The Secrets We Kept(10)
When they’d packed up their tiny room, in a collective apartment shared with four families, Mama had been three months pregnant with me and hoped to reach American shores in time for my birth. In fact, Mama’s pregnancy was what motivated my parents to leave. As her belly swelled, my father had secured the necessary papers and a place to live temporarily—with second cousins who’d made a life for themselves in a place called Pikesville, Maryland. It sounded so exotic to Mama at the time, and she’d whisper it to herself like a prayer: “Maryland,” she’d say. “Maryland.”
At the time, my father had worked in an armaments factory, but before that, he’d attended the Institute of the Red Professors, where he studied philosophy. In his third year, he was dismissed for expressing ideas which fell outside the designated curriculum. The plan was for my father to seek work at one of the many universities in Baltimore or Washington, save up by living with our cousins for a year or two, then buy a house, a car, have another baby—the whole thing. My parents dreamed about the baby they’d have. They’d visualized its entire life: birth in a clean American hospital, learning its first words in both Russian and English, attending the best schools, learning to drive a big American car on a big American highway, maybe even playing baseball. In their dream, they’d sit up in the stands and eat peanuts and cheer. And in their future home, Mama would have a room of her own to make her dresses, and maybe even start her own business.
They said goodbye to their parents and siblings and everyone and everything they’d ever known. They knew that once they left, they’d never be able to return, their citizenship stripped permanently for the pursuit of the American dream.
I was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and my first word was a Russian da, followed by an English no. I did attend an excellent public school and even played softball and learned to drive in my cousin’s Crosley. But my father never saw any of it. It took years for Mama to tell me why I never met him, and when she did, she blurted it out in one rapid speech, as if she had something to confess. As she told it, they’d gotten in line to board the steamship that would take them across the Atlantic when two uniformed men approached and demanded that my father show them his papers. They’d already gone through this process with the other uniformed men, so Mama hadn’t immediately sensed the danger that Papa had when he pulled the papers out of his jacket. Without even looking at the travel documents, the men had taken hold of my father’s arms, saying their superior needed to have a look—in private. Mama grabbed hold of Papa, but the men yanked him away. She screamed and Papa calmly told Mama to board the ship—that he’d be along shortly. When she protested, he said again, “Board the ship.”
As the steamer whistled that it was about to leave, Mama didn’t run to the railing to see if my father was running up the ramp at the last minute; she already knew she’d never see her husband again. Instead, she collapsed on the cot reserved for her in the third-class bunk. The cot next to hers would remain empty for the remainder of the journey, my steady kicks inside her belly her only companionship.
Years later, when we received a telegram from Mama’s sister in Moscow saying that Papa had died in the Gulag, Mama spent exactly one week in bed. I was only eight at the time, but I carried on with the cooking and cleaning, getting myself to and from school, and finishing Mama’s small sewing jobs—repairing torn sleeves and hemming pants and then delivering the finished items.
Her first job in America had been at Lou’s Cleaners & Alterations, where she pressed and ironed men’s shirts all day, coming home each night with her hands stained and cracked from the harsh chemicals. Only occasionally did she have the meager opportunity to take out her needle and hem a pair of pants or repair a jacket button. But a week after hearing about my father’s death, Mama got out of bed, put on a full face of makeup, quit her job at Lou’s, and went to work. Stitch after stitch, bead after bead, feather after feather, she applied the full extent of her grief to making dresses. She barely left the house for two months, and when she was done, she’d filled two trunks with gowns more beautiful than anything she’d ever produced. She persuaded the priest at Holy Cross Russian Orthodox Church to allow her to set up a small table at their annual fall festival. She sold every dress within hours, even the showpiece—a bridal gown that a woman bought for her eleven-year-old daughter to wear sometime in the future. When she was finished, we had enough money to move out of our cousins’ crowded house in Maryland, to put first and last months’ rent down on an apartment in D.C., and for Mama to get her dress business off the ground. She’d have her American dream, even if she had to do it by herself.
She set up her shop—USA Dresses and More for You—in our basement apartment, and word of her talents spread. First-and second-generation Russian Americans sought her out for the intricate work she could do for a wedding or funeral or any special occasion. She boasted that she could stitch more sequins onto a bodice than anyone else on the continent. Soon enough she was known as the second-best Russian seamstress in the District. Number one was a woman named Bianka, with whom Mama had a bit of a rivalry. “She makes cuts,” she’d tell anyone who’d listen. “Her needlework, it’s sloppy. Her hems fall out if the wind blows. She has been in America far too long.”
Mama supported us with her business, even paying for my college tuition when I received only a partial scholarship to Trinity. But when our landlord threatened to raise our rent, it became critical that I get a job. As I sat in reception, surveying my competition, the thought settled in my chest and I pressed my hand against my sternum to suppress it.