Transliteration

by Caroline Kenworthy

Academy Alum, Class of 2011

“Full name?”

“Svetlana Ilyina,” her mother said before Lana could answer. The sounds unfolded from her mouth with the ease of her mother’s tongue. She shot the letters of her daughter’s name at the man before he asked and he thrust the blue booklet over the counter. She opened and examined it, then held the passport to Lana, satisfied. Lana saw underneath her mother’s contentment, saw her satisfaction with her decision. It was playing out accordingly; four months ago, Lana had been told she was traveling to Russia, from the end of December to August. The passport and the packing were all that was left before Lana would be sent to St. Petersburg. Her mother had marked the trip with conviction into the kitchen calendar, lettered and boxed off, but Lana saw the passport, and didn’t want to take it—she wanted to decide, for herself, whether or not to. Lana wanted to stand up into her life, take steps in the direction she chose.

Her mother clicked her teeth impatiently and Lana took the passport. The synthetic cover felt cool, and snapped like a new book when Lana opened it. She traced her fingernail over the patterned pages, wondering—what did the Russian stamp look like? Would it be red? Or black? What would it say? In English, or Cyrillic?

Lana’s lungs and throat stiffened as she saw herself being forced through customs, voices rattling around her. A beefy hand grabbing the passport, confirming the rounded outline of her cheeks against the picture and thrusting it back to her, waving for the next traveler, leaving Lana to find a cab and try not to mangle the sounds of Aunt Oksana’s­­­ address.

Since October, her thoughts had skirted around St. Petersburg, the airport, but now they condensed, knotted and settled into the base of her throat. Lana flipped to the front of the passport, trying to swallow the anxiety.

The picture caught Lana’s breath—the round cheeks and stormy eyes in the picture were drawn from her mother’s face. As she counted out bills for the passport, Lana saw her mother’s lids drop, the skin purple from lack of sleep. Wrinkles deepened in her cheeks and forehead, and her mother’s features seemed pinched into place under her skin. Weariness had swallowed the satisfaction Lana sensed. She glanced at her photo again—her own eyelids were wilted and thin, and the pursed corners of her lips stood out. She looked like her mother the morning after a hard day, as though she couldn’t sleep enough.

Lana had a sudden urge to scratch her face out of the picture, paint it with cover-up and eyeliner and show everyone how fresh she was, a girl with verve and flourish. She wanted her eyes to open wide and see everything with its glimmer; she wanted her cheekbones discerning, her lips smooth and smiling at what she found candid and sharp. She wasn’t tired yet—she was just starting to feel her nerves, the currents and glances skimming between herself and others. It had been weeks since she and Trevor had begun to exchange smiles, private and electrifying. Her mother’s round cheeks and watery eyes weren’t everything; almost spitefully Lana vowed that she would not get pushed around at St. Petersburg’s airport, that she would grow taller than even her mother expected. Lana pocketed the passport and walked out, her mother following. She felt her mother’s fatigue and slouch behind her, and recurved her spine. Lana’s eyes rose up, and didn’t blink as the clouds opened for the sun.

The car silenced them, its thick, sun-heated air stifling them next to the chill. Instead, Lana indulged in thought-conversations with her, asking about her day, her childhood, her past and present hopes. She imagined discussing her mother’s young and sudden immigration to America—her tug-of-war between Russian as a child and English as a teen. She imagined her mother telling tales of Lana’s grandmother, Babushka, as a young woman, trying to grasp her own daughter's growing up and away. Lana picked at the residue of a sticker on the seat belt. Whenever her thoughts wheeled this way, they dove into images of her mother, at Lana’s age, roaring at Babushka, who sat in a kitchen chair with her face in her palms. Lana closed her eyes and imagined herself as her mother, and twisted between loving and tearing from her.

“Svetlana, you’re going away soon. You need to start preparing. Have you started packing yet?”

Lana’s eyes opened and refocused on her mother’s face. The eyes were a dark grey, overshadowed by her eyebrows, which nearly always betrayed her—but she was calm, not a nick in her forehead.  Lana’s mother handed her the slip of paper from the console; it was the plane ticket. The printout read December 18, the end of her semester, and the beginning of winter break. Lana’s mother brushed past her silence, and proffered the slip. “You need to keep this until you leave, and you cannot lose it.”

“Mama…” Lana said, her voice low. She saw their name, Ilyina, the flight number, the economy seat, and mulled it over. “How come it’s only me?” Her mother’s eyebrows contracted; Lana knew as she asked the question that she wouldn’t get the answer, not the real one.

“You know that,” her mother rejoined. Lana’s eyebrows twitched and her mouth tightened, predicting the excuse word-for-word. “Your father and I are going to stay here, to take care of Grandpa and Babushka.” She turned to her purse, tucking things in neatly. Lana closed her eyes and clasped her fingers around the car’s door-handle. Whenever her mother pulled into their driveway, she took minutes to gather her things, herself. Lana sensed the pause was a deep breath, like entering the house was a dive into foul water, and her heart contracted. Since fourth grade, she caught the stony looks her parents gave each other; by now, she knew they didn’t last. Still, her mother’s terseness made Lana’s lips tighten. Her parents’ fights, lately, hadn’t ended cleanly—their resentful looks bled over to their daughter’s questioning looks, aggravated sighs when she inquired. Lana stopped waiting and left her mother in the car, organizing her purse, radiating hostility. She focused on the surname on the passport; Ilyina, the name her grandmother passed down, and had forbidden they marry away. As far back as she could remember, whenever Lana’s mother had to sign anything, or used her name for her business, her father’s back would stiffen, he’d twist the band on his finger, and go pull weeds in the garden or pour himself a drink, depending on the time of day.

