impressions of an expat

animals

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:06:00 +0000

E sends me a message, I don't feel good. I ask if it is from driving in her mother's car half of the day or if it is her stomach.

No, she writes. I am not happy today.

I know it is because of the neighbor's girl, L.

Yes, from L. Eva writes to me.

Tell your mother you really do not like being around her. I reply.

I did. E answers.

She is on a picnic with three neighbors and their children. I know all of them in passing, some better than that. After a few minutes, I decide to call her.

"So, what's going on now?" I ask, quietly.

"L was pouring water in cups and she poured some all over my pants." She says.

"Was it an accident or did she do it on purpose?" I ask.

She pauses.

"I don't know." She says, her voice sounding dead.

"Did she apologize?" I ask.

"No." She says quickly. "And everybody laughed at me."

"That's not right." I tell her. "That's not right at all."

"I know." She says.

"What else?" I ask.

"I went and lied down on a blanket and L came and pulled my shirt up and was trying to touch my bellybutton." She says, sad, frustrated.

The hair on my arms goes up.

"And did anyone see this?" I ask.

"Yes." She says.

"And what did they say?" I ask.

"Nothing." She says. "They laughed."

"And how do you feel now?" I ask.

"I feel bad." She says, about to cry.

I stare at the floor for some time. I think of the act, the betrayal, the invasion. I think of how everyone saw this and no one said anything. I think of the things I would have said and done if I was there, how E's hand would be in mine and we would already be far from this place, that my choice words for L's mother and father would not remain behind my teeth for more than a minute or two. I think of E, the smallest one, her pants soaking wet, helpless, texting me in some unknown patch of grass. I stay calm. I tell her in slow, measured words what do to and what not to do. After she hangs up, I swear for a few minutes. I know the act could have been innocent, some silly playing but even then it should have been corrected, acknowledged. Knowing the adults are all drinking and laughing at E, I imagine the embarrassment she feels.

As the minutes pass, I get angrier.

E writes to me. My hands hurt. What should I do?

I call her again. She has touched a plant, krapiva, a stinging nettle. I tell her to be careful not to touch her face or anyplace else on her body, to wash her hands with a lot of soap.

"There is no soap." She says.

"Even a wipe, like a baby wipe?' I ask her, knowing full well no one there has one.

"No." She says in that same defeated voice.

"Ok, just wash them with water and stay calm." I say, half-full of doubt this will work.

"Ok, Papa." She says.

I spend the rest of the night checking in on her, until she goes home and falls asleep.

The next day, I call in the morning.
"Are we still going to the zoo?" She asks me.
"Of course." I tell her. "I even remembered bread for the ducks."
She laughs once.

I am buzzed in and go up the stairs, waiting in the hallway for her to appear. After some time she does, her pants filthy, dirt and food crusted on her face. I buy a water downstairs and do my best to clean her up. She suddenly looks helpless to me.
We take the metro, changing and wandering the exits until we emerge at Barikadnaya. This was our Saturday, maybe every one of them that summer when she was five. We came out here, bought two hotdogs and ate them on the curb, then pressed our way down the messy sidewalk to the zoo entrance. The price was less then, but kids are still free. Most of the time I would forget to bring bread for the ducks, so we would tear off bits of our hotdog rolls, saving the last few bites to toss over the fence and watch them struggle to get it first, craning their necks back and gobbling them down. No matter what madness was washing over us, this brackish water and these ducks marked the first minutes of breath, of relief.

E still likes the monkeys, but has started to grasp the fact that these animals live in terrible conditions. They are stuck in concrete, with cloudy water littered with trash and dead insects. They waddle through the heat, patches of their skin bare and dry. Only a handful of zebras run on a field of grass and seem healthy.

She cranes her neck to see the polar bears.
"Why don't they have any snow?" She asks me.
I shrug my shoulders.
"They should have snow." She announces in a loud voice.

There are crowds of people pressing faces against glass. Mothers are dressed in carefully selected ensembles. Fathers have cameras swinging from their necks. Children stuff cotton candy and sugared popcorn into their faces. They are all having a wonderful time, snapping memories, laughing, shouting at the animals, pointing, whooping, cheering.

We walk slowly, silently.
E does not look at half of the animals, just holds my hand and squints in the bright afternoon sun. I want to ask her about yesterday, to go through the events and see if there is a new version of what happened. I decide to wait until later and we are eating hamburgers and milkshakes. Later, when there are no dead rats on the ledges, no stench of cheetah piss, no trickle of soda running down the pavement, no rush of heat from the cheap rides and the bumper cars.

I love you, baby

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:42:00 +0000

Late in the afternoon I ask N if she wants to take a walk. She looks up at me, staring for a moment.

"Ok." She answers.

E skips into the kitchen.

"Get dressed." I tell her.

"Why?" She asks.

"We're going to get an ice cream." I tell her.

She bursts into the living room to change, pulling on red leggings and tall socks, a white skirt. She looks like an odd doll.

We walk in the street, E holding one of my hands, N's arm curled in my other. The city is quiet. Handfuls of men stand in circles on the sidewalk, boasting, drinking from plastic cups, smoking cigarettes. We cross the bridge that stretches across the river. It is littered with broken glass.

At a perehod (underpass) the florescent lights are flickering as we go down the stairs. A young man and woman wear sunglasses in the darkness, speaking in loud voices with their hands draped over each other's shoulders. As we get closer to them I see she is crying. He speaks in loud bursts. I cannot follow the words. E looks up at me and I pull her hand to walk closer.

As we reach the bright end of the passage, I hear the girl call out in English, over-pronouncing the words with a thick sarcasm.

"I love you, baybbeeeeeeeeee." She calls to him.

Back in the street and the half-sun I ask N what they were talking about.

"She was telling him that she is pregnant and he was angry." She explains, loud enough for me to hear but so that E will not. "He said she did not protect her stomach."

There is a line out the door and we wait. E cranes her neck, deciding what flavor she will get. A man approaches us, almost stepping on my toes. He is drunk, unwashed, unshaved, asking for money. I look into his bloodshot eyes as I shake my head no.
The line inches forwards.
Somehow we find a table, and E spoons into her masterpiece. N makes a steady series of perfect bites.
A woman in a long overcoat wanders in and goes from table to table. She says she has a sick child and that she needs money.
No one gives her anything.
A man and woman make their way to the table next to us. They have giant backpacks they rest on the chairs. His has an object strapped to the side, wrapped in layers of yellow plastic and then with tape. I see it is a gun, something automatic. I turn to N. She shrugs her shoulders.
"It could be a paint gun." She says. "For those games."
I think for a moment, wondering how this could be possible, but the longer I look at it the more I think it is real. At the same time, E drops her spoon in the cup and surrenders.
"I can't eat any more." She mumbles to us.
We dress quickly and I sense the gun wrapped in plastic just inches from us, even as I am throwing the half-full cup in the trashcan.

On the way home the wind picks up a little. I still walk in the middle, holding their hands keeping our fingers warm.

brutal youth (and twenty seven wishes)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:09:00 +0000

He swings the book bag hard, thwacking her right across the face. I look up at the two of them, guessing they are both eleven, maybe twelve years old. He swings again, landing square on her nose and she is knocked back. A mother standing at the bottom of the stairs of the lobby separates them, as they shove against her, as voices shrill in the clammy air his higher than hers.

Questions are asked.

The boy speaks first, his eyes bulging from his face red now dripping with tears. His skin is pale, almost translucent. The girl stands, calm, tapping one toe on the wet floor. She interrupts, shrugs her shoulders. A group of mothers stare at them. I cannot tell which one is his, or which one is hers.

They are not children. The girl wears pink cowboy boots covered in sequins. The boy is sobbing. He looks like he has never been in the sun or even the playground. I do not understand a word that is being said so I am left guessing who is guilty based on body language.

I cannot tell.

The security guard comes back inside from smoking his cigarette. I stare at him, wishing I had the words to rub his nose in, that I pay a special fee every month for him to sit in the lobby, that mothers are doing his work for him, that he is useless.

I get a text message from E. They will be late coming back from the field trip, maybe even an hour. I watch the boy being dragged off by his mother. I would not have guessed it was her. The girl sighs, hands on hips. She seems too calm. I wonder if this is a subtle message, that she is the instigator.

