The Language of Sisters Read online

  “I’m coming.” I was dreading it.

  “We love you and miss you and we want the family to be together. All the Kozlovskys. That means you.” She hung up.

  “We want everyone to be together” was a common phrase in our family. But we are together. All. The. Time.

  The third call was from my cousin Anya, an actress and a hypochondriac who said she was sure she had “Gangrene. In my toes. Not a lot, but I think it’s growing. I think we can stop it before amputation. I hope.” Her voice wavered.

  Anya has thick, straight brown hair and golden cat eyes. She’s gorgeous. You would never guess at the head case beneath the beauty. “I like stage acting better than TV because I can lose it in front of people if the role calls for it. I mean, totally-freak-out lose it, scare-the-audience lose it, let-my-brain-out-of-my-head-and-let-it-run-up-and-down-the-aisles lose it.”

  I assured her that I thought her toes were fine, and she took a gulp of air and said, how are you, and I said, I’m fine.

  “You’re not fine, Toni, I don’t think. You’re healthy fine. Physically. I worry about you. Worrying about you makes me more susceptible to colds. In fact, I’m not blaming you, but in the last two years I have gotten more colds. I know I was bordering on bird flu once, and another time I am sure I had symptoms for scarlet fever, and I do think my worry about you has caused them. Please stop making me worry. I hope you know if you want to talk, I’m always here.”

  “I know, Anya, I do.”

  I didn’t want to go out with my cousins, though I loved them.

  I wanted to be alone.

  By myself.

  “See you next Saturday night, Toni. I’m so glad you’re coming. We want everyone to be together. All the Kozlovskys. JJ is turning into Stephi, did you hear? She’s going to have a one-night stand. And don’t worry, I’m going to bring the antiseptic spray.”

  “Antiseptic spray? For what?”

  Anya gasped. “So I can spray down the table at the restaurant before we sit down! Do you know the kinds of germs that lurk on restaurant tables?” She made a gagging sound, authentic, as she was gagging at the thought, and explained these germs to me in high-level bacterial detail. “Do you understand now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Love you so much, Toni. See you soon.”

  * * *

  My family is huge. Do not try to keep track of all of the members. It’s impossible.

  We have all immigrated to Portland from Moscow. We are in and out of each other’s lives constantly. My father calls it “The Great American Kozlovsky Escape, Praise America.”

  My father’s father, Konstantin Kozlovsky, was murdered in the Soviet Union. I can’t say more about that now. His mother, Ekaterina Kozlovskaya, died about a year before that.

  My father has three brothers. They are all tall, barrel chested, and grizzled. Black hair turning white. They would not win beauty awards. They all used to box, and none of them have straight noses. They all have scars, small and large, on their faces, and they wear the stoic expressions of Russian men, their jaws hard.

  Beneath the rigid stoicness, soft, loving, and tender hearts reside. These are men who believe in, and love, our family.

  My father’s oldest brother, Uncle Vladan, came here first when I was very young. He had been to college but worked in a factory as he refused to be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. He spoke out against the government. He wanted more money for factory workers and their families who were crammed into dormitories. He wanted a free press, freedom of speech, a fair justice system, and freedom to worship. He was, as all Kozlovskys were, a secret Christian.

  The government didn’t like that, to say the least. Uncle Vladan was imprisoned. He escaped into a winter storm. He froze on his escape but kept running, and later had to have two toes removed and a finger. He went to Poland, Czechoslovakia, then Germany, then came to the States. He was in poor shape during his journey and worked any day job he could get, even through pneumonia, starving, and an infection where his toes used to be. He met my aunt Holly, a hilarious and loud person, here.

  When Aunt Holly met my uncle, she was a kindergarten teacher, and he was starting a landscape business, which meant he was mowing a lot of lawns.

  Uncle Vladan met Aunt Holly when he was mowing her parents’ lawn. His English was poor, her Russian was zero. They fell in love anyhow. He told Holly, “I give of my word to you, I make fine husband. I not always be a lawn mower.”