Lana slipped into the house and up to her room. Closing the door, she found a tough old suitcase and a toiletry kit placed in the middle of her floor. Lana looked at the neat layout, waiting for her to empty her dresser and closet into it. She felt empty, distanced from her impotent, invaded anger, even free from the compulsion to keep her cool. She turned to her dresser and saw the house phone perched on it, where she left it the night before last, and Lana’s mind was filled with a promise Trevor had made to call her tonight. Her heart loosened and lifted, and she held the phone, smiling giddily. The sound of her mother snapping the lock on the front door and ascending the stairs propelled Lana to the dresser to open the drawers, and she unloaded pair after folded pair of jeans and shorts into the vacant mouth of the suitcase, smiling. The door to the master bedroom closed harder than necessary. Lana pictured her mother yanking off her scarf and glowering at her father. Him, muttering a tired greeting, and her mother shooting something poisonous about a forgotten errand. Lana heard their muffled exchange through the wall and the empty hallway, dropping another stack of shirts into the suitcase.

When she’d been younger, immature, the sounds of her parents arguing drew Lana like a rubber band twanging to shape; she’d press against the door of their bedroom as they traded accusations. Phrases floated out, and their lascivious texture enticed her lips; fucking cowboy, goddam rusky— the shouts started grim and harsh, and always dissolved, after whatever interval, into moans and heavy breathing as Lana listened from the hall. She’d fall asleep, and would wake, her father’s footsteps approaching the door, to hide in the bathroom. Other times she’d wake up in her bed, her father having found her, and carried her there.

There was a sudden quiet, and Lana stopped packing. Her parents’ loudening voices had kept her moving, and the lull, the moment of union, was so familiar and dear to her that she had to observe it. She closed her eyes and sat against her dresser, listening.

The silence lingered. There was a cold, measured cadence of familiar syllables, and the soft click of the doorknob across the hall.

Her father’s footsteps and soft knock seeped into Lana’s pounding ears.

Her arms were heavy, blood shuddering through her head and chest. Her parents always fought, and they made up. That was their identity, their relationship, all Lana knew. She watched enough TV to know it wasn’t all normal, but those breaks and mendings made her childhood, her life until then: the space between her mother and father’s half-crouched figures, ready to hurl themselves at each other, was the center of her album of impressions. That image was terrible, cold, without the act of pouncing, the meeting in the middle: Lana didn’t know how to get by without it. Then her mind synthesized the sounds of her father’s voice. He had said Svetlana. Her thoughts thronged against each other, roiled together: Dad never called her Svetlana, and that confusion barred the larger terror, the question of why her name was the last word of their conflict, so soon before her leaving. She heard her father’s voice again, and then her door opening. She felt her body harden, unable to turn or respond.

“Lana, hun?” her father asked, unsure what to make of her fetal position against the dresser. “Come on, sweetheart, we’re going to see Babushka,” her father said, his voice murmuring her out of her immobility. Lana uncurled and sat up. She didn’t think she’d cried but wiped her cheeks anyway, slipping on her boots and standing. In the mirror her injured face stared at her, and she looked down. The house phone was on her dresser, and Trevor flashed back: her parents couldn’t pick up the call, she had told them that he was her partner for a history project, but he didn’t know to say that. And she couldn’t stand the idea of missing him. It was just past seven, and he usually called after dinner, around eight. Hurrying them was impossible—them being her parents, and certain they knew better than her—but she had to try. The thought of them made Lana’s chest hurt, but she forced herself down to the car. The sooner they left, the sooner she’d be back, on the phone in her room, away from the rift that widened between her parents.

When they arrived at the hospital, Lana hurried in front, leading the way down the sterile hallway she’d memorized from the twice-weekly visits. Lana had come here every Tuesday and Thursday for the past three months to learn Russian—russkiy yazyk; Babushka would make Lana heave her onto the wheelchair, where she could coax about a foot’s movement, back-and-forth, out of her sagging arms. Babushka had gotten a rare pleasure out of the lessons; her smile had become common, no longer rare or disconcerting on her naturally frowning face. Lana had had to form most of their lesson plans—with no structure, Babushka prattled on about her tame delinquencies and trials as a young woman, first living alone and then with a husband in St. Petersburg. They were no different than living in Cleveland might have been to Lana. In the interest of organization, she had gotten a thin yellow notebook, and the first ten pages were half-full with English words and their phonetic pronunciations in Russian. Babushka’s eyes were too bad to verify her granddaughter’s Cyrillic scribbles. Babushka had written the whole alphabet in the notebook twice, one in uppercase and the other in lowercase, both in cursive. Above it she had written русский язык: russkiy yazyk. The difference between the capital and lowercase in cursive perplexed Lana, so she hesitantly assumed that Russian was like the rest of the world’s languages—subjugated to manuscript with the arrival of the typewriter. That night Lana looked up the Russian alphabet and copied it neatly beneath her grandmother’s transcripts, and crossed the cursive letters out. At the next lesson, she tried to translate her notes into proper Russian, according to her bastardized syllables, and flipped back to the alphabet page so often it ripped—it was impossible. She couldn’t understand the translations, letter to letter—V was actually a B, and P sounded like R. Never mind the vowels; a long E was, mysteriously, a backwards N. Lana gave up transliterating, and just tried to remember the sounds that went with certain words or roots, like how she figured out words in English. But her rote memorizations were never good enough, and in conversation Lana could only just catch words, or parts of them.

“Добрый вечер, Vera,” Babushka said, smiling at her daughter.

