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

“Go ahead.”

“A while ago I found a DNA testing place in America. My friend translated everything for me. The way it works when someone lives out of the country is they ask you to register for a number online, and then you send a cotton swab with your DNA to them in an envelope. The person in America gets a whole kit. They have to send in the kit labeled with the registered number to match up with the cotton swab; then they do the test or whatever,” she says. “So I only need your dad’s address to send the kit. I’ll pay for it obviously.”

As the details of this revelation hit me (a tad belatedly, as I have to think about each word for a long time), I snap back to reality. “Oh my God. No. Don’t send it to my dad,” I say in English. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“I was worried you might say that,” she says, disappointed.

The thought that she was seconds away from sending my dad a DNA kit! Goodness. Surely she could find his address with a quick search online, at least in real estate records. Does she really lack any foresight? Between the vague message that looked like spam and the idea of sending a kit to my parents’ house, I’m starting to wonder if she has a severe impulsiveness issue or a severe lack of intelligence. Or if there is something else altogether I am missing.

“The thing is I already sent in the swab and even got the registered number and everything,” Zoya adds.

“Please Zoya. Don’t. Let me think of another option, okay?”

Zoya starts to chew on her hair, deep in thought. She doesn’t respond.

“What’s the big rush anyway?” I ask. “You already waited this long.”

Zoya stops chewing her hair and scoots her chair away from the desk. The screen pixelates again before focusing in. She opens her coat to point at something. Right as the connection solidifies again, making the image come into focus, I understand what she’s pointing at.

It’s a giant pregnant belly.

“Oh,” I say.

“I already waited too long as it is,” she says.

“How far along are you?”

“Far,” she answers. “Six months or so.” She looks down at a piece of paper. “98990 w. Oakwood Lane. This is the right address for your papa?”

“Yes, but—” I think about this for no more than two seconds before coming up with a solution. It’s two seconds I may come to regret. And yet, I don’t see any better options. What if my mom accidentally opened mail addressed to my dad? “Please don’t send it to him. Send it here,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Maybe by the time it gets here we’ll know more. I can try to convince my dad to do the right thing.” Or I can take the test, I think. But I don’t say it aloud, because I don’t want to make any promises so soon.

She looks at me skeptically. “Do you think he will agree with you? That it’s the right thing?” she says.

A weird question to ask, if she were to know my dad at all. My dad always does the right thing. He’s practically Captain America. He’s Captain Russian American. “Of course he will. Once he thinks about it? Definitely.”

“Because I’m not so sure he’ll agree with you,” she adds.

“What do you mean?” Outside, it begins to rain, the drops echoing off the roof. It makes the whole conversation feel ominous somehow. I get up to close the window before responding.

“According to my mom, he knows all about me. She thinks that’s why you all left. Thought .”

“That’s impossible,” I tell her. And utterly ridiculous , I think. We left because we were Jews. Because the Soviet Union was a terrible place. We left because we wanted to.

“ Everything is possible ,” Zoya counters, her mood visibly altering. “If you don’t know that, then you’ve lived a very different life than I have.”

I frown, annoyed now. “I’ll message you my address,” I tell Zoya. “Okay? Worst case, I’ll take the test myself,” I add, even though I probably shouldn’t. It seems to me the best option, at least off the top of my head. If Zoya is really my dad’s daughter, it will blow up his whole life to take this test. And he must believe there’s a chance of it or he wouldn’t be so opposed to my talking to Zoya. If he was thinking clearly, he would have already realized that was the best solution from day one, not blocking her and forcing her to contact more family members. I’ve always thought of my dad as a very intelligent man. How does he not realize that ignoring something doesn’t make it go away?

I guess even smart men have blind spots.

Zoya seems to relax now; perhaps it was what she was after all along. “Fine,” she mumbles. But it looks like the best option, the more I think about it; I won’t have to argue with my dad, and if the test turns out to be zero then no one else has to know about this fiasco. I’m relieved just thinking about it. “Let me know when you get it. And thank you.”

“Sure. And write me your address too,” I add at the last second. “Just in case I will need it.”

“Okay. Thank you, Anastasia. I hope we can keep talking. I would like to get to know you.”

“Me, too,” I say. I mostly mean it. But the conversation has admittedly irked me. I spend a lot of energy then convincing myself I am doing the right thing. After she logs out, I turn the computer off, and smoke the entire bowl in Margot’s pipe myself, until I’ve entirely annihilated my brain cells into a coma. Then, all day long, I repeat those words in my head: Do you think he will agree with you?

For the first time in my life, I don’t know the answer to this question.

Consequences don’t always appear in one fell swoop; sometimes they are jagged, ripping slowly through the course of your everyday life, like dull scissors cutting fabric. One moment, everything is as it always was. And the next? Landslide. I didn’t know this, because I had never really done anything before that might produce adverse side effects. I’d never argued with my parents. I got good grades. I paid my rent on time. But there’s only so much goodness to go around before the world begins to show you its true colors. Before those colors start to rub off on you like too much paint.

In short: things are about to get sticky.

It starts one day towards the end of November. I’m at the door of Fuel, about to buy myself a Fat Vegan sandwich—I’m not a vegan, but occasionally I try to become one for a few days—when I walk almost directly into Abby. She stops about an inch from my face and backs up.

“Whoa. I did not see you there,” she says, in her pleasantly hoarse voice. In her hand is a black coffee thermos, a giant pleather purse with feathers, and a burning cigarette. She leans over and gives me a half-hug. “How is it that I never see you anymore and we live together?”

This is a good question. I’d barely seen her since she tried to burn her clothes in the yard, and my landlord happened to come by and see her. Let’s just say he was not happy. Abby had been lying low ever since. The house had been quiet all around, in fact. “Where you going right now?” I ask.

“Foundation. Ed called in sick,” she says, exhaling a plume of smoke. “Hey. Have you heard from August lately?”

I shake my head no and steal a drag from her cigarette, if only to get it away from the feathers on her purse. When I give it back, I place it in her other hand.

“He hasn’t called me in a while,” Abby whines. “Last I heard he was in Atlanta. He went there to introduce a girl to his mom.”

“Really? That was fast,” I say. “What’s her name?”

“Box.”

“Box? That’s her name?”

“You know train-hoppers,” she shrugs. “They’re always making up new names for themselves.”