Tama Janowitz - They Is Us

When Slawa and Murielle first met, Slawa was a limo driver – car service, actually – exotic, kind, of a spiritual nature – who gave her a ride from Newark. It turned out that Slawa’s wife Alga, who was much older than he and suffered from reeTVO.9, was a resident of the nursing home that Murielle managed.

The coincidence seemed remarkable: fate. After Alga died, they married. But somewhere along the line Slawa had changed from a man who rescued her, a single woman with a kid, into a fat Russian slob who worked in a shoe repair shop.

Murielle slams the screen door. When she was married to Terry, Tahnee’s father, and Terry wanted to make Diamond-C dust in the bathroom to sell, she wouldn’t let him, which was one reason why they split up; now in retrospect she thinks, but at least he didn’t drink.

Of course, if Terry had been caught by the law for selling Diamond-C dust, all of their property would have been confiscated, even the things that were in her name. Tahnee would have been sent into foster care. Murielle’s struggles to survive, her desertion by Terry just after Tahnee was born; it means nothing to Tahnee. Tahnee would end up doing what she wanted. There has to be a way, some way, to keep Tahnee with her for a while longer. She loves that kid so much. Who would have thought her own daughter would have ended up being the love of her life?

Even so, Murielle knows there is something wrong with Tahnee. Her dead, pale eyes, white hair, white skin; but that isn’t it. Other people are mesmerized by her, but not really in a positive way. They become nervous, upset. Frightened? Murielle has never figured out what it is, exactly. Tahnee has a certain cat-like indifference to people and things.

Despite this, she loves Tahnee much more than Julie, whom she almost always wants to slap. It takes major control not to. Julie’s eager, earnest face, plain and scared – how is she going to get through the rest of her life unless she toughens up?

“Make sure you put on plenty of sunscreen!” she calls, hoping the girls can still hear. “Otherwise you’re going to fry!” It isn’t that the sun is particularly bright – there is a reddish haze in the sky – but Tahnee is so fair, virtually albino and at fourteen years old almost five eleven, all endless insect leg-and-arm stalks which only burn. Julie has brown hair, more normal color, but prone to prickly heat, rashes, asthma. The kids have never been all that healthy but it is probably from growing up around this polluted marshland.

From the window where she stands, Murielle can see the bald spot on Slawa’s head. He is still painting the drive. How long could it take? And, how stupid to wear a swirly yellow MUU-MUU. Yellow has never been his colour, he looks sallow.

Murielle has taken to making him sleep in a tent in the yard, the flies around him are so constant and offensive. When she goes after them with a fly swatter, he shouts at her, saying to leave them alone. That is so warped. If she ignores him, and actually smashes one, it is so huge that fly intestines – or whatever it is inside them – splatter everywhere and are almost impossible to wipe off, more like paint than guts.

Now Slawa is on his knees, facing the house and looks as if he’s about to topple over. It is a hot, airless day and the smell of car exhaust, burnt rubber, an ashiness that might be from the power plant – sour uranium? Bug poison? The crematorium? – blows over the marsh and through the screen door next to Murielle.

Beyond Slawa, across the road, is another house just like theirs: a white one and a half story ranch house with attached garage, a plate glass window next to the front door.

In this neighborhood no one ever uses their front doors, even though each house has a concrete walkway leading to two or three steps, planted on either side with plastic trees. What is the point of the front entrance, as if – someday – someone grand and important will arrive, who must enter through the main door and not the servant’s entryway?

It’s ridiculous, the development is nearly sixty years old but no one important has ever come to pay a visit, there are no front parlors, there is no life inside or out.

Two or three blocks down is the marsh, what is left of it. The chemical seepage can be smelled – more or less – round the clock. It stings the eyes. Slawa has an empty beer bottle next to the metal pail of driveway blacking, or whatever the stuff is. In a minute he will be in to get a fresh bottle. He is stout, with a big gut. He looks older than his years, although she’s not quite sure how old he is; he has never bothered with the skin treatments and injections even little kids know about from school. How could he let himself go like this? He used to be cute! He comes up the stairs holding his empty beer bottle. “Any more?” he says.

“How should I know? Look in the fridge.”

“All the time like this, Murielle. Why you so angry all the time?”

“Go,” she says. “I think you should go before the girls get back.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I’ve had it. I want you to move out.”

“But… I don’t understand.”

“What is there not to understand? I can’t stay married to you any more! We’re over! Finished! D-I-V-O-R –”

“What will you tell the girls?” he says. “Anyway, at least I want to finish the driveway first.”

“Just forget the driveway. The way this dump looks, that’s the least of it. I’ll tell them… you had to go away for a while, on business. Shoe business. You can call them tonight if you want.”

“Hey,” he says. He is breathing heavily now and for a second she thinks he is going to hit her with the bottle. The big gut swings heavily. He’s practically pregnant. His legs and arms are scrawny, though. He has an alcoholic’s jug belly, under that flowing MUU-MUU. He must think the MUU-MUU hides his tummy. “Do you mind if I shower and change first?”

She guesses he is trying to sound sarcastic. “Can’t you do that when you check into a motel?”

“I’m paying the fucking mortgage on this place, I can sleep here if I want. Why don’t you get out and take Tahnee with you and I’ll stay here with Julie?”

“We’ve been through this a million times, Slawa. Let’s not have another scene. Take a shower if you must. Just don’t leave your towels on the floor.”

He goes muttering up the stairs. “I’m supposed to paint the driveway and then move out covered with tar to check into a Motel 99.” He curses in Russian. Once she might have found this sexy. Now she knows he is saying that he wants to kill her. When his murderous rages strike, Slawa is like an elephant in musth, blood-eyed, uncontrollable. Then, in English, he adds, “Stupid cow, what makes you think I have to go to a motel? There are other places I can go. You think you are the only woman out there? Many womens say to me, Slawa, you are handsome, you are so kind.”

She doesn’t bother to answer. It is true that to some he might still be attractive, if you are into tiger-eyed, slap-you-around, rough-trade, peasant-type Slavs.

There is only one bathroom in the house. Good luck to him, thinks Murielle. There hasn’t been any real water, any decent water, in months. It is all that instant sanitizer glop coming out of the showerhead these days, stuff that leaves you stickier than when you went in. Even so, it will be nice to have one less person using the bathroom. The girls’ rooms are across the hall from the bigger bedroom, one on the side of the house looking out to the neighbors and the other facing the street, neither of them large enough to hold much more than a bed: pink for Julie, pale lilac for Tahnee.

When she first moved in – Tahnee was little more than a year, Julie just about to be born – Slawa had been living alone for some time. The place was a mess. In his enthusiasm at her arrival, Slawa attempted to do some re-decorating. He bought floor-to-ceiling hologramovisions at a nearby discount supply house so each room could have hologramovisions on each wall.