"Where were you last night?" No reply...as though there could be any...Yet I kept pressing with the cold demanding grimace. "Where were you last night, I needed you so!"
But, truth to be told, I was secretly at the control point of this tangled riddle: everything that had happened lead to the resolution-no matter how painful, it was still a resolution. Over. Period. I am free! Finally and for good! But furious desperation of last night's events thickened around my exhausted brain-oh, so hard to break out of that cocoon...Oh, yes, I still pretended that I wanted to know, so demanded again and again: "Where, where were you??"
It must have continued for quite some time-I'd circled the room in the unison with Beethoven's "Moon Light Sonata" which sounded inside my skull until the flickering of a wall mirror broke the vicious cycle and intoxicating piano accords dissolved into the normal day time sounds leaking thru the half-open window. I was astonished to see THAT… I am not sure it was possible to call that a face at all. Did I even know this person? Colorless lips, cold green eyes on the backdrop of a total chaos that used to be my living room. Scattered clothes on my favorite lambskin rug. Was it something that mirror really reflected or just my imagination again? Fresh scar on the shoulder. Myriad of cold shards cascaded thru my veins-and nestled somewhere close to the middle. Recollections of last night begin their cascading dance over me.
Carefully I remove "Queen Isabella" sword from the leopard printed rag on the wall. Yes, the golden handle contrasts so nicely with the bluish coldness of a chain mail dress I am wearing. Both items belong to my small collections of armor and knives. It is my secret passion. My true love. I turn to the mirror. I am afraid to look, because I always feel watched when the mirror reflects me. But the temptation is greater than fear this time. Fireball is born somewhere in the upper chest and it explodes with a thousand of spider-net threads throughout my body as I lift my eyes to look at the reflection of a warrior princess. I lift the sword slowly, holding its arabesque handle with my both palms. Supple knots of biceps probe my matte skin for sturdiness. My body becomes firm. After several passes thru the buttery air the blade approaches my trembling shoulder. It appears that "Queen Isabella" has now a life of her own. Her handle-face smiles and then she extends her tongue of a blade and licks my shoulder playfully. There's no pain, at least not immediately. My shoulder smiles in turn and lets out thin and shiny streak of red. I am so aroused by fascination of this criminal act that do not notice Her standing behind me. Eventually I return to the ground. As an answer to those cold reprimanding eyes I make my way to the bathroom. She follows. I apply band-aid on my shoulder and only after that catch the glimpse of her eyes watching me scornfully. I shut the door of the medicine cabinet with such a fury that the mirror shutters. Then she leaves me alone for a while.
I walk into the living room and realize that the phone is ringing. I am afraid to speak on the phone. Not really afraid as in "scared". Not at all. I just believe that people are cutting their senses short by trying to communicate over the phone. Phone conversations should be restricted only for business discussions and setting the appointments. Especially I dread family discussions over the phone. It's always partially a lie.
When you tell someone "I love you" over the phone it always seems false. Phone conversations kill human feelings over the time. So I always curl my body into a tight spring when picking up the phone. And I do just that this time as well. "Hello?" I am asking carefully and the phone speaker replies with my mother's voice: "Vera? Do you remember what day it is?" I don't remember, so hesitate for a moment trying to think of something to say. My mother was never the patient type though.
"Are you planning to come over tonight?" insists the voice. "Everybody will be here. All the family. It's your brother's birthday!"
"Oh, but of course! I have a present for him already!" This shameless lie warms up the tips of my ears." I'll be there."

