Threshold

(Continued from April 8th, 2012.)

When she first arrived, the older woman took off her shoes before stepping over the threshold.  Unusually considerate, light in her step, she made her daughter nervous.

There had been superstitions, back in her mother’s country, about thresholds, doorways, windows.  Table tops and chairs.  And they were treated like traditions by the women in her family, as non-negotiable as laws of gravity and just as final.  To never kiss over a threshold.  To never sit upon a tabletop.  To never let an unmarried woman be positioned at a corner seat, while dining.  And with the slew of superstitions came antidotes, just as important to take notice of; so that when things did NOT work out — the victim could be still the one to blame:  You shoulda knocked three times on wood, spit over the left shoulder, and hidden a fig hand in your pocket.  These things would grow on one unconsciousness like barnacles of paranoid behavior.  And in a nation of world-renowned courage, it puzzled her to see so many doubtful people.

And was her mother brave at all, to just pack-up like that and leave?  To move herself with a child to the furthest removed continent, after the death of her husband?  His — was a death by drinking.  She didn’t want to die — by mourning.

And now, both women — tired but not tired enough to not be cautious of each other — seemed to be waiting for something.  Waiting for the other shoe to drop, albeit both of them standing barefoot in the empty kitchen.  In this new country, where everyone was in love with fun and smiley faces, they each would arrive to their shared home and try to force a lightness to descend.  It would be mostly out of habit, and not desire.  Her mother functioned better in these new rules:  “Have fun!”  “God bless!”  “I love you!”  She had no difficulty throwing these around, without taking any time to match their implications to the worth of the recipient.

The younger woman now waited by the sink full of dishes.  After enough silence, while stealing glances at her mother, who floated from one room to another like a trapped moth, the hostess began to rummage through the dirty dishes.

Had mother always colored her hair with that unnatural shade of black, when last she’d seen her, in New York?  The snow white roots came in aggressively, all over mother’s head, opposing the other color with no mercy.  When did she age this much?  When did this fear and sorrow find time to settle on her face?

A paw of pity stroked across the young woman’s tightly wound nerves:

“Mom.  Why don’t you sit down?”  She caught herself:  All furniture was made of boxes, uncouth for a woman with a living husband, according to her mother’s generation.  Before the older woman managed to react, the daughter hid her gaze in forming mounds of soapsuds and hurriedly amended her first offer:  “Mom.  Wouldn’t you like a drink?”

“Yes, please,” the older woman turned on her heels, seemingly delighted.  “White zinfandel?”

“Well.  Um.  I don’t have alcohol.  But would you like some juice?”

“Oh.  Right.”  An eyebrow went up and froze.  “No, thanks.”

She turned and walked away again — floating, balancing, looming — stopped by the sliding doors of the balcony, at the edge of the living-room.  The palm trees slowly swayed outside like metronomes to one’s slower heartbeat.  West, West, West.

She’d gone out West, with nothing but the ghosts checked-in as her luggage.  The letters from her best friend on the East Coast would hit the bottom of the mailbox on a weekly basis, for the first two months.  She praised her for the courage.  She mentioned pride, and dignity, and all the other things they’d mutually gotten high on, back in college.

It never happened in any of the books she’d read, but in her life, what others titled “courage” — was merely an act of following through.  Besides, she swore, he thought of the idea first.  What else was she suppose to do?

The best friend wrote her with gel pens, whose color was always given careful consideration.

She wrote in pink:  “It’s better to let it all go to the wind.”

In purple:  “Let justice work itself out.”

At least, unlike the others, the best friend never judged.  She wasn’t in a habit of taking sides.  She never called the husband names.  But then again, they’d never really found men to be the leading topic of their friendship.  Men merely existed.  Some men were good.  And back in college, the two of them hadn’t loved enough men to speak of the other gender with that scornful nostalgia of the other women.  Men merely existed.  And then:  There was the whole of the magnificent world outside.

 

Out here — out West — she could just start from scratch.  She only needed to remember how to breathe the even breath:  if not that of her calmer youth — then of her wiser self.  With time, she knew she’d see the point of it, the purpose, the lessons of her little losses.  She had too vivid of an imagination to not weave her life into a story.

“One’s life had meaning.  It couldn’t be for forsaken.”  (Oh, how she missed those wonderful convictions of her youth!)

So, while she waited to mature into that wiser self, she set aside some time and space in which the hurting self could flail, abandon graces, wag its finger, then call people back with tearful apologies.  But she would not have to confront her past out here, at least; except for when she opened the envelopes of her phone bills.

“So,” mother started speaking to the window, again.  “Natasha?  Are you looking for a job?”

“I have been looking, yes, mom.”

“Okay,” mom turned around.  Change of subject:  “I hear Mike got a promotion for doing the work on that new bridge, in Brooklyn.”

