American Gypsy (29 page)

“If she's not gone in a week, I swear, Valerio, I'll destroy all of you,” Olga shouted.

She was gone for four days. My father found a home on the other side of town, owned by a bedridden Russian immigrant, where Grandma Ksenia was to live from now on. I couldn't understand why he hadn't stood up to Olga, and I am not sure I do now.

As soon as Mom had a couple days off from her nonstop overtime shifts, she and Roxy drove down to see Grandma Ksenia—the woman who'd hated her, who'd cut off all contact after the divorce.

While she and Mom talked in soft tones so as not to wake Grandma's landlord from his nap, I studied the grout between the tiles and the dull green curtains, the kind you'd see in motel rooms. The clinical-looking tile floors throughout and the smell of a dying man in the next room made my skin break out into goose bumps. I listened to the metallic moans ensuing from Grandma's bed every time she moved, and picked my nails with topmost dedication; anything to spare me the bedraggled sight of my once elegant grandmother.

My sister was saying things I tried to follow but failed.

“Oksana. Oksana. Oksaana!”

“What?” I turned to Roxy, oddly grateful.

“I was saying that my school looks like a flying saucer and the playground gets so hot that it burns the soles off my shoes. I hate it there.”

“Nora.
Dochenka
,” Grandma was saying. “Never in my life would I have imagined this. But perhaps it's my punishment for being so cruel to you. I regret every one of those days.”

“Don't think about the past, Mother.” Mom was leaning close, holding the old woman's hand. “This home looks lovely. Very quiet neighborhood.”

“It is. It is.” But giant tears spilled from her eyes.

“Mother. What is wrong?”

“I don't think I can do this.”

“Do what?”

“
Oy, dochenka
. He's so heavy. It takes me an hour to get him out of the bed and to the toilet. Most of the time he doesn't even make it that long and soils himself right there in the hallway. Good thing it's all tile.”

A cold weight was lodged inside my throat, and I looked at Roxy, who thankfully wasn't paying much attention, picking out an outfit for her Barbie instead.

Neither Mom nor I had known that Grandma Ksenia was the old man's live-in caretaker, that she woke up nearly every night to clean the excrement from his behind and change his filthy bedsheets.

Mom did ask Grandma if she wanted to move in with her, but she said, “My place is here with my son.” But soon after our visit, per Olga's demands, Grandma Ksenia went back to Russia. She would die there a few months later.

*   *   *

Olga had calmed down for a while. Did she feel guilty for sending the old woman away to a lousy end? I hoped so. I did, though there was nothing I could've done to improve the situation. The way you knew Olga's conscience was stirring was when she spent more time doing the dishes, a task she executed rather poorly. This meant that my father was also in the kitchen constantly rewashing them. He had more time on his hands now, since he barely saw his clients and had canceled most of his gigs. “The fibers in the rope of our family,” he said once, “are splitting one by one.”

During this time a man came to see my father, walking with shoulders hunched as if preparing for an air raid. Bob's newborn daughter was dying and he begged my father for help. He had heard about Dad from a friend who avoided knee surgery after a regimen Dad prescribed, involving a compress of dried horse sorrel and garlic. That same day the three of us, me as a translator, drove down to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena.

His wife, Kim, was crying when we came in. She clumsily wiped the wetness away with the edge of the sheet and smiled at us.

“I don't know if I can help,” my father said, and I translated. “Something like this is in God's hands.”

Kim sat up straighter and Bob immediately added another pillow at her back. He remained at her side, biting the nail of his index finger.

“The doctor wants me to just give up,” Kim said. “If you were me, would you give up?”

As I repeated the words in Russian, Dad considered the couple with respect.

“We'll pay whatever you ask,” Bob pleaded.

“I do what I can do,” Dad said in English. “But I no take money.”

Did I notice how quickly and earnestly my father was willing to help these strangers? Yes. Even if I was ashamed for the misplaced envy, I let it creep into my mind anyway. This was the first time I'd seen Dad interact with a client, and his kindness seemed limitless. He was a Zen master, breathing hope and tranquillity into the lungs of the lost. I envied that little girl whose life was slipping away, begrudged her my father's Zen. What was wrong with me? Was I really that desperate?

