Yelena Moskovich - Virtuoso

The next morning, they had the same idea, to sponsor Marja and her daughter to come over to America and live with them.

Marja arrived more gawky than Gejza imagined her, with her cream blouse collar laid neatly over her brown and tan jumper, tucked over her knee-length brown checked skirt, with a laminated pink belt hooked at the waist. She had the same bird-eyes and fluffed-out hair, with skin that looked unfolded and refolded already. Her daughter was sixteen, long-limbed, with a pale complexion and pitch-dark hair cut short, sitting jagged on her head, the trail above her neck slightly longer than the rest. Her face held stark, black eyebrows over two dense eyes like iron nails. She had light denim jeans on with two worn holes revealing her bony knees, a loose black T-shirt that was made for a large man, rippling down her torso, and over that a man’s white shirt, the kind that would usually be worn starched to the office, but the girl’s was wrinkled, one sleeve bunched up at her skinny elbow, the other hanging low over her fingertips.

The flight had been long, but it seemed that mother and daughter were operating on some sort of peace treaty, as each spoke to Gejza in Czech individually, never acknowledging each other’s presence.

Tammie helped to enrol the girl at the local public high school, got her some after-school tutoring for her English, and put her in her Basic French class so that Tammie could keep an eye on the girl in this brand-new school.

To celebrate their first week in America, the four went for dinner at McDonald’s where the girl took bites of everyone’s food and licked her wrist that she kept putting in the ketchup she squirted out for herself on her tray. Tammie listened patiently and every time Gejza tried to translate for her, she politely waved her hand, and mouthed, “It’s fine, I’ll just listen.”

At home, they continued their discussion about who should live in the garage space Gejza had just finished converting into a bedroom, and who in the guest bedroom in the house. Marja was a discrete claustrophobe, and kept having visions of a dark-headed, blue-eyed woman in a fur coat slumped in the front seat of a car in the garage, dying of exhaust fumes. She explained to her younger brother that she thought the place was cursed. Not like American cursed, vengeful ghosts or resentful zombies, but cursed in the Eastern way, by one’s own inevitable fate. So she said that her daughter should take the garage room, but under one condition:

“I don’t want you to get a venereal disease like the Americans. They look very clean, but they are very dirty.” She gave her daughter a firm nod, then her daughter rolled her eyes at her mother, then reached inside her own T-shirt and pulled up her bra strap.

Marja grabbed her daughter’s chin and pulled her face in.

“Zorka, I’m serious!”

Zorka pursed her lips together and flapped her mother a kiss, keeping her eyes taut and sly.

Marja lifted her hand and wacked her palm against Zorka’s cheek. Zorka winced but when she opened her eyes they were fully cocked. Both Gejza and Tammie flinched, and grew immediately polite in their unease.

Marja turned to her brother and said in Czech, “She destroyed our mother’s beautiful fur coat, by the way, and of course I love her, she’s my daughter, but I’ll never forgive her, I hope you know.”

Waiting ,

waiting ,

waiting.

Dominxxika_N39: Are u there? Amy?

0_hotgirlAmy_0: Yeah I’m here… Where did u go last time?

Dominxxika_N39: I’m sorry sexy Amy. Internet cut off. I cannot stop think about u. My husband come home and he cut internet. Now he left again for work. I climb on roof and reconnect internet to satellite dish.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: U went on the roof to fix the satellite dish? For real?

Dominxxika_N39: Yes this is real.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: I guess I thought… u like… got weirded out by what I said…

Dominxxika_N39: No, no, my sexy Amy! I was so sad all week I want to scream a million screams, but I stay quiet. I wait for my husband to leave so I can climb on roof and fix internet connection.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: Oh.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: I just wish… he hadn’t done that. I mean I really wanted to talk to you this week and u weren’t online…

Dominxxika_N39: What happen this week?

0_hotgirlAmy_0: Whatever, it’s no big deal.

Dominxxika_N39: Big deal to me, please tell.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: I mean…

0_hotgirlAmy_0: It’s just. I’ve been thinking about Archangel Michael.

Dominxxika_N39: He whisper again to you?

0_hotgirlAmy_0: Maybe…

0_hotgirlAmy_0: I dunno.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: It really doesn’t matter. I just thought you didn’t like me anymore.

Dominxxika_N39: I do like you anymore! Please believe me.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: I guess when you stopped talking to me. Then the thing at school, so…

Dominxxika_N39: What thing at school? I am very interested to hear.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: It’s kinda hard… to talk about.

Dominxxika_N39: O my so-cute Amy, I here and listen so much for you. Please share the hard thing at school with me.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: Just. Other stuff. With the girls.

Dominxxika_N39: Yes?

0_hotgirlAmy_0: I was wearing these sweatpants for gym class. We had to play softball. And it was my turn to bat. And they were taking extra long, between them, the girls I mean. One of them was pitcher and the other, behind me, the catcher. They were looking at each other and I could feel something was up. And our gym teacher, Mr Brooks (who’s also the football coach), he was like, come on girls, let’s not take all day here. So she wound up her pitch and threw the ball and I swung and I hit it, and – the girl behind me, the catcher, she just, um…

0_hotgirlAmy_0: …she…

0_hotgirlAmy_0: She pulled down my sweatpants.

Dominxxika_N39: This is strange gesture in circumstances.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: She pulled down everything – like everything, like my underwear too. And everyone saw.

Dominxxika_N39: This is clear violation! What Mr Brooks do as responsible leader?

0_hotgirlAmy_0: He just acted like nothing happened! I mean I dunno, maybe he didn’t see it, it was kinda quick. I pulled them back up right away, so…

Dominxxika_N39: He is surely pretending blindness as strategy to maintain prescribed hierarchy.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: That’s what I was thinking too! He had to have seen it! But I dunno, he just started yelling at me to run to first base, and everyone was yelling at me too, and I dunno, in the moment, I just totally zonked out, I just… ran to first base. Then I could hear this hooting, “Let’s get Amy all the way!” And Mr Brooks was yelling out “Keep running, Amy!” – so I dunno I just started up running again. Then everyone was shouting “First base! Second base! Third base!” “Mmmmyeah go all the way for me, Amy!”

Dominxxika_N39: I know this pressure system.

0_hotgirlAmy_0: …You said Archangel Michael comes in the hour of your death?

Dominxxika_N39: This is true.