A Still Pond Means Certain Suffocation . . . . . . .Phylinda Moore

A Kazak too. Two things that the Soviets hated. My father was part of what killed her son and my mother never forgave him for it.

My mother had no other family. They had been killed in the collectivization movement in Kazakhstan. She told me her people did not believe in owning the land. They fought very hard against the Soviets who wanted to own everything. My mother survived because she had a talent. She met my father when she trained as a dancer in Moscow. She could not dance at the Bolshoi because she was short and dark. She became a teacher. She told me not to drink too much red wine if I wanted my skin to be called white. I never do. My skin is lighter than hers.

I introduced the American girl to my mother. My mother couldn ’t speak English very well. My mother said that I should have the American girl spend the night because it was too late to take the metro back. There were too many beggars sleeping in the tunnels. The drug dealers and the prostitutes would be out. It was too dangerous. “When it was olden days. When it was before. There no beggars. We all starving. Communism treat us all the same. Treat us all terrible. ”

The American girl slept on the couch that night. Right where Henry Kissinger had sat underneath the dangling lights. She liked being so close to the place where Henry Kissinger had hit his head. My mother told her the story was true about Kissinger hitting his head. She laughed. She liked that I did not lie to her.

A Still Pond Means Certain Suffocation

By Phylinda Moore

last frigid winter the koi pond was a sacrifice each fish a gilded canvas of mottled orange, flecked gold, and white blotches slipping under an icy crust then slower until the snow brushed from the thick, ice plate unveiled their decorative performance suspended like ornament glass.

Phylinda has enjoyed living in Philadelphia for ten years. Visit her website phylindamoore.com for links to more poems.

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Bus Stories by Michael B. Schwartz © 2013

It wasn ’t long before my mother made her a place to sleep in the study. I snuck in and slept with her. We had sex. My mother knew. She wanted me to marry the American too. She knew it would mean a better chance for me. She called her Liza. Her name was Elizabeth. Liza liked my mother too. Her father was dead and her mother drank too much. She told me that she identified with the Russian people. I was not quite sure what she meant.

I took her shopping for old books by Marx. There were many books by Marx because no one wanted to buy them anymore. Marx was history. I took her to the place where the Bolsheviks had been imprisoned. She didn ’t like Lenin and Stalin. She said that they used Marxist ideals to bad ends. She didn ’t understand that Lenin and Stalin said they were Marxists too. They killed people in the name of freedom. Russia was fighting for a different kind of freedom now. I was fighting too. For her.

Every weekend we shopped for old Soviet posters. No one wanted them, either. We went to the bazaars where people who were not being paid by the government anymore would sell their possessions. One time there were some stolen relics from the churches that she wanted to buy. I told her they might have come from Chernobyl and that we had to be careful because they might be radioactive. Some people had raided the churches in Chernobyl for Russian icons to sell. They were beautiful. People died because of them. I bought her painted Russian eggs instead and matyroshka dolls too. I told her that wood cannot be radioactive.

I took her on train rides all over Russia. We visited the principalities. She saw that Russia once had been great. Russia could be great again. Russia and I had a future.

She had been in Moscow for nearly two and a half months when I asked her to marry me. She would be leaving in a month. I took her to McDonald’ s because she wanted to see if the restaurant was the same as in the States. The food was the same. There were fries and milkshakes too. People from the country would save their money for months to come and eat there. She said that the restaurant was exactly the same except that people stood on the toilets to piss because they didn ’t know enough to sit on the seat. They were used to outhouses. There was never any toilet paper because people would steal it.

She ordered a fish sandwich. She said she was a vegetarian. There were no vegetarians in Russia.

I ordered a burger and fries. I asked her,

“Would you stay here with me? Marry me?”

She said she wasn ’t sure about staying in Moscow. I knew she wasn ’t sure about me. My ice cream business hadn ’t taken off. I was too late for the capitalist revolution. The Russian Mafia was making all the money. My mother told me to stay away from them. She had already lost one son. She could not lose another. I

sometimes drove a car for money but I did not know how to survive in the new economy. My father was no longer part of the government. The new democrats let him keep his apartment because he had earned it. I did not know what to do to keep it.

“I don ’t want to live here. ” She had been attacked on the streets by the gypsies. When she jogged in the park, my mother made me guard her with a gun.

I asked her, “Do you love me?”

She answered, “I’ m not sure what love is when I’ m living here. You keep me safe. You take me places I’ ve never been. But that’ s not love. ” She was right. That was what my mother and father had.

She took my hand. “What would it be like if we were to marry? Where would we live? I don ’t know if I want to have children here. ”

I pointed to the apartment around us. “We ’d live here. With my mother. With my father. It’ s one of the biggest apartments near Red Square. We ’ll raise our children here. My mother will help. I’ll earn a living somehow. ”

She looked sad. “But what are you going to do? If you can ’t sell ice cream? What kind of job will you have? What kind of job would I have?”

American girls always want a job. They called it equality in America. Russian women have to work too because of communism. My mother said they did all the work at home and outside the home because Russian men are lazy. She said that wasn ’t equality but all the intelligentsia and hard workers had been killed by Stalin.

I didn ’t have any answers for her. I didn ’t know what kind of job I would have. What kind of future I would have. I only knew I needed her. “Stay. Please. ”

She didn ’t answer. She gave me a blow job instead. I knew then we wouldn ’t ever marry.

She packed up to leave to go back to America. She gave my mother the left over toilet paper she had in her bag. We were no longer receiving toilet paper from the special government store.

Liza insisted on taking all her Marxist books and Soviet posters even though I promised I’d send them to her. I took her to the airport. She wore the Army coat that my friend Peter gave to her. The guards made her give it back.

I never saw her again. The democratic revolution never happened in Russia either.

H.L.S. Nelson holds a PhD and J.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and specializes in the field of science, technology, and society. She has been a recipient of a National Science Foundation grant and has published a book, America Identified: Biometric Technology and Society (MIT, 2011). She is currently an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and a Fellow at the Philosophy of Science Center. She serves as an appointee to the Department of Homeland Security ’ s Policy Advisory group on Data Integrity and Privacy (DPIAC). She ’d give up everything else to be a novelist and has several novels in the works to make that happen.

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