American Gypsy (2 page)

Grandpa Andrei's first Gypsy ensemble, 1936. Grandpa Andrei is seated in the middle row, with Grandma Rose to his left

My eight-year-old sister bragged to all her friends about the move. She had recently developed a crush on George Michael and had been making plans of her own, which included locating, ensnaring, and eventually marrying the pop star.

I spent most of those last days in an emotional limbo, uncertain of how I felt about the impending metamorphosis. Petrified to part with the comfort of familiarity, I still couldn't deny my excitement at living in a place most of the world believed to be paradise. A few years back, a drummer from our ensemble had taken a trip to Las Vegas. When he came back, his eyes were as lit up as the fabled Sin City billboards.

“You get free soap in all the hotel rooms,” Vova had exclaimed in our kitchen. My parents, along with a few musician friends who came to hear about the States, wrapped their ears around Vova's stories. Sometimes, like in the case of the free-soap claim, they would burst into a debate. “I don't believe it,” somebody said. “Why should anyone need free soap in Vegas?” Another added, “To wash their ass with, after they shit all the money away.”

Roxy and I had lurked in the corners of the kitchen that night, trying to stay undetected. But when Vova produced a piece of something yellow covered in filmy plastic, we forgot about the threat of bedtime.

“What is that?” Roxy asked.

“This”—Vova held the delicate sheet between his forefinger and thumb—“is American cheese.”

Our cheese came in thick blocks, so heavy they could kill a man. Even when sliced, it never turned out so thin.

My father, always the smart-ass, interrupted the momentary glorification of the cheese. “Are the Americans rationing food? I thought the war was over.”

“No, man,” Vova said. “It's like this on purpose. You put it between two slices of bread and cook it on a skillet until the cheese melts.”

“What about the plastic?” I asked.

“Here.” Vova placed the cheese into my palm. “You pull this edge up and remove the wrapper.”

A collective “Oh” went around the kitchen.

My father shook his head, still unimpressed. He turned to Mom and said, “See? I told you. Anybody with half a brain can become rich in America.”

But all I thought was, My God—singly wrapped cheese; so exotic, so needlessly luxurious. As Vova continued to list the marvels of everyday American life, I couldn't help but daydream of what living there would be like.

I even got a special haircut for the big move. It was called the Lioness.

In the USSR, all haircuts had names. The Lioness looked identical to Jon Bon Jovi's hair except fluffier. Tamara, Mom's hairdresser, had suggested the cut to offset my eyes, which, she claimed, appeared unnaturally large compared to the rest of my face. If it's good enough for Jon, I thought, it's good enough for me.

For my arrival, I wore an outfit that you could appreciate only if you grew up during the eighties. In that case, you would be sick with envy over my aquamarine sweater and neon-pink corduroy pants, purchased on the black market for three hundred rubles. I had even put on makeup: a touch of green eye shadow and pink lipstick. I felt like a movie star. My Wednesday Addams personality nearly vanished behind the trendy Oksana who was about to move to the land of opportunity. I had no doubt I would fit right in, wearing clothes in the tradition of the MTV music videos I had studied. Perhaps this Oksana could pass for a girl with an average family, instead of a Gypsy one.

Funny: I really thought it would be that simple.

*   *   *

For the first fifteen years of my life, my parents performed in a traveling Roma ensemble the size of a circus. They had little choice in the matter—my grandparents ran it, and it was a family affair. Although my mother was Armenian by blood, once she married my father, she may as well have been Roma.

We led a spur-of-the-moment kind of life, always on the road touring and adjusting to schedules and local customs. Officially we lived in Moscow, but by the age of ten, I had traveled from the Mongolian deserts to the Siberian tundra; I had become adept at sleeping on the worn-out seats of old train stations and during show rehearsals.

Even after I started school, I tried to spend every possible moment on the road, in part to hide my inclination to forget homework assignments or to ditch school for a matinee of a foreign flick. But a bigger reason was fear. For the first five grades I'd done well as the Ukrainian Oksana. Then, one day, a classmate stuck a piece of paper to my back. I didn't notice it for some hours, and by then it was too late.

Gyp.