When rinsing a knife after all pungent foods, one absolutely must use soap.  Because if not, the taste will resonate on every meal for further weeks to come.  

“Oh yeah?  That’s good.”

“Yeah!  He’s a smart boy!  I’ve always liked Mike.  For you.”

It’s better if the handle of the knife is anything but wooden.  Wood stays a living thing forever.  It takes on other substances, breeds them, doesn’t let them go.

Here comes the second round.  Ding, ding, ding:

“I wrote Mike a letter.”  Mom searched for the effects of her intentions on her daughter’s face.  “I know!  I know!  It sounds silly!  We live a borough away.  But I have always relished his opinion.”

She felt exhausted.  “Mom.”

Out West, she’d found herself relearning how to use each thing with an appropriate instrument.  The sense of wonderment!   The love of unexpected beauty!  The curiosity she was resuscitating in herself, like a paralysis patient learning how to walk again.  Her days weren’t daunting, at all times; and they were full of curiosity.

And now:  Mom, barefoot yet armed!   In one woman’s kitchen.  So fearful, she could not release either of them from their pasts.  They stood, displeased with being a reflection of each other.  Another eyebrow arch.  A scoff.  One turned away, demonstratively disappointed.  The other looked down onto her pruned fingers submerged into a sink of cruddy water.

Mom faced the window with no curtains, yet again.  Those horrid, flapping, plastic blinds had been the first thing that Natasha’d taken down.  For the first weeks, she let the wind roam through the apartment, while she, sleepless and exhausted, observed the palm trees wave against the never pitch-black night of her new city:  You are alright.  Remember breathing?

West, West, West.

You still have time.  In your defense.

“WAIT! Oh, yes, wait a minute, Mister Postman!”

But I prefer to think of him as my personal Clint Eastwood.

I don’t run into him much, maybe once a month.  At first, I notice the white clunker, with the profile of a blue eagle plastered onto its side panel.  Considering that most of the time, it’s a complete clusterfuck on my street, I usually see his car parked in the handicap spot, at the end of the block.

“How ever does he manage to not get cold?  or hot?” I study the missing doors and the rusty metal of the vehicle.  Zero isolation in that car.

Shit!  I can’t even call it that:  “a car”.  It’s more like a golf cart, really; and I’ve often wondered whose genius idea it was to have the most important and the most underpaid government workers riding around in those things.

And those uniforms!  Can’t some company get a better handle on the tailoring of that seemingly itchy baby- and navy-blue getup?  Sometimes, I’ll watch some other skinny postman drudging a metal basket filled with mail through a block (but not my block!), and I feel sorry for the guy.

But not this one!  My guy — is proud.  Methodically, he returns to his little postal truck and grabs only as much mail as he can carry.  He approaches each house with the respectful knowledge of its property; the habits, the characters of its residents.  He must know all the local dogs and learn the manners of the cats basking on our lawns, porches or window sills.  And even with the wild tenants, he must be well-acquainted:  the curious raccoons, the badass skunks; the hooligan porcupines and the bullies that are the local coyotes.  (But only when they’re in packs, of course.  Alone, they are pathetic.)  Yet, I imagine he navigates their territories with an even pace and a calm demeanor.  They live here and have done so with more sensible behavior than the humankind.  And even though he is not at their service, he knows to respect their rules.

Because he is my personal Clint Eastwood, and that man — never loses his good graces.

There is an abandoned house in the middle of my block.  Or, so I thought.  I thought that surely something sad must’ve happened to this house, leaving it to be occupied by the local homeless cats and runaway teens.  But then again, the front yard of it is so overwhelmed by weeds, that only a wild thing cat navigate through it.  And yet, I see him, sometimes — my quiet hero of methodical existence, my occasional man of the hour — and he come around to the side fence and hurls a tied bundle of mail to the doormat.  I guess the house is not abandoned after all, but it still must have some sad stories to tell.

To my building, the man usually arrives toward the later part of the afternoon.  The Hollywood Postal Station is in the same zip code as this block, but by the time he leaves, all the surrounding streets turn into a disaster of screeching, honking, smoking metal.  Yet, he endures — my bearer of good news and deliverer of late notices, my confronter of procrastinators and the messenger of long lost loves.  And then, he returns the next day with another handful of mail.  Another truck-full of messages.

And if on occasion, I find him in the downstairs lobby, I watch him sorting out the papers with what seems to be a knowing smirk.  Can he decipher the message of each envelope just by the look of it?  Does he know which handwriting belongs to a lover, and which — to a child?  Can he feel, by touch, the perforated patches caused by the tears of a heartbroken girl, pleading for her love to return?  Does he wonder about the timezones, the climates, the political regimes which each message must endure — in order to make it to the bottom of a mailbox?