The children arrive in a messy group and E waves at me from behind the glass of the front doors. I jump up to take her and she makes a face.
"We can't go home yet." She tells me. "It's Grischa's birthday.
"It will take five minutes." Her teacher tells me in English.
I take E's hand and we climb the stairs together. The classroom is full of children, some still with their coats and hats on. As soon as the teacher enters the room they raise their hands.
A blonde boy stands by the chalkboard. The teacher rests her hands on his shoulders. She calls out the children's names and each one compliments Grischa, then describes something they wish for him. He smiles after each one, his head ducking forwards in quick thanks.
After all the wishes have been made, the teacher pulls his ears with a gentle tug and the children count to nine. He must remain on his toes on the ninth one as he tiptoes to a bag on his desk. He doles out chocolates and chewy candies to each of them, making a series of serpentine trips around the room until his bags are empty. He offers me a chocolate wrapped in purple foil and I take it. The children laugh, shoving things into their bags and wriggling around in their seats.
We head home as E tells me about Pushkin's house, and how his great grandfather was African, about what the rooms looked like, about how she did not get sick on the bus even though she does in cars.

We stand in the line for the poultry stand at rinok. There is an old woman in front of us arguing about the price of the eggs, or maybe just the cost of the paper carton. I am not sure. A round woman wattles up behind us with a little boy. He cannot be older than three. He is crying. She slaps at his face with a flyswatter until he stops. E rolls her eyes up to me. I shake my head. We cannot say anything. The boy makes quiet whining noises. He suddenly looks younger to me.
I ask for a small chicken, less than two kilos.
The boy begins to cry again and the woman smacks his ams and bottom with the flyswatter. People are passing us. No one bats an eye.
We go inside to buy a pastry for the walk home.

I know you

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:24:00 +0000

There is a moment when you pass them in the street. You smile and nod. You know they recognize you, walking with your child's guitar slung across your shoulder. They do not flinch. They know you. You sat next to each other in the back of the classroom for two years while your children studied music theory. The little ones sat in the front seats sometimes with their eyes closed just listening and guessing what interval was being hammered on the piano.

This is the part I never understand.

This fear, this impulse to disconnect. These people on the sidewalks and hallways, aloof, saying you are nothing, you are forgotten. Saying, "I do not know you."

And at the same time there are armies of people busying themselves with ugly acts, meddling, insulting, telling good children they are bad. There are people weaseling for information in kitchens, sucking on cigarettes.

To what end, I do not know.

Maybe this is a way to fill their days.

The annual painting of fences has begun. Oily, giant misshaped lumps glisten in the cool wet air. Like bones that broke and were never set correctly they reheal into grotesque skeletons. There are cigarettes burning. There are trashcans on fire. No one does anything. The militia are chasing the women who hawk roses for forty rubles away instead.
This is how things work here, adding layers on top of layers. This is how things hold together here instead of scraping them clean to the bone and starting fresh.

I can remember Spring on the farm, with mud and pig shit and the first wildflowers. There were baby ducks. There was maple syrup reduced slowly over fires, the sap running in troughs, the snow melting all around us giving way to rotting leaves and the raw earth. There were broken robin's eggs and dead hatchlings. There were mice in the dark corners of the barn. There were cats that padded across the wet grass trying to catch them.

Left alone, a person can stare at viscous acts for days and accomplish nothing. I have to wake up at seven, to get E fed and iron one of her white shirts. We run through the three compositions, her playing them almost perfectly then leaving the guitar on the couch to watch cartoons for a few minutes. I do not have time to shave. A sloppy peanut butter and jelly brings itself together right on the kitchen table and goes into a grocery bag. I pull her hair into two ponytails and her face winces, readjusting them until they are loose and crooked. Shoes go into the bag, a juice box, a camera I never end up using.

Moving across the pavement our shadows run long and blue in front of us.

We will get there first, and practice in the familiar little room. The rest will arrive, thumping and plunking their way through their pieces. E sits on my knee then goes to the window for some time. We are ushered into the big room and then the parents are told they must wait outside. I find my way back to the little room that opens onto the stage. I will sit here and wait, listening for E's music hoping it will carry through the tiny crack I rest my head against. I cannot simply stand in the hallway or in the lobby. I can't.

There are a series of balalaika pieces, accompanied by the piano teacher. An hour goes by and I picture E tiny in her chair, hungry. There is a break. I hear the judges making phone calls in the hallway and I duck inside. E waves at me, sitting right next to the stage.
"I'm in the practice room." I whisper to her. "I can hear you play through the door."
She nods, smiling.
I let out a nervous breath.
She waves me outside, they are starting again.

A low wave of embarrassment runs under my sleeves. I know she will be fine.
I just want to witness it.

of cakes and trains

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:30:00 +0000

E splashes in the bathtub behind a closed door. I remind her to scrub her neck and behind her ears.

"Okaaaaay." She calls to me in her loud singsong voice.

The cake is almost done, the middle still a bit soft to the touch. The kitchen smells of lemon and polenta and almonds. The windows are open.

A crossdraft smacks the balcony doors closed.

"What was that?" E asks.

"Nothing." I tell her. "The wind."

"Oh." She says to herself.

"Finish soon, ok?" I tell her.

"Ok, I am getting oouuuuut." She sings.

"Don't forget to pull the plug so the water goes down." I tell her.

She does not answer.

She brushes her hair in the hallway in front of the mirror, her head cocked to one side. She stares at herself.

I pack the cake in a bag, gathering pens and pencils and blank paper for her to play with.

"Where is the party?" She asks me.

"N knows." I tell her, pulling on shoes.

I call N to tell her we are on our way and she tells me to wait.

She will come upstairs and have a coffee first.

We navigate the streets, turning and staring at signs then driving a bit then stopping to unfold a map. E is quiet in the back seat. I keep hoping she will take a nap.

The sun is going down, but pushes through the windshield for as long as it can. One hand across my eyes I try to balance the map for N to check when we get to the next red light.

We find the place and are the first to arrive.

The apartment is old, a Stalin one as they say with big rooms and tall ceilings.

E sits on a sofa in the kitchen and amuses herself. I wash my hands and roll up my sleeves, asking what I can do to help.

I dry lettuce leaves.

I organize the wine bottles and open the one we brought, splashing some into a juice cup. Rioja swirls in my mouth, pulling my tongue back, my cheeks in. It needs to breathe.

I chop carrots and celery into sticks, balancing them in piles on a bowl pulled from the cabinets.

It is a relief to ask what I can do and be told, not be be in charge.

E is getting bored, asking if any kids are coming. I sit with her and play as guests slowly arrive. The wine tastes better now and for some reason I am not hungry, just ready to sip from the yellow cup and have E slumped against me, with N on my right with her hands dancing in the air as she talks to people. She is crunching on those carrots with tiny bites.

The conversations struggle in English, half me nodding my head and interrupting in Russian. The party is small, and all in the big kitchen. E is getting bored. At one point the hosts disappear into another room for some time and return with a giant long object wrapped in brown paper.

"It is for you." One says, giggling and smiling. "Because you are so sweet."

N is embarrassed. E jumps up, all curiosity.

We thrash at the brown paper until a long photograph is exposed. A landscape of rock and ocean and sky. We thank them. There are toasts.

I refill my glass.

On the way home a train is chugging in the dark, its cars full of sand. I jump in my seat. There is something about trains, something simple that never fails to captivate me.
"Look!" I tell E who is already sleeping and does not wake up.
I watch the cars rattling into the city and plunging into a tunnel, then it is just steel and glass and concrete swishing past us. Nothing new.
I rest my hand on the back of N's head. The photograph is jumping around, balanced across the back seats like a tent over E's head.
"It's fine." I whisper.
N smiles, looking at me for a moment then back to the road.

it's a big world (the thaw)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:29:00 +0000

I imagine I can smell the ocean on my fingers, brushing them across my face in the middle of the night. The low rumble, the quick whip of air that pushes sand into my eyes. But no, it is Moscow with melting snow and traffic, with giant puddles and armies of men chipping ice and carting it away. It is Moscow, where the same wheels turn. Time to pay rent. Time to pay for E's next field trip. Time to wait in line at the bank to pay for music school staring at the long decorated nails of the cashier.

Something happens with the thaw. Cars drive more recklessly than usual without the fear of black ice. Neighbors lurch into the elevator instead of waiting for the doors to open all the way. Sunday afternoon on the metro and people are shoving their way through the doors before we can get off the car. I push them back with one hand, the other tight around E's. I have given up speaking Russian at these moments and just speak English in a loud voice. It is just easier.

The neighbor smokes in the hallway wearing the same shorts and slippers.
He does not open the windows yet. I see him in the late morning light staring at the trains that drift in and out of the station. I think he cut his hair but am not sure.

I wonder if he reads mysteries.

