|  |  | | | Sat, Jul 16, 2005. Опыт ностальгии | | An Ordinary Story
I left everything I had – relatives, friends, places and memories –
across the Atlantic Ocean, in Russia. I had to start my life all over
from the empty space, in the empty room, and to build something remarkable,
so that our immigration wouldn’t be worthless.
(My college essay)
She said, "I’ll tell you how it will feel. First, you will miss people -- everybody, the ones you love and the ones you just see on the streets every day. Then you’ll miss places: streets, buildings, parks... At the end, you will miss this dirt on the ground, because people you love are stepping on it." I still remember us walking under the railroad bridge; it was a heavy September rain, and I was thinking that at least one good thing about my family leaving was that I wouldn’t have to deal with that mud anymore. She also said: "I’ll miss your family as if I left and you stayed." She was a woman who lived next door, my friend’s mother.
I already knew it was going to happen when my grandparents left two years earlier. Although my parents tried to avoid the topic every time I asked, I knew it was just the matter of time. Another incident only ensured my suspicion: in the very beginning of that year my best friend was predicting my fortune with a candle, and the melted wax that dropped in the water formed into a shape of the Northern American continent. Being skeptical of such superstitions, I didn’t pay much attention to it back then; but the minute my mother asked of my opinion about that, I knew there was no way out.
We spoke about it for a while, but there could be no dispute, because the reasons for leaving troublesome Russia combined with the reasons for coming to blossoming America were just too reasonable to argue with. The fact that I would leave my entire 16-year worth of life behind, drop it off like a snake drops of its old skin, without any chance of getting it back, didn’t seem significant compared to more serious things. Economically unstable, my Motherland followed the way of many other countries – it found scapegoats among the most vulnerable – national minorities, to one of which my family unfortunately belonged. And the decision was made.
It was an unbelievable chaos in the house the last days. In the morning we would eat leftovers from yesterday’s supper, at the daytime we would pack, in the evening people would come over to say good-bye, and I would go to the store to get a cake and a bottle of soda for them. We would sit in the kitchen and talk; they would say how good of friends and neighbors we were to them and how much they would miss us. They would bring us little presents so we would know they think about us from across the ocean. I still remember my father smashing his fist on the door that closed behind our neighbor, when he realized what she had done. It was no crime, but it was painful. She rang the doorbell, and as I opened, she put something in my hand, said, “Be a good girl” and left. When I looked in my hand, I saw a pair of golden earrings. My mother started crying; my father told me I could give that woman something of mine. I took off my golden chain, took off my David’s star from it and brought it next door. The expression on her face was like that of my father’s five minutes before. It was gratitude, it was pain, but most of all it was a great desire to change the order of things and complete incapability to do so. She accepted a chain and put her golden Christian cross on it. I haven’t worn those earrings in America. I am too afraid to lose them.
November 27, 1997, was the day we left Tambov. It was snowing for the first time that year. People said that snow was for our good luck.
Everything wanted us to stay. In the train to Moscow somebody pulled an emergency break and we stopped, not yet leaving the station in Tambov. We had another chance to wave good-bye to everything we were leaving. When our airplane was ready to leave the land, the engine was suddenly turned off and the pilot said we were not going before the runway is clean of snow. Because of that delay we hardly made it to the other plane we were supposed to switch to in Paris. But despite everything, we made it to America on time.
It was raining when we left the JFK Airport. It was not a heavy rain, rather a lazy autumn drizzle. The dust on the ground was idly turning into the mud; it was not heavy and full of life like the wet black soils back at home, it was weak and unwilling to stick to my shoes. This was when I remembered my friend’s mother’s words for the first time. They would come to my mind often, for she was right. I miss my relatives and friends, those who knew me from my first years; I miss the bus driver, who took me to school every morning; I miss the building I lived in and the bridge across the river, and the narrow path between the houses that went form my building to the building of my best friend; I remember myself walking there almost every night, and how without any street lights, in complete darkness, I knew where to step; I miss the smell of my friend’s apartment, and the smell of a train passing above the people who walk under the railroad bridge; I miss the snow and the rain, and the puddles on the street afterwards. I miss my city and its people. They are different now, and so am I, but I miss them more than anything else.
The first day in America we woke up late, not yet adapted to the time difference, and my grandparents walked with us along the Brighton Beach, through that Russian-American ghetto; they wanted to show us what America was for them. It was a warm day -- surprisingly warm to be the last day in November. One couple glanced over at us from their bench, recognizing our “fresh from the boat” look, and continued their dialogue. A woman said in Russian, “What a wonderful weather! He, who died yesterday, has to be sorry to miss this day.” I remember myself thinking how sorry I was that I hadn’t died yesterday. |
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