“Good day,” he’ll say.  Not really a question, or a statement that taunts me for my own option.  Just:  Good day.

I don’t even know his name.  I call him “love”.  Sometimes, I ask him about the traffic, and in the winter, I bring down as many tangerines as I can fit into my palm.  I wait and study him, as he continues to shuffle the papers into the identical gaps.  No matter my impatience or the importance of an anticipated message, I NEVER interrupt.

Today, he said, “Hold up!”; then, grabbed the only bill inside my mailbox and handed it to me.

Shit!  And I don’t even know his name.  But I am sure he knows mine.

“Bad news,” he stated.

I pressed the white rectangle to my chest and tried to find my father’s face — on his:  “Not really,” I shook my head.  “Just:  Steady.  Steady news.”

“Well, that’s alright then,” he said, with every decibel sounding like my personal Clint Eastwood.

My constant memory keeper.  A man of relevance despite the change of times.  

My patient overseer of human interactions, a witness of our faults and generosities.

And someone capable of chronically forgiving our race — and then come back to work to prove it.

“But It’s Hard to Come Down — When You’re Up in the Air.”

“Where are you going?” P asked me on the phone during my monthly calls to Motha Russia, after I announced that I was busy packing.

“Eh.  A little bit here and there,” I answered while measuring the contents of my closet against the mouth of my giant suitcase, gaping open on the floor.  “Here and there.  You know.”

I haven’t really finalized my travel plans yet.  I mean:  I knew I was heading back to Motha Russia — eventually.  That explained the uproar currently happening in the family:  They haven’t seen me in sixteen years, so the homecoming trip promised to be loaded.

But I wasn’t making that daunting trip for another couple of months.  In the mean time, I was giving up my apartment and packing up my giant suitcase.

Apparently there was nothing out of the norm about the vagueness of my plans, because P was agreeing with me, quite enthusiastically:

“Da, da, da!” he said.  “I’m listening.”

Dad had always been on my side.  He had to be; because I never left him much of a choice but to get used to the nomadic habits of mine.  I mean:  All I ask for — is my freedom.  Is that so hard?

But apparently, in order to accept my antsy temperament and the life-long addiction to wanderlust, I also ask for a lot of trust.  Trust was exactly what I relied on when I announced my initial decision — sixteen years ago — to leave Motha Russia in pursuit of my education abroad.  Trust was demanded when I later moved to New York, for the same reason; or when I committed the daunting trip back to Cali after my share of victories and defeats on the East Coast.

All along, my relocations were telegraphed to my folk back in Motha Russia on a monthly basis.  Considering the homeland chaos, I took it upon myself to keep the connection alive; and I would call, from wherever I landed.

“I’m here, for a little bit.  Here and there.  You know,” I’d say, while unpacking another giant suitcase.

As far as I was concerned, I was fulfilling my daughterly obligations beautifully.  So, whenever P would voice as much as a hesitation or a worry, I’d go bonkers:

“I mean…  All I’m asking for — is my freedom!  Is that so hard?”

P wouldn’t have much of a choice.  So, he would agree with me, quite enthusiastically:

“Nyet, nyet, nyet,” he’d say.  “I’m listening.”  (Dad had always been on my side.) 

No one knows the responsibility of freedom better — than those of us who vow our lives to its pursuit. 

I mean:  All I am asking for — is my freedom.  And all I am asking of my loves — is trust.

My addiction to wanderlust began in the first years of my life.  Mere months after my birth, P — who devoted his life to building the Soviet Empire as an Army man — was being relocated from the East Coast of Motha Russia into the less populated inlands.  The first couple of our moves would be done by train; and in the beginning of his career, P could track his ascent through the ranks by the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

“You’d always sleep easily, on trains,” he’d say any time I told him about the utter calmness I feel these days, when on a railroad.

His bigger promotion would take us into the middle of the country — into much more brutal winters and lands.  For first time in my life, we would have to take a plane ride.

I wouldn’t be older than a year when motha packed me into a tiny suitcase that she kept unzipped on her lap during the 4-hour flight.  She would have to get inventive and make a transient crib out of it, stuffing it with a pillow.  I would be bundled up into a blanket and wrapped with a ribbon:  A tradition taught to Russian mothers by the brutal winters of my Motha’land.

For the duration of the flight, I wouldn’t fuss at all.

“All I could see from my seat — was your button nose peaking out of the tiny suitcase:  You were sleeping,” P would tell me whenever I confessed about the utter peace I always feel these days, when up in the air.

In order to feed my life-long addiction to wanderlust, I’ve had to grow up quite quickly.  Motha Russia wouldn’t leave my generation much of a choice after the collapse of the Soviet Empire that our parents devoted their lives to building.  So, instead of living in ruins, many of us chose to pursue a life — and an education — elsewhere.  So, we packed our tiny suitcases and we left.  We had to give up our childhood — and to grow up.

