all the pretty little horses (put your hand in mine)

She wakes in darkness, tapping on my door. Silhouetted in the hallway she tells me she has had another nightmare, her voice hushed, defeated. I ask if she wants a cracker, maybe a glass of water. She shakes her head no, just holding her arms up to me.

We shuffle around the house, her chin digging into my shoulder as I carry her from room to room. I hum a melody for her, an old cowboy song.

When you wake,
you shall have,
all the pretty little horses.
Blacks and bays,
dapples and greys,
go to sleep 
you little baby.

The sky still black, the streets are wet with rain and it is time to make that first coffee, to get her ready for school. She stares up at me, hands crossed on her chest, blankets pulled up to her chin.

"Pop." She says quietly.
"Yes." I whisper, stepping on some legos that crunch under my bare feet.
"Mom said you should die." She says.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"She says you should just be dead." She says, sighing and staring right through me.
"I don't know what to tell you kiddo." I say.
"Is it true?" She asks.
I shake my head no.
"What did you dream?" I ask, changing the subject.
"We were in a train station." She begins. "And then I got lost from you."
"Aha." I say, brushing the hair from her eyes. "It was just a dream kiddo, just a dream."
I pinch her nose, kiss her forehead.
"Pop." She says. "Can I have some crunchy cereal now?"

I go to the kitchen, splashing some in a bowl. The sky is empty. A low wind whistles through the windows we leave barely open. I imagine her dreams, the thoughts in her head when she is forced to listen to such madness. I imagine her sitting quietly, nodding her head because she is small and what else can she do, alone with such a mastermind?

Then I imagine her fighting back, arguing, refuting. But that is me, and my way - not hers. That is my struggle, my way. She is much wiser than me, choosing the path of least resistance. She can roll with punches, knowing she will be back here soon enough, to lick her wounds, to eat and laugh, to be kissed goodnight, to wake up with a full day ahead of her.

Snow pants on, hat and sweater and hood all strapped into place we go downstairs and outside. The sidewalk is slick, smelling of rotting leaves and car exhaust. She holds my hand tight, as we navigate around the puddles.

"Pop." She says at one point.
"Yes?" I say.
"When I am at mom's house, even for some hours." She says. "I just hide in a place in my mind until you come and get me."
"I know." I tell her. "You told me before."
"Ok." She says, and falls quiet.

Our walk is silent, as faces flash past us in the dim light. There are no words now, just a playground that stands empty, a traffic light that counts out the seconds we have to cross a busy street. Her hand in mine, holding fiercely. The underpass, our footsteps echoing in the wet corridor. And then inside the school, dressing her quietly. I almost forget a doll she shoved in my pocket before we left the house.

She smiles up at me.

the old wound

The old wound reopens. The dread I feel single every time E is supposed to be dropped off, or when I should pick her up - it is true this time. A thousand promises broken now, and I am still caught off guard. Her mother is playing the usual bait-and-switch, the screaming manipulation, the violent ultimatum, the turning off of the phones, me left furious staring out a window at the black sky, already late for the party, half-dressed suddenly disgusted, thinking to just stay home instead. There is a war of text messages. She tells me I am making my daughter cry. She tells me I will soon get cancer as a God's punishment for my behavior.

I call N, talk the situation through, examine the implications, explore angles. It is not going to happen today, but it will buy us something for tomorrow. E is sitting in that lonely apartment now, her nose bubbling with snot, her tears dripping in splotches on her tshirt. She knows that I am making the right choice, a strategic one. She wants to go to the party of course. She just wants out of there as early as possible.

At one point, E gets a phone turned on and I catch her. I know her mother has put it on speaker and is listening to every word I say. E is there now, just breathing loud, then asking me "are we going?". I tell her what has happened, simplify things. I ask her what she would do if she was me. "I don't know." She replies, her voice trailing off.

I will take her at the normal time the next day. The schedule will remain. No special exceptions. No generosity. No trade-offs. No party for E to go to, where there are two beautiful dogs, a roomful of kind foreigners, exotic dishes to sample. No, she will sit in that lonely place but know I am coming tomorrow even though I negotiated all of this days ago.

I try to call her later, to tell her the names of the dogs, to wish her good night but the phone is turned off again.

