Once a month, when her grays would start coming through, Vera coloured her own hair using a cheap crimson dye from the corner store. She never stepped outside of the house without wearing matching lipstick, tapping it with her index finger to apply it on her cheeks as well. She wore this red trilogy both as a statement and a warning. She was ready for church.
Sunday was her only day off, by choice. The days went by faster when she worked.
After Father Piotr's Sunday sermon, she always lit three candles, walked home through Central Park, then ate borscht with a glass of vodka in front of the game show What's my line? She learned English while watching the show when she first arrived in New York in the fifties.
Despite being the daughter of an Estonian peasant in the USSR, Vera's future was once promising. That was until her fifth year of medical school, when she got pregnant by her professor. An untimely blessing. He, who had been so enamoured and had once pursued her passionately, refused to marry her and sent her back to her village.
She could not bear the future that awaited her there and started spending time with a local group of dissidents-farmers who were resisting having to give up their land. All she ever did was drink with them; nevertheless, her cousin, who worked for the government, showed up short of breath at her door one day and told her she had but minutes to leave if she wanted to breathe another day. Her mother locked eyes with her, holding on tight to her grandson. Vera's body started moving towards them, but she stopped herself. If she touched and smelled her child, she'd crumble. She swiftly made a bag and left.
After months of walking through forests, lying hungry at the bottom of damp fishing boats, and almost meeting her fate more times than she could count, she made it to New York. There was no sense of relief when she arrived. Sundays, weeks, and years went by.
Thirty-two years later, on July 20,1968, walking back to her East Village apartment, she noticed a tall pale man who had clearly been sitting on the stoop for a while. He wobbled from standing upright too suddenly and walked towards her.
"Vera Ivanova?" He asked hastily.
"Yes." She responded hesitantly. He looked Slavic. Familiar.
"Mother," he said in Estonian. A heavy wave of astonishment crashed on Vera. She could not think. She had never seen a picture of her son, but she had no doubt it was him.
"Vassili?"
"Yes."
They remained silent for a couple of minutes, unable to speak. A million times she had played a potential reunion in her mind, each time going differently.
They walked up to her apartment in silence. She sat him on a stool in her kitchen with a glass of pomegranate juice and started making stuffed cabbage. She hadn't made it in decades; it's not the kind of food you cook just for yourself. She didn't need a recipe; she remembered every step, exactly how her Baba used to make it. She could still see her every movement, her beautiful hands wrinkled with wisdom and repetition. The smell of onions and meat browning coloured her dull apartment into a cheerful home.
She served the cabbage, some broth, and a dollop of sour cream in soup bowls and set them on the coffee table as they sat side by side on her stiff burnt orange couch. Out of habit, she turned on the TV.
That's right, some American astronauts were supposed to try and walk on the moon again today. The first four missions had failed. She wished it had been an Estonian man who got to walk it first. But she didn't want the government to take credit for it. What an incredible feat regardless! At that moment, right there and then, sitting side by side, Vera and Vassili watched Apollo 11 land on the moon, and two men walk, or rather, float on it for the first time. The anchor explained that the patch of moon they had landed on was called Sea of Tranquillity. This word, tranquillity. She couldn't remember having felt that way in decades.
Fragments of quietly blissful summer afternoons in the fields with her Baba resurfaced, picking and eating fruit, singing folk songs, listening to her stories of goddesses and mythical animals from ancient times.
Time shrunk back into Vera's East Village living room. Her son was staring at her. Vera did not know what it would feel like to be on the moon, but she did not wish to be anywhere else tonight.
They ate in silence, taking enthusiastic bites of the familiar and comforting food that tasted of home, which they were eating together for the first time. She hadn't looked at his face too long yet. She was afraid.
Finally, after swallowing her last bite of cabbage, she sipped the broth loudly, set down her plate, took a deep inhale, and looked over. He had her grandmother's deep brown almond-shaped eyes and his father's aquiline nose. Of hers, he had inherited the little ears, dirty blonde hair, and high cheeks.
As she was studying every inch of his face and body, she felt her heart rapidly expanding, bursting through her chest. A single, shiny, gigantic tear rolled down her cheek. She had been holding her breath for thirty-two years.
Feeling her gaze, he stared back and smiled awkwardly. He had sadness in his eyes. She had so many questions. Right now, she would enjoy being close to him, looking at him. She would not blink, out of fear that he'd disappear, that it would all turn out to be a figment of her imagination.
"I'll make the coffee," he said as he got up, picked up both of their plates, and headed toward the kitchen.
Courtesy: Flash Fiction Magazine