The pettiness of the people here runs wild on Sunday. An old woman stands in my way, and I step aside to let her pass but she will not. She mumbles and expects me to walk through a giant puddle first. I wave my hand, show her she can walk on the dry path. She is swearing at me and the words fly out of my mouth, some avocados jumping in the bag on my shoulder as I pass her, turning and waving my hands asking her what she wants.
"It's a big world." I shout in Russian and her face whips away, looking down.
I ring the doorbell and take E from the sole night at her mother's house. She mumbles through the intercom telling me she is almost dressed.
I sit in the stairwell, the smell of stale cigarettes and frying onions swirling up the stairs.

Later we go out for ice cream in a shopping center. There are no free tables except for one with a pair of gloves on it. I imagine someone forgot them, so I move them to a bench. We sit and E spoons into her masterpiece, fruit and syrup, cold and sticky. A man approaches us, shouting. He smacks the gloves back on the table, saying the table is his. I see he was in line and did not buy anything yet.
"It's not a restaurant." I tell him. "You can't reserve a table here."
He waves his gloves, smacking them against his hands.
I stare at him, force a giant smile onto my face and make not motion to leave.
He swears a string of disgusting phrases I hope E does not understand.
A minute later another table frees up and he stomps over to it with his girlfriend.
E licks her spoon and smiles at me.
"Does it bother you when I have to yell at people?" I ask her.
Her mouth twists around for a moment.
"Kind of." She tells me. "But sometimes you have to."

Sancho Panza and Don Quixote

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:47:00 +0000

The ocean whorls and spits and turns back on itself, a blue muscle pushing against sand.

There are groups of old women, mostly in threes taking in low voices as they move slowly down the white tiled street. Little men in red berets all start to look like Sancho Panza. The rain is not salty, running down my cheeks and across my lips. My feet are wet.

After the rain, the cherry blossoms hang low. I watch them bobbing from invisible hands. A man sits on a bench waiting for someone. Children jump in puddles all messy hair and smiles, their raincoats open and flapping around them. Someone is smoking a cigar. A man with one leg shorter than the other is waving papers on a corner trying to hand one to everyone that passes.

Umbrellas choke the sky as I walk narrow streets.

A few days here and Moscow's deep snow cannot be imagined. I block it out, sipping on cafe con leche in little shops with their doors open to the damp air. I think of E in school, offering her homework to the teacher that bends down with a red pen and gives her a star, a correction or the casual grade. I think of her at lunch, slurping soup from a tiny spoon with her big eyes watching the other children not looking down at her bowl. I imagine her on the playground, hands in pockets, walking in slow circles in dirty snow, maybe kneeling to retie a shoelace.

I imagine what it will be like to travel with her someday, to climb little mountains and look down at cities, to feel sand between her toes, to order randomly from menus we do not understand and eat baby eels for lunch.

eight (heart on a plate)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:04:00 +0000

"I like the number nine more than the number eight." E announces in the dim morning walk to school. "So maybe I could be nine today."

"How come?" I ask.

"Because eight looks like my shoelaces and they always come untied." She explains.

Upstairs, I leave a bag with twenty-five juice boxes and forty-nine homemade chocolate chip cookies for her school birthday party. The room is empty. Two girls run in, sliding across the floor in their mary janes. E is chirping away, explaining what kind of cookies we made. The girls are smiling and staring at the dad who cooks.

I kiss E on the forehead and head home.

The dry ingredients meet the wet ones, and then the blueberries. The cake cooks for forty minutes and the house smells like a giant muffin. The rooms get clean. A little bit of work gets done and then it is time to go back and get her, to trudge through the half-shoveled snow through tiny crooked paths, to put on a pot of pasta water and warm up those meatballs and sauce for a fast lunch.

We hover over the bowls afterwards, smacking our lips.

"Pop, look." E says, pointing at her near-empty dish.

"Good job." I answer. "Almost the whole thing."

"No." She says, pointing. "It made a heart."

I look, a laugh jumping out of my mouth.

"We made a heart." I correct her.

She smiles with an odd sort of satisfaction.

After the guests have come and gone, after the waves of food are eaten and the plates are piled in a mess of paper and plastic, after the pinata we made is forced piece by piece into a garbage bag, we sit in the room without talking.
"It was a good party, Pop." E tells me after a while.
I can hear N in the kitchen starting to wash some dishes.
E reaches out, and hugs me for some time.
"I'm gonna go to sleep now." She whispers.
"After you brush your teeth." I whisper back.
She walks to the kitchen and I hear her saying something to N.
I close my eyes and let out a long breath. It is time to put leftovers in containers, to toss bags of trash down the chute in the hallway, to drink one cup of black tea and tuck E in, to lay down on my back and snore before my head touches the cool pillow.

Niki Dashentine and the Black Black Miracle

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:26:00 +0000

E skips down the dark halls of the music school, a silhouette interrupted by a few fluorescent rectangles. We search for our coats in a tiny room littered with muddy boots and broken hooks. Her coat has been thrown to the floor. Mine was relocated to the deepest corner.

We emerge as the sun dips behind some clouds and the air turns colder.

"Do you want an eclair on the way home?" I ask her.

Her face twists around.

"I'm ok without it." She says.

Her undersized guitar thumps against my shoulder blades. Her school bag twists around my neck and then the music bag. I feel like a gypsy, making our way down icy steps and down Kutuzovsky.

Old women in ratty fur coats travel in packs of two and three, some holding umbrellas against the new snow that is falling. They move like penguins.

E squeezes my hand once, looking up at me.

"You know Pop, I have a new story." She announces.

"Tell me about it." I shout into the cold air.

"It is about a girl named Niki Dashentine." She explains. "I got her name on Valentine's Day, so it is kind of from that."

"Ok." I say.

"And the story is called The Black Black Miracle." She continues.

"Woho." I say.

E makes a funny face, asking me to calm down.

"So there is a scientist and he makes an experiment but it does not go how he wanted and it makes a girl. But the girl is a skeleton. He makes the girl as his daughter, and he takes care of her. She grows up but the other kids do not like her. They are mean to her because they say she does not have a brain." She tells me.

"That sounds like something." I say after a moment.

She squeezes my hand again.

"That is as far as I got to." She explains.

"And what is the miracle?" I ask her. "I did not understand that part."

"That he makes her the daughter." She says. "He does not throw it away."

"What away?" I ask.

"The experiment." She says.

We stop in front of the wedding hall for a moment. I readjust the bags, trying to get them to hang more comfortably.

There are always foil hearts and stars on the ground here.

I see words spraypainted on a wall.

"The future - ." E reads out loud. "Is roses?"

"I guess so." I say.

"What does that even mean?" She asks, half-laughing.

"Maybe it is somebody else's black black miracle." I tell her.

She shrugs her shoulders, her chin bunching up.

"OK." She chirps.

I stare at her for a moment, trying to understand how tall she is, how her eyes are so big, how she is taller than she was yesterday.

"Let's go home." She announces.

the familiar red jacket (things to never give away and things to let go of)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:28:00 +0000

The kitchen windows are steamed over, lines painting down the old glass like miniature rivers. I have grapefruit marmalade bubbling in a pot, with cloves and fresh ginger and a splash of cheap cognac. It is Women's Day and I have put work aside. N is shoving a vacuum into every corner. E is making piles of her drawings and a bed for her dolls.

The balcony door is open and cool air rushes around the house. The smell of bitter pith turning dark and sweeter fills the rooms.

I started the day with a walk to a new flower shop that is close to us. The women inside do not stare at me like I am a flounder. I buy tiny pink roses for N and a pot of pansies for E. They work in silence, hands assisting with a quick bow, the stapler, more clear plastic, two hundred rubles in change. Outside a taxi creeps up to me, tires cracking on the black ice. A man leans out of the driver's side window. He asks me where I bought the flowers and I wave behind me telling him it is just past the pharmacy. He thanks me, maybe even smiles a little.

Downstairs I see one of the security guards walking with his two year old daughter. He is a man of very few words, depending on nods and long looks to express everything he has to say. His daughter looks up at me, a red puffy coat wrapped around her. I recognize it. It was E's many years ago, and after going through the closets one day I decided to get rid of some of her old things. N sat with me making piles of things to never give away and things to let go of.

I stare at the little girl's pale blue eyes and the curl of blonde hair that peeks from her hat. It is so strange to see a familiar object, not in a box on a shelf but warm and useful.

There is a mound of flour on the kitchen table where I crack eggs and splash a little olive oil, stirring gently with a fork and then just my hands, dribbling in a little cold water to make the pasta dough come together. I knead it until it goes smooth, wrap it in plastic, nest it in an empty spot in the fridge.