The doctor came in and did a double take. I would've laughed if the situation hadn't been so dire. Dad had on one of his black fedoras and a long leather trench coat beneath which he wore a black dress shirt, black leather pants, and steel-toed cowboy boots. His long hair trailed down his back. The doc eyed it before seeming to remember why he'd come in.

“Any change?” Kim's fingers twisted the sheet over her belly.

The doctor shook his head.

Dad asked the couple if he could talk to the doctor in private, and when they consented we stepped out into the hallway. Dad asked several questions about the baby.

“She has a metabolic disorder,” the doctor said.

Perplexed, I admitted that I didn't know what that meant, but Dad wasn't discouraged.

“You tell me not like doctor but like patient,” he suggested to the man, who clearly wasn't used to being questioned.

“If you wish, although I don't see the difference.”

“Please.”

“She's like a car that's running out of gas. Once it's gone, she'll stop working.”

Back in the room Dad rubbed his hands together. “I no promise anything, but will pray. You must hold baby, never let her down, and feed her more. Take turn but keep her close to your body all time. She not make life energy, so you give her yours, keep her safe with yours.”

The couple looked incredulous. I was doubtful myself, but I could tell that hope was the only thing left to them, and then I remembered Paywand and her theories on magic being all-encompassing and attainable by everyone. My father always tried to explain to his clients the logic behind every séance or healing process: All matter is energy. We are energy. God is energy. Devil is energy. It has neither form nor boundaries. It is what we make of it.

The couple followed my father's instructions, and though the staff objected at first, eventually they let the parents be. On the tenth day the doctors announced that although the metabolic problem had inexplicably disappeared, the little girl's kidneys were now failing. Three weeks later it was her heart. But the parents kept holding her.

Six years later Kim wrote an article about her daughter's miraculous recovery, which was published in a Russian magazine called
Panorama
. She spoke of the Gypsy man who spent days and nights at her daughter's side.

The funny thing is that my father's own mending took place during his visits to the hospital, on his vigils, while he prayed over the sleeping baby. Without her, who knows if he'd ever have snapped out of his grief.

Life has a funny way of sweeping you back into its current.

 

CHASING FRIENDSHIP

One night Svetlana and Alan paid us another visit, although no one dared to mention marriage in the presence of my father while he was still in mourning.

Half that night I spent twisting in my bed to stay awake until everyone else went to sleep so I could sneak to the kitchen phone and call Mom. Even after the guests had left—the whir of their car unzipping the tightness in my rib cage—I could hear the staccato of Olga's voice chased by Dad's powerful bass for hours. It's worse than living with vampires, I thought when their bedroom door closed at dawn. I slunk into the kitchen, where the wooden tick of the clock was the only sound on the planet. Then there was the shrill of the phone ringing, and I grabbed it before it woke anyone up.

“
Doch
(Daughter)?”

“Mom? Is that you?”

“Who else?” She chuckled. “My shift just ended. Got home a few minutes ago, but I'll wait to get Roxy from the neighbors until at least eight, you know. Everybody's probably sleeping still.”

“Are you okay?”

Knots of silence marked by a swift gurgle going down the neck of a bottle.

“Mom? I was about to call you.”

“Gotta tell you. I bought a brand-new fifty-four-inch RCA yesterday. Roxy helped me pick it.”

“Mom.”

“I swear, it's the size of a car.”

“You can't watch the programs on a smaller TV?”

“Soon I'll get my raise, a dollar a year, you know, and then we'll get out of this one-bedroom matchbox and buy a house.”

At this point Mom still thought that purchasing a house in the States was like purchasing one in the old country, where you paid it off all at once. The concept of credit cards and loans was foreign to her.

“I have to go. We'll talk later, okay?” When you're sober, I almost added.

“Talk about what?”

Everything rolled out of me in one hot whisper.

“You father wouldn't dare,” she said.

I pressed the receiver closer to my chin. “This is serious, Mom. I'm not ten. I know what's going on.”

