Familial Illusions
Anastasia Zenkevich
Babushka’s residence is wedged into the affordable housing conglomerate that fills the towering brick walls of Brighton Beach. Off of the bustling Ocean Parkway stands a dilapidated construction of chipped white paint, rusting fire escapes, dripping AC units, and eroding bricks. Roman columns stand in front of the building holding up a small awning that serves as a refuge from the sun as grandparents gather to regale each other with the achievements of their grandchildren. Inside, at the end of the hallway with broken linoleum tiling, stands a regular apartment door with five different locks. The air inside smells like cement walls and chicken soup. The foyer is a thin corridor with two rooms on either side and the kitchen branching from the middle.
Hanging on her bedroom wall is a portrait of me, probably six years old, sporting some faded green cargo pants and kissing her on the cheek while her face crinkles with a bashful smile. The photo captures a time when I was unaware of her complexity and perceived her solely as my grandmother. Perhaps a bit aggressive with her commands and a little too insistent on developing my educational prowess, but someone I could always rely on for love and safety.
We spent our summers together in a cabin in the mountains, picking blueberries and mushrooms, cooking and playing dominoes, isolated in a sea of orthodox Jews who wouldn’t acknowledge us. The memories of this time have faded in my mind, reduced to a series of snippets and images I can put together. Her chasing me around the house as I try to fashion myself a new hairstyle with a pair of scissors. Her waiting patiently as I recite my multiplication tables. Our weekly walk to get my long-awaited frozen pizza. Her carefully hanging up strings of mushrooms to dry out. Her back as she stands stirring a variation of cabbage soup. Her strained smile as I jiggle her underarm while she plays Rummikub with her friends.
This image differs so much from the image my mom carries from her childhood. She tells me tales of an angry woman running through the house, screaming at the top of her lungs from the moment she comes from work till the moment she sleeps. A woman who plunged a fork into her daughter’s upper thigh during a dinner conversation. She would tell her daughter nobody will ever want to marry you and hide the letters of a possible proposal severing a connection forever. Someone who has a hearty distrust for the world and craves so deeply for her children to be better than the rest. Someone who never lets her daughter bring beauty into her life, whether it be pretty dresses, art classes, or anything in between. A woman so uncomfortable with her role as a mother, she refuses her family any comfort at all.
When Babushka recounts this time, she tells me how she had to leave her family behind to study in Siberia because those were the only universities that accepted Jews. She tells me of how she lived alone and spent her time studying and playing basketball. When she turned thirty it was no longer acceptable for her to be alone and she was forced into a union with my grandfather. She once told me, “I would’ve never married if I could.” Set up by her own siblings, a necessary betrayal she would never forget. Two people, never meant for a relationship united by societal pressures and familial connections joined together and abandoned, left to raise a family. A recipe for disaster if I’ve ever seen one.
This childhood aged my mom; it made her search for a life away from home at a young age. But it also stunted her, making her crave this childlike bliss and ignorance you can only find in the sheltered confines of happy youth. A combination of headstrong independence and insecurity, my mother found her way to my father, a silent man who craved the same escape. After a chance meeting at a campground, the two were whisked into a whirlwind romance. They were married a few years later, as a result of an accidental pregnancy. Babushka never had a knack for emotional intimacy, but she did know the importance of financial security. With my sister on the way, Babushka decided a life in America would bring our family the most success. Shortly after, they received their refugee visas to migrate to America and make a new home in Brooklyn.
The city seemed desolate. Despite the hustle and bustle, it lacked the kind of beauty that only develops from years of memories and familiarity. My father worked in construction, while my mother worked as a maid. My sister and my mother were inseparable, studying together, learning English together, laughing together, and essentially growing up together.
My sister’s first Halloween was also my mother’s first Halloween. A costume needed to be fastened, and my mom considered herself an artist. She dressed her in all green, painted her face yellow, and fastened a white scrunchie around her head, transforming my sister into a flower. So as the fifth graders paraded around as princesses and fairies, my sister wore her poverty on her yellow face.
Katya was exposed to harsher realities and younger parents. Their big Friday night delight was for their landlord to give them leftover chicken fat which they then fried and ate with bread. My Friday night delight was a dinner out eating sushi. The financial scarcity my sister grew up with disappeared and transformed into my two working parents that were never home. My sister became my idol. I adored her more than anything. It came to the point where my sister and I were enrolled in a private K-8 school so that I could sit next to her in her pre-algebra class, doing my kindergarten math problems.
When I was at the age of eight, my parents got divorced, and my sister cut ties with our mom. I had two different lives, one with my mother in her small apartment, and one with my sister and my father in my childhood home. I remember the rainy day my mom took me for pizza to let me know that she was leaving my father. That night we clung together on a twin mattress on the floor of her empty apartment, and I remember thinking that she needed me but also feeling like I was betraying my sister.
As time went on, my life began to split into two. I became more aware of this hatred festering between the two most important women in my life. My relationship with my mother grew as I began to see her as a person rather than an absent mother, while my relationship with my sister faltered as I began to see her as a growing teenager rather than an ever-present mother figure. I felt my sister’s resentment towards me in her words during our fights. She would tell me I was spoiled and self-centered, that I wasn’t grateful, and only thought about myself.
I would sit in my room and look at this big tree through my skylight. The branches would sway in the wind as squirrels and birds would run across from one perch to the other, and I would stare up, trying to find shapes and answers in the leaves, trying to figure out how I was selfish. My sister did things for me. She would plan my birthdays and take me shopping and bring me to coffee shops and treat me like an adult. I loved her for that, but in return she needed me to choose her, to follow her orders, to hate my mother as she did, and to defend her at all costs.