I think of E when she was two, when that red jacket was what I pulled onto her arms before we went out. I think of her tiny face and round cheeks and eyes that stared up at me, about the sling I wore under my coat that she loved to travel in as we walked to the market. She would hold one of my fingers very tight, and then loser when she fell asleep. That was me in the checkout line, pulling for cash in my pockets trying not to wake her up, then walking home and stopping at the wine shop wandering the small place for some time until I pulled a bottle from the shelf, the owner a French man and his wife always talking with me a bit, E maybe waking up and holding my finger tight again.

I cut the dough in four pieces, rolling each out until it is as thin as a few playing cards, cutting it into long strips. E trots into the kitchen, running her finger in a stray bit of flour and touching it to her nose. She stares at me, waiting for me to lean forward to get the same.

The last piece is for her to cut into whatever shapes she wishes. This will be for the children to eat, dressed with a little olive oil and a grate of Pecorino. The rest is for N and her mother and her sister who will be here soon with tulips and cards and jackets we pile up on the bed.

there is no dream (Spring)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:45:00 +0000

There is no dream.

Frost is on the windows. No silk gifts. No warm sand. Nothing but work and desperate naps, faces like animals in the street. We are almost out of eggs. Time to do laundry. Time to make the bed. Time to make breakfast. Time to make lunch. Time to make dinner. Time to pay the rent. Time to pay the phone bill. Time to pass the train station that runs all the way to Paris with its curlicued entrance. Those green metal flowers are surely ice cold as they stare back at us.

Pens are breaking, staining fingers with black ink.
A clump of birds circle the trees. I watch them swooping in lopsided arcs, now here now gone then back again.

Luggage is hidden under the bed collecting dust.

There is a hot shower under the dribble of water that spurts out, smelling faintly of gasoline.

A near full bottle of maple syrup is on the middle shelf in the fridge. I keep it there, waiting for N to ask for pancakes.

The snow keeps coming, piling in clean drifts that blot out the black ones. The rest of the world is starting Spring. I imagine girls are somehow in sundresses, legs naked. I imagine men are wearing scarves and light coats walking down Madison or Fifth, staring at those girls as they flock outside for lunch filling the sidewalk with hair turned behind ears and purses held close. Young men with guitars in hard cases are passing, heads down with half a melody under their breath they are trying not to forget. I would be up in my old place on 1st Street with pennies on the windowsills, cracking them open and letting the wet air in. The radiators would be banging still, pipes dancing in the bathroom and less noisy in the bedroom. A single rose still sits in an empty bottle from some good night, crisp, dusty, ready to fall apart if I move it. The phone rings. It is a wrong number, someone breathing heavily asking if Carlos is home. I can go out for lunch across town, sitting in a quiet place at a table in the corner. My pile of pages can be there, and a good pen to mark the changes then continue the story on the last one where it is still blank, scribbling in crooked lines and then onto the back of the page and then the back of the next page putting numbers in the corners and circling them so I can decipher all of this in a week or two when I type it up sitting in the living room with the computer propped up on the radiator cover with the moist night air coming in and the scraps of trash that somehow made it to the rooftop below my window while they flip around in the wind.

my kitchen, my rules

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:26:00 +0000

The Sunday laundry hangs limp from the drying rack. E's tights and jeans and underwear stare back at me. I am restless, as sunlight grows across the bedroom reaching into corners behind doors and then the hallway. That burnt ozone smell drifts through the cracks in the windows, the scent of electricity and trains.

Another ultimatum has come down.

I am now being censored. Every Monday I was afforded the right to tuck a message in a bottle and toss it out into the world. I spoke the truth and withheld names. I found relief in free expression. Now I am being told if I write anything critical, specifically about E's mother I will pay the consequences. Legal or not, valid or not, serious consequences will be the result.

The light has painted itself from the balcony windows all the way under the kitchen table.

Living under ongoing threats, living in fear for years is very different than a few months. There are sprints and there are marathons but they both end. This is a race that never ends, and cannot be won. It can only be endured.

The sun is hard on my face now, and I have to squint. I want to stay here in this quiet room next to the bed with half a cup of coffee on the little black table. I always write here. I can look out at the sky when I am stuck, or at the textured beige wallpaper that peels at the edges just a little where it meets the ceiling. There is so much to write that will now go unsaid but I will not make excuses. Plenty of writers created masterworks in situations just like this. Maybe our story has grown stale and this will inspire a new perspective, a new gem to polish until it sparkles, a gem to stare into as I search for its center.

The coffee cup is empty now. I am already wondering what to cook for dinner, shifting my thoughts from fear and anger to the creative obstacles of flour and butter, of meat and salt. In the kitchen, I am free.

new partner (and about yellow flowers)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:14:00 +0000

The day approaches with slack-eyed dread. I forget sometimes, somehow blinding myself to seven years with a turn of the shoulder and a loss for words. This year, the trick is beyond me. There is less magic this time, as the day inches closer, stillborn. I wore my best coat and fedora that day. Both of them are long gone. Parables and expressions tumble out. Time heals all wounds, people say. It may be true, but like it or not the wound reopens each year. I can pretend the scar is clean and smooth and getting smaller. I can pretend it does not seep blood, and money and regret.

I can imagine none of it even happened.

There are at least ten or eleven women wandering the flower shop, weaving around each other with lists and papers and questions like "where is the green ribbon?" and "did you take my scissors?". I am a walk-in, and must wait as they create antiseptic, homogenous bouquets. I see loose roses turning into stock photographs with the life sucked out of them. There is nothing human about these creations.

The one woman who deals with the walk-ins wears a thin purple turtleneck that is three sizes too small. Her body is sagging in many places, and I can see her underwear through the thin, frayed fabric. She wears no makeup. Her dark hair hangs limp over her ears. She speaks to me, eyelids lowered, immediately resentful to be dealing with a foreigner who talks and points and waves his hand around. I ask for peonies

She disappears for a while, then helps someone else then goes into a back room. She returns with a bunch of yellow ones. I stare at her for a moment. Yellow flowers are only for when you want to say goodbye to someone, when you want to leave your girlfriend or your wife. Why she tries to pawn them off on me on Valentine's Day is so offensive that I think to stalk out, slam the door until the windows shake and never come back to this place. She stares at me, asking if I want them. They are for my girlfriend, I tell her. She shrugs her shoulders. This is the moment I have passed a thousand times in Moscow. Someone trying to sell me shit with a perfectly straight face, waiting for me to pull a few thousand rubles from my pocket.

I shake my head no. Yellow is wrong, I tell her.

She shrugs her shoulders. Her chin bunches up.

I point at at a handful of tiny pink peonies in front of me. I tell her to mix them with some pink French tulips and she slumps into action, more elephant than human.

She starts on the bouquet and it is a little bit messy. I like that. Maybe all bouquets should look like children made them. I see some lilies of the valley, and decide to get E a little bouquet too. Just some daisies and a few green leaves to round hers out.

I think about the promise of the flower shop, the act of picking something beautiful. No matter what happens in life, this selecting and giving of flowers - there is something so terribly right about this simple act. I wonder why I don't buy flowers every day.

It is dead cold outside but the sun has come out. People are coughing and sneezing. Somehow their breath hanging in the air looks like chalk dust.

I will always be the man who made a promise on Valentine's Day that ended with a ring on his finger. I can remember it banging on the cold metal banisters coming out of the subway. It suddenly felt heavy on my hand. That will never change. Every Valentine's Day I think of not just that, but of the anniversaries that followed, the tight faces, the early warning that there will be no gifts, no dinner reservations to be made, nothing exchanged except a sideways look and relief when the day is over.

I take E from school in the afternoon and start cleaning shrimp for dinner when we get home.
"Risotto?" E asks and I nod.
She claps her hands and brings her flowers from the living room to the kitchen table.
She spreads her homework out and begins with a math exercise.
"Pop." She says at one point. "You know I love you, right?"
"I do." I tell her, kissing her once on the top of her head. "And I love you."
E rolls her eyes, looking up at me from the page.
I put some music on, and it is somehow an old mix of songs. Music I discovered about ten years ago. The first track is New Partner by Will Oldham. I turn the volume way up, and suddenly am singing at the top of my lungs.

Now you'll haunt me, you'll haunt me
'Till I've paid for what I've done
It's a payment which precludes the having of fun

And the key turns in the front door and N is home. I give her the flowers and she is all oohs and aahs. She reminds me how long it has been since I bought them, but she is smiling and laughing with that wise mouth and that light in her eyes. I go back to singing, and whirl E around the kitchen a while before the song ends.

