Karolina Waclawiak: How to Get into the Twin Palms

I HAD INHERITED THE APARTMENT FROMsomeone I once knew and it was strange to live here, to think about what he had done in here. The apartment was vertical blinds, beige carpets, bare off-white walls, and small things I found that people left behind.

Bobby pins in the corner of the bedroom carpet, a hair ball of long blond hair in the living room that the vacuum had missed, six shrimp-flavored Ramen noodle packages at the back of the kitchen cabinet, and purple Fabuloso floor cleaner, untouched.

I used the bobby pins, threw away the hair, pushed the Ramen aside, and filled the cabinets with my own food. I threw away the floor cleaner and bought myself Ajax powder, like my mother always used.

The apartment was rent controlled so I wasn’t going to complain. But, I was curious about whose hairball was in the living room. I thought maybe some kind of actress-to-be. The roots were dark brown. She was in need of a touch-up, whoever she was, and her hair was fine, like mine.

I considered keeping the hair, saving it, but I was already holding on to too much.

SOMETIMES, WHEN THERE IS NO PARKING ONFairfax the Russians park on my street. The men are always alone, having already deposited their wives or significant others curbside at the Twin Palms. Alone, they like to look. I can giggle and coo here without being called a suka or worse, shalava . Here, I can woo freely.

I usually sit behind my ficus and wait. I see a few pull up with their Cadillacs and Buicks. These are better Russians. Better than the cabbies. They are well fed and wear their shirts unbuttoned two buttons to show their chest hair, their lion’s mane. I whistle from my ground-level balcony. They look for a moment, or two. I’m not their type or I’m not their girl or I just don’t work because they keep walking.

My neighbor climbs out of the sliding glass door and starts preparing something. He lays down newspaper on the table outside. He brings a floor lamp from inside the apartment outside. He brings out a few knives, and finally a fish. He smiles at me. His mustache is fine haired and ill groomed. He does not have gray yet.

He shakes his knife at me. “Do you want to take a try?” He points to the fish and smiles.

“Gut it?”

“Yes, gut and scale. Easy work.” He laughs at this but I don’t.

His English is thick with an accent. His mother still cuts his hair in the bathroom. I can see it. The lopsided cuts. The cowlick. The telltale sign of a homemade haircut. His mother only speaks to me in Russian and I do not understand. She comes outside and smiles at me. She wants me to gut the fish and motions to it. She wants me to like her son.

He is much older than me. But still not old.

He lives across the street and walks back and forth. One day he talks to me — more than hello and goodbye.

“My mother thinks you’re pretty,” he says.

I stare at him. I’m not sure how to react so I smile and shrug.

“She said it. I didn’t.”

“Tell her thank you.”

I smile at her and she smiles back with her few silver teeth, just like my grandfather. Her single son climbs into her ground-level balcony every day, pulls open the sliding glass door and goes inside. A few minutes later he comes back out the front door with a small bag of garbage and brings it to the dumpster. Every day.

Why not use the front door each time? It was some kind of strange ritual I did not understand. I never considered scaling my balcony to press through my sliding glass. We were supposed to be cultured here and not do those kind of things in this country. Or call attention to ourselves. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t know that in America we used the front door, always.

My neighbor’s son doesn’t go to the Twin Palms. He walks around the streets with his white athletic socks pulled up high, and black, plastic sandals. And shorts. The men who go to the Twin Palms do not wear shorts. They wear slacks and silk shirts unbuttoned and leather jackets even if the Santa Ana winds are roaring.

I WORK HARD ON MY APPEARANCE. I GO TO Aneighborhood salon. The women have curlers in their hair and are all over 50. They will leave the salon with plastic wrapped around their perms so the curl sets properly. I sit in a chair and stare at my hairdresser. I brought a picture from Burda , the only magazine I know of that is for both Polish and Russian women. I can’t read the words but am transfixed by the Cyrillic. The women are smiling and wearing their versions of American styles. I point to the picture. The hair is dark, a maroon tint to it, and much darker than the carefully highlighted mane I have spent years cultivating. She comes back with a tub full of color and brushes it on. She rolls it atop my head and clips it.

“Come to dryer.”

I follow her and look at myself in the mirror as the machine hums. When she washes my hair I notice the dye has stained the skin all around my hairline. My ears. My skin has dark splotches to match my new dark strands. I will have to spend hundreds of dollars to go back to the careful blond.

“Do you like?”

“It’s dark.”

“Yes, moody. Like picture.”

I stare at myself. My eyes are glowing. My hair flat and black, not dark chestnut. With a hint of maroon. Whatever it is, I will have to work with it.

I keep whistling at the Russian men and so far that has not worked. I spend evenings walking back and forth past the Twin Palms. Now some of the men nod at me from the front and stare at my ass from the back. My new slim black pants accentuate my hips and elongate my legs. They seem to like that. My dark hair makes my eyes more cat-like and brighter in hue. More Eastern European. Less American. I am starting to make sense to them. I am taking off all my American skin. Killing my ability to pass for Middle American and quiet and from here. Instead I am from the bloki again. Soviet-built and dooming.

WHEN I SEE HIM I KNOW IT’S GOING TO BE HIM.He is not exceptionally tall, not exceptionally anything. He is nondescript in the Eastern European way. The Soviet way. Brown, muddled hair, like deerskin. He is beginning the slant toward overweight.

I watch him walk toward the Twin Palms and I know he’ll appreciate all the work I have put in. Should I yell to him in words I have just learned or speak to him in English? I panic and speak English. More of a grunt than a sentence. Something vague about the weather. The street. I catch him off guard. I wonder if women ever talk to him. If they ever come on to him. He is not the man I saw outside pressed up against his car, against a woman. He is new, fresh and I know I can hold onto his attention for a while.

“It’s street cleaning today. You’ll get a ticket,” I said. He stares at me blankly.

“You can’t park on that side on Tuesdays and Fridays between 12 and 2 and you can’t park on this side Mondays and Thursdays. From 1 to 3.”

“Who says?”

I point to the signs. “The city.”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Do you understand?”

He looks at me, inspecting me really. My hair, my eyes. The signs of who I am and where I am from, if he wants to talk to me or deal with me or if I am just another American. He has a clean haircut. A barber cut, or even a salon. Not from the kitchen, over a basin with fine brown hairs dropping on peeling linoleum. He’s slack-jawed and has pocket eyes, blue or green or something in between. Like a shark.

“Fuck them.”

He walks away, down the street and toward the Twin Palms. He doesn’t turn around to see if I’m still watching him. He’s older than me, probably in his late 30’s. I pull the dead leaves off my ficus. It’s not taking to the dips in temperature at night.