My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead (21 page)

—It’s hard to imagine his life getting worse.

—She’ll make it worse.

—She’s your mother.

—She’s a whore. Do you want to know how it sounds when they do it?

—Not particularly.

—They do it at least three times a day. He groans like he is being killed and she screams like she is killing him.

A month after the wedding, my uncle, Zina, and Natasha rented a new two-bedroom apartment ten minutes’ walk from our house. This was in the early summer and I was on vacation from school. Instead of going off to camp I made an arrangement to work for Rufus, my dealer. Over the course of the year we had become friends. He was twenty and, while keeping up his business, was also studying philosophy at the University of Toronto. Aside from providing me with drugs, he also recommended books. Because of him I graduated from John Irving and Mordecai Richler to Camus, Heraclitus, Catullus, and Kafka. That summer, in exchange for doing the deliveries, I got free dope—plus whatever I shorted off potheads—and a little money. I also got to borrow the books Rufus had been reading over the course of the year. This, to me, was a perfectly legitimate way to spend two months, although my parents insisted that I had to find a job. Telling them about the job I already had was out of the question, and so the summer started off on a point of conflict.

A week into my summer vacation, my mother resolved our conflict. If I had no intention of finding a job, she would put me to good use. Since I was home by myself I would be conscripted into performing an essential service. I was alone and Natasha was alone. She didn’t know anyone in the city and was making a nuisance of herself. From what I could understand, she wasn’t actually doing anything to be a nuisance, but her mere presence in the apartment was inconvenient. My family felt that my uncle needed time alone with his new wife and having Natasha around made him uncomfortable. Besides, she was difficult. My uncle reported that she refused to speak to her mother and literally hadn’t said a word in weeks.

The morning after my mother decided that I would keep Natasha company I was on my way to my uncle’s new apartment. I hadn’t seen him, Zina, or Natasha since the wedding and the barbecue. They hadn’t been back to our house and I had had no reason to go there. In fact, in all the years that my uncle lived in Toronto I had never been to his apartment. Despite occasional invitations, I avoided the place because I preferred not to see how he lived.

By the time I arrived, my uncle had already left for work. Zina met me at the door wearing a blue Soviet housedress that could have passed for a hospital gown. Again, she wore no bra. I was greeted by nipples, then Zina. She put her hand on my arm and ushered me into the kitchen, where she was filling out forms to obtain credentials from the school board. A stack of forms was laid out on the table along with black bread and cucumbers. She made me a sandwich I did not want and told me what a wonderful man my uncle was. How she was very fortunate to find such a man and how good things would be as soon as Natasha became accustomed to their new life. We were co-conspirators, she and I, both working for Natasha’s well-being. She was convinced that I would be able to help her. She sensed that Natasha liked me. Natasha didn’t like many people.

—I’m her mother, and no matter what she says, I would cut off my right arm for her. But she has always been different. Even as a baby she hardly smiled.

Zina led me to Natasha’s door and knocked. Through the door she announced that I was here. After a brief pause Natasha opened the door. She was wearing blue jeans and a souvenir T-shirt from Niagara Falls. I could see behind her into the room. There was a small bed and a table. On one wall was an old poster of Michael Jackson circa
Thriller
. In bold red letters a phonetic approximation of Michael Jackson’s name was written in Cyrillic. I read the name slowly letter by letter since I was effectively illiterate. It gave me something to do while Natasha and Zina glared at each other in acrimonious silence.

—I’m an enemy because I took her away from her criminal friends. I’m an enemy because I wanted to give her a better life. Now she won’t say a word, but one day she’ll thank me.

Without breaking her silence, Natasha grabbed my hand and led me out of the apartment. As we went past the door Zina called after us telling me to watch out for Natasha. I was to make sure that she didn’t do anything stupid. Natasha should remember what it would do to my uncle if something were to happen to her. Even if she didn’t care about how Zina felt, she should at least consider my uncle, for whom she was now like a daughter.

In the stairway Natasha released my hand and we descended to the back of the building and the parking lot. Outside, she turned and spoke what must have been her first words in weeks.

—I can’t stand looking at her. I want to scratch out my eyes. In Moscow I never had to see her. Now she’s always there.

We wound our way out of the parking lot and toward the subdivisions leading back to my house. On the way I decided to stop at Rufus’s and pick up an eighth for one of our regular heads. Rufus had a house not far from us, and since it was still early in the morning I knew that he would be home. I walked ahead and Natasha trailed along, more interested in the uniform lawns and houses than the specifics of where we were going. Aside from the odd Filipina nanny wheeling a little white kid, the streets were quiet. The sun was neither bright nor hot and the outdoors felt conveniently like the indoors: God’s thermostat set to “suburban basement.”

—In Moscow, everyone lives in apartments. The only time you see houses like this is in the country, where people have their dachas.

—Three years ago this was the country.

We found Rufus on his backyard deck listening to Led Zeppelin, eating an omelette. Although he was alone the table was set for four with a complete set of linen napkins and matching cutlery. Rufus didn’t seem at all surprised to see us. That was part of his persona. Rufus never appeared surprised about anything. At twenty years old he had already accomplished more than most men twice his age. It was rumored that aside from dealing Rufus was also a partner in a used car lot/body shop and various other ventures. Nobody who knew him had ever seen him sleep.