When you think like a hermit
you forget what you know

I've got a new partner, riding with me
I've got a new partner, riding with me
I've got a new partner, riding with me
I've got a new partner now

I am a man that was broken. I have spent so long pretending, but now I am peeling shrimp and the next song is coming on. Valentine's Day will be over soon. We will drink and eat and make jokes and E will fall asleep early. I will drink tea in the kitchen with N.

The flowers are open even in the dark.

tiny opera

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:58:00 +0000

You can hear her through the kitchen wall sometimes. She sings scales, then something I guess is Verdi. She is nameless, faceless. There are so many stout old women in musty fur coats tiptoeing across the icy sidewalk when I do go outside. She could be any of them.

I assign something to the moments I hear her, like a comet or a moon circling the little world of our kitchen. She is like the rabbit that hid in our front yard when E was born, a random sign of something significant, but impossible to pin down.

I notice her.

I miss her.

Winter has smothered the day to day, the metronome of the week. E is better, but is resting before I put her back in school. I have left the house for a handful of of hours in the past two weeks, just enough to smell the hard soap smell of the gutter, mixing with sliced cucumbers and diesel as I cram eggs and bread and milk into bags I pull across my shoulder. The cars are still trying to run me over, even when I pass the entrance to a parking lot they pull in front of me and I shake my head at them resisting the urge to thump my fist on the shiny black hood of their Porsche. The man's window is down and he stares back at me as if he is memorizing my face. I will never accept this petty hustling, this shoving match that happens every time I set foot outside our apartment. I remember being a boy, stranded in the middle of nowhere on our farm with no one to play with but my brother. We made attempts at games like baseball, employing a complex army of ghost men who ran bases, stole them and could even get tagged out by other ghost players. A few innings into the process, my brother would hit one way into a hay field and by the time I retrieved it he was gone.

Running to my parents with tears on my cheeks, I would shout about how it wasn't fair for him to do that. They would shrug their shoulders, maybe laugh at me a little. "What did you expect?" They would ask me. "Do you really think the world is supposed to be fair?"

N is at her mother's house. E is fast asleep, her arms twisted in a ballet pose above the blankets. I walk the rooms, a box of her cereal under my arm. I cannot sleep.

All at once, the walls light up. I hear a boom in the direction of the White House. On the balcony, I imagine I will see tanks and explosions. It is just fireworks, flaring into the sky long after the children are asleep. This place is a real fucking Disney Land I tell myself, as the river reflects red pom poms and trickles of white.

Closing the window, the smell of gunpowder and smoke drifts into the room. It isn't a holiday. It isn't Chinese New Years. It is just some random noise and lights for ten minutes on a Saturday night.

I dream of E's mother running across the bedroom and to the balcony as if she is going to jump to her death, but then she catches herself. It does not happen in slow motion. It is all very real. She is wearing all white.

the wind and the tattoo

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 12:42:00 +0000

E has three dots on her stomach on Monday evening. We keep her home from school and call the clinic in the morning, busy signal after busy signal. Everyone calls in the morning then waits for the doctor to come. E looks up at me, more red dots growing across her and I know it is chicken pox.

"Pop." She whispers. "Am I really sick?"

"You didn't do anything wrong." I answer. "It is good to get this now. You get chicken pox only once in your whole life."

She looks at me for a while.

"But I don't want to be sick again." She tells me, slumping onto her bed.

"You just don't want to take medicine." I say.

She nods once, and pulls the blankets over her head.

I cut her nails and take her temperature.

I make her a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich for lunch.

The doorbell rings. It is the same doctor, a young woman with rosy cheeks who speaks in a happy whisper. She pulls on a mask, wraps blue plastic booties over her muddy shoes and disinfects her hands. She was here a month ago. E likes her. She listens to E's heart and lungs. She looks at the back of her throat. She has E lift her shirt. E waits patiently on the edge of her bed.

The young doctor sits and writes on a half-sheet of paper.

"Vetryanka?" I ask her.

She nods yes.

"Ok, kiddo." I tell E. "You have chicken pox."

I call N, and hand the phone to the doctor. There is a flurry of directions to follow, that N will translate for me when I call her back. This dance of phones and translation is all too common now. I imagine trying to follow the doctor's wishes without her.

It is not necessary, but I hand five hundred rubles to her as she is about to leave. She pockets it, head bowing forward, whispering something I cannot understand.

"So, how long will I be out of school?" E asks me.

"If I am correct, ten to fifteen days at home." I say, looking out at the snow that has started to fall.

She makes a face.

"We'll make the best of it." I tell her. "And as soon as you have no fever, we can call your teacher and do some schoolwork at home."

"Ok." She says, her voice trailing off as she slumps back to bed.

N comes home with a special green medicine pen that the Russians use. She places a dot on every red bump. E winces at each one. N blows on them lightly, making a quiet sound. There is antihistamine to take before E goes to bed too.
After E falls asleep we sit in the kitchen drinking tea.
"So, what is the green for?" I ask.
"It helps dry them up." She says. "And it tells us which ones are new and which ones are old."
"That's smart." I say.
"And vetryanka, that is from the word for wind?" I ask. "Veter?"
She nods.
"It lives in the wind." She says. "It jumps from person to person in the wind."
"That makes more sense than calling it chicken pox." I say. "But we need calamine."

"They did not have it." N tells me.

I frown.

"This is really important for her face, so she does not scratch it." I say.

"We will find it." N says.

The next day, E is anxious. The dots are appearing by the minute across her face, her back. She runs to the hallway mirror to check herself all morning. I explain to her that she cannot itch them for the hundredth time.
We build a lego house together.
I make lunch.
She is jumping around and crying, saying she cannot stop itching.
I make a bath, and pour baking soda into it.
"This will help a lot." I tell her. "But don't get your hair wet, you still have a little bit of a temperature."
She nods, with big eyes.

The pharmacy has no calamine. I go to another one on Kutuzovsky. Not there either. I go to a third one, explaining it is for vetryanka. The woman in the blue coat nods, she understands me. She looks in back. No, no calamine lotion. I ask if she knows where it can be found and she shrugs her shoulders.
Walking in the snow I am getting angry. I will not put green dots on her face. If she scratches this and ink gets into the red bump, this will be some kind of tattoo then. That is my thought, that the green will not go away, trapped under her skin.
At the next pharmacy the woman behind the counter looks more kind. I ask, she looks then says no. My face runs red as I tell her many children have chicken pox at the moment, that they should have medicine for it. She dismisses me.
I go to the last pharmacy in the neighborhood. The woman in the blue coat behind the counter says no, they do not have it. She does not even look in the back or the drawers of medicine behind her. She looks at me fiercely.
"And what am I supposed to do with a kid that has chicken pox?" I ask her.
She stares me, motionless.
"I don't know." She says.
"This is not right." I say to her.
She stares at the front door avoiding me, her lips curling over her teeth.
Somehow I do not knock over anything on my way out.

I feel helpless. I have not had this feeling for some time here. Maybe I can make a paste from baking soda, I tell myself.
I call N, venting and swearing about the women in blue coats.
"Give me an hour." She says. "I will find it."

Later, N comes home with a bottle of calamine. It is imported from Israel, and is more liquid than lotion. E is sleeping.
In the morning I will dip a q-tip in the bottle and paint E's face with dots of it. She will smile at me, her fever almost gone.

the lost portrait

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:33:00 +0000

"Pop." E announces from her bed, after I nudge her shoulders and turn on the living room light.
"What, kiddo?" I whisper.
"I want to know why the clouds go through the moon." She says.
"Ok." I reply, sipping from my first cup of coffee, staring out at the black sky and wondering how cold it is today.
"Also, how come the earth would look red if you look at it from a star that is very very far away?" She adds.
"Are you sure it does that?" I ask her.
She nods once, staring at me as she pulls her tights on.
Then she nods again.
I pack her lunchbox in the dark kitchen, thinking to rip a strip of paper and write a note on it like I do sometimes but it is already getting late and she has not brushed her teeth yet.

We walk quietly with just the sound of her snow pants swishing against each other.
"What time did I go to bed last night?" She asks me at one point.
"About nine." I answer.
"And you?" E asks.
"Ah." I say after a moment. "I was working on some jobs so it was after two in the morning, but I am still messy from being in California so it is hard to go to sleep at the right time."
"Yeah." E says, half to herself as she squeezes my hand once. "It's always hard to go to bed at the right time."

Shoveling kasha and a boiled egg into my mouth, I pull a wool hat down over my ears. It is still black beyond the windows.

The empty bowl is brought to the kitchen table.

I pull one of E's blankets from her bed and wrap it around my shoulders, and then go to the bedroom. The rule I made is not to get under the sheets, but to stay in my clothes on top of them with E's red blanket. I can go back to sleep for about an hour then and still get back up. More than time than that, more blankets than that and I will not rise until noon.

