Stories
The Kyiv Symphony
Published in ZYZZYVA, Winter 2022
On his way home from the grocery store, hands weighted with buckwheat and potatoes, stooping, he shuffles up six flights of steps because the elevator in his building has been broken for a month, since the start of the war. Two men in loose black suits, under which, he thinks, they can easily hide guns or even grenades, smoke next to his flat. They stand back-to-back, one facing the stairs, the other his door. The latter, with a cigarette clamped between his lips, twists the doorknob, then rings the bell. The men don’t seem nervous or even curious. Their somewhat numb, somewhat flaccid expressions make him think that perhaps their visit is intended for another citizen and they came to his flat by mistake.
Or not.
Once in his living room, offering him a cigarette that he politely refuses, they ask him to write a symphony, a pompous, victorious march to welcome Russian soldiers back home from the war. In their hands—yellowed sheets of music, a requiem to his orphaned youth.
They discuss his payment, a disquieting sum of rubles he can use to remodel his flat or build a country house, plant an orchard. He loves apples, doesn’t he? Things will be arranged for him: foods, drinks, medicine, trips to the Black Sea, a doctor, a driver.
“Excuse me, what year is this?” he asks, his eyes drawing in the men’s smiles dry and crooked like old branches.
The Visitor
Published in Fish Anthology, 2022
It began with fish. One sulky, rainy afternoon, a man walked into my store and asked if he could order fifty live salmon. Dressed in leather, he was square-jawed and dark-skinned, with a creased face, gray braided hair, and huge earlobes that reminded me of my grandmother’s. She used to tug at her ears when she told stories about WWII and the concentration camp, where she’d been discovered on a pile of rotting corpses by an American soldier. When she died, her ears were large and floppy, like burdock leaves.
As an immigrant living in Virginia for nearly twenty years, I was used to seeing all kinds of odd customers in my store. They were mostly people like me, expatriates from the former Soviet Republics or other faraway countries, so I tried to place my visitor. Could he be Georgian, Moldovan, or even Armenian? Greek, Turkish, or Middle-Eastern?
I was just about to ask, but he read my mind.
“Native,” the man said in a deep flowing voice that made me think of rivers. “From Spokane.”
The Island of Sodor
Published in Joyland, August 2021
Korovin roused to a stench of cat piss pervading the bedroom. The cat was incorrigible. After a multitude of tests and checkups, which had cost a fortune, the vet assured Korovin of the animal’s perfect health. Korovin was the only soul living with the cat for the past three years after Nancy took off with their four-year-old son and all his belongings, except for an expensive railroad village Korovin had purchased for Daniel’s birthday but never assembled. So, unless the cat remonstrated against its being left behind and sharing the house with Korovin, there could be no other logical reason for it to start pissing every-damn-where.
The cat was a gluttonous beast, long and scrawny, with smooth black seal-like hide. It had sparse whiskers and sharp yellow eyes that followed Korovin in and out of the room. The animal’s body had no visible deformities, except for the hind legs that seemed too thin and wobbly, the paws turned out. The cat stayed perpetually famished, and when it demanded food, it mewed in the most miserable, pleading manner, which irritated Korovin to the roots of his hair, but also made him aware of his own loneliness in the world.
Poplars
Published in Zoetrope: All-Story, Summer 2021
It happened a very long time ago, in another century, another country. Cell phones hadn’t been invented yet or color TVs, and to own a city apartment was the same as to own a plane or a ship. We lived in the heart of Moscow back then, in a communal flat, with high ceilings and decorative wooden moldings that resembled garlands of laurel leaves. Before the revolution, the entire three-story structure had belonged to a famous doctor, who, fearing the imminent socialist slaughter, had escaped to Europe. The building was then divided into flats, flats into rooms, rooms into sleeping nooks housing total strangers, who were forced to cohabitate, and who knew all the secrets breeding in the darkness of their neighbors’ dens.
The original oak floors in our flat were burned for heat during the war, and five years later all but a small patch in the kitchen had been replaced with smooth, pale boards that resembled skin. Stepping on them made me think of naked bodies piled in ravines or gas chambers, and how two of those bodies had been my parents. When my grandmother learned the truth, she didn’t speak for a year. Her hair turned to ash overnight; her gait slowed, and her shoulders drooped, as though she were carrying two sacks of bones. But I wasn’t yet old enough to understand loss or grief, how it’s like a fire burning through everything it touches.