“Привет, Mama. Как поживаете?” Lana’s mother replied. The heavy cadence of Russian, punctuated with names, tempted Lana. Babushka had said her mother’s name, she knew. She belatedly made out the quick, slurred syllables of “good evening” from her grandmother’s practiced mouth, but by then Lana had tripped over her mother’s sentence. She heard Mama at the end of it—maybe it had been the informal greeting, but it was gone; she had fallen behind. She stopped trying to find meaning in the halted syllables, and let her mind corkscrew into itself. Lana was supposed to be learning Russian—she couldn’t even understand it. She couldn’t begin to fathom what the three of them were so pleasantly talking about.

“Ax, как обычно. Как дела, Robbie?” Lana knew, in her mind, that it was just pleasantries. But that didn't make it okay for them to force her out, like she had nothing to say or contribute. If they'd talk a little slower she could, but they left no room for her to rise into the conversation. She was incensed with the backwardness of it—she could have been conversing on her own, with someone young who listened and knew her. Lana's gaze swept across their faces, wholly self-absorbed and in the present, no thought of anything except their politely lovely exchange. Her glare seared her mother first, searing through her skull, then Babushka, looking past her loose flesh to her vain young self’s, and finally her father—but her gaze cooled to vapor. She looked at her dad, whose gaze was so intent on his wife’s and her mother’s mouths that Lana could almost see beads of sweat pearling on his hairline. Her mouth loosened and quirked down at one end, seeing her father’s tongue stumble, as hers did, for the half-second he needed to translate. Lana couldn’t form a full sentence no matter how much time was given her, but she hadn’t studied Russian in college. Yet her father was like her. Self-possessed and given to adaptation, but still American—worse, Texan—and still an outsider.

“Прекрасно. Pад тебя видеть.” Lana closed her eyes. She was presented with an image of she and her father, yards apart, surrounded by rings of people’s backs. She could hear quieted voices, one of them her mother’s, expulsing unintelligible Russian. Her nostrils flared with controlled breath, her anger welling in her throat in the form of words: I’m right here! I can hear you. Turn around.

Babushka must have noticed her then, her shoulders rolled forward and eyes narrowed. Suddenly Lana’s sinuses stung and her eyes flooded; she coughed violently and curled forward, crouching over the chair.

“Mama!” Vera said indignantly.

“Что? Что? Она собирается обратно домой, и она жалуется! И слышать об этом не хочу,” Babushka said, shaking her small purse at her daughter. “You are lucky I had my salts, maybe she went into coma.” The wrinkles around her mouth carved grim lines down to her neck, and her gray eyes were watery as they glowered at her granddaughter. The woman’s swollen hands fumbled with her vial of smelling salts, zipping the pouch. Lana leaned against the wall, wiping her nose, then sat back down next to her grandmother. She shook with anger and disbelief at the older woman’s senseless reasoning. She stared at her narrowed eyes, her nose, swollen with age, hooked over her mouth like a caricature. Lana’s eyes darted to her father’s face, full of righteous indignation, and when he caught her gaze, he gave her a slight, impudent roll of the eyes, as if to say she’s absurd, isn’t she—then, as he held her gaze, forgive her. Looking back to Babushka, Lana felt as though she could laugh and cry for that nose—which, Lana was certain, had once sniffed and tested stew and looked perfect for a mother, and may even have needed the salts from time to time. Lana was twisted again, seeing her grandmother and her mother at her age. Just then, the nose, the hands, spoke as clearly to Lana as Babushka did in Russian.

Her nostrils stung as she inhaled again, and Lana’s forehead crinkled. Her father came over with a glass of water, and she sipped. “Can we go?” she muttered, glancing at him; he nodded, and she eyed Babushka, who caught her gaze.

“Sveta,” she said roughly, “come. I apologize. Show you something.”

Lana got up as her grandmother nudged herself across the small room, toward Lana. Her puffy knuckles worked clumsily at the zipper again, and managed to open it. Yellowed papers crackled inside, and Babushka withdrew a passport rippled with water and age. Lana took it, wordless, and prized it open; the pages were spackled with cursive lines of Cyrillic beside stamps of nearly all the European countries.

“I used this for all travels; you take this, before your first travel. When will it use again?” Babushka said, squinting matter-of-factly. Lana took her hand, and her wrinkles all turned upward.

“Thank you, Babushka,” Lana said.

“Nothing, little Sveta, nothing,” her grandmother replied, flapping her hand. “But you must write to me, yes? My ears is—are bad for the phone, but I can have nurse read a letter to me. Write to me with russkiy yazyk, tell me where you go.” A smile lightened all of her features: she wore her lines like a crinkled silk scarf, fleetingly lovely with contentment.

Lana nodded, certain none of the nurses knew the language. “Okay, Babushka. Da.”

She smiled queerly at her granddaughter, then repeated the Russian affirmative for her, and gestured for Lana to try again until she turned her tongue around the word properly. Babushka suddenly turned to her daughter and son-in-law. “ясно, она его понимает, russkiy yazyk… слов и фраз, at least so she will find her way back if she loses Oksana. Not advanced much, but… достаточный.”

Lana tried to wrestle that final mixture of sounds into an English word, but she gave up, drawing the meaning from the downward quirk on her grandmother’s mouth—some combination of disappointment and enough.

Vera chuckled and brought her hands together. “Чудесный. Thank you, Mama.” She touched Lana’s shoulder. “We’re very proud of you.”

Babushka laughed. “Just the last week, Sveta had very interest in words like boyfriend, husband, ну! She has someone with her, hm?” Lana blushed deep pink and swatted her grandmother’s wrist.

