the honey badger and the hare krishnas

The afternoon sun bangs off the frozen river. E is with her mother now, for a handful of hours. 

She cried before she left, her half-built lego restaurant on the coffee table. E stood up, her movements stiff and awkward. Walking like a tiny robot, she came to my chair and pulled herself onto my lap. I was still waking up, a cold cup of coffee next to my hands. She slumped against me. 

"I don't want to go to Mom's house." She tells me under her breath.

"I know." I say, instinctively.

She lets out a long sigh.

"But it's only for part of one day a week now." I tell her.

She nods, her chin trembling.

 "And you need to go and take care of the cats." I add. "They miss you."

She looks up at me.

"You have to teach them English." I say.

She cries some more.

I hold her for some time, watching two plumes of smoke curling into the cold sky.

"Life." She says. "Life is a thing."

"Yes it is, kiddo," I tell her. "Yes it is."

We take the elevator downstairs, and she is jumpy. Two nights before she had a terrible dream that we were separated. She was in an elevator. Before I could follow her inside, the doors closed and she never saw me again. She woke up at three, and it took almost two hours to get her back to sleep. She clung to my arms long after she began to snore. Even in sleep, she would not let go easily.

It is bitter cold. My breath freezes inside my mouth. I walk fast, my hands curled up, shoved deep in my pockets. I cross a bridge and the frozen river. I think of E's life, and how she wakes up each day wondering where she will sleep, and who will take her from school. I think of how her mother constantly lies to her, fabricating elaborate excuses for living half a mile from us and leaving her with me after she plans to take her for three nights, then two, then one, then none. She does not call for days, pretending it is all so normal. 

The cobblestones are noisy under my heels. Old Arbat is a tourist alley where no cars can drive. It reminds me of Astor Place with the graffitied bricks, with the students laughing and jumping around in sloppy groups. It has been overrun with coffee chains and sneaker stores just like my old neighborhood in New York, a new one every few weeks it seems.

In the distance, a line of people are dancing. I hear a harmonium, and finger cymbals. It is the Hare Krishnas, twisting in a ragged unison. Their faces are painted. They wear white sheets over jackets and sweatpants. The song is beautiful, slicing into the cold air.

I stand for a moment as they pass. The music is soaring, their voices raised, hands held high. My eyes are wet from blinking. I feel myself crying for almost a minute, the last look on E's face behind the car window swelling up inside me. I think of when she was born, and how she has grown to be so very brave.

The music is fading. I dry my face with the edge of a scarf N bought for me. I need to go buy a music book for E's guitar class.

I am almost there.

nice to meet you (and the vinegar kick)

One and one has become two. Two years. Two people. One life. One bed. One kitchen. Four guitars. Bags of mismatched socks. Plates of foreign coins. A tiny pair of wooden shoes hanging from a nail in the wall. A jar of wine corks.

There are three toothbrushes next to the bathroom sink.

Staring down the lens of memory, the chain of events is still impossible. Me, sitting on a plane to New York to get a new visa. The woman next to me with a hawkish nose and a pile of magazines says nothing for the first nine hours of the flight. Before we land, they hand out immigration forms. She is nervous, and asks my help. In broken English and my terrible Russian I talk her through the questions, suggesting the safest answers. She is thanking me, asking me where she should eat, where her French boyfriend should take her. I give a few names, places that hold countless memories for me. The Italian place I ate lunch at every day of the Fellini festival when it was clear he was going to die.

She takes my information, sees E's picture on my phone. This was back when I was too scared and embarrassed to tell the truth of our situation. She has a daughter too, a bit older. I explain things in crude sentences. She stares at me, suddenly knowing everything before I say it.

A month later, I am living in a two room apartment with a kitten. The chance of keeping E overnight is rare, the blackmailing and police calls are only getting started. The woman contacts me, thanks me for sending them to such great places. She asks about E, about everything.