“I'll talk to him, but I think you're overreacting.” And she was gone.

It was my own fault, I knew. Had I not brought Cruz home, Olga's alarm never would've gone off. She'd have been too busy making money vanish to worry about me. The funny thing was that nothing was happening between us. Nothing tangible. Our connection was a rush, a flurry of wind out the car window. We soared in a perpetual state of foreplay. Caught in a trap of my own devising, I spent days thinking up ways to get Cruz out of our house. Not that I didn't enjoy watching him lean over his guitar, strumming those strings with his clever fingers. On the contrary, during lesson time the living room called to me in a siren voice. Before long I'd find an excuse to dust a shelf, polish a table, or do any other kind of housework in the area so I could enjoy the view.

But after Alan's whackathon, I was convinced the only way to stop Olga's husband-hunting was to pretend Cruz and I didn't associate. Surely then she could point her guns elsewhere.

It proved surprisingly difficult to feign indifference. Cruz's presence made me clumsy and absentminded. If I happened to glance at his hands, my face burned as if he'd touched me. My eyes followed, in slow motion, as he turned the pages of his sheet music. I could even tell his footsteps from everyone else's.

Meanwhile, my stepmother made a list of families with brand-new cars.

Cruz had to go.

I rehearsed my speech all the way to his cousin's house. I'd ask him to stay away for a while, not disappear completely. He was my best friend. And
that
I recognized as something to protect.

The person who opened the door took a large bite of a banana with lips painted tar black. “Hi, sweetie,” he chirped. “You looking for Cruz?”

I nodded, taking in the black lacy dress and the makeup.

“In here,” he said, crooking one purple-nailed finger. “I'm Brandon.”

“Oksana.”

“Oh, I know. You're only the most talented Gypsy in school.” We went through a dimly lit hallway toward the sound of a booming TV and ended up in the living room. “Well, the only Gypsy I know.”

Annie, Cruz's cousin and a fellow magnet student, sat up on the couch to say “Hi” before slumping back down. A cloud of smoke lingered around her, unmoving, even as two albino ferrets scurried off her chest and under the couch. I'd seen the little creatures before. Romeo and Juliet. Annie often brought them to school, hidden in her backpack or coat.

Brandon waved one graceful hand at the couch. “Sit. Don't be shy.”

I didn't at first, too busy wondering why both of them were eyeing me with such blatant interest.

Brandon finally spoke. “So, I don't mean to be rude, but I have to ask. How long have you been practicing?”

“Practicing what?” I asked.

“Being a Gypsy.”

I laughed a little until it became obvious that he wasn't joking.

“I'm sorry, sweetie,” Brandon said, exchanging glances with Annie, who stayed peculiarly mum. “I've always been fascinated with the whole bohemian-lifestyle thing … and when I heard about you, well, I couldn't wait to meet you.” When I said nothing, he continued. “I know. I'm being totally rude, but I'd rather ask someone who knows, you know?”

He had a point.

“It's okay,” I said. “But I don't think I can be of much help if you're looking for the bohemian version. I've never lived in a caravan or anything like that.”

“No?” Brandon cocked his head to one side, and it was his turn to look puzzled.

“Ahhh, no,” I said. “Most of us have become pretty domesticated, you know, like cats.” I was trying for a joke to keep the mood light. “Listen, I really need to speak with Cruz. Is he here?”

“I'll go grab him,” Brandon said, and disappeared into the back of the house.

Annie offered me the skinny joint and, when I refused, took a deep pull herself. “Come on,” she said, blowing out the words slowly between her lips, eyes half-closed. “Don't be a geek. I have something with less pollution if you're picky.”

In my parents' line of work, almost everyone got high on something. I remember during one concert, Dad came out of the dressing room already late for his stage entrance.

“Dad, you have sugar on your mustache,” I said. He wiped it and shambled past. Behind drawn curtains, the MC was announcing the song, trying to stretch his words until one of the guitar players signaled him that Dad had caught up. When the curtains opened, my father was sitting at the piano, pulling off his shoes and socks and draping them on the instrument, shouting into the microphone, “It's so fucking humid here in Odessa.”