“No,” Lana muttered, “not really, there’s just this guy…” She snuck a look at her parents, and breathed again; they hadn’t noticed, thought it was just a passing crush, already beginning a fervent conversation under their breaths. Lana’s watched her parents’ faces, the tense lines of their mouths and brows clashing. She had never considered the idea of telling them about Trevor. Neither of them had ever forbidden dating, or even really spoken to her about it, but she still held the façade of schoolwork over her relationship. Lana sensed the damage it would do, telling them that she had something they could not know everything about.

Lana remembered more of that lesson— Babushka had reminisced about her own flings, talking to herself in Russian, occasionally denoting a word with an English one. Then her face darkened, all of its lines squeezed together, and when Lana asked what was wrong, she shook her head and wrote down one word in Russian: pазвод. Babushka looked up and her eyes were dark with sadness. She traced the word with her finger and said, “Separate. Away.”

Lana looked again at the passport and Babushka, pressed her cheek to her grandmother’s, and muttered, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, little Sveta!” she replied, laughing wryly as they left for the parking lot.

Lana shut the door to her bedroom as soon as she got in, and snatched the phone from her dresser. She set down Babushka’s passport, then lay on her bed and checked her watch. Seven-forty-three. She stared at the old phone, coiling its wire around her finger. Her attention strayed from the taut anticipation for the call, and circled around Babushka, around Oksana, and Russia, and the plane ticket tucked within the pocket of her suitcase, and at seven-fifty it rang and she nearly dropped the phone.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Lana?” Trevor’s voice perked.

“Hey,” Lana said.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Lana said, clearing her throat. The line went quiet, hushing with static.

“You sound… I don’t know. Is anything wrong?”

Lana opened her mouth, then closed it. Yes was the truth; the word had rolled to her mouth, but she quickly wrapped it in her thoughts again. She couldn’t suddenly tell Trevor she was leaving—she liked him, and she loved having a boyfriend. She liked calling his house, exchanging surreptitious glances in the halls. She liked telling her mother that she would be late because she had to work on the history project. She liked the way he looked at her, like an equal, and loved the control it gave her; how she could take his hand to her hip, or coyly keep it from inching upward. Lana’s need for him, for the freedom he gave her, coiled in the space behind her sternum, and it was comfortable there. Telling him would tear it out and apart. Leaving the country, for half a year—Lana could imagine his reaction, a slow oh, and the inevitable then I guess it’s best… Lana couldn’t do it, give him up so soon after knowing him, nor give up the choices he offered.

 “Just tired, I think… I fell asleep accidentally.”

“Ah.” Then her thoughts backpedaled, and she immediately tried to reject the idea that he might be indifferent. That to him, she may have been just an amusement, she had to move, no big deal… No, she told herself forcefully. She wasn’t staying in Russia forever—just for six months. And she wasn’t leaving Trevor. It was just a detour. He could… He might wait. No big deal.

“I’ll be happy to see you tomorrow,” Lana said.

“I will too,” he returned awkwardly.

“Aww, you’re sweet.” She swallowed, tomorrow’s task weighing in her stomach already. She had to tell him. It wouldn’t be right not to.

“You too. You’re sublime.” Lana laughed, the sound hollow and leaden to her.

“Read any dictionaries lately?”

“Nope, just the assignment, believe it or not,” he said.

“Oh, damn.” Lana laid back on her bed, her mind less on the assignment than her words, and her thoughts. She did like him, liked being around him, and felt Russia couldn’t change that. “You really like spending time with me?”

“Yeah, Lana. Why?” Then the coil in her chest flicked with an idea.

“I don’t know. I’m glad, I guess,” she said, her fingers in her hair. She could invite him over. Lana heard his breath over the line, awkward and uncertain. She’d tell him to come Thursday, and find some excuse not to visit Babushka. The consequences of this whispered at the back of her head: the house would be empty, they would be alone. She would have time to find the right words, the ones that would preserve what they shared. Her stomach fluttered and she opened her mouth again to ask him before the nerve left her.

There was a loud rap on Lana’s door. “I need to use the phone,” her mother called.

“I’m using it, Mama. For history class.”

“Svetlana. I need to call someone for business, now. I’ll talk to your history teacher if necessary.”

“It’s nine o’clock! Can’t you get a cell phone? This wouldn’t happen all the time if we had our own phones.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Vera opened the door and extended her hand for the phone. A surge of anger broiled Lana’s stomach and lungs, and her breath came out short and hot.

“Lana?” Trevor’s voice asked worriedly, tinny and faraway.

“I gotta go.” She hung up before he could respond and dropped the phone on the floor, then slipped through the doorway, not looking at or touching her mother. She pounded down the stairs and strode into the living room, where her father stood at the wet bar.

His gaze dipped down, the look almost demure, as he tipped out his two-finger portion of whiskey. The corners of his eyes trailed into crow’s-feet that deepened as his hand curled around the glass, and then the other hand rose up, hiding the crinkles as he massaged his temple. Lana was frozen, like she was meeting her father for the first time. She opened her mouth, and his real name, Robbie, rose in her throat. She silently formed her lips around it. Robbie was the man who poured his drink and pressed his fingers to his temples. If he knew she was there, not a second would pass and he would be Dad, smiling laconically, his mouth either closed or full of whiskey. He would listen to whatever she had to get off of her chest, and roast it over a parental spit somewhere inside and send it back to her, unchanged at its core, yet meant to comfort her. That would be Dad; but this, right now, was Robbie. She pressed her lips together, recording him, the particular fall of his shoulders and sincerity of his pain. She wanted to talk to him, yet not obliterate that line of his back, his body’s candor. She thought of the stiff circle of backs, surrounding them with Russian, and her expression softened. Lana could try to speak to him, somehow—they were tied, more tightly than by blood, through exclusion. She straightened her posture and quietly said Dad, the name she had to call him.