I really hate stiff faces of soon-to-be party animals, so I always arrive at least an hour after the party had started. This way I avoid lengthy greetings and excursions into one or another branch of my family's history. But not this time. I got to my parents' apartment at least half an hour before any other guests did. After the small digital camera I'd bought on my way traveled to my brother's hands, I sighed with a relief and tried to nestle in the farthest corner of the balcony. There, I started spying on the neighborhood cats thru the thick foliage of grape vines, which embraced this old 5-story building from foundation to the roof. My seclusion was ended rather violently with my aunt loudly inquiring where I was. I felt obliged to greet her more out of compassion than the "family duty". Ten years ago she was picking mulberries from her girlfriends tree (everyone could have some, as long as they picked the berry themselves) and she fell down the ladder and broke her right leg. There were long hospital stays and several surgeries which left her bone reinforced with a steel pole and her movements upon the ground - duck like.
"How are you, aunt Olya?" I asked aiming my undivided attention at her still beautiful blue eyes.
"Oh, all is well…as usual," She smiled faintly.
"Must've been really hot on a bus?"
"It's August. It's always like that in August…"
"I see you have stopped using your cane?" Tried I for a cheerful note.
" It doesn't really matter whether I am using it or not…so I have stopped doing it. I am not 50 years old yet!" Her eyes flickered in the direction of my mother and I caught the same familiar smile slipping away. Aunt Olya was 2 years younger than my mother but she looked older and she knew it.
"Our time is very old…so it is not of interest to young people."
"Oh, c'mon now, I am almost thirty," I wailed rolling my eyes to the ceiling. My tongue was itching to ask her how her life really was. She must have sensed it.
"Have you bought any of that nice halibut they have on the market?" Her eyes turned bleak gray now. The moment was lost. For the thousands time I started wondering if I'll ever get to talk to her for real.
"Ah, yes," heard I my own suddenly alienated voice. "They sell such monsters there; we've just got one yesterday-must be 10 kilos at least!"
At times I really despise myself.
Lengthy and absurd conversation about the prices on fresh summer fish followed. Finally, after my grandmother walked in, supported by my father's hand and pale kisses were exchanged, my mother asked everybody to the table. It was the way every event was celebrated in my family- at least dozen different salads and hot dishes were being consumed. Conversation was getting louder and faster proportionately to decrease of the amount of vodka on the table. And just when I thought that my salvation was close (my brother was getting ready to cut the birthday cake), my mother announced: "You, Vera have to be grateful to your brother! After all, you owe him your life!"
I paid little attention to this pompous tirade; it was just another "tradition of the family". Or so I thought. My mother was in no mood to be taken lightly this time.
"Of course, you do not remember anything", teased she. " But a family should always hold together! And you do not know how to appreciate your brother! Oh, no! You are so full of yourself, being fancy designer and all! But if not for Oleg, you wouldn't even be here today reprimanding him for not being able to get a decent job!"
OK, it was something new, so I pretended faint interest.
"Yes, you've always disliked him, I know!" Continued her rampage my mother, "Always jealous because he was a baby! You had been a baby for 7 years before he was born.
He was only 4 months old when he saved you! Yes, his crying woke me up that night and I just felt that something is not right... I made your father to get up and go check on you...both…"
She meant my twin sister and me.
"…Why did you want to sleep over, tell me?" -continued my mother. "You never did it before.... why that day????"
An accident. Yes, I remembered. Or at least I thought I did. I was only one month shy of my 8th birthday then. So was my sister.
"I always allowed you to play with Valentina whenever you wanted to! Your cousin always was more important to you than your own brother! I know what I am talking about!" Snapped my mother at my grandma who tried to pull her sleeve.
Valentina was only 6 then. We cried our eyes out that evening for our mother to allow us to go and sleep over at Valentina's house. It was neighboring ours. Almost touching. What could possibly go wrong? But it did. After we've played all we could and were tucked in beds, Valentina's father, Uncle Vasya, went out for a "refreshment", meaning he intended to get completely drunk, which he did dutifully everyday. Valentina's mother, aunt Olya, was away for the session in her college. After he'd returned, uncle Vasya decided to close the oxygen flow to the fire in the small pellet-stove, for it was warm enough inside the house. Apparently, he miscalculated his move for he closed the chimney. Thus, the noxious carbon monoxide started its work.
I woke up briefly when someone was carrying me out of the house-I remember black November sky with the tiny dots of stars- for the first time I felt the vast distance between me and those stars. Then everything disappeared. Next thing I remember some woman inserting a needle into my right arm. The needle was red for some reason. The entire world around seemed somehow saturated and the air was thick. The next memory-I lay on a hospital bed, seeing the seashore out the window. Somewhere between the insertion of the needle and the seashore I have met Her for the first time. I was falling into emptiness. All my entrails seemed to congregate near my tongue. I was not afraid of the very process of falling, but of being alone throughout it. It seemed that my blood got frozen. And then there were those bright green eyes. She was smiling at me. Not because she wanted to appear friendly. Not because she wanted something from me. Not because she had liked me. Not because she had disliked me. She was simply smiling because she had found me! She became my inseparable companion. Sometimes I would not see Her for long periods of time, but whenever I was sick and I'd start my fall into the emptiness-there was Her to keep me company.
Before I'd met her, my only friend and companion was my twin sister, Cristina. Quite a wild couple, we were. Terrorized our mother with hooligan pranks like climbing the roof of our grandma's house at the age of four and cutting linens to make parachutes or go "treasure hunting" during the night or cross-bow hunting on the neighbor's goat.
When we were about 5 years of age, we adopted the habit of practicing "slave-owner" game. If one of us did something potentially punishable and managed to conceal the deed from our parents and the other one discovered it, then the guilty party had to become temporary "slave" in order for her sister not to tell on her. It had started with me laughing so hard after a dress-up game we played that I peed on the carpet we were rolling on. I had cleaned it up the best way I could and sprinkled some of our father's harsh cologne over the spot, then washed the cologne off because it smelled too strongly. My sister observed the whole incident calmly, her green eyes pretended to study the book of fairy tales. After I was finished with the task of concealment, she casually said: "Now you have to do me favors, otherwise I'm telling mom!" And so I was fetching her drinks and giving micro-massages to her hand, which she liked so much. It lasted for the next three days or so. I remember getting angry at times and ask:" How long will it last? I can't serve you forever", and she'd reply with a sly smile:" You can stop right now...but I think I need to tell our mom something!" I remember hating her then. But I've also discovered that I liked to be a victim. A victim can't be at fault. A victim is fragile and deserves consolation from others. Yes. I decided to be a victim whenever possible.

