New year, new home

At the end of the year, I sit in a wide and pale-lit room, tracing the dark designs of the carpet on my wall. Valentina clangs in the kitchen. Last night I found a row of xholodets – meat jelly – in trays keeping cold by the door.

Two weeks ago I came to live in Valentina’s house, in Bogdanivka. She looks as if she were carved from rock, like a wise and solemn god in a garden. Her fingertips once brushed me and they were like rock.

She is kind, but like most babusyas I would imagine, she doesn’t take no for an answer. The night of my arrival, she prepared me a bath by heating water on the stove. In the bathroom she showed me how to mix it with cold water in the tub. At this point I thanked her and waited for her to leave. Instead, she took off my clothes and put me (horrified, stunned) into a bucket and poured water on me. She then instructed me to scrub my lady parts, and watched, repeating, “Molodetz! Molodetz!” (Good job). Since that night, I wash myself as quickly as possible – sometimes when I dally, Valentina bursts in and scrubs my back with a bristly, wooly rag.

I came here at a strange time – the winter holiday began on Monday, and so I haven’t been doing much actual work yet. My first day I met with the principal, and I had barely sat down when he asked if I could sing “Yesterday.” He grabbed his guitar from the wall and strummed, and everyone watched me eagerly as I sang the lyrics. Every time a verse ended, I thought I could stop singing – but no, I had to sing the whole song, the principal eagerly trying to sing along even though he doesn’t know the words, nor English.

This meeting excited everyone so much that I somehow got roped into singing “Yesterday” at the party for the entire school. This was mortifying, but luckily the entire school is only about 100 people. And then again, at the party for teachers, about 5 toasts of vodka later, my colleagues made me sing.

After this, the teachers began to dance. They formed a ring and swayed from side to side, clapping off-time. The mathematics teacher jumped into the center, heels splayed, and let out whoops and guttural laughter. She grabbed another teacher’s arm and they whirled – both short and round, like merry gnomes. Then they began taking down decorations – streamers, paper snowflakes, plastic tinsel – and draping their shoulders.

I even made a toast – wobbly and mispronounced, the only toast I know: “Za drooz-boo!” (To friendship.) 

Insert melancholic Eastern European violin music here

Typing like mad in the school computer lab, my first taste of internet in a while. Not enough time to tell you about my new life in Bogdanivka - so for now let my just share my new address:

182 Lenina St., village of Bogdanivka, Znamenka region, Kirovohrad oblast. Ukraine, 27431

Please write me a letter if you have time. I hope everyone had a magical winter solstice, and much love from the village.

Scary dog

This a story I wrote for class. It's called, "CAUTION!" 

"In Kaharlyk, we have a big problem. What is the name, you want to know? It's name is - scary dog. It's not a joke! I saw the dog and it yelled and ran at me. Why? Because the dog - is very scary dog. Maybe it doesn't have food, and it wants to eat Peace Corps volunteers. I do not know why, but I know - I am a person, I am not food. Finally, I think that the dog has scary friends. It needs to have good friends and later the dog will be good."

Thank you, Medill school of journalism.

Last few days in Kaharlyk

Snowed-over streets throw your own sounds back to you. Last night there was a party for the host families. My feet dragged to go in. Outside are night fields with skeletal grasses. Rooms inside are yellow-lit and smell warm but I am antsy in them, always moving my hands and leaning against things trying to look casual. 

But I like my hands when they go orange and black-nailed from peeling carrots. Nadja and I have been cooking together. We even made eclairs, so delicate, and squeezed them full of cream. She fears I will starve when I live alone.

No one thinks Americans have life skills. Once a teacher asked us what we can cook, and scoffed dismissively when we said, “Pasta, stir fry…” Then she held up her baby at us – “And when will you have this?” Probably around the same time I start loving these mayonnaise-saturated salads that are only one color.

At the party, all the mothers asked us women, “Maybe you’ll marry Ukrainian boys?” Uncomfortable mumbling. But then one woman said she sees me walking down the street every day, very fast, and I whip around all the men without seeing them. She can’t realize – that made me feel so capable, for once, like Kathryn Hepburn.

Still, I will wear my long underwear. If I don’t, I won’t be able to have babies, says Nadja, and don’t I want to have a little Nastia of my own? (Can ovaries freeze over?) As I’m writing this, the baby is hiding under my bed and whispering, “How-how, how-how,” like a puppy. I lean my face on the bed and so does she. We blow raspberries at each other for a long time. I don’t even care that her spit gets in my eyes. 

Sad bag

Thanksgiving was long, and spent in the hospital, hooked to an IV, and the next morning long. I’ll tell you right away not to worry. Communist Grandpa has not been poisoning my food. Yet. Instead, it’s something like Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, which is probably a little too pelvic of a disease for me to want to talk about much on the internet.

But I’ll tell you about the hospital. There is not a lot of light there. Long and bare is the hallway, where a woman with gold teeth took hedging, ghostly steps, curling and uncurling fingers. I was cold. The hard tables where they laid me out were cold, and cold instruments on my skin. These nurses kept moving in and out of rooms and talking at me, taking my blood and sticking needles in my ass. But they were kind. I looked at their hands as they tied up my arm for the IV – pale, fleshy, capable.

My family called me as I was hooked up to the IV, and I started weeping and shivering. The doctor told me to calm down and I yelled at him in broken Ukrainian. Nadja put spoonfuls of mashed potatoes in my mouth. It gummed on my dry tongue. Moya malenka, she called me – my little one. And I was at once so grateful to her, not to be alone there, and at once furious at with the nauseous need to which I’d been reduced. Tear-streaked gob of a body, infantile.

I thought about last Thanksgiving, when Christopher and I drove singing around the Chicago suburbs. Wearing Western hats. I imagined all the rooms my friends move through now. But there are rooms a mind can’t move through, and I am scared of forgetting and being forgotten.

I've been confusing the words for "sad" and "bag" lately. And indeed, at that moment, I was a sad bag of bones.

Morning was better, though full of more waiting, IVs and tests. Lace curtains cut in shapes of shells imprinted themselves on the walls. I watched them slide across the room as the morning spun out and grew gray.

Two other women lay on cots in the room. One was slowly waking up when I arrived, curled to her side, face in a wan light. The face was pocked and white and moon-wide, her robe of a chintzy material but its color jewel green. There was something girlish in her black stockinged feet nested under her.

The other woman sprawled heavily in her nightdress, picking at borscht and black bread and reading romance novels. She rose at times to move slowly, to rearrange her matted curls in the mirror or take pills. Nadja chatted to her in the tone she can somehow affect with everyone, friends or strangers, so loud and easy and familiar. I read Bridget Pegeen Kelly poems and thought about apple-eyed deer, in and out of sleep.

And then a couple days later, I was myself again. Ilya and I built a “snow grandmother.” The snow was dirty from the garden, and too soft for packing. Ilya kept apologizing to the snow grandmother – “I’m sorry, snee babusya, that the snow is terrible, I’m sorry.” Then Igor came out, big lug, and threw hunks of our snow babusya at us. WHAT A JERK. So we had a snowball fight. And then it was sunset, at 4 p.m., and I went inside, and there was hot vareneky, and everything was all right for once.