  Uncle Vladan kept his word. He owns a huge landscaping business now, for residential and corporate clients. He never mows lawns anymore. He cried when he bought his house ten years ago, brand new, with a sunset view. “I promised my Holly I buy her pretty home one day, and I did it. What you think, Holly?”

  Holly hugged him. “I think I love you, and when you told me you would not be a lawn mower forever, I believed you.” We all laughed.

  Aunt Holly and Uncle Vladan have two children. The oldest is my cousin Anya, the actress and hypochondriac.

  When Anya told Uncle Vladan in high school she wanted to be an actress, he gasped, hand to heart, and yelled, “What? Woe on my life. You on the stage? No. Not my daughter. You not loose woman. You go to college, you get married, have the babies, like nice Russian women do.”

  Their son, Boris, steals cars. He runs a chop shop. It’s an embarrassment to the family. Boris has served time twice. He will again. Uncle Vladan currently likes to pretend to believe that Boris is a full-time mechanic, his wily ways behind him.

  “Aha! My son. He fix anything. He know everything. Has own mechanic business now. Obedient son. Soon he marry Russian woman, have the babies, like nice Russian men do.”

  Boris is a funny guy. He steals fancy cars, “only from the rich and spoiled,” but he also has season tickets to the Oregon Symphony and the Portland Opera. He’s addicted to it. He goes to every single concert. He begs me to come with him all the time, and I do, sometimes. He literally brushed my hair and got me dressed when I could hardly get out of bed two years ago. “Come on, honey. Get up, Toni. It’s Rachmaninoff’s Concerto Number 2 in C Minor. I know that was your uncle Leonid’s favorite. You can’t miss it, you simply can’t.”

  I have a real problem with him car stealing, and I have told him many times, often yelling. But I love him, he’s my cousin, so what to do? Relatives can cause difficult moral conundrums.

  My father’s second brother, my uncle Yuri, is married to my aunt Polina. Uncle Yuri is an electrician, and Aunt Polina owns a florist shop. Aunt Polina and Uncle Yuri left Moscow about a year before us. Their daughter is JJ, the cousin who harangues people about their hair.

  JJ and Jax have two teenage girls. Chelsea is seventeen, a rebel with dyed black hair, black eye shadow, black leather, and black nails. JJ says Chelsea needs a chastity belt and a leash to keep her from sneaking out at night. Hope is eighteen. She is a straight-A student and athlete and Pollyannaish, and very, very sweet. Hope has had the same boyfriend—Macky Talbot, a truly nice, intelligent kid—for two years.

  My father’s third brother, my uncle Sasho, who owns a trucking business. That’s what he did in Moscow, before he escaped with his wife, Yelena, and my twin cousins, also about a year before us.

  Uncle Sasho is divorced from his wife, Yelena. Yelena ran off with the plumber ten years ago. They don’t know where she is, but now and then they get a postcard. Yelena leaving was, in some ways, wrenching for her kids, but she was also a face-planting alcoholic and mean as a python, so there was relief mixed in with the cauldron of emotions.

  Tatiana (Tati) and Zoya are the twins. They are in their early thirties, and they are wild. Tati and Zoya own their own business selling stripper clothes. The business is called Tati and Zoya’s Light and Lacy Delights. They do the whole costume thing for the strippers—Scottish dancing lady, doctor, executive—down to the pasties and thongs.

  They are next-door neighbors in condos overlooking the city, and they have a sewing/office space downtown. Business is boomin
g. Zoya handles the business end, marketing, sales, and the Web site. Tati is the designer and deals with the fabrics. They are curvy and daring and, shall I say, refuse to be monogamous.

  “I cannot limit myself to one man,” Tati told me years ago. “How boring.”

  “I feel the same,” Zoya said. “Three is a ... tantalizing number.”

  “Yes, three,” Tati nodded. “Tantalizing.”

  “You can rotate.” Zoya made a swirling motion with her finger.

  “Yes,” Tati agreed, rotating her hands. “Rotate. Who wants to get bored or tied down?”

  “Well ...” Zoya mused.

  Tati clapped her hands. “Fantastic-o idea! We should make licorice straps. What do you think, Zoya? You could eat your way out of being tied down.”

