Mother Country Read online

  Grisha was greeted from all directions, women bending down to him, grasping his hand. “If it isn’t the poet Grisha,” they said, gently mocking. He took advantage of these exchanges to evaluate spilling cleavage. Firm-lipped babushki cracked smiles at him, and he called them seductive ladies, a true coven of Sophia Lorens. The Sophia Lorens ignored Nadia entirely; to them, like to most people she encountered these past six years, a paid helper was the most insignificant personage, a ghost.

  “Good morning, Gospodin Poet,” called out yet another woman of a certain age, not even glancing Nadia’s way.

  They stopped for a red light. “Are you really a famous poet?” she asked Grisha. “How come I’ve never read a single poem if you’re such a celebrity here?”

  He swiveled around in his wheelchair, eyes moist at their pink corners. “I will be whatever you want me to be, Nadezhda Andreevna. For you, I will be Alexander Blok himself.” Grisha was growing an uneven scraggly beard, more filled in at the cheeks than chin and neck. Nadia had offered to shave it, but he said it lent him imperial distinction. He liked holding a cane as they rolled along, sometimes wielding it as a conductor’s baton.

  She smiled. “I’ll take Okudzhava. I’m not picky.”

  “I love women who aren’t too picky. How do you feel about men of the Jewish persuasion?”

  “You’re ridiculous, Gregory Markovich. Recite me a poem of yours.”

  “And eradicate my entire mystique? What if you’re not educated enough to appreciate it?”

  A pair of ridiculously dressed middle-aged babas stalked right by him in bare legs and gold sandals shimmering in the sun, and he swiveled to better appreciate the receding promenade. She felt strangely rejected, as if Grisha were conspiring against her with the rest of the borough.

  “Recite one for me. Please?” She pouted, a rusty, coquettish act. But it worked. Grisha’s attention returned to her.

  * * *

  Every surface in Grisha’s apartment was littered with medicine. Pills clustered in days-of-the-week containers, white ovals outlined on the dining room table. At home, she used Russian Google to figure out what purpose all the pills performed. There was depression medication and nitroglycerin, pills for erections and ancient antibiotics, central nervous system stimulants, pain relievers. Vials of insulin clogged up the refrigerator’s vegetable drawer.

  “How is my beauty feeling after her last altercation with Baba Yaga? Cheek all healed?” he asked when she lowered him onto the couch for his favorite reality show, Masculine/Feminine.

  “Aneta? She doesn’t bother me.”

  “Sure she doesn’t.”

  With the additional incursion of Aneta’s name overlaying her worry for Larisska, the mood she had been working hard to preserve was soured. She busied herself with unpacking groceries. The entire place had the smell of rotting food and medicine, the dreaded scent of solitary old age. A new fear struck her—growing old in this foreign country, no husband, no child, no English language. Who did she have here except for Regina and Sasha? She had no idea how to go about putting herself on a waiting list for a plot; headstones seemed to occupy every possible square meter of the local cemeteries.

  “What’s this?” she cried. Buried under a stack of kitchen towels was an opened pack of cookies, those tasty American ones with cream pressed between two wheels of chocolate. She flourished them as proof of his transgression. “Gregory Markovich. Do I need to remind you that diabetes is a serious disease? My daughter…”

  “I know, I know. Your daughter suffers from it. But we are different. Mine is Type 2, which is much less serious. And I’m an old man. If I don’t have my pleasures, I might as well hang myself.”

  “There is no need for hyperbole. Just please eat only one or two cookies. I happen to know this is a brand-new purchase.”

  As she turned away, she felt his hand lightly brushing her behind. Some of her acquaintances worked as home attendants for old ladies who berated them all day, who accused them of stealing worthless family knickknacks or colluding against them with pernicious relatives. She knew that a lonely, good-natured pervert was not the worst assignment in the world and VIP Senior Care was a legitimate company that could prove to the government she was officially, gainfully employed, ready to sponsor her daughter at any time. She removed Grisha’s palm from her butt, then theatrically dumped the cookies in the garbage.