He looked up, the corner of his mouth following in a half-smile, his shoulders already squared. “Hey, kid.”

“How come you and Mom aren’t going?” Lana asked without pretense, her tone almost querulous.

He picked up the glass and closed the liquor cabinet, thoroughly within himself as he loped to the couch, thoroughly Dad.

“Well, someone does need to take care of the old folks,” he replied.

“Dad…” Lana looked into her father’s thick brown eyes, searching for a mutual link between them, but they flicked away coldly. It was the only thing to suggest he was unsure, and she clung to it. “Please just talk to me. I know what Mama tells me. Nurses exist for a reason.” She tried to say it gently. She wasn’t dismissing her grandparents—just probing the eggshell for the yolk, the real reason.

Her dad gave her a hard look over his glasses. “Grandpa and Babushka need the same things as you and me. They need company from people who aren’t paid to be there. I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose your spouse and your health, one right after another. Without my family at least visiting, I’d be lost. And you can bet you would be, too.”

He sat down and gestured for her to sit. Lana saw his eyes, now a bemused and friendly chocolate, and when she felt for the circle they had shared, she sensed his back receding into the multitude. She numbly made her way to the couch and sat next to him, legs to her chest. Her mouth moved for her, producing conversation from nowhere.

“So what are you gonna do?”

He touched the top of Lana’s head. “Hold down the fort. Maybe try to get things into better shape.”

“You and Mama will just… be here until I get back.”

“Yes, Lana, of course. Your mother and I lived together for a long time before you were around, you know.” He stirred the drink with his finger, something he only did when he was rather worried, and unaware of himself. “You shouldn’t think this’ll ruin your life. It’ll be…” He looked above her head as he sipped, and continued, “enlightening.”

“What if I don’t need to be enlightened at the moment?” Lana watched his finger, saw the extremity become itself, not Dad’s but Robbie’s, as it whirlpooled the whiskey.

“Well, it happens.” He sucked the whiskey from his fingertip, his crow’s-feet deepened, his eyes clouded, and she tried again.

“Dad, just tell me. Please. Why is all this happening all the sudden?”

“Your mother wants Oksana to see you before you’re all grown up, as I understand it,” he said, avoiding her eyes and smiling faintly. Lana was alone in the circle. He had disappeared into the crowd, conversing in loud and comfortable Russian, invisible except for his indecipherable voice—he was gone and did not want to see her again.

“She saw me for my twelfth birthday,” Lana said, monotonous.

“And did you learn all about who she is in one day? Stop being negative, Lana. And selfish. I know it’s a big change, but it’s not forever, and you’ll be back for high school.” His voice closed.

She sat in the corner of the couch, inhaling with her sensitive nostrils, her eyes glazing over. Selfish wasn’t a word she was familiar with. Thoughtless, yes, impatient, yes—but selfish was new. Lana tried to distance herself from it, ward off the blood burning in her cheeks, her prickling eyes. She tried to pick apart the situation. If she took herself completely out of it, Lana knew the trip would probably make her a better person: more diverse, interesting, accepting. But she wanted differently—not different ends, but different ways of getting there. She was sure there was no wrong in wanting to mature, come into her own and control her life. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with doing that here, with friends and places she knew. But what her father said—she was being selfish, meaning the trip had not been arranged for her.

The knot in her chest tightened, and she heard the real reason for the trip settle and solidify, hunker down in the space between her and Dad, her and Mama. Lana curled into herself and saw her father’s face, stony as he sipped the drink. He looked up at the ceiling, staring through it to his bedroom, where Lana could hear her mother pacing, on the phone. Listening, she couldn’t make out if the raised voice spoke in English or Russian. Her ears strained, frantic to hear the half-words, to absolve herself, but her mind closed itself up fearfully, convinced her eyes to close, that she was too tired to translate even if she could. Her eyes darted and rolled beneath her lids.

Then Lana awoke from a sense of weightlessness, and opened her eyes. Her nostrils stung and she felt her knees against her forehead, her elbows pinched between her legs and chest. She breathed in and expelled a gagging cough, her nose burning in protest from her father’s breath.

“Dad?” she rasped. His hands were under Lana’s shoulders and knees, her middle suspended as he tried to lift her up. “Dad, what’re you doing?” she said, extending her legs and twisting out of his grasp.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” he said, his eyes strangely wide.

“Dad, you don’t have to carry me up the stairs,” Lana said, shoving herself upright and rubbing her eyes. “Just get me up. I’m not… I don’t need you to do that.” Her father stepped backward, swaying into the table and his hands looking empty, lost, until he shoved them into his pockets.

He cleared his throat. His gaze flicked up at her, then away. Lana slipped through the space between her father and the couch, not looking at him.

“Good night,” Lana mumbled and went upstairs, rising up into the formless dark. In her room, she took the yellow notebook from her dresser, and flipped slowly from page to page, trying to feel the letters her grandmother had written. P is a rolled R, and a sounded the same… The backwards three was a faint buzz on her lips. Raz, she murmured. B is V, the long o, and д, like the Russian affirmative. Raz-vohd. Pазвод.