  I couldn’t imagine handling three men.

  Uncle Sasho also has a son. It was a surprise when Yelena got pregnant. We are not sure if Sasho is Pavel’s father, as Yelena was running around a lot back then, but we don’t ask, we don’t talk about it, and we love Pavel as Sasho does.

  Pavel is a junior in high school. He told me last year he wanted to be a dancer but swore me to secrecy.

  “How long have you been dancing?”

  “Three years.”

  “You want to be a dancer after high school?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of dance?”

  “Jazz. Modern. Tap. But what I love most is ballet. It’s so graceful, it’s so hard. And to be dancing in roles that other men have danced in for a hundred years ...” He teared up.

  Several months ago he said, “Can you help me with my dad, Aunt Toni? I’ve been lying to him about where I’m going after school all these years. He thinks I’m studying chemistry.”

  Pavel is well groomed. Long and lanky. Huge smile. Enjoys clothes and fashion. Sensitive. Gentle. Hopeful, but sad eyes. He is keeping another secret from his father. “I will help you with your father.”

  He smiled, relieved, hugged me tight. “I love your heels, Aunt Toni! I think your color wheel leans heavily on blue.”

  (I am almost done with my family line, don’t worry.)

  My mother, Svetlana, maiden name, Sabonisa, had a dear mother, Lada, who died in the Soviet Union when I was young, with what they think was cancer, but are not sure, as the medical care was poor. Her father, Anatoly Sabonis, almost fifteen years older than Lada, died a year after his wife of a heart attack. It was undoubtedly because he missed Lada, but it was also because of what happened to Leonid, his son, my mother’s brother. There is only so much one can take.

  Our families get together all the time. Birthdays. Christmas. Anniversaries. On Fourth of July my family hosts a huge parade in our neighborhood for hundreds of people. There are homemade floats, decorated bikes and wagons, and a barbeque at the end. The American flag is prominently displayed.

  Unless you are in the hospital you are expected to come to all family activities. However, if you are in the hospital, the dinner will be brought to you, because you cannot possibly eat hospital food, my goodness no. It will kill you. Russian food will build your strength up again, and here is a small shot of vodka.

  We recently went to see Uncle Sasho when he was passing kidney stones.

  We are a chaotic bunch. We phone, e-mail, and even have a separate, private Facebook page for Kozlovskys only. We fight, although I try to stay out of all of them. When I had a dinner at my tugboat a month ago, Zoya pushed Boris into the river because she is sick of him stealing cars, even if it is from the “rich piranhas.”

  Tati told our aunt Polina she needed a colonic cleansing so she wouldn’t be so uptight. That made JJ mad—no one is allowed to speak ill of her mama—and she told Tati she was a lingerie-wearing slut. This did not offend Tati as much as one would think it would.

  Valerie told Anya her hypochondriac tendencies were giving her an ulcer. This alarmed Anya, and she had to sit in a corner and look it up on the Internet to see if it was a possibility.

  My mother told Uncle Vladan that his mind was as closed “as a clam. Shut like a snap.” Uncle Vladan said, “That not true, Svetlana.” Then he said, after a few minutes, “I think you right. That hurt my feelings.” And he got all teary and my mother had to hug him. “I not be a snap clam anymore, Svetlana.”

  Things go on like that.

  If the argument gets too heated my father steps in, solves it, and says, “This is my final word.” The matter is then done. Until a new matter/fight comes up.

  We’re like any other American family.

  We’re a mess.

  But we’re the Kozlovskys, and this is how we live. It is not always peaceful. But we love each other and we will do anything for one other.

  Especially if a car is stolen. We know to contact Boris. He’ll get it back for us.

  * * *

  The next day I was sitting at my desk, working, having just gotten off the phone with an assistant police chief when my editor, William Lopez, who is ex-military from Vietnam, stomped up and said, “Why the hell does your mother want you to quit? I saw it at the restaurant last night on the Specials board. ‘Antonia Quit Your Job.’ What’s wrong, Kozlovsky?”

  “It’s my mother, William. What can I say? She wants me to make desserts at the restaurant.”