  “Oh no, that’s just unnecessary.” Grisha moaned extravagantly. “They are Oreos. Haven’t you ever experienced the great American invention that is Oreo?”

  “Your blood sugar, Grisha. It’s not funny. I keep picking up your insulin at the pharmacy but it’s clear you’re not taking it. Look how many vials you have lying around in the fridge.”

  Grisha tossed up his hands, as if to say, I’m beyond all hope! I need the love of a good woman! And turned back to the television. “At least Aneta’s off until next week. We are all free from her for a while.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard all month.”

  On Russian television, a man complained to the reality show host that his wife went at his head with an axe to prevent him from seeing their daughter. He pointed to the center of his scalp where hair gave way to a sutured purple gash. The audience did not look as horrified as one would expect.

  “If you’re such a poet, why do you sit in front of this lowlife drek instead of perusing Lermontov?” Nadia checked behind the pans, saw a round tin of butter wafers, but decided to leave it.

  Grisha didn’t respond. He was absorbed in his program, a balloon of deflated belly spilling over his belt. On-screen, the man was showing the viewers stitches crisscrossing from crown to ear. All at once, it overwhelmed her, the old pain exploding in her belly. Hot tears burned her cheeks. She felt herself gulping for air.

  “Come here.” Grisha turned off the television and the apartment was plunged into darkness. She had not realized that evening was seeping so quickly and the dread of the upcoming night rattled inside her.

  “I don’t think I can handle your insinuations tonight, to tell you the truth.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “I haven’t heard from her in weeks, Grish. They say on the news that bridges are being blown up. No one can leave town. Any minute a shell could hit our apartment building.”

  “I know. That’s terrible.” Grisha’s eyes were soggy blue islands surrounded by more yellow than white. He was reaching for her.

  “How are they surviving without light or water? They can’t even use the toilet. She’s probably not getting our packages.”

  “A tragedy, your war. ‘But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.’” Grisha motioned for her to join him on the sofa. “Look, Nadyenka, there is always a way to get around a system. Use your connections, write letters, complain. Do what you have to do. This is America.”

  “You think I haven’t written letters?” she said. She thought of Regina wordlessly handing over a neatly typed letter, the way she hugged and kissed her own daughter that day with a sharper strength than usual. What she really wanted to say to Grisha was “You think this isn’t your war too?” She allowed him to squeeze her hands for a while, until her politeness gave out. Behind him, she glimpsed the empty vials of insulin scattered across his desk.

  “Take the ones in the fridge. There’s a cooler under the sink,” he said, following her gaze. “Try sending them. It can’t hurt right? We can get more next time.”

  * * *

  As Grisha slept, she opened Skype. The program was slow in loading but once she was signed in, she had to look twice. Beneath her daughter’s picture, there was a green check mark. Slowly, she guided the cursor over that precious square and clicked. The dial, the ring. Her stomach clenched. All the questions of the past weeks were rising in her at once: Is their building safe? How is their health? Is it safe for Larissa to go to her job? Is she getting
her insulin? But the screen just rang and rang, and after a few more hopeful taps, she gave up.

  It was hard for her to picture Rubizhne now. These years in America had winnowed her memories to a mere snatch of images. Flinging open her fifth-floor apartment window onto the tops of the majestic mast pines, pin-straight as if reaching for the sky. The smell of fresh pine woven through the dry, bracing air, the sight of forest stretching far back toward the horizon. Her soul escaped her throat every time she thought of home. In Rubizhne, she lived beneath birds she never saw in America, the aerial swoop of swallows and swifts.

  The wide boulevards planted with rows of roses. Streets lined with busy markets, neighbors selling cuts of pork, fragrant tomatoes, freshly picked eggplant. Over there, everyone had some connection to the soil. Those who worked in the plastics factory bought produce from friends’ gardens.