Setting an alarm for ten I imagine E in school right now at her desk, deep in thought.

I dream that N comes home, her hair still wet from the shower and how she crawls under the blanket with me, resting her cheek on my shoulder. I can smell her shampoo.

The home phone rings.
I pull myself to it and it is the same old woman with the wrong number, who calls and calls and calls.

I go back to the bedroom. The sky is getting blue at the edges. I pull the hat down over my ears.

I am in a giant house. It is messy. I have a few cameras with me and I stack them in a corner, taking pictures of my sister with one of them. We all sit at a table and have a simple lunch. There are people there I have not seen in twenty years, some I know are dead.

N sits on one side of me, E on the other. I can feel N's knee against mine under the table. The lunch is very simple because more people are coming later for some kind of party. This is just to put something in our bellies until then.

I see outside that there is tall green grass, stacks of clouds in the sky and a low wind moving everything around. I tell E I want to go outside with her to take some pictures together, maybe a portrait of her. She tells me the kids are not allowed outside. I say of course, but if she is with me that is different. She goes to find her shoes.

My cameras are not in the corner of the room. Everything has been cleaned up, but there are still blobs of dust on the carpet. I yank open drawers, and stalk around the house looking for my cameras, especially a small white one.

People are beginning to arrive. I mistake a tall black man for my father and apologize to him. I go back to the corner of the room, staring at the empty space. My father is there now and my voice chokes in my throat as I try to explain what has happened. He shrugs his shoulders. He never saw my camera.

I am yelling, my hands waving and now. There was almost a full roll of pictures I shot in that camera.

E has come back with her shoes on and is ready to go outside. She looks so skinny in her jeans, waiting for me next to the door.

postcards from San Bernadino

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:23:00 +0000

I forgot how cold it gets at night in the desert. My hands are in my pockets, elbows out to the traffic thrashing past me on some sidewalk underpass in San Bernadino. Maybe Fante was here one drunken night.

La Costa smells solid. Through the front window I see families clustered around tables, slapping shoulders, ordering another beer.

I go in and am greeted all smiles.
The waitress calls me amigo three times before I decide what to eat.

I order a giant bowl of molcajete. Crabs and cactus, shrimp and squid, black beans and a beer with lime wedged on the rim. I squeeze it between my dirty fingers and wonder what N would say, eyes rolling but she is sleeping now in that makeshift bed in her mother's kitchen. I want to call, to wake her up and tell her how sweet and briney the crabs are, how this black stone bowl is really for two and they are actually out of cactus.

There are two shots left on the roll and they go quickly after I see some men working on a roof. Squatting on the curb with the sun behind me I reload the Leica.

The neighborhood is marked by dirt lawns and faded American flags that drift around in the early morning light. I see a man on crutches standing beside the Salvation Army. There are low buildings, just paint and cinder blocks. There are car dealerships with more flags, but no one looking. On one corner a man in a silver costume waves a sign around, promising fast and easy loans. He dances, feet planted on the sidewalk, hips swiveling, arms poking out.

I wander into a 99 cent store, searching the shelves for souvenirs. I buy E some purple hair clips, a wild cherry air freshener for N's car, and a red baseball cap that reads California Republic above an embroidered brown bear.

There is a white house with a wheelchair and at least six cats on the front porch. They stare at me, walking around each other, moving in strange patterns. A man leans deep into a car, vacuuming the back seats. Someone sleeps on the green meridian strip of grass as traffic sputters past them.

A kid wheels around the street on a bike, swooping past me in giant curves his hands limp at the handlebars. I think of E's pink bike on our balcony, stiff and unused, with the training wheels still on it. I think it will be four years old soon. I remember buying it for her birthday and how she made me take her out in the snow and ice to wheel around the courtyard until she got cold.

just come home fast

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:30:00 +0000

We pack some school clothes and all of her books in a shopping bag. I show her the laptop charger and the European adapter before coiling them into her new purse. She nods once, lips tight together.

I make butterfly pasta, dressed in olive oil with pecorino on top.

“Maybe some black pepper on it?” I call to her from the kitchen.

“No-o-o-o.” she answers, in her singsong home voice.

I split the pasta between her lunchbox and the dinner bowl. She will have this for tomorrow too, when I am already on the plane above the Moscow fog.

She eats with her feet curled under her, leaning across her bed and the big purple blanket, stabbing the fork into three or four pieces at a time.

I save files, make plastic envelopes of important papers I have printed and organized in piles on the table.

She goes quiet.

I see her chin trembling, and then tears. Red cheeks, sputtering breath, forehead tight, nose dripping. Sitting next to her, she buries her face in my t-shirt. I just hold her in silence.

"So which Monster High doll do you want?” I ask, trying to shift the mood.

She sputters something.

I run a hand along her hair, smooth it from her face.

“You are going to be fine.” I tell her. “I will not be gone so long.”

She nods, her eyes as big as soup spoons.

“And when I have a job like this, I really have to go – it isn’t an option.” I continue.

“OK.” She whispers.

I hold her for some time, as my shirt grows wet. Handing her a tissue from my pocket, she blows her nose.

“So what do you want me to get you?” I ask.

“Nothing.” She says. “Just come home fast.”

The car to the airport drifts along the wet road. No music plays. It smells of cinnamon and berries. The leather seat squeaks under me as I try to get comfortable.

All at once there is traffic, even though it is the middle of the night. A string of red taillights dangles beyond the windshield wipers. I think of E crying in traffic once, when she was just a baby and we lived in Connecticut. I-95 was frozen for more than an hour, and she was teething. I remember the frustration, the thin hot anger under my skin thinking it was construction that was keeping us from home

At one point the traffic eases and the delay becomes invisible. I will be at the airport soon.

On that day in Connecticut, it was a family car spread in burning pieces across three lanes. I saw stuffed animals and a stroller flapping in the wind, teetering back and forth on the side of the highway. There were ambulances. There were long faces. I remember squeezing E’s hand in the back seat of the car and looking at her for some time and how she stopped crying.

there's nothing sadder than a town with no cheer

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 07:25:00 +0000

His is taller then six feet and has bushy grey eyebrows, a lumpy face punctuated by a red nose. He does not look me in the eye. There are two dogs he takes outside, a slow moving German Shepherd and some tiny, nervous one. I have not learned their names even though we have shared the elevator countless times. The big dog is always silent, the little one with its shrill bark scares E if she is with me.

Our neighbor smells of cigarettes and cheap cologne.

He spends hours in the hallway, leaning against the window that looks out onto the train yards and a small school where they teach economics. He smokes and smokes, pressing the butts into a tiny glass jelly jar. I see the empty packs there when he is gone, the residue of the previous night, the wisp of clear plastic wrapper, the damp smell. He reads entire books leaning against the banister in a pair of plaid shorts and a t shirt, his yellow toenails shining from his flip-flops.

I used to think he was avoiding his wife by turning the hallway into a sort of den. She is quiet, short, with brown hair pulled back tight. I never see her. N told me that maybe she does not allow smoking in the house, and that is why he spends his time in the stairwell.

A year or so ago, I saw a young man going into their apartment. He was bald, his skin shiny and thin as if I could see the veins through it. His hands were shaking. I talked about this with N over tea that night and she guessed that maybe the boy was their son, and he was sick and that is why the old man smokes in the hallway.

Months passed and we did not see the young man. The old man's face made more sense to me, the solemn mumbled greetings or none at all, the shuffling from door to window, even the dogs saying nothing just scratching at the door asking to go outside.

the year of the rabbit (is never over)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:44:00 +0000

The rabbit weighs at least five pounds including the single dangling foot left intact to prove it is fresh. The black nails, the grey fur and the smell of straw drift towards me. It is the first part I cut off, fluffy and soft in my hands. I stare at the carcass for some time, wash my hands again, sharpen the small knife and the big one. The year of the rabbit has come to an end, and all of Russia celebrates this by eating one. They say it is both significant and lucky.

I had a hard time finding one at rinok until I went to my halal booth, the same one where I bought our Thanksgiving turkey. They apologize for the price, telling me I should come back after New Year's and the cost will be half. I shrug my shoulders, try to say "what to do?" as I tuck the giant pink plastic bag under my arm and make my way through the noisy, chaotic, lurching crowd.

I tiptoe into the living room.

E is fast asleep, one hand perched awkwardly across her cheek.

I do not want her to see any of this.