Because all we asked for — was our freedom.  And for my generation, it was indeed very, very hard.

Because all I’ve asked for — is my freedom.  And as someone who’s vowed her life to the pursuit of it, I’ve paid all the consequences of my choices in full — and they have indeed been very, very hard.

So:

“Da, da, da!  I’m listening!” P is always saying, quite enthusiastically, on the phone.

He — is always on my side.

And after sixteen years of my untimely adulthood, he agrees with my pursuit of that calmness and peace that I always feel when transient; when in pursuit of my self-education — when in pursuit of my freedom.

“You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog!”

I love men.  And I love dogs.  And I love men that love dogs.

And I’ve never had a dog, but I’ve had enough men to know that no other animal in the world is better suited — for a good man.

It just looks right when you see it:  One of those sporty baby-tall boys, tired from a day of conquering the world in the name of his girl, slowly walking behind a leashed creature early in the morning.  They both would be barely awake, yawning their sleepy faces into something so fucking adorable — into something that would jumpstart my ovaries into wanting to give life — and they would rapidly blink their kind eyes at the world that they couldn’t wait to get into:  A man and his dog — the creatures of such strength and goodness, and of such unconditional devotion, so very different from my own feline predisposition.

Their fur would be equally disheveled, either from sleep but most likely from the roughing caresses that woke them, that day.  Before other mortals would summon enough will to get out of their beds, a man and his dog would step out to greet the world firsthand:  both of them aging without ever surrendering their innocence (and neither their strength nor the unconditional devotion).  I would always want to come close to them, and burry my face in their hair, in all that goodness.  If I could, I bet the man’s head would smell like the hand of his girl, ever so lovely; while the dog’s — like his own.  And together, they would smell like a home I have yet to build, somewhere on a hill that would overlook the rest of my life — with forgiveness.

Instead, I am stuck watching them from a distance.  At least, for now.  But willingly, I would smile away at their expense while secretly tearing up from the privilege of being ever so close to all that strength and all that goodness.  My ovaries would get jumpstarted into wanting to give life; but there they would be — a good man and his dog — slowly shifting their athletic limbs in the morning, not yet ready for play.  But give them a good meal and a tender nod, and off they would go:  leaping, running, panting, inventing their games as they went along; yelping contagiously, whimpering for attention; teasing or asking to be teased.  And they would both be finally released from having to tone down their strength and their overwhelming enthusiasm.  And the world would be theirs for conquering — in the name of their girl.

The dog would pull the master’s hand via its leash, as if saying:

“Come!  Be!  Love!  Play!”

“Let’s!” — the good man would follow; because, being so very different from my own feline predisposition, he would never grow out of his habit for a child’s play.  And unlike me, he would never grow up.  Thank goodness!

Then, there are those little dogs, completely domesticated and entirely dependent on a man.  They remind me of plush toys, with their teary eyes and perpetually stumped little faces.  And one would have to be born with a heart of a villain to not want to reach for them, at least; if not sweep them up and stuff them under a coat, next to the heart — as if craving a piece of all that goodness.  They are not really my type of dogs, because the world seems too big for them, and mostly full of danger (and that’s not my type of a world).  So, they shiver and retreat, seeking protection from larger animals.  But then again, in such dependency and trust, I bet I could heal a wound or two on the surface of my perpetually stumped little face.  And perhaps, in this life, I would be able to move on a little bit faster — with a tiny creature stuffed under my coat, next to my heart.

The fancier dogs I treat as pieces of artwork.  They strut with dignity.  They hold their statures with focus and calm.  But unlike cats with pedigree, these purebreds still haven’t forgotten the pleasure of some rough play — a bigger child’s play — or of a rough caress.  To the contrary, because they are best equipped to win, they cannot wait for it.  So, they pull their master’s hand via their leash, as if saying:

“Come!  Be!  Love!”

From one moment to the next, they are ready to topple you over at the door, after you’ve finished your conquering at the world for the day — or to save your life.  And you cannot dare to object to either, because all that strength and goodness — and all that unconditional devotion — dwells in the best of intentions, and sometimes, despite their own.

And that’s just the thing about those sporty good men (good boys) and their dogs:  Once a girl earns their unconditional devotion, their own life is no longer a matter of the biggest relevance.  They may be in the mood for an occasional rough play — or a rough caress.  They may even sometimes be quite child-like in their dire need for a silly toy.  But if a girl can give them a good meal and a tender caress, off they would go:  conquering the world, in her name.

And with all their strength and goodness — with all that unconditional devotion — they have the ability to restore a woman’s heart, into more life and into more love.