Honey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Phylinda Moore

dollars. I only had rubles. But I had an American girl. He let us sit at a table in the front window. I ordered champagne. It was eleven o ’ clock in the morning.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked her, but I didn ’t really care. I wanted her to stay in Moscow.

“In Wisconsin. On a tobacco farm, ” she answered. I tried not to stare. Farmers are not the same as peasants. Peasants were the reason for the Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin said he wanted to make the peasants free and equal. My mother said that Lenin and Stalin killed more people than they ever made free. We never learned this sort of thing in school. My father told her to be quiet.

I asked why she was here. “I decided that I was going to get a graduate degree. I liked Soviet history. I wanted to come and see it. Study it. ” She leaned in. “What are you going to do? You know, now that there ’ s freedom and democracy?”

I was going to get a graduate degree until there was no Soviet Union anymore. “I’ m going to sell ice cream. ”

“Ice cream?” She was disappointed.

“Ice cream. I can buy a cart and sell from it and then when I get more money I can buy more carts and then I can hire people to sell for me. ” Money was to be made, but I wasn ’t sure how to do it. Everyone liked ice cream. I had heard of someone who had become a millionaire.

She asked, “Why do you want to sell ice cream? I thought you were getting your Ph.D. ”

She did not understand how revolutions destroy lives. “There ’ s no point in getting a Ph.D. now. The universities are falling apart. Little things like selling ice cream can turn into bigger things. It’ s like America in the 1920s. I just need a start. A way to make money. There isn ’t any money in getting a degree. Not now. I have to think about now. ”

I could tell she didn ’t understand. She didn ’t like capitalism. Capitalism was what the revolution promised. We talked about the weather. I didn ’t want her to be angry with me.

I took her to see a show at the Bolshoi. I bought tickets on the street. Russians buy the tickets cheap. Tourists buy the tickets for dollars. I don ’t go to the Bolshoi very often anymore because it’ s better to have dollars. My mother and father used to go every week end before Gorbachev came along. My father does not like Gorbachev. My mother thinks there might be hope.

We watched the opera and ate caviar and drank more champagne during the intermission. Exactly as the Soviets imagined. Everyone at the opera. Everyone drinking champagne and eating caviar. Equality among the masses. She liked the Bolshoi. She drank too much champagne. She wanted to go home. I wanted to take her to my apartment.

I hired a driver off the street. I told him to drive very slowly and to take the long way home. I kissed her in the back seat. She kissed me back. Then she gave me a blow job. The driver watched in the rear view mirror. He winked at me. I was glad that I wore the underwear that I had bought in the States. They were leopard print. We didn ’t have these sorts of things in the Soviet Union. I bought twenty pairs because I didn ’t know if I could ever go back to the United States. We weren ’t friends with the Eisenhower family anymore.

When we got out of the car I asked her,

“Why do American girls give blow jobs before they will have sex? Russian girls won ’t give blow jobs until after they ’ re married. ”

She shrugged. “American girls don ’t give blow jobs after we ’ re married. Only before. ”

American girls have strange logic, but they give good blow jobs.

I brought her home to meet my mother. She would not be able to meet my father. He never came out of his back room anymore except to eat the food that my mother prepared for him. He ate the food after she went to bed. She didn ’t know what he did in the back room. She didn ’t care. She still had to live with him because there was no place else for her to live. They went their own ways after my brother died. He killed himself by jumping out of the window in my mother and father ’ s flat. He was an artist.

Honey

By Phylinda Moore

we are from somewhere, even if it’ s an invented somewhere signs point to. as in my hair is the honey-colored dirt where I’ m from eyes, the same. skin, a sand river bed, snake scales, a branded hide. my mind is a sunset filter, a disheveled feather. nails, quartz flecks. eyelashes, spider-belly black. bones, a quarry graft. there is: more flat road, land and weather between river and dust, a skyline floats in the distance