Zhanna Slor - At the End of the World, Turn Left

“Papachka,” I start, trying to get to the heart of the matter quickly, the reason he’d asked—no, begged—me to return. Seeing him so frazzled over what is probably nothing is making this whole trip seem less like a friendly visit home and more like an intervention. “Have you considered that, uh… maybe Anastasia is just… mad at you? That she’s not really… missing?”

“Maria, please. I may be old but I no idiot. I not heard from her in weeks,” he roars, in English. “She started hanging around in that stupid Riverwest.” Here he frowns at me like this is my fault. Which it probably is. I’d been the one to first show Anna Riverwest, an eclectic but semi-dangerous neighborhood of Milwaukee full of artists and musicians and, most importantly to my dad: a lot of crime. “I think she shacked up with guy.”

“Her roommate? They’re just friends. Get with the times already.”

“No, not Anarchist.”

I stifle a laugh. “I don’t think he’s an anarchist. He fixes bikes.”

“Not him. A boyfriend,” my dad explains.

“Oh. Well. It isn’t a crime to have a boyfriend. She’s an adult. She’s allowed to do whatever she wants.”

“This is what cops said, too.” He shakes his head again, frustrated. “Gospodi, I wish I’d had boys.”

“ Papa! ”

“When you last talk to her?”

“I think a few weeks ago, online,” I say. “I gave up calling her a long time ago. You know how much she likes to answer the phone.”

“Her phone is dead. I called AT&T and guy couldn’t tell me something except phone is dead, which I already know,” he says. “Durak.”

“That doesn’t prove much, except that she’s nineteen,” I explain. “Right now, the most rebellious thing a person can do is get off the grid.”

“It just like what happened before,” my dad responds, pointedly. “This why I ask you to come. You think it was easy for me?”

I sit on this for a moment, that old familiar uneasiness bubbling up inside me. Guilt. It coursed through every interaction I’d ever had in my family, even before I’d had reason to feel it; the unfortunate outcome of surviving when so many didn’t, I’d supposed—pogroms, Hitler, Stalin, mass poverty, my family had escaped it all. How would I ever live up to that? All I’d managed to do was escape them .

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to find her,” I tell my dad, quietly. “You should talk to the cops again if you’re worried.”

“You think I did not talk to cops again? They have better things to do than look for girl who no longer posts on Bookface account.”

“It’s called Facebook, Papa. And she wasn’t on Facebook, she was on MySpace.”

“Okay. My space,” he parrots, as if speaking in an alien tongue. He exits the highway via Locust Ave., instead of continuing north to the suburbs, where he still chooses to live for some reason I will never understand. “I ask you to try. You used to live down here. You familiar with area. You know… young people.”

“Not really. I’ve been gone a while. And I’m not so young anymore.” I turn my head to the side, confused. A sign directing traffic towards UW-Milwaukee appears on the left. On the right, the standard string of rundown houses, baggy-clothed youth with paper-sack forties and cigarettes lingering in groups. My dad goes left. “Where are we going?” I ask. “I need to sleep, Papa. And I stink. People will think I’m homeless.”

“This is better. You blend in,” my dad says, with a hint of a smirk. It’s the first relatively positive emotion he’s expressed since I got in the car. Not that my father is a man of many positive emotions in general; Dostoevsky was right when he said, “The Russian soul is a dark place.” Still, for a moment the knot in my stomach loosens, until I realize he’s serious. I turn to the back seat.

“What about my stuff? What about Mom? I haven’t seen her since… I can’t even remember. When was it that you came to Jerusalem for Totya Lana’s funeral?”

“So you wait few more hours, big deal.” He pauses for a moment, then exhales another long plume of smoke out the window, where the familiar landscape of Riverwest begins to pass us by. Center Street, Uptowner, Foundation’s bamboo door and candlelit windows. A line of parked, multicolored road bikes. They shimmer in the bright, hot sun all the way down to Fuel Café, patios filled with aging hippies and crust punks in black-and-beige thrift store fare, all smoking cigarettes above some scraggly dogs. It’s like seeing an old lover again; half adoration, half punch in the gut.

“ Seriously, Papa? This really can’t wait?” I ask, in Russian now.

“I’ve been waiting, Masha,” my dad sighs. “You know this not good for me,” he adds, tapping his chest. “With my condition.”

“And you know this place isn’t good for me ,” I say, looking back down at my hands, which are clenched. I unfold them onto my lap. I feel angry, then immediately after, like I could cry. I can’t explain why exactly. What am I so scared of? This used to be my favorite place in the world. And Center Street is abuzz with activity—a leather-clad couple walking two spotted pit bulls in bandanas. A dreadlocked mom with a baby attached to her chest, a face-tattooed cyclist splashing past on a bright yellow tall bike.

It’s exactly like I left it.

My dad, noticing all this too, shakes his head in confusion. This type of rebellion, more aesthetic than political, is inexplicable to a Soviet immigrant, where going against the grain could mean gulags or death.

“I told you not to move here, didn’t I? You could have lived at home. Anastasia too. Nothing would be happening if you girls listened to me.”

“We don’t even know if anything is happening,” I say, not taking the bait. “All I was saying is that…” I start. I swallow the lump in my throat. “It’s, I don’t know. It’s really weird. For me to be here.”

Papa drops his cigarette out the window and double-parks in front of the alley right past Fuel Café, where a purple-haired barista is throwing out a large bag of garbage. She turns and looks in our direction, squints, then drops the bag inside the dumpster.

“I could care less about weird. Your sister is gone,” he says. He reaches across me to open the door, essentially kicking me out of the car. “You still young. You manage.”

Before I know what’s happening, I’m back outside in a barely-there leather coat watching as my dad’s car disappears down Fratney Street. For a moment I stand there, numbly, staring at his bumper—plastered with Bush/Cheney stickers, something you could probably get punched for around here these days—and forgetting what it is I am meant to do. Then I turn to find myself in front of Fuel Cafe’s awning. Right. Fuel. A good place to start, if I’m really here to find Anna. Anna loves Fuel. Plus, I could definitely use some coffee.

Walking through the narrow, flyer-covered vestibule, I’m immediately bombarded with a vivid memory of her. My parents had gone to China for the week, so I stayed at the house and brought her to Fuel with me a few times. There was nothing unusual about the hours we’d spent. She doodled mugs and smoke rings in her sketchpad while I studied for my linguistics final: A group of dragonflies is called a dazzle. Tsuris is a Yiddish word for grief and trouble, especially when caused by a son or daughter. Bamboozle derives from the French word, embabouiner, meaning “to make a baboon out of someone.” To explode originally meant “to jeer a performer off the stage.”