Standing in the hallway, counting the old tiles one more time as I wait for the sound of the door unlocking and in a breath her arms are around my neck and she is squeezing me like a tiny python in a big furry coat. She kisses my cheek, making a face from the stubble there. All at once we are outside, buying fragrant yellow turnips and a box of blueberries. I have two extra johnny cakes from breakfast that I wrapped in plastic. She eats them in the street, crumbs collecting in her scarf, giving me a big thumbs-up, her mouth full and smiling.

We are at rinock, waiting in line to buy one of those fabulous chickens, then coffee beans and some chocolates. Fresh bread from the oven, a chunk of goat's cheese, then the smokey air from the Uzbek restaurant by the entrance. The air cold, the sky hard and blue, the clouds moving fast we laugh and run, my giant bag sliding off my shoulder. Now bags of onions and green feijoa that are so sour and smooth. Now turning the keys and home, as she tells me she is hungry again, so we make little balls from leftover pumpkin risotto and roll them in flour, saute them in olive oil and eat them right there our fingers yellow as we lick the last bits from them.

She will stand with her eyes squeezed closed as I trim her bangs, get her to take a bath, practice some guitar. All at once she is tired, telling me a story and falling asleep mid-sentence. I surround her with animals to squeeze in the middle of the night. I turn off the light.

Yes, the old wound reopened. The pain and embarrassment never fade. The fresh taste of blood inside my mouth is there, the flush of humiliation, then the healing.

the night of the impossible

It was on an August night ten years ago that I saw the moon caught behind clouds, perfectly close to an ornate tower of red brick. Standing on a bridge with the silhouette of Red Square behind me, stuck in some sort of fairy tale, I tried to relight the cigar in my hand. I had no idea what I was doing, swept up in the moment and the prospect of a real Cuban to tell everyone about back in New York. It burned my throat, and I did not draw on it correctly.  

Pulling my coat around me, I went back to the Rossiya, where $50 a night got you a simple room draped in aging pink velvet. They say the radios set into the walls were actually intercoms that could be used to eavesdrop on guests. In the elevator two girls were pressing their hands inside the jacket of a drunken man, all laughing in slow motion, the grotesque light of the tiny space etching their bad skin and the frayed edges of their jackets. I exit on the third floor, the corridors dim and narrow, a labyrinth of old wood and worn carpets. The same old woman sits at her desk. I give her my passport as she hands me my room key. She says nothing. I turn back, pulling 50 rubles from my pocket to buy a beer from her tiny refrigerator. 

The halls are full of prostitutes. Tall, thin, wearing nothing but leopard spot lingerie and heels, with some kind of robe or coat draped across their shoulders. I stare at my feet and try to avoid their eyes, the corridor a gauntlet of perfume, naked thighs, whispers of broken English. It takes me some time to find my room this way, but I fumble inside, sipping at once from the beer, cracking the windows open. That moon is still there, bright and pale behind the storm clouds. I struggle with the cigar a bit more, enough to slump into the lumpy armchair by the window and gaze out at the rooftops, to sip some warm, soapy Soviet beer, to stare at the torn threads and warped poles around the window.

The phone rings, as it does every time I return to the room. I let it ring for a while.

"Do you want massage?" A woman asks in a flat voice.

"No thanks." I say.

She breathes for a moment, and does not hang up.

"Wish I could order another beer." I say.

She clears her throat, then hangs up.

The room feels very quiet now, as I place the receiver back in its cradle. 

I give up on the cigar that has gone out again. It feels fat and damp in my hand. 

There is a messy pile of pages on the bed that I will edit tonight long after the moon has passed out of sight. My precious first novel sits in fragments that cannot be sewn back together it seems. 

I sat on a boat landing on the edge of the river a few days ago, a line of yellow buildings stretching past me into the distance. In the roar of traffic, I had an epiphany, scribbling as pages flipped in the dust and wind. I don't know if the ending will work better now, after the solution has had some time to be absorbed. Something about an ant crawling across the carpet of a cheap motel room, something about a chance run-in with an old love. 

It all seems so impossible.

The snow kicks up, turning the air thick and white. You cannot see out the windows as it tumbles down, then drifts back up in cartwheels that make E jump and shout. It looks like night outside, a strange white night.

She asks if we can make a snowman. I dress her warmly, wrapping a giant scarf twice around her tiny neck. We go outside, our feet making perfect prints on the sidewalk.

