I can’t remember my mother ever admitting to being wrong about something, and I am somewhat taken aback.
Am I embarrassed to be Jewish?
I certainly never offer up the information freely. Friends in Riverwest speak of Israel with such disgust I’d always avoided these conversations as if being associated with the place would beget disgust. I didn’t know enough about it to get involved and honestly, none of them did, either, so there seemed no point in starting. It’s not like being Jewish had ever felt natural to me, or relevant. Maybe my mom is right. On this point, anyway.
“When your sister was little, she fell in love with these red sandals that your great-aunt Vera brought from Israel.” Mom shakes her head a little and starts to smile. She’s watching the girl with the dog too, running back across the boardwalk, her bright blonde hair streaming behind her like a kite, her red shoes sparkling in the sun. “She kept walking around with them, even though they were way too big on her. She even started sleeping with them. Your father and I couldn’t get the things away from her even to clean.”
“Really? I can’t see her doing that.”
“We didn’t have much in Ukraine, as you know. It was something new, something… exciting. A pair of shoes. Israel felt like the most magical place in the world to us then,” she says, wistfully. “Anyway, I finally had to tell her that Babaika took them.”
“Who’s Babaika? Like Baba Yaga?”
“Sort of. She’s an old fairy tale ghost who likes to steal stuff,” Mom says. “All day long she was yelling ‘Babaika, Babaika, give them back!’ Bozhe moy.” She starts laughing a little. “You should have seen how serious she was.”
“I can’t imagine her being so caught up with a pair of shoes,” I find myself saying, but when I look over again, my mom is wiping her eyes. I can’t tell if it’s from laughing or crying. Either way, I am so sorry about it I have to bite my lip and look out to the beach again. I know I’m not supposed to, but I feel this… spark of excitement every time I hear stories like that, stories from the Soviet Union. Maybe it’s because, in a way, everyone else feels a little bit excited when they’re telling me. It’s probably easier after you’ve already lived through the scary, dangerous part, only to remember the high stakes, the action. Can you ever untangle nostalgia from real hardships? Is it your decision which truth to hold onto, the good or the bad, or does that decision get made without any input from you?
I clear my throat. “Do you ever… miss all that?” I ask my mom, once she has regained her composure. I’d never seen her cry and now twice in one day. She must really be losing it. I look back to the water to see that the girl is gone, replaced by a different dog, racing back and forth with a toy, followed by a man in jogging pants. The two of them stop at the water fountains outside the bathrooms and drink from it simultaneously. “The Soviet Union, I mean.”
“No,” Mom tells me, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think you understand how stressful it is to think you could be jailed or killed at any moment. To be afraid to walk in the street because you happen to be Jewish. Someone once reported me for having ‘capitalistic’ jeans. I made them myself! How can that be capitalistic? It still makes me furious.” She pauses. “I don’t think I was able to relax until we were here almost a year. I kept thinking they would find something to send us back,” my mom says. She pauses and takes a breath. “I thought it would be easier for you here, Anastasia. That you wouldn’t even remember the place you were born. But, somehow… I don’t know, for some reason you both insist on doing everything the hard way.”
I let out a groan before I can stop myself. “Have you ever thought that maybe I don’t want to do things the easy way?” I ask. “No one wants an easy life. They want a meaningful life. The two are pretty much mutually exclusive.”
“Maybe you think you don’t, but that’s only because you haven’t had to go through what we have. I didn’t want you to have to be hungry or tired or stuck in a position you hate because you don’t have another choice,” my mom says, right on cue. If survival consumes your mind for so long, you don’t get to see past it; you don’t get to the part where necessity and need start to diverge. I know she won’t understand, but I also know I need to explain. “I want what’s best for you.”
“Maybe instead of telling me what’s good for me all the time you can let me try to figure out what’s good for me,” I say. “Isn’t that the whole point of freedom? So every person can make their own decisions?”
For a moment I think I might be getting through to her—if I will ever get through to anyone it would be my mom—but then she goes and ruins it again. She looks pointedly at my clothes and says, “I wish I could do that, Anastasia, but I’m less and less sure every day that you’re able to know what that is.”
How they don’t see the irony of constantly telling me what I know and what I need to do, after escaping a life under totalitarianism, is really beyond my understanding, so I do not even try to respond to this. But my silence only eggs her on.
“I just think whatever it is you’re looking for, you can find it in Israel,” she says. “Plus, they have tons of programs that support people like you. Probably art ones, too.”
I move right past the ‘people like you’ comment and sigh. For a moment I try to picture it in my mind, but all I can imagine is camels and people with guns. A market full of hookahs and oriental rugs. Men praying to a giant wall. Donkeys in the street. Pictures my sister had shared.
“I’m not saying you should move there, honey. America is the greatest country in the world; I still believe that,” she says. “But a few weeks in a different place… might give you some perspective, at least.”
“If you like it so much why don’t you go there?” I ask.
“Maybe I will. We can go together.”
“You should go home, Mom.”
Mom scowls, her eyes darting from mine. “Anastasia…”
“I want to stay here, Mom. I want to be an artist.”
“I see,” she says, gritting her teeth.
I don’t look away. “I’m not asking for your help. I’m not asking you to understand. I’m just asking you not to hate me for it.”
I expect her to argue more, but instead she stays silent. Then she puts her hand over mine, and, surrounded by the Russian language echoing in our ears, we sit and watch the birds for what feels like a lifetime, imagining the places we would go, the things we would do.
Because we are free, and we are American, the opportunities are endless.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Biggest thanks to my editor, Chantelle Aimee Osman, without whom I would never have written this version of the book, and Polis/Agora for all the help and support throughout the publishing process.
Another big thanks to my husband, who is surprisingly good at editing for someone who doesn’t write. Without his constant analyses and our long walks discussing all aspects of human existence, this book would also never have come to fruition.
A special acknowledgment to my daughter Alma, who has been my lucky charm since the day she was born! I always thought this book was my baby until I had her and realized: nope, not my baby.
Thanks to my dad Igor and my babushka Valentina and all of the courageous relatives who came before me and are no longer with us, including the ones I was never able to meet.
Lastly, thanks to my fabulous in-laws, Haya and Eran Talmon, for all their support.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zhanna was born in the former Soviet Union and moved to the Midwest in the early 1990s. She has a master’s degree in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University, and has been published in many literary magazines, including Ninth Letter, Bellevue Literary Review, Tusculum Review, Midwestern Gothic, Another Chicago Magazine, and five times in Michigan Quarterly Review, one of which received an honorary mention in Best American Essays 2014. She and her husband, saxophonist for Jazz-Rock fusion band Marbin, recently relocated from Chicago to Milwaukee, where, besides writing, she is raising her newborn daughter.