Inseparable companions, we were. First differences revealed themselves by the time we'd started our first school year. Mannerisms sneaked upon Cristina's attitude. She knew how to smile politely and despitefully at the same time. Her dress was always perfectly ironed and its cuffs divinely white throughout the week when everybody else's in the class started to turn gray by Wednesday. She never joined in on the fun of hanging on the monkey bars or jumping over the row of old car tires that nestled by the maple trees on our schoolyard. I wanted to be just like her. Up until one incident.
Screaming gang of our classmates was chasing each other thru the bushes. They must've stepped on a mouse nest, because suddenly a small rodent appeared in front of Cristina. It was totally disoriented and injured. Oily beads of small eyes stared painfully right at my sister. Her green eyes trembled for a moment before she came to a decision. Slowly she lifted her foot dressed in a white stoking and a black middle heeled shoe and accurately put it right on top of baby mouse's' head. When she lifted her foot, poor critter was staring at the sky in amazement, its oily eyes unblinking. Where a second ago was nose there been bright pink mashed substance...
Cristina looked upon her victim coldly, smiled and trotted off to the classroom, because the bell had rung for the third and final time. I stayed. All I could do was to stare into those beads of the eyes.
I imagined myself in a place of a mouse, hurt and forgotten by everyone. Yes, I didn't want to have it any other way. Maybe that's when I first realized what power carries the blood in itself. It is the energy of suffering. The energy of life! I often dream of it. Just imagine this salty tangy substance filling my head, teasing the taste buds in my mouth.

I think that my fantasies of the blood were the first time I lied to my sister. I lied to her by not telling her anything about my obsession. Up until then we shared every little secret, at least I did. Not finding enough courage to tell her my fantasies made me ashamed of myself - I didn't want to be dishonest. Yet I forced myself to be. I just imagined her smiling coldly and saying I'd never do it or she's telling mom. I kept to myself this time and many other times thereon.

I'm driving down very familiar road. I left soon after the cake was cut but not soon enough to escape a series of my mother's accusations about not being a good daughter but an overly proud and egoistic being. It was nothing new, I had heard it from my mother many times before and always remained silent. But not this time. Something vicious sprung inside my chest. "I hate you!" Heard I myself cry.
"I wish Cristina had survived instead of you!" Cascading down every fold of my brain are my mother's last words. At least the last for me to hear before I slammed the door closed into her face.
Since I was a teenager I fantasized about the suicide via cutting my veins open. By doing so, I thought, I'd get to see and taste blood as it will make the water in a bathtub smell like the hot iron. And my mom would come and see my lifeless body floating in the scarlet colored water and she'd regret her indifference towards me, and she'll forget me for outliving my twin sister and she'll love me again! But I won't be there to answer her feelings.
I notice an arrow on speedometer vibrating close to 100mph. Steady now. Steady. "You know your mother didn't mean it," I tell myself, "she is always gets that way if she had something to drink."
"Well, lately, yes; but what about when she was younger?" I have no answer.
Back then she rarely drank any alcohol. She was its fiercest enemy. My father was an alcoholic back then. I remember those nights when he was getting home late, his eyes hazy. My mother would watch him enter our apartment silently, standing stiff in the doorway of her bedroom like a dragon waiting to attack. As soon as the entrance door was shut closed, she'll let out her claws. I swear I saw her breath real fire!
These incidents had become a part of our family life. I took them for granted. Even so, it was frightening when one evening my parents took the escalation to the next level.
After yet one more exchange of abusive verbs my father yelled something different from all he'd ever said to my mother before. I was only 7, so the meaning of his words were somewhat unclear, but the tone in which they were said lifted me out of my bed and led me to the living room. The door was half open, so I peeked in. In a second, my sister was doing the same. My father was holding a knife in his hand. "I'll kill you!" Those words again. Now I understood. I sprang in front of my mother. My own face felt like a leather mask over pulsating nerves.
"Don't touch my mom!"
"Go ahead, make orphans out of your own children!" Shrieked my mother's voice behind me.
Just then I saw my father's fingers release the knife. It dropped to the floor with a muffled thud. I remember thinking that my father's eyes looked just like those of my grandfather when he lay in a coffin. I wanted to run to him and put my hands around his neck and tell him how much I loved him.
"Vera, go to bed" heard I my mother's voice. So I did. Cristina was still standing in the doorway. We looked at each other silently and moved to our joint bed. When the blanket was snagged around us, Cristina whispered: "I really hate our father! I wish some car would run him over one day!"
I wanted to tell her that our father wasn't bad at all, just very unhappy, and that our mother is responsible for that unhappiness. But as soon as I caught the glimpse of her cold eyes in the dark, I bit my tongue down. We had never talked about that incident. Not that night, not ever.
My father didn't stop drinking, though he slowed down somewhat. Drunken fights continued, but they were mellower now. Only two years ago after loosing his job as a supervisor on an oil refinement plant my father finally decided he needed medical help and he got it. He doesn't drink anymore and got his job back. But my mom seems to enjoy alcohol a little too much lately.

