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

You can’t get out of that deep a hole alone; that was one of the main metaphorical points I’d retrieved from watching season six with her. Buffy, I had to admit, was not only a great distraction but a pretty good motivation tool. Buffy was why I’d had the idea to try martial arts in the first place. Kickboxing, originally. Then Krav Maga once I got to Israel and learned enough Hebrew to follow directions. Somehow all the show did to June was make her more lethargic. It was like she didn’t want to get better. The only reason I could come up with when I occasionally tried to come up with a reason beyond laziness, was that part of her must have craved the sorrow, so ubiquitous it came to feel like a friend. To her, sadness was like a drug. And for whatever reason, June didn’t want to stop being sad. I never did find out why. As much time as she’d spent writing her feelings into words, she did not leave a suicide note. Just that poem.

I wipe my eyes, realizing they’re wet. As I said, I never think about June. There’s a reason for that. Weirdly, this is followed by an unquenchable need to talk to my mom, so I take out my phone and try calling her again for the third or fourth time since my arrival. In a few hours, the sun would fall, and it would be Shabbat, which meant I could no longer use my phone. If we are ever going to talk it has to be now.

A throat clearing, then a fuzzy “Hello?”

“Mama?”

“Masha? Is that you?”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Finally. I was starting to get worried,” I breathe. “I tried calling you a few times.”

“About what?” my mom asks, in Russian. Her voice sounds distant, muffled even. Like after she’s had too much wine, or woken up from a late nap. “Is everything OK? Whose phone number is this?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, I just… I haven’t talked to you since I got here and it feels weird—”

“Got here? Where?”

“Milwaukee,” I say, slowly. “Are you telling me that you didn’t know that?”

A pause from the other end of the phone. “I’m in New Jersey.”

A long breath of air escapes my mouth unexpectedly, and I have to close it before it turns into a cry. How extremely strange. My dad had definitely left that out when summoning me here. I had been so looking forward to seeing her. “What are you doing in New Jersey?”

“Oh… it’s a long story.”

“Can I hear this story?”

“Have you talked to your sister?”

“No, that’s kind of—” I pause, suddenly unsure if my mom even knows Anastasia is missing. There seems to be a lot of miscommunication going on here, and I don’t want to make things worse. And why hadn’t my dad mentioned to me that she was out of town?

“Talk to her, please,” Mama says.

If only I could , I want to say aloud, but don’t. “Where are you exactly?” I ask.

She clears her throat again. “I’m visiting Svetlana. I’ve been here for a little while. How long are you staying?”

I swallow. “Um. I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m kinda bummed. I mean, I know I’ve been hard to reach lately, but… Anyway, Papa didn’t tell me you were out of town.”

More silence. Something is wrong, I can feel it. She sounds… what, sad? Distant? I can’t quite put my finger on it. My mother is usually a very severe person. This woman seems emotional. How strange of her to travel to New Jersey in the middle of the week, too. Maybe Tristan was right after all, and the clue I needed has been under my nose this whole time. My dad is obviously keeping something from me. “Is Sveta okay?”

“Mashinka, I’m so sorry, but I have to go. Can I call you back later?” She pauses for a moment, then adds, “It’s so good to hear your voice, honey. I’ll call you back soon.”

And before I could finish saying “It’s Shabbat today,” my mom drops the call.

I call her back, but it goes straight to voicemail. So I leave one. “Mom, in case you forgot, it’s Friday, which means in three hours I’m turning off this phone and you won’t be able to get a hold of me. Please call me tomorrow night if that happens. Also, I hope everything is okay! I miss you. Bye.”

I hang up the phone, which blinks at me in orange, a sign of low battery. I don’t even bother getting my charger. I am all out of words. All I can think is:

What.

The.

Hell.

When I get into my dad’s car an hour later, he looks peeved. My shoes are soaked, and my muscles are sore from spending the time between calling him and his arrival walking around the slushy streets of Riverwest. There’s a Parisian word for this sort of aimless ambling—flâner. It refers to the art of leisurely strolling the streets of Paris without any goal or destination simply for the pleasure of soaking up the city’s beauty. These aimless pedestrians are known as “flâneurs . ” I’m not sure what you’d call a person who does this in Riverwest—besides, perhaps, careless—but it did not help. I’m still as in shock as I was before, only colder.

“I was in the middle of cooking,” my dad is saying in Russian. There’s more, but I’m too spacey to listen. “What was so urgent that you had to come home right this second? You find Anna?”

I put a hand on the gear shift and don’t let him move it out of park. “Why is Mama in New Jersey?” I ask in Russian.

My dad sucks in some air between his teeth. “Oh.” I think he is about to deny it, make up some excuse to appease me, but instead he digs into his pocket and lights a cigarette. Then he moves my hand away and begins driving, heading west down Center Street then turning right on Fratney. We pass an array of multi-colored Polish flats with wraparound porches and balconies. I’ve been inside at least seven of them, though I’m not sure any would still have the same residents. Although, I’d assumed that about Liam too, and had been wrong. Maybe Milwaukee really is quicksand, just like I’d always thought. “That’s, uh… long story.”

“Can someone please tell me this long story?”

“There are things… that have been going on here the last few months.”

“I can see that,” I tell him. “Don’t you think you might have mentioned that to me before I came here? Shto sloochelas?”

My dad turns his head toward the window, then itches his neck with his cigarette hand.

“Papa?” I start. “Does it have anything to do with the fact that you’re smoking again?”

For whatever reason, Papua New Guinea is full of languages with untranslatable words. My favorite one is Mokita, a Kivila word for the truth everyone knows but agrees not to talk about . It makes me wonder. What would Anastasia tell me if I found her? Here I’d thought this whole ordeal was about her disappearing, but it’s not, not really. There’s something else. Something that has to do with my parents, with my mom being in New Jersey. If that’s the case, perhaps I should let her be.

“Papa! Talk to me, or I’m getting on a plane home right now.”

Finally, Papa sinks into the seat, unstiffening. Then he takes a deep breath. “Well. Actually, your mom… uh, she needed break. She went to see your aunt,” he explains in English now.

“Yeah. I got that part. What did she need a break from ?”

“From me.”

“Don’t you think that would have been important information to give me before I got here?” I ask. “No wonder Anna just up and disappeared.” No wonder she has resorted to stealing , I think. It could have been worse; when the world falls out from under you, it takes a lot of will power not to grab onto the first thing you catch on your way down—and she’s young and sensitive and newly involved with this blue-haired thief. I think of the French term, l’appel du vide: literally translated to “the call of the void”; contextually used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places. Or low places, depending on how you look at it. I know from experience that the call of the void comes easier than you might imagine. One little change can send anyone reeling, if they’re not standing on solid ground.