Emily Rubin - Stalina

“Continue,” she said.

“Amalia would say, ‘Watch me, Stalina. This is the way it’s done.’ After peeling back the skin of the plum and revealing its brown and purple flesh, she would wet her lips. ‘Remember, don’t tense—let them relax, feel full. Your lips must be soft and determined at the same time.’ Lifting a plum from the bowl, she would bring it toward her lips and lean in a little over the cream. Her lips and the plum became one.”

I explained how we would continue to eat in silence, bobbing the peeled plums, watching the morning sunlight bounce off our spoons onto the walls. Karlik and Meeyassa, my two cats who would be called Little One and Meat in English, swatted at the flickerings along the top of the refrigerator. One cat would swipe and hit the other. Timid Meat would jump down first and hiss back up at Little One and go under my chair, where I always put the bowl of unfinished cream.

As I spoke, Frederica continued to look at my left palm. With a long, sharp fingernail she traced the lines in my hand. Her black nail polish was peeling. The sunlight was streaking in a slant through the front window, hitting her heavily made-up eyes. Flecks of mascara were clumped on her lashes, and her lips were painted deep purple, the same color as the plums. The lipstick had seeped into the age lines around her mouth like the canals that split off the Neva River at home.

Frederica spoke as if a vision had come to her. “You are on a long journey.”

This clairvoyance did not impress me. After all, I had not slept in twenty-four hours, my eyes were heavy, I had my valise packed full at my side, and even though I speak English with good confidence, my accent is quite thick. She could tell I was not very impressed, so she held both my palms in her hands and stared at them.

“Are you comfortable hearing about past lives?” she asked.

I said yes, not because I believe in life after death, but I still had forty minutes before my bus would leave, and I was curious.

“You were in a desperate situation because of your religion.”

“Once a Jew, always a Jew,” I said, laughing. “Let my people go? Inquisition? Would you like me to continue?”

She was serious.

“One of those. Your safety was compromised, and you were forced to take your four children away, which ended in great tragedy. There were deaths. Your husband was not of your religion, so he was safe. At the time, your relationship was one of much dependency. That all fell apart, and you never recovered.”

For some reason I keep getting sent back as a Jew.

“‘You, you, always a Jew,’ the angels yelled down at me from St. Isaac’s Cathedral before I left Russia,” I told her.

“Angels, that’s good. They don’t hate Jews—they’re just doing someone else’s bidding.”

“Could have fooled me,” I said under my breath.

“Please may I see the other pictures?” she asked.

I pulled out the pictures of my grandmother, our neighbors, my mother, father, and Trofim.

At that moment an official car with a siren blaring and lights flashing pulled up out front. It was the police, and two officers got out and came into Frederica’s salon.

“We have a warrant for the arrest of Anthony Hermona,” one of the officers announced.

I froze. I did not want to be part of anything illegal during my first hours in America. Frederica said nothing, just indicated with her eyes and a tilt of her head to the curtain at the back of the room. The officers went through, and there was a scuffle in the back. A few moments later a young man with dark, oily hair and sweat stains at his armpits was led away in handcuffs. Frederica was silent until the police had driven away. I stared at a moving waterfall in a frame that was also a clock. It was three o’clock. I waited for Frederica to say something.

“He’s my nephew. He sold cocaine to the wrong people. They’ll let him out in a week. I told the police he knew a lot. Now they’ll watch out for my store. Sorry for the disturbance.”

She gave her nephew to the police! I realized that America is more like Russia than I imagined, only there the police would never have stopped at the door. The clock now said five after three.

“My bus is leaving for Hartford soon. I must be going,” I explained as I stood to leave.

“There were betrayals among these people,” she said, giving me back the pictures.

“Betrayals? It was common,” I responded.

“You were not the one betrayed. But you will be. Five dollars, please,” she said.

“There is a Russian saying that goes, ‘Being the daughter of the betrayed is like having alcoholic parents. You may end up becoming a bartender.’ Why five dollars? The sign says three.”

“You are too stuck in your past, and that was the old sign.”

“I have to get on a bus to Hartford—that’s the future.”

I handed her five dollars. Amalia had sent me a stack of five-dollar bills so I would not have to change money right away. The rubles I took from Russia were stuffed inside the hollow centers of my porcelain cats protected by the brassieres. Months later I would wish it had been the cats protecting the brassieres.

Frederica scrutinized the five-dollar bill in the sunlight. As I left, she pulled a cigarette from behind her ear and placed my money inside her brassiere. She wore a tight-fitting black sweater that showed off her sagging but plentiful breasts. She stood in stockinged feet on the plastic fake grass mat in front of her store. Through her black opaque stockings I could see her toes were painted red and she had a bunion on her left foot. She drew loudly on her cigarette and exhaled even louder. A sign of an addict, I could tell. I walked to the corner and went inside the Port Authority. The bus was waiting at gate fifteen.

The bus driver said, “Let me put your bag under here,” indicating somewhere deep in the belly of the bus.

“No, thank you,” I replied.

“Sup to you,” he said.

English was still often baffling to me. I wondered what “sup” meant, but I did not dare ask as the bus driver was busy with the next passengers.

The seats were soft, the bus dark, and the diesel fumes once again made me feel cozy and relaxed. As the bus rumbled out of the depot into the narrow streets, I could barely see any sky between the tall buildings. We went into a tunnel, and in the darkness I fell into the exhaustion of my journey and slept. In my dreams, I was still in Russia.

I was deep in a Russian forest and could hear, but could not see, someone chopping down a tree. I was nervous for the person chopping, as if the tree was going to fall on them. Eventually after much effort, the woodsman felled the tree. I could see through the clearing that it was my grandfather. He was holding up his right hand, showing a mangled index finger. In his youth it was common for young men to chop off their trigger fingers or shoot wax into their leg veins to make them varicose to escape serving in the czar’s army. My grandfather’s finger was mangled in real life, but I never knew how it happened. A flash went off in the dream—a spy wearing a black hood photographed my grandfather burying the top joint of his finger.

I woke, startled. My mouth had dropped open, and my tongue was parched. I looked at the watch of the man sitting next to me and saw that it was almost six o’clock. I had slept for a long time, and in order to see where I was, I read the signs on the stores as the bus sped by.

Arturo’s Haircuts—Best in Hartford—Only $5

The bus stopped at a traffic light. My legs were numb from the weight of my bag.

“Prroh, prroh, prroh…” the man next to me started to splutter. He was dreaming and sounded like a motorboat engine struggling to start. I held tightly onto my bag.