  She would never admit this to a single American, but the pleasures in Rubizhne were more acute than anything she experienced here. How the entire town came together for national celebrations, gathered in the main square for Chemists’ Day or Family Day or Victory Day. Wares and talents spilling out from the sidewalks—the seamstresses showing off their caftans, the painters offering portraits on the spot. A karaoke competition breaking out next to the fountain, a children’s puppet performance in one corner of the square. And after all that, fireworks, the likes of which she will never see again. Not even the dazzle of Fourth of July over Manhattan came close to the splendor of color against Rubizhne stars.

  How lovely it had been to walk just a few paces to the pipe manufacturing factory where she was bookkeeper. The leather ledgers with the numbers in the right boxes, the satisfaction of an anticipated balance. She was respected there—always called Nadezhda Andreevna, the technolog stopping by to flirt, to ask if the numbers added up properly or perhaps she had missed a decimal point? The scent of pure spirits on his breath, the hairy manliness of his ropy arms leaning on the edge of her desk. She looked forward to hearing him whistling a Makarevich song as he strode down the hall. That one shattering hour against his cold metal desk that would result in Larisska. The voluminous daisies he left on her chair for Women’s Day. Of course he left them on the chairs of the other women in the department, but hers were bundled carefully with hot pink ribbon.

  Meeting up with her childhood friend Yulia after work, both of them wearing dresses cut in different styles from identical Soviet fabric. The whole group of school friends piling into Café Avalon, taking turns buying one another mugs of cold kvass.

  All that was now gone, her mother had told her before Skype went dark. The factories shut down, the playgrounds and parks deserted. No more Chemists’ or Family Day. No more fireworks in the central ploshchad. No more markets with watermelons and potatoes and sunflowers straight from a neighbor’s garden. Just two weeks ago, on Odnoklassniki, the wife posted in a status update that the bushy-eyebrowed technolog of Plastics was killed by stray gunfire back in the spring. He was buried next to his parents, she said, in Moscow.

  * * *

  A week later, on the day after Aneta’s return to work, Nadia was determined to arrive extra early. She hauled herself out of bed and dressed, gulped down lukewarm tea and assembled her lunch. The streets were bare apart from parents depositing kids at their schools and the very elderly making their laborious way down the sidewalk or squeezing pears suspiciously at corner markets. It had rained overnight, the streets slick with a thin veneer of dampness. Her feet felt light against the concrete and she allowed herself to linger in the morning sunshine, to notice the way it slipped between the subway tracks above her and dappled the ground.

  The day before she had been at Regina’s; she and Sasha had had a hilarious time practicing mathematics by counting dogs. How much more pleasant it was to work with Regina and Sasha. When you pushed a child in a stroller, everyone on the street smiled at you, when you pushed an old man, everyone averted their eyes. But children grew up, the nanny faded from the child’s life. Somehow it was easier to work where the elderly died than where children forgot you existed.

  She turned on Kings Highway and let herself into Grisha’s deceptively fancy lobby. It was one of those ubiquitous Brooklyn co-ops where all the funds were diverted away from apartment repairs toward an opulent entrance. She had been impressed at first glance: a mirrored wall, a floor fanned by sea-colored tiles, a tufted velvet bench balanced on gold metal legs. But upstairs was another story, dirt-mottled floors, the intermingling scents of fried dinners, a row of chipped maroon doors. Behind one of them, Aneta was insulting her rather vocally.

  “That cow left you alone too, eh? I go away and everything is big mess.”

  “This is how we like it,” she heard Grisha say, a show of solidarity he knew would enrage Aneta further.

  “Is that right? Are you a couple now? When’s the wedding? Shall we alert VIP that there are some shenanigans going on?”

  Nadia quickly turned the knob.

  Aneta’s hair was loosened from her bun, face glistening from sweaty exertion. Grisha looked unusually dispirited at the dining table. A bowl of unappetizing ricotta cheese with a suspended spoon in it was plopped before his roughly shaven chin. His helplessness was so heightened in that moment that she wondered how Aneta actually treated him when they were alone.