That morning, Lana sat in the desk closest to the door, and as the substitute took attendance, she leaned forward and peered into 204. Trevor looked through the window next to the door, and smiled at her, waved. Lana’s lips curved back before she thought them to. She looked into his eyes, and felt her head start to pound a little, knowing the two of them shared what might best be called a rapport, an understanding—they actually liked each other. Lana easily saw the surface levels of it—they both liked listening to 104.9 FM, and they had loved the same cartoons. Lana thought of it as “when they were little”—Trevor had laughed and pointed out it’d been maybe three years ago. It made her laugh at herself; that was another level they connected on. He could make her laugh, make her happy, which dissolved into that giddy, stomach-lurching feeling—the part she couldn’t understand. That was the part she felt when she had enough courage to hold his gaze, or put her arm around his waist.

Suddenly his head whipped around and his mouth moved. Laughter swelled from across the hall, and Lana saw Trevor’s neck and ears redden. Someone had seen him staring. His gaze stayed stolidly on his desk, and Lana sat back in her chair.

“Svet-lana El—Il-yana?” The substitute sounded out her name painfully slowly.

“I’m Lana,” she said quickly, “I’m here.” He nodded and checked her name off. Her thoughts diverged, now concerned more with Russian than Trevor—how would you say “here”? “Present”? Lana couldn’t even ask “what do you mean?” or “could you repeat that?” properly. She tried to record all these questions, ones she had to ask Babushka on her last lesson. Lana hadn’t tried very hard over the months her grandmother had spent exposing her to Russian, but it was hardly a class—more a peripheral experience than organized instruction. Lana knew the names for hospital objects that Babushka could point to, but for the most part her vocabulary was pitiful. Lana knew the parts of the body. Back was spinah; eyes, glah-zsa. Mouth: рот. The p as a rolled r, long o, and the clean, softened t felt to her like the small groove at the top of the lip, where the skin raised and reddened, laced with hair’s-breadth cuts and wrinkles.

Then Lana noticed the heat in her cheeks, and was sure her eyes had to look distant and glazed over, sugary and saccharine. She looked down at her desk. Lana’s thoughts of her boyfriend and the trip ahead converged, and her guts clenched, remembering she had to tell Trevor, then relaxed as she remembered her invitation. She felt her blood rush under her skin. They hadn’t gone so far as to plan out their breaks, and until now, Lana had been grateful the topic hadn’t come up. She would have had to tell him about St. Petersburg, Oksana, russkiy yazyk. She tried to weigh the news of her leaving against her offer, and couldn’t differentiate them—she was twisted into both.

Of course delaying the news was mere distraction; putting it off only heightened her fear and excitement. Until lunch her thoughts labyrinthed around the coming conversation with Trevor, questions for Babushka diverting and twisting her path. She planned the talk, dread twining with hope in her chest, wanting him to come over, that want roiled with the thought of the trip. The bell rattled shrilly and the students rushed out of the classroom. As they left, the substitute yelled that everyone was to report to the lunchroom; outside, the sleet had iced over. There was a collective groan, but Lana sat still at her desk, knowing she had to find Trevor, so they could talk—they’d never be able to leave the lunchroom unnoticed. She had to get up and find him, she knew.

“Um, Sv—er, Lana?” the substitute asked. She looked up at him, at the rows of empty desks, and muttered an apology before hurrying out of the classroom, her feet prickling. She saw Trevor meandering down the hallway, looking for her.

“Trev,” she called quietly. He turned around and smiled. She beckoned to him. “C’mon, before somebody sees us…” She took his hand, pulling him into the girls’ bathroom.

“Whoa,” he said, partly apprehensive but mostly intrigued. He couldn’t help but look around the bathroom. Lana saw his thoughts travel from nonplussed from the lack of urinals to so this is what it looks like. For her the bathroom was normal, and the pink-and-white tiles were background to her brittle and twisting thoughts. Her unease made her anxious, and she snapped her fingers next to his ear. “What?!” he said, his eyebrows furrowed as he batted her hand away.

Lana’s arms dropped to her sides. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I gotta tell you something.”

Trevor tugged on his ear. “Well, just… what?” he said.

She stared at him, her twisted-up thoughts muting her. There were words sitting beneath her tongue, but they were wrong, she hated them, hated the trip and the idea of losing Trevor. She looked at his forehead, a few lines starting to crease it, and the perfectly curved line dividing his lips. Lana looked down at the tiled floor and inhaled. She felt Trevor’s hands on her arms, and her nerves fired in response. “Lana, what is it?”

She looked up and kissed him. His back stiffened and his hands tightened around her arms, and then he pressed her body to his. Blood pounded through her ears. They hadn’t had the nerve to kiss again since the first time, in Trevor’s dark dining room. It had been a neighborhood party, for his parents’ 25th anniversary, just a week ago. He’d snuck some champagne from the kitchen. He held a finger to his lips and gave her one of the plastic cups. She drank the bittersweet liquid—the bubbles tickled her lips, and stung her throat—and when she put it down he touched her wrist and kissed her.

Lana pulled back and breathed hard. She found her hands wrapped around the side of his jaw and neck, and her body crushed against his. She relaxed her fingers, and saw residual whiteness disappear from the skin she had gripped. Trevor felt her loosening, and let go of her, first one arm and then the other. He rubbed his neck and hair. Lana smiled and saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down. She giggled and hooked her thumb through his belt loop. The words under her tongue were gone. Invitation first, she recalled fuzzily, and looked up at his face.

“My parents will be out of the house tomorrow,” she said conspiratorially. Trevor’s eyes widened and his eyebrows went up, like his whole face was expanding, making her laugh again. “Come over,” she said. He nodded eagerly. Though Lana could see his excitement, his eyes still searched her face, like some part of him had sensed the disquiet that had risen up from her feet, the roil in her thoughts. It was as though he knew the invitation had only come after; that it came because of the kiss—what they weren’t bold enough to call lust, the new intoxication with the embrace, the body, as tantalizing as the champagne. She would tell him then.