My mother also took me shopping. She wouldn’t plan my birthdays, but she would teach me about art and theater. She took me to incredible places and taught me about the wonders of beauty. And when the time came and I would choose my sister and my father over her, she would understand, and with saddened eyes, she would let me go without guilt or anger.
I loved and hated them separately, until one day they collided. It was May 30th, 2013, one of those happily sunny days where the air carried the promise of summer through the pollinated breeze. We ate at our usual sushi spot, my little heart thrilled by the excitement of a family united. I loved storytelling, despite being notoriously bad at it. I was nestled in between my mom and the window and across from my sister, watching the emotions flash across her face. There was an unnamable tension that had developed over the years that I was never able to label, but whose presence was eminently clear. I did that thing to my voice, where I emphasized the fact that I was a child and therefore they needed to plaster on some kindness into their voice and focus on their love for me rather than the problems they had with each other. I regaled them of my trip to six flags and the roller coasters I had been on to accentuate my fearless nature.
“Did you go on El Turoe?” my sister asked.
“Nooo,” I replied with a sigh.
“Ohhh so you were scared?” she jeered jokingly at me.
“No!! I totally would have but Katie was terrified of the rides so we-”
The tension was thicker than ever, and the emotion on my sister’s face was strong: betrayal, anger, grief. I recognized my serious misstep, as my mom had warned me not to mention the members of her new family. A forbidden topic, I later came to understand, was forbidden because it was an affair that broke up our original family. A block away and we were back at the apartment. A couple of exchanged words turned into physical exchanges. I remember watching in shock and awe, amazed that such a scene could unfurl in front of me. They were locked together in a dance glued to the wall rolling on the walls of the apartment as if they were magnets. It was like some complicated ballet accompanying a crescendo of anger, betrayal, and confrontation. I locked myself in the office.
Later that day, sitting in the pews of a church, listening to the calming harmony of a choir, I watched my mother get whisked away. When a short graying woman came and took me outside, I realized my sister had called the police. I had a restraining order against my mother and was not allowed to see her for a month. I felt guilty but was happy to have all of that time only with my sister and father.
Their relationship would ebb in and out of these discomforts. There would be long stretches of silence, severe outbursts, and teary forgiveness. They carried a lot of pain between them, and I was an unfortunate bystander who collected emotional debris with no knowledge of what stood at the center of their storm.
I remember watching my sister’s face as she received a phone call. I remember the plummeting feeling and an intense urge to sprint out of the room, away from the darkened look in her eyes. I remember the silence in my head as we drove to the hospital. An unlicensed van struck my grandmother as she was crossing the street. The van drove away. She was stripped of her clothes and her consciousness in the ambulance, but even in that state, they could not pry her money from her clenched in her fist.
I stood by the side of her hospital bed, as she tousled like a toddler who was having a horrible nightmare. I tried to hold her hand as she asked who it was. As I tried to explain to her, she claimed that I wasn’t her granddaughter. I laughed as if it were some kind of cruel joke, as my mom peeled me away.
It was a horrible time, having my grandmother in the hospital. Her brain was bleeding and she went into surgery multiple times. At the same time, my mother broke her leg and the ceiling in our house caved in forcing us to seek refuge in a hotel. But it was in all of this chaos that the three of us could come together. My sister and I would meet my mom at the hospital, and drink matzah ball soup at the cafeteria. We would talk about how the nurses found Babushka’s jokes funny and how her stubbornness was too strong for a silly van to kill her. And of course, we talked about Gregory, what would happen to him if Babushka died, and how he was likely the reason for her stubborn survival.
Gregory is Babushka’s son, my mother’s brother. I’ve met him periodically throughout my life. The stories that I’ve been told about him are divided into two categories: when he was normal and after he went crazy. He was diagnosed with some kind of paranoid disorder. Along with my grandparents, he refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong. He lost his job and moved in with my grandmother after Dedushka died. My mom always told me that he was considered the golden child, an intelligent son, the goal of every Jewish union. She always resented how he was always regarded as more worthy than her. He was once my grandmother’s pride and joy, but quickly became my grandmother’s greatest shame.
I can easily forget him in my daily life, but during my visits, the truth is imminent and all-encompassing. A gloomy cloud that hangs over every sentence, every discussion of the future, the women of my family bear the burden of “what will happen to Gregory”
“That’s your brother in there,” Babushka tells my mother.
“I know,” she responds.
With a great sigh and an exasperated look, she commands, “Well go talk to him”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell him what he is doing to me. Tell him to get a job. Talk some sense into him, that is YOUR brother”
My mother and I share a glance, and I shrug as she sulks off to talk to someone who very clearly does not want to be bothered. After this obligatory interaction we go and walk the boardwalk, linking arms, and discussing money, the future, and reminiscing on the past.
I hope that I will always remember us this way. Walking together heads leaning back as we roar with laughter. It is in these moments I feel indestructible. We’ve walked this way my whole life, along the Coney Island boardwalk, around the block of our house and the park near the new house, and now by various rivers in North Carolina or along the beaches in California. The locations change, the conversation topics change, even we change into unrecognizable versions still attached through our linked arms. We have all hurt each other in unspeakable ways and screamed various atrocities we can never take back. We have abandoned each other and found our way back.
Anastasia Zenkevich writes, “I am a confused Neuroscience and Cell Biology Major expected to graduate in the year 2022. I grew up in Glen Rock, New Jersey, and found my way to the Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences. I enjoy reading magical realism, wikipedia pages, and political commentaries.”
Anastasia wrote this piece in Caridad Svich’s Intro to Creative Writing class. Svich selected it for publication in WHR.