I look out at the river, and a set of stairs that lead down to a landing.

of cosmonauts and blind saints

We are driving to Taganka to visit an icon, Matrona of Moscow. E has been with her mother for two days, and I am restless, unable to enjoy the three day weekend very much. N taps her hands on the steering wheel to some new music playing on the stereo. She runs a hand across the stubble on my chin, squeezes my arm for a moment.

"There may be very long lines." She says at one point.

I click pictures of random landmarks as we make our way across the city.

The convent is a sprawling collection of buildings behind a red brick wall. As we park a gypsy approaches us, a child in her arms. She accosts us with strange insults, then begs in a stream of crude Russian that I can barely understand. I see her hostile eyes, the way her mouth pokes out in a sort of snarl.

There are countless people in wheelchairs, hands outstretched.

I see rubles on the ground, not kopeks. They shine in the late afternoon sun and no one picks them up.

People stand in hushed groups, arm in arm against the cold. The lines curl around the walkways, along fences and then disappear. The rumble of a chainsaw is the only sound, a strange intrusion. Some take holy water from a glass-enclosed cistern. Some wander with handfuls of white flowers, giant lilies that are starting to freeze in the November air.

The icon is outside. People approach it one at a time, kissing the glass, kneeling, praying, crossing themselves again and again. There is no chaos here, no jumble of order, no VIP section. There are people who are sick, wounded, blind. There are people praying for their relatives who cannot leave the house. This is a place of last resorts, when medicine has failed.

She was born with empty eye sockets, lids covering nothing. Intended for the orphanage, her mother Natalia had a dream that a white bird with the same blindness visited her. She took this as a divine message and Matrona was not abandoned.

The icon is large, her habit a deep and calm shade of blue. One hand stands in the air, frozen in a state of forgiveness. We stand for a little while, drinking it all in. My hands are pulled into fists in my pockets trying to get warm. N looks at me, her face asking if we will join one of the lines. I gesture with my chin to just walk around a bit.

A heavy thud echoes through the convent. The chainsaw stops. The carcass of a tree rests on a bed of dry leaves.

I look at the faces around me, drinking in their pilgrimage, the hours of waiting that lead to a golden moment of attention, the focusing of energy and desire in the open air. Then the return home on the metro, of life dissolved back to the simple patterns of cooking dinner, brushing teeth, taking out garbage.

Back at the car, there are more gypsies now. That woman is carving the air with insults, waving her hands around, her child staring at us with wide eyes. We are in the car and they bang on the windows, palms slapping against the glass next to our faces. I think of the rubles on the sidewalk and see they are still there.

The street is thick with nervous, lurching traffic as the gypsy woman crosses it, the child dangling from her elbow, weaving around the cars.

I close my eyes. I cannot watch.

We drive as night falls. There is nothing obvious to do but fill the hours somehow. I feel a dark hand touching me as I try to call E and the phones are turned off. I see her being interrogated by her mother. I see her going to sleep without dinner, in a dark room with nothing but a few cats to keep her company.

We end up watching a film at home after sipping cups of strong black tea. N rests her head on my shoulder. There is a scene in the film when a young woman tells a story about a Russian astronaut on some solo mission. There is a constant tapping sound in the tiny spacecraft. He rips up the controls, trying to find the source of the sound. He cannot find it. Alone in space for days, the sound starts to drive him mad. He cannot sleep.

At one point he comes to an understanding. He must fall in love with this sound instead of hating it. He must drink it in, allow it to become some kind of music.

He does this somehow, and the sound is suddenly gone.

I am haunted by the story of the cosmonaut. I try to find out who it was based on, wondering if Gagarin is the hero once again. The story is a powerful one, one I want to live up to. I grow drunk with a hazy optimism, seeing a road to take.

I learn that the story is a just a fable, a wise and calculated fabrication. It is a tasty bit of filmmaking and nothing more. I have spent hours meditating on this transformation, the turning of pain and ugliness into beauty. I have coaxed myself to accept it is possible, convinced myself I can accomplish the same.

And now I understand how hard it is. Possible in fiction, maybe not in life.

In the light of morning, I watch N sleeping. There is one rose next to her from a bouquet I gave her weeks ago. She has saved one flower that has dried perfectly, frozen in gesture and life. I wonder why she keeps it with water and in a glass.

Maybe this is why I love her so much.