Vaclav & Lena (28 page)

“I’m sorry, did I wake you up? I know it’s really early.” Vaclav is standing just inside the door, and Lena’s aunt is fumbling inside the kitchen. Putting on tea. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“Wake me up? No. I’m not going to bed yet.”

She’s wearing a lot of makeup, heavy nighttime makeup, but it looks used, slept in. Her hair looks slept in. She’s wearing gray sweatpants with big yellow-ringed white bleach blotches on them, and a tight black top with mesh parts, exposing her lower back, a portion of skin above her belly button, the cleavage between her breasts. She smells terrible, like old milk and cigarettes.

“You want tea?” she says.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says.

“Fuck you, ma’am. Call me Trina,” she says, from the kitchen. “Sit down,” she says, sounding angry.

Vaclav sits on the couch feeling out of his league. His hands don’t know where to go; he doesn’t know where to put them.

She brings him the tea and sits down at the other end of the couch. She curls her legs underneath her in the same complicated way that Lena does. Vaclav’s teacup is dirty, but she is looking at him, so he drinks. There is nowhere to put his tea bag. She takes out a cigarette and lights it, and Vaclav is acutely aware that there are no windows open, no fan, nothing. He wants to smoke one of her cigarettes, take it without asking, to show her that he is a man and not a child, that he is not afraid of her. He eyes the pack of cigarettes. He cannot do it.

She drops her tea bag into an ashtray, an ashtray that has another desiccated tea bag in it already.

“What is this about?” she says, glaring at him. She is like a cat, this way her eyes never leave him.

“I want to know about Lena,” he says. She looks at him for a long time. A very long time. She is like a computer full of memory, loading information. Sorting files.
She knows everything I want to know
, he thinks.

“I know nothing,” she says. “I haven’t seen her for years.”

“That’s not what I care about. I care about before. When she lived with you.”

“I will not talk about this,” she says.

He knows that what she will not talk about is the man, the boyfriend.

“Before that,” he says. “Before she went away. I don’t care about that,” he says. “I want to know what happened to Lena’s parents. To her mother. To her father. How she got here.”

“Why do you want to know?” she says.

“She wants to know,” he offers, by way of correction. “Lena wants to know.”

“And you give her what she wants.”
How is it
, Vaclav thinks,
that these people, prostitutes, crazy street people, homeless men on the subway, they see sometimes straight to the truth, no matter what?

“Why does she not come and see me herself?” Trina asks. Wouldn’t it be obvious, to anyone, why Lena would not want to come back here?

“She doesn’t know that I’m here.”

The Aunt nods. He seems to have met all of her prerequisites, so she can tell him this story. She has decided to tell him, but she will make him wait. Vaclav can see that this is a story that part of her wants to tell but that she will tell it only on her own terms.

Trina knows from stripping about negotiations, about power struggles. She knows how to give a customer everything he wants, so that by the time she does, he wishes he could give it back.

She lights another cigarette, uncurls and recurls her body on the couch, arranges her bleached hair on top of her head. She’s trying to make him uncomfortable. She is succeeding. He decides to speak.

“Where are Lena’s parents?” he says.

“Dead,” she says, without hesitation. She says it loud, and mean, and it startles him.

“Where?” he asks.

“What do you mean ‘where’?” she says, finding humor in it. “They are dead! There is no place, it is not geography, no? Once you are dead you are nowhere, everywhere, yes?”

“I mean where did they die?” Vaclav asks. “Here? In Brooklyn?” he asks. She smiles.

“You know nothing of anything,” she says. How could he know anything? Of course he knows nothing. She is taunting him, and he hates her.

“They were never here. They died in Russia. Both.”

“How did it happen? They died together?”

“Listen, if you are wanting Romeo and Juliet, it is not happening. They were never together. They were fucking. Enough to make Lena and some dirty sheets. She didn’t even know his last name.”

“They were not in love?” he says, grasping. He’s made many faulty assumptions. Already this is falling apart as a solution, as a story to take to Lena, wrapped up like a valentine.

“They were high,” she says.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“They were junkies, you know what this is? Criminals. Drug addicts. And stealing, she stole things. That was why she was killed. The street.”

“She was killed on the street?” he says.