She tells me there is someone she wants me to meet, an old friend that speaks excellent English. I have very little money, but the thought of entertaining, of cooking for a stranger and a new friend with children running around is overwhelming. We agree on the day - Saturday, January 23. I clean the house, the little cat chasing me from room to room. E helps me, soaking the savoiardi in a dish of espresso. All at once the phone rings and she is asking for directions, and I do not realize her English is suddenly better, and that it is her friend on the phone. I am speaking fast, my hands caked with flour, describing landmarks to turn at. There are never signs here.

And then the they are ringing the doorbell, and I have no place to hang their coats. There is a forest of boots in the entrance. And N is standing, fixing a belt, adjusting her black sweater, instinctually moving her hair around even if there is no mirror. And she sees me, in an old pair of jeans, barefoot, unshaved. I am wiping my hands on a dishtowel. I take hers, shaking it gently.

"Ochin priadna." I tell her.
"Nice to meet you." She replies, her eyes as big as quarters.

I made us some eggs a few days ago, a mess of homefries and bacon. I splashed tabasco on my side of the dish.
N looks at me, twisting her mouth.
"What." I say, sipping coffee.
She tastes my side.
"Mmm." She says. "Why don't you give me some tabasco?"
I am lost.
"I thought you don't like things that are so spicy." I say.
"It's not so spicy." She replies.
She makes that little smile, that half-sigh, half-laugh.
"So now you like tabasco?" I ask.
"I always did." She says.
I roll my eyes. I look at this beautiful woman in her loose bathrobe, her hand on her knee, her foot resting against my ankle. I close my eyes, breathing in the scent of cold juice, the salt, the vinegar kick. That's what the good times smell like, I tell myself.

the taste of falling ice

"Translate!" She orders E, who cowers in her chair.
E mumbles something to me, saying she will just tell me later.
Mothers and children stare at us, as I sigh slowly, loudly. This foul-smelling, fat little woman is piling up insults and accusations that I almost understand. After she turned her music theory class into a grabby, lukewarm school play for a month I stopped bringing E. This woman made her cry too much.

After the holidays trickle into the empty, cold weeks of January I decide to come back one last time. I believe she will really teach E something, that somehow the rough edges will be worn down by a few weeks absence, that we will be welcomed back with jokes and smiles.

I stare at the back of E's head, and the crooked ponytail I twisted her long hair into. I can't listen to this woman any more. I remember last Spring and how a family of cockroaches were crawling across the walls of this same room. They would advance past the old posters on the walls, and then drop - one right on my head. I swat it away. No one says anything. E jumps in her chair. The teacher does not say a thing. A minute later, another one falls - right on my head again. The class is half over, but I stand up with E in one movement, her workbooks and pencils and flash cards a mess in my arms. The teacher raises an eyebrow, as if we are being foolish.
"Tarakan." I say, as we leave. "Ochin mnoga tarakan."
I close the door a bit louder than I intended.
E looks up at me in the dark corridor.
"Just tell me I said there are a lot of cockroaches in there." I say.
She nods yes.

I argue with myself. This is a conservatory, not a playground. They take things very seriously here. This is not playtime. I think back to college, and the electric crackle of art school. There were endless critiques and evaluations. Quadruple secret probation for some. It was exciting because it was difficult, yet remotely possible to do something, to make something. Each teacher was tougher than the next, but they all cared in some way. They all wanted you to succeed. They were not cruel for the sake of cruelty, or some sort of masochism. They were tough to the edge of damage, and then they sent you home with a sense of accomplishment - that you had done your absolute best.

I wonder if this is something a six year old can benefit from. With guitar, it works fine. But that is a different teacher. She plays until her fingers hurt, for herself, for him.

That's not playtime.