New Life
Published in Electric Literature, Spring 2021
Mrs. Jones was my twelfth-grade biology teacher, whose husband had left her for the ninth-grade English teacher after twenty-two years of marriage. It happened early in the fall, and Mrs. Jones often came to work tired and distressed, often plucking a tissue out of a box and pressing it to her eyes during class. Some students grinned or snickered, but most pretended not to notice as they studied the division of chromosomes and how much energy and labor it took to grow a life. Mrs. Jones didn’t have children, but she nodded and occasionally corrected us, drawing intricate beehive charts on the board. It was my senior year at F. W. High; I lacked friends and had just begun to get acquainted with the surroundings. I was new to the area, new to the country, new to the people.
Beloveds
Published in Indiana Review, Winter 2020
It’s Maslenitsa, or a blini week. The orphanage smells of butter and fruit preserves that volunteers brought in last Friday along with secondhand clothes, books, and old CDs. We stare out the windows at the other side of the street, where trees will soon swell with tender, green leaves. We dream about beautiful homes and perfect families—mothers, fathers, kids. Everyone is happy and cozy, snuggled in wool, lolling on couches or gathering for meals. Men read newspapers or paint walls; women bake pierogi or knit scarves, hats, sweaters. We dream our mothers still love us and that one day not too far into the future, they’ll be knock- ing on our doors with armloads of toys and candy. Most of us don’t remember what our mothers look like, but when we draw them, they appear tall and thin, dressed in white or pale-pink gowns, angels without wings.
Also, we aren’t exactly sure how we got here—from a dark closet to a car to this building crowded with other scared, silent children. It’s a mystery we must solve before we grow up and forget each other’s smell, as we did our mothers’. Was it the smell of strawberries or meat cutlets or lilacs? Or was it that of vodka, cigarettes, or herring? We don’t know. We don’t remem- ber. We don’t remember our family names or what our mothers called us, what songs they sang or bedtime stories they told. We don’t remember if we had beds before these hard metal ones with frayed cotton mattresses that reek of fish and other leftover food we hide underneath, squashed against the rusty springs of the bed frames.
Pain Management
Published in Press 53, Summer 2019
“This isn’t some dumb story, but life,” Maika said. “My life.”
In the kitchen, across the table, I gazed at my sister, who was thirty-four, two years younger than me. Her face had barely aged, still smooth, dotted with freckles. Her hair long, corn-yellow, heavy. In fact, I often noted how it was the only heavy thing about her. Maika was thin and willowy; she could fold in two and touch her nose to her knees. She had her first fuck at fourteen, her first love at fifteen, her first child at seventeen. She still didn’t have a job and wasn’t married, hopping back and forth between men like a bird between trees. Our parents pretty much raised Sonya, Maika’s firstborn, and would most likely raise her next one.
“Let’s just say you have the baby. How are you going to tell Sonya who the father is?” I asked.
“I’m not. All she needs to know is that it’s her brother or sister. The rest is unimportant.”
“To you.”
“To the rest of the world.”
Somebody Loves Me
Published in Slice, Fall 2018/Winter 2019
(Nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Katya cried each time after she had sex. It was that good. She cried also because she couldn’t imagine not sleeping with David, who couldn’t imagine leaving his three children. All boys, all precious replicas of their father—strong, handsome, pony eyed, and dimple chinned. It had been five years since Katya first brought David into her bed; it had been twice as long since she felt any interest toward any other man, beyond initial lust followed by the boredom of meals and promises, which always got broken. David made no promises and he could cook the best pasta puttanesca in all of Manhattan. Katya’s culinary skills didn’t extend past a soft-boiled egg or a baked potato, unlike her mother’s; she often told Katya that men might not always need sex, but they had to eat.
Katya stroked David’s chest, the soft nest of hairs. Her eyes were wet, and so was his skin, where Katya’s cheek touched it.
“Could you please leave your keys?” she asked.“Why?”
“My half brother is flying over from Armenia. He’ll stay with me. He’ll need the keys.”
“I didn’t know you had a half brother.”
“I didn’t either. Until just recently. He found me on Facebook.”
“What does he look like?”
“The opposite of me. Dark and hairy. Huge eyebrows.”
“Are you serious? You’re letting some dark hairy stranger stay here with you? What if he’s lying? What if he’s a rapist? A murderer?” David rose on his elbows, and Katya rose with him.