"What happened here?" Sam is focusing his eyes of black marble on the fresh scar on my shoulder.
"Oh, that…well, it just happened, an accident."
"Really?" He doesn't believe me of course. "I am not going to sharpen kitchen knives for you, my dear, anymore. Least the baby will hurt herself!" Proclaims he, outstretching his muscular hand in a very comical way.
I don't feel very playful. "I did it on purpose."
"Which purpose?"
"Just to feel that I am still alive."
"Silly, that is just silly. All you needed to do to feel alive was to come here." His smile dissolves into a kiss. A very familiar move. Terse and demanding. I sink my fingers into his short curly hair.
2 hours later we lay in bed, my back turned towards the warmth of his body.
"Tell me about your first time?" I ask casually. He is eager to share this secret just as he did so many others over a period of three months that we've known each other.
"She was a maid in our house, an Egyptian."
"Was she pretty?" I ask, but what I really mean is "Was she prettier than me?"
"She was all right, full bodied, about 30 years of age."
"And you? How old were you?" Thrust I an inevitable in this case question. Without hesitation he says "Fourteen." Then he tells he caught her masturbating once and asked if she needed help. At first she pretended not to understand what he was asking of her, but he made it quite clear really fast. Their affair lasted for 2 years, until she went back to her family and her husband, whom she was supporting out of her salary all this time.
When Sam was finished with the story, we both fell silent for a few minutes. "Do you think she was genuinely attracted to you?"
"I never thought of it. I think she might have been."
"Or she was afraid to lose her job if she refused to be your lover?" I insist now.
"What is gotten into you today?" Mumbles Sam as he drifts towards sleep.
I lay very still. My breathing is steady. Steady. Steady. "Sam, are you sleeping?" "Sam?"
Then I carefully get up, grab my clothes. It is a difficult task, they are scattered everywhere. I make my way to the door, walking into a wall several times: "Damn it, why is it always so dark in this place?"
Once in a living room, I dress as quick as I can, listening for the noises in the bedroom. There aren't any. I don't bother to close the door behind me.
Good-bye, Sam. I will never see you again. You are already in the past. Just like Alex and Mike and Jean-Pierre and Tom and Gosh and Vlad and Sergey and the others whose names I cannot even remember. No relationship I've ever been to might be named "settled". I am always on my tiptoes ready to leave. You should have been more careful when answering my question about an affair with that Egyptian maid. It only takes one careless remark to ruin everything we've had. You've demonstrated that you are no better than any other guy I've met. You do not care for women's feelings. Ability to forgive is not one of my virtues. Good-bye.
One-hour drive thru the night does nothing to calm me down. It gives me an opportunity to think the day over. And over. I see more light infuse the night air outside the car windshield than behind the windows of my soul. If someone were to look into my eyes right now, they would see two black holes. When did I become so detached? Could it be I am an anomaly of some sort? Born or educated deviation from the norm? I am fighting a surging desire to point the headlights towards the rocky cliff edge and step on a gas pedal. Steady now. Steady.
As soon as I walk into my apartment I look into the mirror in the living room hoping to see Her. Only emptiness. I run to the bedrooms' mirrored closet-no one is waiting for me there as well. I just don't want to be alone. But I am. Then I start to throw things around. She still doesn't show up. Until the morning comes.
Why is it so hard to breathe? Questions again. When will I receive any answers? And from whom? The person in the mirror smirks at me. Surely she knows. But she keeps smiling. I cannot take anymore of that smile. She wants me to cry. Of course she does. I hate her so. I love her even more. But she doesn't love me. Just like everybody else. Because if she did, she'd be here last night. I was alone. I was not going to forgive her. Not this time. Never. I inhaled full lungs getting ready to yell. Just scream. Maybe without any words. Most likely so. Because I could. I was still alive!

May 15, 2003

Tatiana Malinko©2003