Even though I had only intended to see Rufus for as long as it took to get the eighth, he insisted on cooking us breakfast. Natasha and I sat at the kitchen counter as Rufus made more omelettes. He explained that even when he ate alone he liked to set a full table. The mere act of setting extra places prevented him from receding into solipsism. It also made for good karma, so that even when he was not expecting guests there existed tangible evidence announcing that he was open to the possibility.

While Rufus spoke Natasha’s eyes roamed around the house, taking in the spotless kitchen, the copper cookware, the living room with matching leather sofas, the abstract art on the walls. If not for the contents of the basement refrigerator, the house gave no indication that it was owned and inhabited by a drug dealer barely out of his teens. This was no accident. Rufus believed that it helped his business. His clients were all middle-class suburban kids, and despite his bohemian inclinations, a nice house in the suburbs was the perfect location. It kept him local and it meant that, for his customers, a visit to their dealer felt just like coming home.

Back on the deck I explained to Rufus about Natasha, leaving out certain details I didn’t think he needed to know. As Rufus and I talked, Natasha sat contentedly with her omelette and orange juice. Since we’d left my uncle’s apartment her attitude toward everything had taken a form of benign detachment. She was calibrated somewhere between resignation and joy.

I noticed Rufus looking at her.

—Did I mention she was fourteen?

—My interest, I assure you, is purely anthropological.

—The anthropology of jailbait.

—She’s an intense little chick.

—She’s Russian. We’re born intense.

—With all due respect, Berman, you and her aren’t even the same species.

To get her attention Rufus leaned across the table and tapped Natasha on the arm. She looked up from her omelette and returned Rufus’s smile. He asked me to translate for him. His own family, he said, could be traced back to Russia. He wanted to know what Russia was like now. What it was really like.

With a shrug Natasha answered.

—Russia is shit but people enjoy themselves.

* * *

After that first day, Natasha started coming to our house regularly. I no longer went to pick her up but waited instead for her to arrive. Through my basement window I could see her as she appeared in our backyard and wandered around inspecting my mother’s peonies or the raspberry and red currant bushes. If I was in a certain mood I would watch her for a while before going upstairs and opening the sliding glass door in the kitchen. Other times, I would just go and open the door. We spent most of our days in the basement. I read and Natasha studied television English. When I had a delivery to make she accompanied me. Between reading, television English, and deliveries, I taught Natasha how to get high. I showed her how to roll a joint, to light a pipe, or, in a pinch, where to cut the holes in a Coke can or Gatorade bottle. In exchange, Natasha taught me other things. Many of these things had nothing to do with sex.

After our days in the basement we would listen for my mother to arrive home from work. To avoid some serious unpleasantness I made a habit of setting my alarm for five o’clock. If we weren’t sleeping, the alarm simply reminded us to open a window or get dressed. By the time my mother came home we were usually in the kitchen or out in the backyard. Chores that had been assigned to me were usually done at this time. It pleased my mother to come home and find me, spade in hand, turning over the earth around the berry bushes. Also, once it was established that Natasha much preferred to stay at our house, my mother grew more than accustomed to having her around. Unlike me and my father, Natasha volunteered to help her in the kitchen. The two of them would stand at the sink peeling potatoes and slicing up radishes and cucumbers for salad. I often came in to overhear my mother telling stories about her childhood in postwar Latvia—a land of outhouses, horse-drawn wagons, and friendly neighbors. In Natasha she found a receptive audience. They spoke the same language—Russian girl to Russian girl. This despite the fact that, in too many ways, Natasha’s childhood couldn’t have been more different from my mother’s if she had been raised by Peruvian cannibals, but there was never any indication of this in our kitchen. Only my mother telling stories and Natasha listening.

Very quickly, our family of three became a family of four. No more than two weeks after I picked her up at my uncle’s apartment Natasha became a fixture at our house. It was a situation that, for different and even perversely conflicting reasons, suited everyone. It solved the Natasha problem for my uncle. It solved the Zina problem for Natasha. It made my mother feel like she was protecting my uncle’s last chance at happiness and also satisfying her own latent desire for a daughter. It absolved me of the need to find a job and cast me in a generally favorable light with the rest of my family. And, strangely enough, Natasha’s incorporation into the household made the things we did in the basement seem less bad. Or not bad at all. What we did in the basement became only a part of who we were. There were layers upon layers. Which was why, at any one moment, I felt for Natasha the most natural and unusual feelings; to explain the feelings would be impossible, but whatever they were they were never bad.

Since I had been conditioned to approach sex as negotiation, I was amazed to discover that it could be as perfunctory as brushing your teeth. One day, after some but not too many days together, Natasha simply slid out of her jeans and removed her shirt. We were sitting inches apart, each on our own beanbag. Moments before, we had finished smoking a joint and I had gone back to Kafka’s diaries. I became aware of what she was doing slower than a sixteen-year-old should have. I looked over as she was wriggling out of her pants. That she saw me looking changed nothing. On the beanbag, naked, she turned to me and said, very simply, as if it were as insignificant to her as it was significant to me: Do you want to? At sixteen, no expert but no virgin, I lived in a permanent state of want to. But for everything I knew, I knew almost nothing. In the middle of the day, Natasha in the basement, was the first time I had seen a live naked girl. All the parts available for viewing. Nothing in my previous dimly lit gropings compared. In my teenage life, what was more elusive than a properly illuminated naked girl? And the fact that it was Natasha—my nominal cousin, fourteen, strange—no longer mattered. After spending days with her and thinking about her at night, I knew very well how I felt. And so, when she asked if I wanted to, I wanted to.