C. BELLETTINI | CROSSING THE RIVER

C. BELLETTINI | CROSSING THE RIVER

This morning, I woke up to the sound of Grandmother’s prayer beads flowing through her fingers, clicking her simple gold wedding band. The only piece of jewelry we didn’t sell because she put it on when she was 16, and we couldn’t remove it even after the soup became water.

There is no space in this tiny apartment that I share with her, my mother, and my brother. He tries his best to forget by spending the night with the cheap lipsticks he meets at the Club Zhavago. Nobody says anything about the cloud of perfume he leaves behind after one of his expeditions. We ignore the whole squalid spectacle like some beggar on the street we cannot afford to see.

My grandmother has put the eye on me. I walk up the stairs from the subway, I wait at the bus stop in the night, and I am safe. After the soldiers crossed the river, the gulf between childhood and the person I am now is so wide there is no bridge. But here in America, my grandmother’s eye is a powerful thing, stronger than death.

I pack cardboard boxes with plastic objects in a warehouse without windows. I work every day except Monday. At night, I learn how to be a phlebotomist. My lips move around the word: fill-bottom-must. I am not afraid of blood. I put in the best IV. The instructor even told me so: “Jelena, you are a natural. I didn’t even feel it. Nice job.” I smile. My fingers find the ping-pop of a good vein, where the needle can slide in and not blow a site when the skin is tough or the patient is dehydrated. These are the things I can do. But in the timelessness of artificial light, one more box until I am huffing and puffing running late into the classroom that will be my escape, one day

But escape is a question, like the hastily packed suitcase I left behind; I don’t really know if it exists. A white car parked by our building becomes a smoking shell, the wind whistling its tinny music through the charred interior. There are still echoes of feet running on the pavement, slamming of doors, whispers of men coming to town, tomorrow, next week, next month. When I tell my mother these things, she and my grandmother sing to me; sometimes we all cry at the lost slow sound of our voices remembering.