The teacher is laying into E now, while the other children pick their noses and rest their heads on the tables about to fall asleep. She criticizes E's pencil, her eraser, the bent corners of the pages in her workbook. She is trying to get the children to write down the notes she is playing on the piano - their first lesson in dictation. E is right as far as the first two notes. I see her making a mistake with the next ones. I rest my hand on her shoulder, and tell her to think again about them. The teacher is jumping from her chair, spit flying from her mouth.
"Don't tell her the answer." She says.
"Nyet." I reply, calmly. "Tolka gavarit ne pravilna." (No, I only told her she was mistaken.)
The mothers in the room are drinking it all in. I see them constantly whispering answers to their children, competing vicariously to get perfect marks from the teacher's red pen.
The teacher is stabbing at E's notebook, tearing through the page with the eraser.
"Wrong." She tells her. "This is what happens when you miss class for a month."

I stare at her, angrily. There is a terrible taste in my mouth, like when I know something is going to happen no matter how much I try to avoid it. I think to remind her that messy rehearsals for a pathetic little play are not music dictation. I think to tell her that E already had a play in her kindergarden, that she sang loud and beautifully, that she danced, that she laughed.

E is shrinking into her chair.
A tear slides down one cheek.
"Stop crying." The teacher barks at her.
I know this is exactly what E's mother does when she cries - this Soviet answer to behavior, to reject it. Of course E does not stop. The teacher launches into her. I breathe in and let the breath out as loud as possible - the air whistling past my lips. I shake my head to myself. Of course, my impulse is to grab E and slip out the door like last Spring. But that would be like an admission of guilt, a confusing message of surrender. I am caught between protecting my child, saving face as an American and setting an example for seeing things through.

I try to teach E that we are not quitters.

The teacher goes into one of her fifteen minute stories about how some special child became a professional musician. No one listens. Children are drawing pictures on the corners of their pages. Mothers are resting their cheeks on the cold desks. One is even snoring. I close E's books, organize the flash cards. I want her to know class is over, and the worst part is behind us. Her story ends with some kind of parable. No one cares. Books are slapped closed. Everyone leaves.

In the hallway, I try to talk to one mother - a dancer with pockmarked skin. I tell her in crude phrases that this teacher thinks she is helping by being so cruel, but it just makes E sad. She tells me to ignore this woman, to see things abstractly. I tell her E cries in the class not because she is right or wrong, but because this teacher talks like E's mother - triggering something in her personal life that has nothing to do with chords and intervals. The ballerina mother nods, understanding. This rarely happens to me here - being understood by an acquaintance. If this teacher listened to me and understood her mother says "don't cry" on the rare night when E is in her house, then sends her to bed with no dinner, she would not say such things in the class. I have tried to explain all of this to her, but she brushes me away. She will not listen to anyone criticize a Russian, especially a mother. Even a mother she has never met.

We walk slowly in the street. The cars are thundering past us, spritzing the parked cars with handfuls of dirty slush. I smell something terrible - like dishwashing liquid that has been lit on fire. E squeezes my hand as we creep across the icy sidewalk. She tells me something but I cannot hear her. I lead us to the the string of courtyards that run behind the buildings. We will walk behind them on the way back to kindergarden.

Navigating between the brackish mud puddles and slush, we hear a massive thud. Workers are freeing giant sheets of ice from the roof. It falls in massive pieces. A cluster of Tajiks in orange jumpsuits wave at us to stop. I am not in the mood to stand with ice dropping from hundreds of feet above us. I lead E across the courtyard through mounds of fresh snow, weaving between a half-hidden playground and a low fence. I lift her over it, and we make our way back to the warm entrance of the kindergarden. Before we go inside, I kneel down and bring my face close to hers.
"I want you to have a lot of fun this afternoon, ok?" I say quietly.
She nods.
"I want you to forget all of that bullshit with Ludmilla. She is an idiot, and you are never going to see her again - ok, maybe in the hallway but that's it. She is no longer your teacher."
"Good." E says, setting her chin straight.
"It's her loss, kiddo." I tell her. "And she is never going to play psychologist with you again."
E smiles a little.
"We'll try the other teacher, ok?" I say. "I heard she is worse, but who knows."
She holds out her pinky to me. I lock mine against hers. This is our promise ritual.
"I love you." I tell her, then ring the doorbell and bring her inside.

