Russian Tattoo by Elena Gorokhova

Author:Elena Gorokhova
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Twenty-Six

My mother’s hair is thin and snow white, covering her head like the fuzz of a baby bird. “Like during the war,” she says and pats her head with her palm. “I look like a typhus victim.” After I left, Marina tells me, Mama’s hair, long and brown, began to fall out in clumps, and for a year or so she had to wear a wig. Then it started growing back, white and fluffy as the Leningrad January snow.

I kiss my mother and Marina three times on the cheeks, the Russian custom. I press into Mama’s breasts and stand still for a few moments, enveloped by her softness. I stroke Mama’s hair, the white down around her head, like a halo. She opens her arms to Andy, and in her eyes I read approval.

For the next two days, we are corralled at home in my old apartment, sitting in the kitchen in front of endless plates of pirozhki filled with cabbage and egg my mother baked, chunks of beef slathered with mayonnaise and roasted under a crust of grated cheese. We feast on Marina’s famous potato kotlety swimming in a sauce of wild mushrooms they picked the year before in our dacha woods. I know that this cornucopia of tastes required weeks of hoarding and standing on lines, things I used to do with my mother and sister before my provincial aunt came to visit for the summer, her three sons in tow, or when my mother’s Kiev cousin, Aunt Mila, rode on a train for two days to bathe in the translucent air of white nights. It is our family’s tradition to secure enough food to impress our guests, especially those from far away. Yet, after two days of eating, I can see that Andy has become restless, and, from the glances he throws me across the table, I know he is dying to escape the kitchen.

I try to take the dishes to the kitchen sink, but Mama stops me. Guests aren’t allowed to do any work. “Go rest,” she orders and walks to the bathroom to turn the water heater on.

There is nothing to rest from. We open the door to the balcony and look down onto the street. A few people are waiting at the bus stop, where every morning I used to take bus number 22 to my English school. It crawls out from behind the corner, a double yellow Hungarian-made Ikarus, its two cars connected with an accordion of black rubber. Behind the bus stop is a kiosk where we returned our empty bottles: fifteen kopeks for a half liter of milk, sunflower oil, or vodka. I tell Andy an old joke: Two friends meet on the street. —What are you up to? asks Kolya. —Working, saving up to buy a car, replies Sergei. And you? —Drinking, Kolya says. Five years later, they meet again. —How are you? Kolya asks. —Working, still saving up for a car, says Sergei. And you? —I brought back all the empty bottles, says Kolya, and bought myself a car.

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