When Lana got home, damp with sleet and melted snow, her mother was bent over in her closet. She had sorted through old and shrunken dress shoes, purses that had fallen down and been forgotten. Lana didn’t keep anything she cared about in the closet, but it wasn’t the closet—it was that her mother was in her room, had been there as long as she wanted to be. She had no privacy, nothing to herself, and she reddened with indignation. “Need help?” she said bitingly.

“There you are. You’re only halfway done with packing. You won’t have time before the flight, and you have to be at the gate an hour ahead of takeoff and it’s at six in the morning—”

“I know, I was going—”

“All right, fine, as long as you get it done. I’ll get rid of these old things, you can’t possibly fit into them anymore,” she said, brandishing the shoes and old dresses. “We’re going to see Babushka as soon as your father gets home, and again tomorrow, so you’ll have to do as much as you can tonight,” her mother said, striding out of the room.

Lana put her attention to inventing some story that would excuse her from tomorrow’s visit. She combed through her options as she sorted the laundry, but nothing she came up with would keep the house empty. Folding shirts and tossing them in the suitcase, she sorted through the stories one by one, but they all hung from some weak lie that could easily unravel. Lana sat next to the suitcase and idly began feeling through its pockets and pouches, coming across a few pennies and rubles. Then she felt a large packet in one of the pockets and tugged it out, already turning to check the cleared-off top of her dresser. It was Babushka’s passport, velvety and pliable in her hands. Lana ran her hands over the worn and smooth leather, opening each page of the passport carefully, marveling at the antiquity of the thing, with its penciled-in Cyrillic topped by many stamps for the countries Babushka had seen. For the first time, Lana had a notion of how old she was; the woman had been born after the first World War, and had fled to America, pregnant, because of the second. Lana flipped to the front of the passport, where a picture of her young grandmother was taped. Anya Ilyina, born 1925, had the stormy eyes and pursed lips she passed on to her daughters. Yet in her youth, Anya had had high, defined cheekbones—the kind that looked self-importantly at the camera, and separated her from the rest of the dour, full-faced Russian women. Lana touched her face, round and unoriginal, but saw in her grandmother’s eyes the independence Lana sensed in herself. In the mirror, her own eyes didn’t flash with zeal; it was somewhere in the lines around her mouth, above her brows. Her wrinkles quirked and furrowed resolutely, evidence to her autonomy, the mind twisting behind her eyes and cheeks—and the wrinkles deepened more and more every day.

“Svetlana?” her mother asked, her voice traveling up the stairs.

“What?” Lana shot back defensively, looking up from her suitcase.

Her mother stood in her doorframe, her hands behind her back, her mouth and eyes turned down. Her shoulders drooped. Remorse sat Lana back on her heels and made her brush her hair behind her ear, raise her eyebrows pleasantly. “What is it, Mama?”

She regained her composure and walked into the room, holding out a box from behind her back. It was white and had an unmistakable picture of a cell phone on it. Lana took it, wide-eyed, and flipped open the top, unearthing the slab of plastic and wiring from its wrappings.

“It’s international,” her mother said. “I gave it some thought, and… well, we can’t expect Oksana to cover the cost of your calls back here. Your dad and I got phones too—I programmed our numbers in.” To be sure, kids at school had sleeker, glossy versions—but it was a phone, the one thing Lana had been gunning for since fifth grade. Lana hugged her mother’s legs, grinning.

“Thank you so much, Mama. It’s great,” she said, already dialing Trevor’s number.

“Don’t forget to call us while you’re there,” her mother said, her voice subdued, and touched her hair with unexpected tenderness.

Lana looked up. “I will,” she said, and felt the vow lock around her throat. Her mother smiled absently, and hearing her own phone’s ring, left to answer it. Lana heard her say “hello?” as she saved Trevor’s number. The voice across the hall quickly crept from polite to livid.

“You remember she’s leaving, right? Or did it slip your mind?” Lana heard her mother ask, saying each word too loud and distinctly. She got up and pressed herself to the window, feeling the agonizing restlessness of being talked about. Ice plinked against the glass, and the sky was a flat grey. Lana’s fingernails dug into the painted window-ledge, hearing the anger in her mother’s voice slice through the hall. She looked back down at her new phone. Dad and Mama were the first entries, and were already set to speed-dial. Her mother had already taken the phone out of the box, charged it, entered the numbers, and repacked it all for Lana. She touched the screen, feeling that tenderness. Yet now, she was hissing at Dad, and using one of the few Russian phrases Lana had known before her lessons with Babushka: one she had shown off before school, and the whole week the teachers couldn’t pin them down for swearing but warned them for their tone. They just laughed and repeated it: Ohtoy-deh oht minyah. Go to hell.

“Отойди от меня! You said…” Vera walked away before Lana could hear the rest of the accusation. Her fingernails cut down further, into the wood of the window frame, her lips pursed and brow pinched down, and her heart tightening with senseless remorse. It was not her fault, she thought again and again, damming up the throbbing in her chest.

“Svetlana,” her mother called, fury straining her voice, “we have to go. Your father is working late. I’ll be in the car.” The front door slammed, and something in the foyer clattered to the floor. Lana forced her feet to walk, picking up the umbrella that had fallen from the coat hook and taking it with.

At the hospital, Lana got out of the car and opened the umbrella over her mother’s door before she opened it. Her mother smiled tiredly, and they went to Babushka’s room. In the cold fluorescent light, the old woman looked too tired to listen, much less to teach. Lana went to the bed and took her hand, knowing even her simplest phrases wouldn’t be translated.