As she climbs the stairs her snowpants make funny noises against each other.

Outside, the sun is banging off the car windshields.
The ice is still dropping like thunder.
I suddenly feel very alone.
In the market I buy two sweet potatoes for $8.
The beggars hands are shaking in the underpass.
I know I am lucky.

I am going home to work, and to put a chicken in the oven.
I know we are lucky.
I know we are lucky.

the emperor's new clothes (are away)

Every night brings nightmares. Better they are mine, not E's is my first thought. Better they are not N's, my second. A headache surfaces each dim morning. Coffee is sipped that turns cold from the wind slipping past the window cracks. The images, the situations of these dreams are like a poison. 

They tell stories that are so black, so ugly, grotesque and thankless I cannot repeat them to anyone. 

The city is empty.

Anyplace else would feel sleepy and intimate. I could feel a freedom on the empty sidewalks and parking lots. But no, this is Moscow. Its facade is so shallow, so paper-thin that it grows transparent in these quiet days. There is nothing here but money and the absence of money. Centuries of history mean nothing.

The people mean nothing.

There is no future, no past. Just potatoes and mud. Desperate sellers of withering flowers. The old growing older. Fake news. Fake companies. Fake reviews of restaurants that are already closed. Fake cheese. Fake wine. Fake shoes.

An expression turns in my mind. "It's not a lie if you believe it." Told as a bitter, funny anecdote it used to make me grin.

We are in the supermarket to buy bread and milk. A handful of young men stand in silence waving their hands. They whip the air with gestures. Quiet grunts punctuate the stale Christmas songs playing on the PA system.

They are deaf.

They are arguing about how many bottles of vodka to buy with an operatic level of sign language. I smell that intense body odor produced by so many people here. Like raw onions and rotting liver, it coats the roof of your mouth if you try to breathe with it open.

As I write, E stands at the edge of my bedroom door. She hovers in the dark corridor, a hand resting on the wall. I ask if she is hungry. Her head shakes no.

She stays there.

All at once she is next to me, arms stretched long and upwards. I hug her. Her arms are tight around my neck. She cries quietly. I run through a list of reasons. She says it is none of them.

"I just don't want to be here." She whispers at one point.
"Me too, kiddo." I whisper back. "Me too."

hard water

We are all together, celebrating deep into the night. E is chirping like a little bird, at one moment plinking the keys of a piano, the next swapping the costumes on a small army of dolls. N is chewing on dried persimmons, talking to an endless stream of relatives on her phone, all wishing great things for us this year. I slurp down champagne after champagne, not the slightest bit drunk. 

I see everything with a cold eye. It has started to snow. A woman's lipstick is smeared. A bored teenage boy is about to fall asleep. There is a perfect handprint mark of flour on my jeans from the dinner I cooked earlier, in our apartment.

My thoughts run to the minutes just after midnight, driving to pick up E. She emerges from behind that door. She tells me her mother will leave her with us for the entire week. The madwoman claims to have fallen in the bathtub and her brain has been hurt, that she will soon go to the hospital and will only be better on Saturday. E winces at the transparency, the half-baked lie. It saddens her, but not as much as she feels good to spend a week off with us. 

The dim light in the sky tells us nothing about the hour. The streets are silent. E is hungry for an egg sandwich. N will sleep for another few hours, her perfumed shoulders a warm mound above the blankets that I sneak in to kiss, wondering when she will rise.

And then after picking through the leftovers, after some board games and E has gone to sleep, we watch films late into the night.

The house is clean. The dishes are washed. There is nothing to do, for once. There is nothing to wake up early for.

A cautious optimism fills the hours. So many battles behind us. So many won. I see a march to progress in E's face, and in the drawings she makes. We are like water, eroding the hard edges of rocks. We bend, but never stop. We are wearing the monster down, molecule by molecule.