  She stared the woman down. “What now, Aneta?”

  “That’s it. I’m reporting you to VIP. This is last straw.”

  “What else did I personally do to you? Did I bomb your village or something?”

  Aneta hissed, “I told you to speak only English or Ukrainian to me. Is that so hard? And considering what you did to that helicopter in Slovyansk, I don’t think it’s so very funny, do you? Twelve people dead, maybe more.”

  “What I did? You think I shot it down last night, and that’s why I’m late this morning?”

  Aneta set her face into a straight line. “I meant your Russki-loving friends of course. They’re capable of anything. Or have you conveniently forgotten the 1930s when Russia starved us to death?”

  “I just think it’s rude in front of Grisha to speak a language he doesn’t understand.”

  “He doesn’t need to understand us.” Aneta started scrawling something on a sheet of paper. Evidence against her? Lies about her to the VIP offices? “Once they fire your lazy ass, you can go ask your beloved Putin for a pension. But here, we actually work for a living.”

  She would have to beg to keep her job; there were dozens just like her waiting for an open post. But Nadia couldn’t resist the ridiculousness of the image. “When I see my beloved, as you say, I’ll be sure to ask a few of his soldier friends to look in on your relatives in Berdychev.”

  Aneta’s eyes almost burst out of her skull, and the sight kept her and Grisha crying with laughter for a full half hour after she was gone.

  * * *

  On the way to the pharmacy, Grisha fell asleep in the wheelchair, allowing her the luxury of being enveloped in her own thoughts. The day was cold, not June-like at all. Every morning, she expected the rush of warmth, but even the afternoons withheld it. A rogue drop of rain sprinkled Grisha’s face but she kept pushing him onward.

  In the pharmacy, babushki were arguing with the white-coated woman behind the counter. Each had her own demands for the pharmacist: just a few extra pills to send to relatives in Russia or Ukraine or Uzbekistan. Would it kill the woman to throw in just three or four more? An expired prescription was still good, wasn’t it? And what do these words on the bottle mean—“This medication can increase the effects of alcohol”? Her vodka-loving husband argued this was a very desirable thing.

  The pharmacist was overwhelmed as usual, arguing with the entire horde simultaneously, pushing stapled packets across the counter. “But that’s not legal, how many times do I have to say this? Let your cousins get their own medication over there.”

  “No one trusts those drugs. They look like our pills but they’re fakes,” one babushka was arguing.


  “Can I help you?” The woman was looking toward Nadia for an infusion of sanity. She pushed past the grannies to hand in Grisha’s slip for the insulin she would be packing away in a small cooler that would probably never make it to her daughter. But at least it gave her the illusion of taking action. This waiting, this war being translated in her mind, was becoming intolerable.

  While the debates at the counter raged, she tested some lotions on her wrist.

  “Gregory Melman,” the pharmacist finally called. As Nadia paid, they exchanged a look of complicity. They were two mentally sound people among the mad at the sanatorium. The woman even gave her a tight, friendly nod of approval.

  Back in the apartment, Nadia flipped on the television and rooted around for any remaining edible potatoes from their recent haul. She hummed as she peeled. “So what do you think? I haven’t heard a peep from VIP. Maybe Aneta’s all threats after all.”

  “If they took you away, I would start drafting the most beautifully crafted suicide note they’ve ever read.” Grisha opened a book, leather and gold-embossed, turned a few of its parchment pages. Maybe the Lermontov joke had struck a note with him after all. Even if it was for her benefit, it was nice to see him reading instead of immersed in those nihilistic television programs.

  “Why was Aneta gone last week anyway? Was she sick?”

  “No, nothing that convenient. Her niece got asylum. She’s getting a green card. It seems our friend is nice to her own family. Can you even picture Aneta as a warm and fuzzy auntie?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” She popped her head up, the back of her skull slamming into an open cabinet door. “Her niece got out of Ukraine? That girl on her phone? How did she manage that? She’s barely been on the waiting list a year.”