“She was killed in prison,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hating the sound of the words, because he wanted to interrogate her like he was a detective on television, like she had the information and it belonged to him; he would beat it out of her. But instead he was coddling her, being nice, apologizing, and it’s just like him to do this. “Please tell this to me from beginning to end. I need to know the whole story. Please.”

She nods.

“Okay, okay, it is fair. I start from the beginning. In Russia it was a bad time. It was, what, 1991? No, Lena was born in 1993. The country was coming apart, every day, the government crumbling. Everything was a mess. There was not food or jobs, and there was crime everywhere, and with the rationing, everyone was, what they say, dirty? You pay for this, you get this, you pay with vodka, with fuck, with whatever. Right?”

“Corrupt,” says Vaclav.

“Right,” she says. “So there was nothing. In our family, there was sadness and failing, and our father could not work, and he drank and sat with the other men. He was not bad. This was what was. Like your depression in this country. It makes men into nothing, into dogs or criminals or girls. Our father was like this. He was nothing.

“There was crime everywhere. To go out, to go to school, it was dangerous. Lena’s mother—her name also it was the same as Lena’s, but we called her Yelena—Yelena was older than me ten years. There was a dead baby in between us, a boy. He was born too soon. My mother, she would yell his name and offer us, her daughters, to have him back. A bloody lump who never spoke or cried or shat, but still, she would trade us in for a child with a dick. She would say, ‘God, I would give you willingly these two little girls, if I could only have back my Aleck.’

“Yelena, with her it was a bad situation. There were girls who had things, clothes and food. And fun places to go where everyone was excited to see them there. And at home, it was like what I just told you. And me. I was at home, and anytime Yelena was there, my mother would make Yelena take care of me while she drank until she slept like death. Yelena would do her best to keep me happy, to make dolls and play around and enjoy ourselves, but she was sad. Even as a little girl I knew this. You know this about your sister.” Trina takes a deep breath.

“So she went with the girls.” The Aunt says this like it is the final word on the subject—like there is nothing more to say. Vaclav waits for her to continue, but she doesn’t, she just smokes and looks at her fingernails.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means,” Vaclav asks.

“She stopped going to school; she went to the street with these girls, to sell her pussy for money, to get nice things. I have to spell it out for you?” the Aunt barks.
It isn’t easy to say that your sister became a whore
, Vaclav reminds himself.

“It sounds like she didn’t have a choice,” Vaclav says, by way of softening things. Trina doesn’t like this either; she makes a face like there is a turd somewhere in the room that she can smell but cannot find.

“There is always choice,” she spits.

“When did she get into drugs?” he asks.

“Selling pussy, drugs, it comes along with the territory, no?” She says this like Vaclav must be familiar with the situation. Vaclav has never before heard the word
pussy
spoken by a live woman in his presence. Never. The Aunt says it like
poo-see
.

“Girls need the drugs to keep selling themselves, and then they are selling suddenly only for the drugs.”

Vaclav has a terrible thought.

“Was Lena’s father one of these men? Who paid her, for …”

“For pussy? Probably he gave her drugs, not money. He was a drug dealer, a thug in a gang. Maybe he gave her nothing. Maybe he just took.”

“So they were not together. Dating. Anything?”

“No.”

“Okay. Did you know him?”

“No. Only from the trial, and when they were arrested.”

“They were arrested together?” he asks.

“There was a bust of this drug ring. He was there; she was there. There had been a murder. A rich girl, the daughter of an important man. They were both arrested together for her murder.”

“Did they kill her together?”

“Someone did. Who knows. Maybe they did. Yelena said she had nothing to do with it. Wrong place in time. At the trial she cried the whole time, but he never said a word. The police, they said that the two of them killed this girl for money. A mugging.”

Vaclav is confused. It seems that the Aunt won’t give him a straight answer on whether Lena’s mother killed this girl, whether she was innocent or guilty, and it all seems so important, so huge to him. Every detail seems close to the one that will make sense, that will close the case, make the logic work.

“Wait … So she was innocent? And she was executed?” Vaclav’s eyes are wild with fear that this could happen anywhere in the world, ever. Trina is used to this look on the faces of Americans. She is tired of this look, exhausted by it.

“No, not executed … It doesn’t matter. She committed many crimes. Prostitution, theft, drugs. She could have been tried for any of these things. She was a criminal; to them she was dirt. It did not matter.”

