My 20+ Years In America. Tatiana Shymanova

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Vano was the most intelligent boy in Tonya’s class; maybe one day they would get together, but she had not yet experienced being in love. That would come later.

      So Tonya took Vano’s death very hard. She could not forgive herself that she never found the time for him, even when he was in the hospital with pneumonia and she knew that her mere presence would have meant so much to him. Their high school graduation marked three years since Tonya first knew of his love towards her. He now had a girlfriend and Tonya only hoped that he had been happy. Perhaps he had forgotten about Tonya a long time ago, maybe he was in love with his girlfriend, even happy for a short time before his death. The loss of him brought an awful pain of helplessness. She could not change anything: she could not turn back time and could not save him. The pain was intolerable. The school of music had been like a bad omen for Vano. Not only had he lost his first love to it, but he had also lost his very life right outside of its doors.

      Vano was buried on May first. The beginning of May is usually a warm period for Siberia, but on this day, the weather was particularly cold and windy, matching the mood of those who had come to pay their respects to the young life that was lost.

      After the burial, Tonya returned home and shifted listlessly for the remainder of the day until her mother called her for dinner. They were sharing a bit of small talk while eating when Frola stopped eating and unexpectedly said to her daughter, “I am going to die soon.”

      Tonya answered, “What are you talking about? Don’t talk about death. Where did you get this idea from? Out of the blue? Stop it.”

      Her mother replied, “I know it from my dream. Some men were chasing me, and I knew that they were dangerous people and I had to get away from them. I tried to run as fast as I could, and in front of me I saw a new, small white house. I ran inside, and there, right in front of me, was my mother. I was so surprised to see her, and I asked her what she was doing there. She answered, ‘This is my home.’ I heard footsteps coming up the stairs to the house, men rapidly approaching, so I quickly locked the door. Then I woke up. It was about five o’clock in the morning, but this dream was so clear. I know that I do not have much time left in this world.”

      Frola knew about her death the same way that her own mother had known about hers. She was so positively sure that it was going to happen. In the same way, Tonya had first realized the power of her dreams when she was in 10^th grade and had her first dream that did not just vanish with the morning sun. It stayed in her mind, surprisingly even coming true the next day.

      Tonya had dreamt that as she arrived at school, her classmate Oleg ran in and excitedly shouted, “Guys, let’s go to physics class – it’s starting now!” Since Tonya was always busy practicing her beloved piano, she habitually put off working on academics and relied on all the breaks between classes to do the work she had neglected to do the night before. So when Oleg said this, Tonya felt her heart drop, knowing she had not even begun the complicated physics problems that she had expected to do during the breaks between classes. But somehow she had felt great relief in her dream, knowing that she would receive full credit.

      Tonya awoke with a feeling of worry, because this situation was all too realistic. Getting dressed for school, Tonya remembered that once again she had not even given her homework a second glance. She was hoping for the break time before 5^th period physics to do her work. Yet as she arrived to her first class, she experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. The same classmate Oleg ran in, yelling in the same tone, and verbatim shouted, “Guys, let’s go to physics class – it’s starting now!” Tonya was extremely shocked. She turned to her girlfriends and exclaimed, “I saw this very situation in my dream last night, and I received full credit!” They laughed and said, “Well you’d better expect an F!” When the class began, the teacher asked the students, “Who completed their homework?” When his question was met with silence, he looked at his grade book and called out Tonya’s name to do a problem on the board. She quickly looked at her homework assignment and somehow knew exactly how to complete it. She confidently went up to the board, wrote out the solution, and returned to her desk, receiving full credit. Smugly, she looked over at her disbelieving girlfriends and smiled, making an A with her fingers.

      So Tonya took her mother’s dream seriously. Indeed, she had had her own portentous dream about her mother three years earlier, when she was about to leave home for college for the first time. In her dream she had seen her father beat her mother with a rope and then leave her there, lying on a rag on fresh black soil, all alone and naked. When Tonya awoke, it was such a bizarre feeling, but the dream stayed clear in her mind, and she thought about it for the rest of the day. She had an ominous feeling about it. Across the street from their home lived an elderly woman who was known for her gift of dream interpretation. When she asked the old woman to explain the meaning of her dream, she told her that the dream meant that her mother would be the first to die.

      Trying to avoid these thoughts, Tonya steered the topic of conversation with her mother away from death, and the conversation turned once again to the issue of money. Normally Tonya would sit quietly, allow her mother to say her piece, and attempt to quietly defend herself, but she had experienced far too much bad news in the past day and had reached her boiling point. Whenever she came home, her conversations with her mother were always about money, and it seemed to her that her mother cared more about money than about their relationship. This time was the last straw. It was the last time that she would come home, because in her mind she had no home and she had no mother.

      The train was to depart at midnight, so Tonya packed a few things in her bag and left the house at 11:00 p.m. Her parents were already in bed. It was not safe to walk alone at night, but from early childhood Tonya had learned to be wary of strangers rather than being afraid of the dark corners in the room. Her developed sixth sense kept her safe through her childhood and into her youth. Tonya’s mother had heard her when she left, and, along with her father, followed her. Tonya noticed her parents only at the train station. Her mother tried to give her some money, but Tonya refused to take it. Her mother’s swollen, red eyes glistened in the moonlight, but Tonya was defiant and left anyway, vowing in her heart to never return… Her mother died two weeks later from an aneurysm of the aorta.

* * *

      When Frola passed away, Tonya’s father became lost and helpless, but the women around town were very anxious about his widowed status. Tonya recalled one particular afternoon when two women came to their house and asked if Stepan was home. Tonya answered that he would soon return from work and asked them to wait for him. She then prepared a light snack and tea for them. When Stepan came, he showed the same hospitality as Tonya, and they talked and walked around the house.

      When they left, Stepan asked Tonya, “Who were they?”

      Tonya was surprised, as she thought they were her father’s acquaintances. Her father answered that this was his first time seeing them.

      Very soon, one woman from their neighborhood took a close interest in him. Tonya wanted him to be happy and not to spend the rest of his days alone. She doubted that her mother had been capable of making him happy, so she approved of his decision to be remarried…

* * *

      Tonya noticed at the last moment that she had nearly missed her exit and took a sharp turn to the right onto exit 41 B. After the exit, there was still a ten- to fifteen-minute drive to the nursing home, depending on the traffic and lights. She had driven there almost every day for the past 2 years working as a private nursing assistant for John Leberman.

      Tonya parked her car and rushed into the nursing home. In the hallway close to the main entrance she met the same people as always, sitting there every morning from the time they awoke. Some of them СКАЧАТЬ