Everyone’s poor. In Israel, sure some people are poor, but there’s not so much difference between poor and not poor, like here. And at least there’s hope. There’s… life.” She turns around and looks behind her at something. “Can you wait a minute?” she asks me, then her head turns into a pixelated blur and disappears off the screen.
This gives me the opportunity to study her living quarters more closely: I see faded flower-print wallpaper, peeling at the edges, spread across much of the room. An old wooden table covered in loose papers. Books stacked on the floor under what appears to be some bus maps. It’s not much smaller than my own, but it seems far older, and far more cramped, though this probably comes from a severe lack in organizing skills. There is no visible door, nor any useful furniture besides the foldout couch and table. In combination it resembles the sort of room I’ve seen in photo albums of old Soviet apartments. This doesn’t exactly surprise me. When my grandma Mila last visited Chernovtsy, she said the building next to our old apartment on Ruska St., which had been under construction when we left, was still not done. At that point, ten years had passed.
“Sorry,” Zoya says when she returns, now wearing a large purple down coat over her body, re-pixelated. “Our pipes froze again. I tell my neighbors to keep the water running when it’s this cold, but they won’t do it. They’re narcomanee, so what can you do…”
“Narcomanee?” I ask, unfamiliar with the word.
Zoya mimes a needle in the arm. “Heroin,” she says. “It’s a big problem in Ukraine. It’s cheaper than cigarettes now.”
“Oh,” I say. As if I need any more reason to feel for this poor woman. It’s amazing she isn’t a junkie like her neighbors. I find that I like and respect her all the more given these circumstances, especially seeing that she doesn’t seem particularly unhappy, at least any more so than anyone I know in Milwaukee. “I’m sorry.”
Zoya shrugs looks into the distance. She definitely knows what she’s facing, and is clearly doing everything she can to change her destiny. It makes me feel weak in comparison. I have so many options open to me and yet I still only do what my parents tell me.
“Listen, I have a request to ask of you. But you can say no if you want to,” she says. She shifts in her hard, wooden chair and starts pulling at a strand of hair somewhat obsessively. I recognize this tic: the fixation of a smoker wanting a cigarette. There’s an ashtray behind her so I’m not sure what stops her. Instead of lighting one up, her face turns serious.
“Go ahead.”
“A while ago I found a DNA testing place in America. My friend translated everything for me. The way it works when someone lives out of the country is they ask you to register for a number online, and then you send a cotton swab with your DNA to them in an envelope. The person in America gets a whole kit. They have to send in the kit labeled with the registered number to match up with the cotton swab; then they do the test or whatever,” she says. “So I only need your dad’s address to send the kit. I’ll pay for it obviously.”
As the details of this revelation hit me (a tad belatedly, as I have to think about each word for a long time), I snap back to reality. “Oh my God. No. Don’t send it to my dad,” I say in English. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“I was worried you might say that,” she says, disappointed.