“Were you there? At the trial?”

“Yes. I went because my mother would not go. Yelena was dead already to her.” Trina stands up and looks Vaclav directly in the eyes, and he does not understand how, but her look tells him that she will not answer any further questions about the trial, that there is something there that is still hurt.

“You want tea?” she says.

“I have tea, from before,” he says. He looks at his cold tea.

She picks up a dish from the sink, runs water over it, and puts it back down.

“I did not know that she was pregnant then, at her trial. They didn’t let me talk to her.”

“So did you go see her in prison, after the trial?” Vaclav asks.

“No. There was the trial, she was guilty, and then they told me to go home, but there was no sentencing. They said she would be sentenced later. Now I know they were just waiting for her to have the baby. She delivered in prison, and then they kill her.”

“Wait, what do you mean? When did you get Lena?”

“I was called to the prison; I am thinking Yelena asked to see me. I go in, expecting to see Yelena, and they give me this baby. I say, ‘What is this baby and where is Yelena?’ and they say, ‘This is her baby; she is in hospital.’ I ask to see her and they say this is not possible.”

“They just gave Lena to you?”

“Yelena requested that the baby be released to me. I did not know even that there was any baby.”

“And then they killed her? Yelena?” Vaclav is trying desperately to put together the sequence of events.

“Yes, I know they did this. Six weeks later a letter comes that she is dead from tuberculosis. But that day at the prison, when they gave me this baby and say no, I cannot see Yelena, I know she is dead already.”

“Do you think someone killed her, like executed her? And lied?”

“I think she is dead. Giving birth or with tuberculosis or with a gun to her head, doesn’t matter. They wanted her dead; she died. They said there were prisoners dying with tuberculosis then. Maybe true, maybe not. Maybe it is true they have tuberculosis, maybe it is also true that the prison lets it spread and gives no medicine. Either way, someone wanted them dead, and they are dead.”

“What did you do?”

“I brought the baby home.” She stares at Vaclav, challenging him to ask for more.

“So her dad didn’t want her?”

“The man who was tried with Yelena, who knows, maybe the man it wasn’t even her father. Anyway, whoever her father is, either this man or some other drug dealer pimp whatever. Not someone to give a baby to, right?”

“Right.”

“Forget the father,” she says. “He is dirt or nothing. Dead. A criminal. A nothing. Forget.”

“How did you get here?” asks Vaclav, promising nothing in the way of forgetting Lena’s father.

“My mother didn’t look at the baby or touch her or hold her, nothing. I could tell she wants only to forget Yelena. This baby, it was too much for her, this she did not want. I was buying formula and trying to take care of this baby and go to my job, and having girlfriends come over to watch the baby, my mother, she would do nothing.

“One day she gives me a passport with Yelena’s name on it, and fake papers for the baby, and airplane tickets to New York John F. Kennedy International Airport. She tells me to pack and leave in the morning. She didn’t pay for these tickets, there were men in the family already in Brooklyn, men who are involved, importing, exporting, whatever, drugs and girls and selling stolen things. Some of these people, we are related to them. So my mother gets in touch, and she says she has a girl and a baby to send to America, and we will be useful, and she puts us on a plane to America, and that is it.”

“Why did the passport have Yelena’s name?”

“This I think our mother was doing for her before she went to prison and died. Arranging for her to go to United States.”

“She was trying to save her?” Vaclav asks, lost.

“She was tying to sell her,” the Aunt says, “like she sold me.”

“Sold you?”

“She sent me here to work for these men, and the lie is that you will work off the money that they have spent to get you here, the money spent on fake passport, on airplane flight, and they put you up in apartment and pay for green card, and do all sorts of other lying in your name so that you are trapped to them and you cannot go to police and escape. They make credit cards in your name, and a loan on a car in your name, because your credit is clean, and you cannot afford these things without them, and they are saying that you owe them money already for these things, and it is adding up every day. Some girls, they think they will work it off, and they count their dollars and every day they are thinking about how this work is getting them to freedom, but eventually they all give in to it being permanent slave to these men, and instead of dreaming to get out they start thinking this is the way their life will be always, and they start dating one of these men, and they take the drugs and let these men make their life into disaster.”