The classmate was Aleksey Moruskin, Nastya's boyfriend. Later, when he and I sat in the principal's office, his hair and face stained magenta-red as he sulked at the floor between the principal's desk and his feet, I knew his pout had little to do with guilt and a lot with the fact that I'd dumped a bowl of beets on his head during lunch. It was the only time I was grateful to the school cooks for making home-style vegetables every day.

Timofey Timofeevich, who sometimes punished students by making them kneel on a pile of dried beans in the corner of his office, sat across from us like God come down for Judgment one day early.

“
Raskazivay
(Tell me),” he said to Aleksey.

The boy mumbled, “Nastya heard her”—a nod at me—“grandmother singing on the radio,” then stopped and swung his legs like a kindergartner.

“I don't have all day, boy.” Timofey Timofeevich sang bass with an a cappella quartet called Bright Sunrises. His voice reached places.

“The announcer guy said she was a … you know…”

“Where's that bag of kidney beans I've been saving for a special occasion?”

“Hesaidshewasagypsy,” Aleksey pinballed in a single breath.

The bag was opened, the beans scattered. Aleksey cut me a look that hissed of revenge. He kneeled down, cheeks puffed to hold in the sobs. You'd have to kneel for a while before it went from uncomfortable to painful, but he still cried.

“My dad is a
Ukrainian
Rom,” I said to Timofey Timofeevich, as if he were about to confiscate my last name now that the Gypsy part had been revealed.

“In that case,” the principal said, back at his desk now, “you ought to act like a lady, no matter the unfortunate choices your Ukrainian ancestors made with all this mindless mixing.” The principal's admonition of my family's unsavory behavior was quite common in the Soviet Union at the time. As the Stalinist cleansings made horribly clear, certain nationalities were considered second-rate—proof optional. Gypsies came third. We were quite new in our role as model citizens, a bit clumsy at it, and it seemed that even a few centuries of domestication couldn't fully smother our nonconformist ways. We questioned too much, followed too little. Therefore, “trouble” and “useless” remained synonymous with “Gypsy” in a country that tooted solidarity from every slogan.

I lost most of my friends, my Gypsiness proving too much of a deterrent to their popularity, and whenever I could, I joined my parents on the road. The hectic stage life never allowed much time to dwell on school politics.

When we relocated to Los Angeles in the summer of 1990, we thought of it as another tour stop. “Here goes nothing,” Dad had said when we landed at LAX, winking like he was about to set off on some grand adventure. Never mind the fact that we barely spoke English. Since I spoke more of it than the rest, I knew that in case of an emergency, the task of communicating would fall on me. The prospect hurried my steps ahead of my parents across the crowded airport. Mom's brother, my uncle Arsen, had assured us that he would wait outside to pick us up when she called him before we left Moscow. Nevertheless, we would have to make it from the gate to the passenger pickup without having to utter one English syllable.

In fifth grade, my foreign-language teacher, Ludmila Ivanovna, taught our class a traditional Scottish folk song called “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean.” She wrote the lyrics on the chalkboard, expecting us to memorize them. Ever since then I had been obsessed with the English language, which sounded like spoken silk to me. For my eleventh birthday, I had asked my parents for a Russian-English dictionary, and I read it like a novel, though I didn't understand most of it.

But now that I had a chance to practice what I'd learned, I couldn't remember a single word. It didn't help that once outside we discovered that Uncle was not there. An hour later, at one forty-five in the morning, we were still waiting. Roxy slept slumped over the mountain of our belongings: canvas bags and leather suitcases.

Thanks to an entire can of hair spray, Mom's hair, also styled in the Lioness, didn't move at all as she paced the sidewalk and peered into every passing car.

“Should I call them? Maybe they got the dates mixed up.”

“We'll hail a taxi.” My father sat on the bench, smoking. He shook his head side to side, slowly. I couldn't see his expression from under the brim of his fedora, but I heard him whisper “
Hahs amareh khula
(May he eat shit)” in Rromanes. Like most Russian Roma, Dad's primary language was Russian. But when it came to swearing, he'd often make an inadvertent switch to the language of his ancestors, as if that somehow authenticated his complaint.