Cutting the animal in half just above the hind legs, I pull sinew and spine apart. Breaking the legs down, I debone them, leaving the tough parts at the bottom to scrape off. The full pieces of meat are trimmed of silver flesh and fat, then go into the first bowl. The smaller bits will be salted, strewn with fresh thyme and a splash of olive oil, maybe a spoonful of good sherry. They will braise for hours under tin foil in an oven barely on until they become a fragrant mush called rillette that will be spread on toast.

There are organs tucked inside, a giant liver, kidneys, heart. I pull them out, wiping the black coagulated dots of blood from the cutting board. A hot ripple runs up my back. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. I need to break this down, or I will feel it staring back at me. When I was a boy on the farm, I had easily seen a dozen pigs killed and butchered by the time I was E's age. It was fascinating, and then quickly became something I could not stand. I hid far in the woods until I heard the single gunshot, waiting for hours to come back down the hill, hoping the carcass had become shoulders and ribs and roasts. I hack off the front legs and ribcage, and the saddle remains. Running the knife along each side of the spine I break out two slender muscles. The midsection is flipped over and the loins come out. There is plenty of silver flesh to slice away. It sticks to my fingers when I try to toss it into the garbage. This is man's work, I used to tell myself as a boy when a deer would be hoisted onto the dining room table over garbage bags and newspapers, to be hacked into pieces that were stored in the freezer except the heart which my father ate the same day he killed one, sliced thin and fried with onions then stacked on a Kaiser roll.

When E was a baby a pair of rabbits hid sometimes in our front yard. There was a grown one and a little one. It was as easy to imagine it was a mother and child as it was to imagine it was a father and child. One rainy day in Fall, I stood for more than an hour at the front window watching them shiver under a canvas folding chair I had forgotten to bring inside. The rain dripped down around them, and they shook next to each other, feet tucked under their soft chests. E was standing then with my help, her fingers in my hands, balancing on top of a shoe cabinet to see them. I imagined they were scared, that maybe a dog had chased them in the park next to our apartment. I Imagined them making quiet noises to each other, giving comfort and reassurance, making plans for someplace safe to hide. There was something hopeless about them, as if I was preparing myself to be unsurprised to find them dead the next morning. At the same time, I imagined they would be fine, hiding in the bushes or in some backyard, dry and safe, growing fat and old.

E had already witnessed more fear and anger, more waste and pain than many people do in a lifetime. Somehow, the rabbit parent and child did survive that Fall and Winter, and were still there when we left that place.

The pile of bones and thick slivers of fat grows larger than what is left. The front legs are easier, as I know they are all going to be small pieces for the rillette. No need to go slow now. The bones and fat go into a pot of water with three fingers of salt and some bay leaves. The trimmed meat will brine in lemon juice and white wine, some mustard, fresh thyme and oregano, salt and pepper. The heart, kidneys and liver will become pate tomorrow but now I just wrap them quickly in a plastic bag and hide them in the refrigerator.

I thought it would get easier as I went, but no.
It is sober work that I do in silence.

Tomorrow will be the party, the clean table, the dishes salty and sweet, the crunch, the savory, the tender. There will be quiet toasts and smiles, laughter, hugs, kisses, jokes. There will be music and a door to the hallway opened for the new year to enter.

I tell myself the hard part is behind me, that I can wash my hands one last time but I know that this is just wishful thinking. Things are going to be messy for a long time.

A revision note: I stand corrected as to why everyone in Russia is eating a rabbit tonight. The year that is ending is actually the year of the dragon. The previous year was the year of the rabbit. People in Russia eat rabbits tonight because the incoming year is the year of the snake - and snakes eat rabbits.

How to believe in shooting stars

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 12:14:00 +0000

E's fever passes sometime in the middle of the night.

Coughing and sneezing, she follows me around the apartment all morning. I peel her a mandarin. I wash dishes. I read the letter she has written to Santa and make sure he will understand everything she has described.

N sleeps under a mound of covers, not even a foot exposed.

I make pancakes, with E hovering next to the plates, draping a towel over them to keep them warm. N appears, stretching, her eyes half-open, her hair a messy question mark. I pour hot water into her tea cup.

"Been a long time." I say to her.

"Since what?" She asks.

"Since we all had pancakes together." I answer, lifting the last two from the pan.

N clicks her head back and forth, her personal way of saying something smells good.

"Can I have blueberry jam?" E asks, between coughs.

I show her that it is already on the table. She spoons into the jar and sweeps jam across her pate in one dramatic gesture.

"Looks like a shooting star." I tell her.

She nods, chin tight to her smile. This is exactly what she wanted me to see.

We spend all of Sunday together, N knitting a scarf, E tucked into bed sipping juice from long straws, me working in the same room.

E falls asleep at eight.

She coughs in the middle of the night, and cannot stop. I bring her warm cups of water with lemon and honey. She sits up in bed and slurps down spoons of cough syrup.
"I'm ok Pop." She assures me.
I put a Christmas film on for her.
"But watch with your eyes closed." I whisper.
She looks at me, eyes wide.
E's arms thrust out into the air, and she wants me to hold her.
I click off the lights with one hand and carry her around the house. Her chin digs into my shoulder, then she rests her cheek there. I think of that first time she got sick when she was almost one and how she only wanted me to hold her. I carried her for almost a day, treading the hallway in that Greenwich apartment, turning into a room, making a few circles, looking out the windows, humming a Tom Waits song, then into another room. Her mother sat in chairs by windows, jealous and angry that E refused to be held by her. Exhausted, I would place her in the crib but then she would wake up and stretch those tiny arms out to me again.

I place her in bed, pulling three blankets to her chin. Her forehead is cool. She looks at me for a little while.
I sit in the big red chair next to her and wait for her to fall asleep.
E waves a hand around for a moment.
I sit on the edge of her little bed.
"Pop - tomorrow is still Christmas, right?" She whispers.
"Yes, kiddo." I tell her, smoothing the hair on her forehead.
"Ok, but if I don't go to school will American Santa still come?"She asks.
"Of course." I say, half laughing. "Just like American tooth fairy. They know you are a good kid and they make a special detour for you."
She squeezes my hand once.
"Ok." She whispers. "I believe you."

nothing

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:55:00 +0000

A window has drifted open in the middle of the night, and the kitchen is freezing. I can see my breath hanging in the dark air. Standing on a chair, I press it closed. There was a bathroom in the farmhouse that was always like this. I peed on the ice at the bottom of the toilet each morning, melting it down a little. It was a funny habit before waddling down the driveway in a snowsuit to wait for the bus.

When the snow got high, and Christmas drew close it was hunting season. My parents kept the dogs inside and forbid us to wear brown, a paranoid impulse to offset the hunters that shot at anything that looked like a deer. There were men who treaded down our driveway in giant coats, asking permission to use our land. We always said no. These were our seventy-two acres, and we lived off of them. My parents made one exception, for two brothers from Ramapo, or somewhere else downstate. I don't know what made them different. They brought us boxes of Whitman's samplers and we nibbled at the corners of each chocolate trying to find the nougat ones or the caramels. I remember their giant bottle of Pepsi that would stand in the fridge and how I would sneak sips from it, my lips painted with sugar and salt.

They came each December and got their buck, tying it to the roof of their truck and driving off. I stood outside in nothing but a t-shirt once, to show them how tough I was.

I am searching for a hairband, and E is taking forever to tie her boots. We almost forget her lunchbox. I kiss her forehead on the front steps of her school, transferring the book bag from my shoulders to hers. It is still dark outside.

I pass that first apartment we moved into three years ago, almost to the day. I had nothing in my pockets. E rolled around on the floor and danced that night, the first night outside of her mother's house, that first terrifying step towards some kind of freedom. The electric stove always smelled like something was burning in it. The kitchen table wobbled. The washing machine sounded like a broken speedboat. No one in the hallways ever said hello, just faces down, keys thrust forward in the darkness ready to click and disappear.

I pass the courthouse where I got divorced two years ago, counting out thousand ruble notes and paying the bowlegged lawyer in the snow, and then the translator. That was also the middle of December. That was when E's mother slipped into school in the middle of the day and took her, holding her for a week of blackmail and threats while I could do nothing. I had exposed her lies in court, and she was punishing me. E was weaker then, easier to mold, easier to surrender.

The kitchen is warm now. I start some kasha, and an egg to soft boil. The avocados are hard and sour still. They take more than a week to ripen now.
Dragging the chair into the hallway, I dig in the storage space over the front door. The box of ornaments is in the back. Tonight, we will set up our plastic tree. E will direct the decorating. N will come through the door, her cheeks red, her arms full of bags and gifts to wrap. I will look at her for some time and she will say "what?" and I will say "nothing".

panthers, crows and sparrows

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:20:00 +0000

The river is almost frozen over. Wind whips across the ice each morning as we tiptoe along the uneven sidewalk and make our way to school. E makes small desperate noises, sometimes just stopping until she feels like she can move again. My legs lock up when I am about to fall, hands jumping wildly for balance.