  He grumbled. “I had the kebabs with plum and lemon sauce. I couldn’t have the special because the name of my favorite reporter was on it. You’re not quitting, Kozlovsky,” he said, jabbing a finger at me before stalking away. He shot back, “I need a draft on that story you’re writing on the Ramburg embezzlement charge in one hour.”

  He left. Charged back on full speed. He pointed at me again. “And don’t you even think about quitting.”

  I was quitting. Soon. It’s always best to avoid nervous breakdowns when one can.

  4

  On Thursday I went shopping. I don’t call it retail therapy. I call it Keeping The Monsters At Bay: Shopping Defensive Strategies. I found an emerald-green wrap dress with a low V neckline; three lacy bras made by Lace, Satin, and Baubles, my favorite lingerie company; and a red leather coat with a belt at the waist.

  I love clothes.

  I love knee-high boots and skirts with slits. I love lace and ruffles and clean lines. I love tight jeans and shiny silver dresses. I love red high heels and sandals with bling. I love silky scarves, dangling earrings, and bracelets that jangle.

  My love of fashion is not based—much—in vanity or self-absorption. It goes back to Moscow. I shop to remind myself that I am not living in poverty anymore, that I am not doing things I wished I didn’t have to do, that I am not poor, scared, hungry, and desperate. I am not a street urchin.

  I shop for that warm coat that will take away the memories of that ceaseless snow in Moscow. For that thick cable-knit sweater to keep the freezing rain from Red Square out of my mind. For warm boots that chase away the thoughts of ice hanging from our apartment windows—on the inside.

  My love of clothes is also related to being an immigrant, knowing no English, scared in a new country, a new state, a new school, and not fitting in at all.

  When we arrived in Oregon, my sisters and I wore our long black hair in braids wrapped around the tops of our head with a fluffy bow on top.

  We were stared at, and the kids giggled behind our backs. Several of the kids pulled on our braids. No one in my class had long braids wrapped around their heads like the Kozlovsky girls. We wore uniforms in Moscow, and though my parents were happy that we were not wearing uniforms here, that didn’t mean they would let us wear pants or anything casual to school.

  We had to wear dresses. Flowers. High collars. Prim. A little lace. My mother sewed us our dresses. We looked like overgrown dolls with an overabundance of weird braids.

  Not only did the kids make fun of our clothes, they made fun of us because we were Russian and didn’t speak English. Not all the kids. Many of the kids were nice, and we’re still friends with them, but when you are young and scared you remember the kid
s who made you feel like nothing, a freak, the most.

  On a sunny afternoon, two weeks after starting school, at home in Uncle Vladan and Aunt Holly’s basement, I chopped off about a foot from each of my braids, then brushed my hair out. It was thick and shiny. I loved it. When Valerie saw me, she insisted I do hers, too, as did Ellie.

  When our parents arrived home that evening, from their jobs with Uncle Vladan’s landscaping business, their mouths dropped open at the changes in their daughters. Then we threw them another shock. We told them, “At school our names are Toni, Valerie, and Ellie now, not Antonia, Valeria, and Elvira.”

  The kids had made fun of our names, too. They called me “An-TOE-nya,” or “Toe.” They called Valeria “Valeria Malaria,” and they called Elvira “Virus.”

  My father swayed. My mother sank into a chair. Our parents spoke to us in Russian, though we would all soon be trying to always “speaky the English” to each other, as my father said.

  “Who cut your hair?” my mother asked.

  “I did.”

  Their eyes bugged out. “You cut it, Antonia?” my father said.

  I nodded, scared.

  They stared at us. They stared at each other. They sighed. They reached for each other’s hand.

  “Girls,” my mother started.

  We all flinched. Tensed. We were ready for our punishment, but it could not be as bad as what the kids at school were dealing out.

  “Daughters,” my father said.

  Our parents exchanged another look, then they both sat straighter and tilted their chins up.

  My father cleared his throat. “Your hair is pretty.”

  “We Kozlovskys are proud of our hair,” my mother said. “I am impressed with your hair-cutting skills, Antonia.”