At the tail end of another hour a gargantuan vehicle dawdled to a stop in front of our bench.

Uncle Arsen lowered the passenger window and leaned out, grinning, his tall, wiry frame bent at an awkward angle, head nearly touching the ceiling.

Moments later we were speeding down the freeway, and I was amazed that even at this hour I could see into the depths of the city, thanks to its billboards and traffic. Moscow at night had the softness of a child's bedroom illuminated by a night-light. Los Angeles didn't seem like a city that would ever be caught sleeping.

“Will you help?”

My sister's question dragged me away from the car window. “What?”

“To find George Michael. Will you?”

“Go back to sleep, Roxy.”

Outside, like a beacon in the dark of an unfamiliar ocean, the Fox Studios' sign shone over the freeway. It was beautiful.

“What do you think?” Uncle glanced around expectantly. “Bought it last week. It's called Cadillac Eldorado.”

In Moscow, where traffic rolled down the streets like mince out of a meat grinder, cars weren't a necessity; hop a bus or a trolley, get a taxi, or use the metro that stretched below the city in a subterranean spiderweb. Dad had bought a car mostly to transport his instruments, and it was a special occasion each time we mortals could ride in it.

“Very big,” Dad volunteered, with Mom adding “Oh yes,” as if they were speaking to a child.

“It sure is,” Uncle said, although his shoulders had fallen in response to the thin praise.

Uncle Arsen's one-bedroom Hollywood apartment had no wallpaper—I was shocked, thinking they hadn't the money to properly finish it. Later I'd learn that the spit-up color on its naked walls had a name—eggshell white—and that most dwellings in America came with bare walls and carpets stapled to the floor.

Uncle's wife, Varvara, met us at the door with a lukewarm smile, briefly flashing discolored teeth as she attempted to hug my sister and me.

“Oh, look at you, Roxy.” She smooched her lips into my sister's cheek. “So skinny, like a stick. And Oksana. Practically a woman, isn't she, Arsen?”

I remembered my aunt with thin dirty-blond hair, peering hazel eyes, and an omnipresent smile at the corners of her mouth. But three years in the States had loosened her at the waist so much that she resembled a nesting doll, the kind Russians put atop their samovars. On the other hand, my two teenage cousins hadn't changed at all. Nelly's straight blond hair and fair complexion stood in stark contrast to her younger sister's curly black mop and uninterrupted eyebrow.

We stayed up all night gossiping, reminiscing, planning—talking about everything and nothing at all. The adults gathered in the tightly furnished living room, drinking cups of Turkish coffee like it was water.

Aunt Varvara had set the kitchen table with a variety of cold dishes served in tiny crystal saucers. There was the delicious ruby-red Vinigret—a robust salad made with fresh beets, peas, and carrots tossed in grape-seed oil. A dish of homemade sauerkraut spiced the air next to a mound of shredded carrot salad sprinkled with ground walnuts and raisins. Estonian and Krakovskaya kielbasas took up the center stage like a big mama duck surrounded by her little ducklings. Though not an actual meal, the spread worked for a late-night snack when accompanied by many bottles of vodka.

Not wanting to be disrespectful, I ate, but the lack of American food sorely disappointed me. In Moscow, before McDonald's had officially opened their first Russian restaurant in the late eighties, hamburger stands had begun popping up all over the city because some entrepreneur believed that hamburgers equaled wealth. Young people loved the idea of trying something American, even if older folks disapproved of any influence from the evil place across the ocean. Not much to look at, the hamburger still signified a threat. But my friends and I gladly paid two rubles to sample the Devil's treat.

Thin buns concealed a sheet of overcooked meat smeared with some red stuff and a sliver of dehydrated pickle. It did not put fear in our hearts, and it failed to fill our stomachs. But despite its shortcomings, we devoured this poor relative of the fast-food superstar as if we'd never eaten meat and bread at the same time in our lives.

 

BRINGING DOWN THE WALL

At my uncle's house old habits and new converged into a patchwork of delirium. I itched to learn everything at once.

“What is this?”

“A water dispenser. And here's the ice maker.”

“How come your legs are so smooth?”