We feel the same.

The man with the accordion is out again playing that same song. I try to remember how many times I have written about his blank stare, the same chipper melody. He is unstoppable. My irritation has waned, and now I welcome the light rumble of his instrument as we make our way through the bright tunnel he plays in.

His familiar face sits beneath a new hat.

I wonder if he notices us after years of passing him.

My thoughts run to the day we will leave here, and if I will remember him. This accordion player is paralyzed, like one of Rilke's panthers. The world outside of this place may not exist to him. I know that when I am not here, it becomes an impossible place within a matter of days, a place that cannot be imagined. The snow and filth, these blank faces cannot remain. They become charcoal sketches in an old book. They are never real to me in some way. I am not here, I tell myself. I am not here.

"At mom's house there are crows." E says to me after a long silence. "But at our house there are sparrows."

I nod, showing I am listening.

"I like sparrows." She continues. "They are so sweet."

"Yes they are." I say.

"And crows eat garbage." E says, wrinkling her nose.

red pen, red blanket

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:35:00 +0000

Rooting in the cabinets, I cannot find a red ballpoint pen. E sits on the edge of her bed, tears sliding down her cheeks and dripping onto her knees. She lets out a deep sigh.

I find another one, but it is dry. For some reason I put it back in the box instead of throwing it away.

"Aha, an orange one." I say in a big voice. "For one day that has to be ok, right?"

She slowly shakes her head.

"But what if your pen stopped working in the middle of a lesson, then what?" I ask.

She shrugs her shoulders.

"You're telling me that when someone's red pen dries up the teacher doesn't give them one to use for a few minutes?" I ask.

"I don't know." E mumbles.

"I don't think so." I say.

"I have to have a red pen for school tomorrow." She repeats.

"Well, on a Sunday night this is the best I can do." I explain, pressing the orange ballpoint into her tiny folded hands.

She sighs again.

"Ok, lets make meatballs already." I announce, and leave the room.

In the kitchen I toast pieces of bread in a hot pan. I grate pecorino, dice shallot and garlic and parsley. The bread is crushed into small pieces under a rolling pin.

"Do you want to crack an egg?" I call out to her.

She appears in the doorway after a little bit, shoulders sloping down, pyjamas hanging off of her tiny body like a Raggedy Ann doll. I pat the green box once, and she takes an egg out. E breaks it against the edge of the bowl with a bang. Bits of shell fall in, and she stares up at me. I pick them out.

I massage the meat into the mixture and saute a little piece in the pan. We taste it, blowing hard to cool it off as it bounces around our mouths.

"Enough salt?" I ask.

She nods once.

I roll a ball in my hands, then dust it with flour and place it on a plate. E stares at me, frozen.

"Come on." I say.

She looks at the wet meat, her lips screwing around.

I go to the drawer and pull out N's ice cream scoop.

E's smile flashes, and she makes balls - flipping them around the flour bowl, placing them carefully on the white plate. I start to cook the first batch and the kitchen smells of olive oil and rendering pork fat, of salt and black pepper, of that sheep's milk cheese.

The second batch smells even better. I add some more shallot and garlic to the bottom of the pan. I tear fresh oregano over the pot. E stands next to me, quietly. I give her some oregano to smell, passing it under her nose. She nods once, approving.

I put a pot of water on, tossing half a handful of salt into it.

E washes her hands, and dries them on a towel.

Chopped tomatoes go over the meatballs and I turn the heat down.

E sits, watching.

"I know you can't help it." I say after a while.

"What?" She asks.

"Imagining the worst." I reply.

"Yeah."" She whispers.

"At least you know you do it." I say.

She nods again, her chin screwing around as she reaches out to hug me. We stand this way for a little while. She sniffs a few times.

"Go blow your nose." I tell her quietly.

She trots off, to pull some toilet paper off the roll.

I suddenly feel exhausted.

I tell E I am going to lie down for a few minutes while we wait for the pasta water to boil.

In the dark room, I feel the covers cool beneath me. Traffic is shuffling below the balcony. I hear E's computer click on, and the sound of a familiar game.

She pads into the bedroom, and I feel her red blanket being pulled across me.

I keep my eyes closed.

the only thing that matters is what is in the picture

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:57:00 +0000

I press the tiny camera into E's hand and press the record button.

"Is it on?" She asks me.

I nod yes and gesture for her to hold it up, not to shoot the wet rinok floor.

We navigate around men in blue coats pushing shopping carts full of lamb carcasses. The back wall is lined with glass cases, with giant sturgeons that are ringed with bright yellow fat. There is one case with plucked birds. The man, Rachman does not recognize me. I point at the turkeys, and hope E is getting all of this. His smile flashes. Now he knows me. On Sunday he said 5,000 rubles for a five kilo bird. Today, seven kilos for 3,000 rubles. I agree, dropping bills on the scale and sliding the giant bird into a canvas bag that I sling across my shoulder. I would shake his hand, but it would not be right. Maybe after the next bird.

"Did you get it?" I ask her.

She shrugs her shoulders.

"Can I get a strawberry roulette?" She asks.

Outside I watch the video on the tiny screen. It looks like a seven year old shot it, all crooked close-ups of strange details. No wide shots, no faces. This is what she sees.

"Is it ok?" She asks.

"It's great." I answer quickly.

On Thanksgiving, we wake up early and I start by roasting chestnuts.
"I want to cook with you." E says, her hands pulling at my elbow.
I kiss the top of her head.
"Especially the apple pie." She says.
"That will be later." I explain. "First we need to roast the sweet potatoes, then the turkey."
She skips out of the kitchen, her hair bouncing around her.

I set up the new camera on a tripod, and set focus on the dented metal bowls, filming my hands cracking eggs, peeling carrots, smashing cloves and chopping them fine. I imagine the story these fragments might tell, as the windows steam up, as the sun fills the bedroom with giant rectangles. This is not the best way to make little films, by shooting randomly without help. I need extra eyes to focus. I need extra hands, ears. This is a good way to shoot nothing, and I know it.

E is drawing a Thanksgiving card in the living room.
She asks me how to spell things.
I film her profile, the tip of the pencil, the page she slowly fills with curlicues and tiny hearts. This might be something, I tell myself.

The bird is roasting. Fat is spitting and sizzling in the pan. The cranberries taste profoundly sour to me. I think they may be a disaster. Some of the sweet potatoes have some soft spots I carve off of them. We did not get enough brussel sprouts. I chop shallot and celery, carrot and mushrooms for the stuffing and saute it in the giant pan that has come down from its hook on the wall. I add fresh thyme and sage, salt, pepper, and diced apple.
E runs in, and breathes deep.
She lets out a giant sigh.
I ask her to rip some sweet bread into little pieces and she does, standing on a chair and dropping them into the pan. I almost forget to add the cloves.

The afternoon is gone. A client calls and I have to talk for almost an hour. E is hopping around, writing on a piece of paper and shoving it in front of me. "Apple pie?"

I hang up, and we tear into the flour and butter, that secret spoonful of lemon juice, the unorthodox egg. The dough goes into the fridge to rest just as N comes in. She has bags of juice and water. She tastes the cranberries and tells me they are fine.

The vacuum whirs on, and I film her from the doorway.
The pie gets made.

N's family arrives and we coax them into the kitchen. I open a bottle of red wine from Georgia, some Saperavi. We squeeze everyone around the tiny table, and I turn on the sound recorder tucked above the fridge, the camera poised in the hallway on a tripod. I make a toast, and an explanation of the day. The camera is in focus, but the framing is off, and some faces just can't be seen.

We eat, and I watch everyone take a spoonful of one thing, place it on their plate and begin to eat. No, no I tell them. It all has to be together. The faces are lost. I load mine up, the gravy seeping into the meat, the brussels stacked on top of the stuffing. They follow my example, and everyone grows quiet.
"Now I understand." N's brother-in-law admits to me. "And this cranberry sauce is really something."
The children pick at white meat, and disappear into the living room at one point.
I sip my wine, rest one hand on N's knee and eat plate after plate.

After everyone has gone home, I film traffic outside the balcony.
I am grabbing at straws with all this.
The image does not forgive. It does not explain why it was hard to capture.
It tells a story, no matter what.

I was taught that the only thing that matters is what is in the picture.
Nothing else exists.

I wonder if I can cobble these fragments into something cohesive, something moving. I wonder if anyone can watch video shot by a seven year old and get something out of it.
It all seems desperate to me.
But in a way, this is the truth.