When I first saw the title of the movie Mr. Mom, I assumed it was about my father. Yuri did everything back then. For days and days, years and years, it was just him and me. We slept in the same creaky fold-out bed, shared the same goals and plans. At times, I could not tell his dreams from my own. Or his dreams became my dreams. He woke me each morning, before first light. As I said, he did not need an alarm. Five o’clock, his eyes just opened. He made me breakfast and helped me get ready. He told me what we needed to do that day, where my attention should be focused. You have a good day, it’s a good day. You put together a string of good days, you have a good career.
That’s what he believed.
While I was playing, Yuri worked. Whatever he did, the work had to be flexible because he had to be back at the apartment each afternoon before I came in the door. I was dropped off by an instructor or some kid’s parents. Yuri and I would sit and talk through every moment of the day as he prepared me for the day to come. He dealt with my equipment and clothes. For years, most of my clothes were hand-me-downs, skirts and shorts and shoes that once belonged to Anna Kournikova. The first thing my mom did when she finally arrived in America was go through my closet and throw all that stuff in the trash. But what did Yuri know about clothes? He fed me and dressed me and cut my hair. I remember sitting on the toilet in the bathroom as he brushed out and trimmed my bangs, straight across, like a kid in a cartoon.
Was I lonely? Was I sad? I don’t know. This was my life and I had no other life to compare it to. I spoke to my mother once a week on the phone. The calls were short, because of the rates. She asked what I was doing and told me that she loved me. She still managed my education, even though she was so far away. That was what mattered to her—that I remember my Russian heritage, that I be able to read and write Russian, that I know the Russian writers and their important books. She said I was never to forget who I was and where I came from. “If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know who you are,” she said. I don’t really remember the conversations, but I do remember the letters. I wrote to her every day. I’d scribble at the bottom: “I love you, I love you, I love you!” One day, a Russian boy I was friends with—he had a brother and his family was rich—grabbed one of my letters and ran with it, reading it out loud. He made fun of me. “Why do you write ‘I love you’ so much?” he asked.
“It’s my mom,” I said, pleading.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “It’s so cheesy.”
I remember looking at him and asking, “Don’t you tell your mom you love her?”
He said, “Well, yeah, but not as many times as you do.”
“Well, probably because you have your mom and I don’t.”
I had tears in my eyes when I said this, so maybe I was sadder than I want to admit.
When I was a little older, I took classes at a public school near the academy, but at the beginning, when I hardly knew any English, my only teacher was an old Russian lady, a tutor who came to the apartment a few times a week. She taught me the basics—math, history, English—though I learned more by watching TV. These early years toughened me up. In fact, I think they explain my character, the style of my game, my on-court persona, why I can be hard to beat. If you don’t have a mother to cry to, you don’t cry. You just hang in there, knowing that eventually things will change—that the pain will subside, that the screw will turn. More than anything, that has defined my career. I do not bitch. I do not throw my racket. I do not threaten the line judge. I do not quit. If you want to beat me, you are going to have to work for every point in every game. I will not give you anything. Some people, especially the sort that grew up in country clubs, on manicured lawns, are not used to a girl who just keeps coming.
Of course, this is what Yudkin was talking about, that unnameable thing, that doggedness that is so Russian. My father tells a few stories, of key moments when he realized I was a tough player. There was one time, when I was six years old, before we left for America. I woke up with a bump on my eye, like a pimple on the cornea. At first, OK, no big deal. But it started to grow. One day, I woke and it was killing me. Wow, the pain. Yuri took me to the hospital. They called for a special doctor, an eye surgeon, a woman. She looked me over, then came back and said, “We have to cut away that bump immediately. Right now.” OK, said Yuri, do it. “But it’s near the eyeball, which means we can’t give anesthesia,” she said. “I won’t be able to make the eye numb. Your daughter will feel every cut.” OK, OK. Just do it. She took me into a room and somehow I got through it. Twenty minutes later, we went back to see Yuri. The doctor was white and speechless. Yuri was scared. He said, “My God, what’s happened?”
“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “Everything is fine. I did a good job. No problem, no big deal. But something does bother me—Masha did not cry. That’s not normal. That’s not good. You’ve got to cry.”
Yuri said, “What can we do?”
The doctor said, “I don’t know, but it’s not normal. She’s supposed to be crying.”
“OK,” said Yuri, “we can’t change her. She wants to cry, she will cry. She doesn’t want to cry, you cannot push her to cry.”
We took the bus back home, and I didn’t say a word. When we got into the house, and my mother embraced me, that’s when I cried. Oh my God, did I cry!
Another time: We were running for a bus, late for a practice. And I fell. Hard. Very hard. The fingernail on my pinkie ripped off. Completely. I was bleeding all over the place.
“Holy shit,” said Yuri, “we need to get back home.”
I said, “It’s OK, Pop. We’ve got to practice.”
Meanwhile, my game was developing. It came from repetition, hitting the ball again and again. I was getting stronger. My shots were becoming harder and faster. From the start, my game was all about hitting that ball, low and flat. To put the other girls back onto their heels. I was playing in tournaments and was quickly ranked number five in Florida for age ten and under. I was developing the persona that would become such an important part of my game. I was grunting when I hit the ball. Even then, I tried to set myself apart. No emotion. No fear. Like ice. I was not friends with the other girls, because that would make me softer, easier to beat. They could have been the nicest girls in the world, and I wouldn’t even have known it. I chose not to know it. I figured we could be friends later, after I retired, and they retired, when we were all older and content. But not now, not yet. My biggest edge is that persona. Why would I give it up? Before I even go out onto the court, some of the other players are intimidated. I can feel it. They know that I’m strong. I have no interest in making friends on my battlefield. If we are friends, I give up a weapon. My former coach Thomas Högstedt told me that his advice to players going against me was this: “Don’t look Maria in the eyes before, during, or after the match.” When I asked Nick about my early days, he said, “Well, there was your game, then there was your game. That’s what people don’t understand about tennis. You do not have to be the best player in the world to win. You only have to be better, on that day, than the person across from you. And that’s something you understood from the start.”
“You scared the shit out of the other girls,” he added. “Especially Jelena and Tatiana. You intimidated them. I don’t know whether you did it deliberately, but you had an air about you: this is a business and you are in my way.”