“Pree-vyet, Babushka,” Lana said. Her grandmother’s face lit up.

“Добрый вечер, Svetlana,” Babushka said, and turned to her daughter. “Prevyet, Vera. Как дела? А где Robbie сегодня?”

“Плохо, Mama. хороший вопрос.” Vera slumped onto the chair beside the bed. “Я не могу ему поверить. Он не.. Я понимаю, что ему может быть трудно приходить сюда и видеть тебя со мной, но она же завтра уезжает! На полгода! И Robbie просто отмахивается от нее как будто она не его единственная дочь. Не знаю что сказать на это, полное безразличие. Апатия.”

Lana listened hard, teasing out the nouns and articles she recognized. She was able to decipher two or three words in a sentence, and she could guess at a few of her mother’s resentments—for there was no doubt from her tone, she was bitter and sad. The verb endings were male—and there, her mother said Robbie. Dad.

“Но Robbie так заботится.. о тебе и о нее. Он русский для тебя выучил, и хорошо на нем говорит. И он в девочке души не чает,” Babushka said warmly, and Lana smiled despite herself, hearing her father’s name, and russkiy; her father’s stumbling command of Russian had always mollified her grandmother.

“Но это же не все. И Svetlana... Я за нее беспокоюсь. Мне жаль, что она оказалась меж двух огней, но если она останется, я не смогу со всем этим справится.” Her own name. Lana’s concentration flew apart; a wave of shame deafened her. The fights her parents had been having were about her, because of her. “До августа у нас с Robbie достаточно времени, чтобы с этим разобраться. Мы постараемся, но развoдемся мы или нет... невозможно предугадать.” She concentrated harder on her mother’s voice, trying to ignore her thickening throat. She was pretty sure yeh-sleh was the conditional, if: then avgust, August, the month she came back. Then it was over. Pазвод, she heard. Razvohd. Divorce.

Lana was being sent to Russia to give her parents room, to see if they could stick it out. She was worse than useless: problematic, insufferable. She found herself standing, ready to walk out of the hospital. Anywhere to escape the guilt, the crumbling of her family at her grandmother’s bedside.

Yet as she stood there, watching her mother stretched on the hospital chair, Babushka’s hands folded resignedly on her lap, a kernel of resentment swelled beneath her. The rightful questions buoyed her up: why was she the problem for her parents? She was the irrefutable proof that they loved each other, or at the very least had once. Even if she had misinterpreted her mother’s Russian, there was no misunderstanding the plane ticket folded into her passport in the suitcase. Lana knew that her growing awareness set her parents on edge. They were trying to deal with it, gain their bearings while she was gone. She felt the guilt settle in her chest again, tied between her sternum and her spine. The weight made her head sag, but she held it up. She could carry it. Vaguely Lana heard Babushka say her name, and her mother asked her something. She responded, acting surprised to find herself standing, and sat down again. She couldn’t stop growing, or become less aware. Lana could not accept that her parents were sending her away; she was their bond, and if they would just tell her what she did, their reasons for fighting, she could try to stop it. But they wouldn’t. Snarled language was all she heard, hard words curved against her ears, like eggs she couldn’t crack.

At lunch the next day, Lana pulled out her new phone and called her mother, told her she couldn’t possibly go to see Babushka after school; she had fallen asleep too early last night to pack, and had to do it tonight. She hardly heard the ensuing diatribe, murmured apologies again and again, was sorry but she simply couldn’t go. She convinced her mother to go see Babushka in her place, assured her that she would finish the packing tonight. After that she cut the rest of her study period and spent it in the library with Trevor, exchanging glances and touching his wrist, his leg. She sensed his excitement in his hands, sweaty when they squeezed hers. After the bell rang, he hurried ahead, making one wrong turn after another before she noticed and tugged him aright. Lana’s mind twisted around phrases, ways to tell him; she sorted through synonyms for trip, and traded between half a year and six months. She wrestled with words, her throat going dry, and her feet prickling as she turned onto her block.

They arrived. Lana unlocked the door and opened it for him, and kissed him again. He felt her sides and back, and under her shirt. Her skin pebbled over, and her hands clutched his neck. She inched her fingers under his waistband, then retracted them. She leaned against him slightly, leading him to the stairs. When the backs of his legs hit the first step, he half-fell and sat down; Lana knelt over him, kissing again, her mind twisted in the embrace and reveling in the freedom of her arms, her hands as they wrapped around him. In a gasping pause, he asked if she wanted to go upstairs; she had his hand in hers in a moment, and pulled him up to her room. Inside her door, he wrapped his arms around her, almost lifting her up, nudging towards the bed. She opened her eyes and caught his look, which anxiously asked her permission. She stepped back compliantly, and he kissed her harder, electrified with her yes. He turned her and pushed her against the bed and she slipped and then she was laying down, Trevor on top of her, near frantic with the impulses of his nerves. Lana felt her muscles tense and twist automatically against his weight—she shouldered him off of her and rolled, sitting over his hips again. Her hands paused on the warm skin below his navel, between his shirt and waistband. She looked into his eyes, hardly registering his confusion as much as the roil in her chest; he was cautious and lustful, wanting her as she wanted him. But his muscles, his body was as different from her as the bed, as her mother and grandmother’s faces, as the language that unfolded from their tongues. Her lips parted, and words unwrapped themselves from her mind; plane ticket, Russia, August. Her fingertips wavered above his skin, grazed the feathery hairs there, and his hips pressed beneath hers; she rose up, breathless and hovering as she heard her grandmother’s translation in her head. Pазвод: Separate. Away.