The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine Page 2
I lay on the other side of the wall and listened to the baby girl cry. I knew exactly what she needed. After the first three days I could distinguish the sounds. Eventually I couldn’t take it any longer and brought the crib into the room I occupied with Kalganow.
I liked the way she balled her tiny fists and rubbed her eyes when she was sleepy.
Mornings I sent Kalganow to the milk dispensary for baby formula—after all, someone had to make sure the baby got enough to eat. She drained every bottle in the shortest time, much more quickly than other children. My husband tried to protest when I asked him to go; the line of unshaven young fathers at the milk dispensary made him uncomfortable. But I determinedly sent him every morning. This was about his own flesh and blood. Kalganow said he wouldn’t treat his own granddaughter any better or worse than he would any other child because all mankind were of equal worth. I called him a fascist.
After a few months, Sulfia returned to her nursing program and I registered little Aminat for daycare. We all had to get on with our lives somehow. Aminat cried bitterly. I had to pry her fingers from my skirt every morning when I left.
My granddaughter Aminat was lucky. She hadn’t inherited any of the sluggishness or ugliness of her mother. She had my dark, almond-shaped eyes, my gently wavy black hair, a slender nose, and a bright look on her face. With some people, you can tell from the moment of birth whether they’re smart or not. I had been able to tell with Sulfia—and had been proved correct. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Sulfia had been conceived in bed, with my husband, rather than by a stranger in a dream.
Aminat was nonetheless a troublesome child. She didn’t want to go to daycare. She would start to scream as soon as we got there and I had to swat away the fingers she clawed into me. But I couldn’t keep showing up late for work.
When I went to pick her up each evening, I could hear her screaming from the street. I felt embarrassed. I didn’t like the fact that my granddaughter was disturbing the whole school. In fact, I felt I had to explain to the caregiver that Tartar children are usually well behaved. For the most part better than Russian children, though of course I didn’t say that. I didn’t want to sound arrogant.
Aminat fought all efforts at child rearing. I even caught myself referring to her as Anja in front of the kindergarten teachers because I was so ashamed of her. She was such a handful that I didn’t want to make things any more difficult for the teachers by also insisting on using an Arabic name. I could be so thoughtful at times.
My daughter Sulfia meanwhile forgot she had given birth to a daughter. She finished her vocational training and began working at a surgical clinic. But she hadn’t passed her exams, so she had to work as a nursing assistant instead of as a nurse. She performed the lowliest duties and nothing of importance. Still, I thought it was for the best for everyone.
I was just happy that despite her limited capabilities, my daughter had become a productive member of society and had even given birth to a daughter of her own, and a surprisingly fabulous one at that. Sulfia was out of the woods, leaving me time to see to raising my granddaughter. It was an important duty for a woman like me, and not such an easy one with a child like Aminat.
Very slowly I stopped paying attention to Sulfia. I no longer noticed when she came home or what she did when she was home. As a result, I was totally unprepared when I came home one day and found a note on the windowsill: Dear Mama, dear Papa, I’m moving out and taking Anna with me. Please just leave me alone. Kisses, your Sulfia.
Next to the note was the key to her room.
My heart beat loudly against my ribs as I threw open the wardrobe she and I shared and found it half empty. Sulfia’s neatly hung dresses and skirts were gone, her underwear was gone, her pantyhose were gone. Some much more important things were gone, too: Aminat’s rompers, socks, and sweaters, as well as her stuffed animals and bottles, her cloth diapers, and her favorite cup, the one with the yellow rabbit on it.
Traitor to motherhood
I didn’t give myself much time to wallow in depression. I took action, as was always my way. I opened the tin can where we kept the petty cash and took out a few banknotes. I hurriedly threw on my coat and ran out to the street. I stood on the curb and put out my thumb. Not nervously fidgeting the way some people did it, but unambiguously, with dignity. That always worked.
A small, dirty car stopped immediately. I always looked younger than I was, and people were happy to be able to help a woman like me.
It was impossible to tell what color the Lada was beneath the filth, but the car got me to Aminat’s kindergarten within eight minutes. The driver wouldn’t take any money, and I didn’t insist. He was understandably proud to have had a woman like me in his car. But I was too late. Sulfia had already picked up Aminat from kindergarten. She had planned everything.
Aminat’s cubby in the entry hall was empty. Her indoor shoes and her smock were gone. The worm she had kneaded out of modeling clay during arts and crafts was gone as well. Aminat wasn’t coming back to this kindergarten anymore, said one of the teachers, with an unusually official look on her face. Aminat’s mother had moved to the other side of town and put her child in a kindergarten that was closer to her new residence.
“Where?” I shouted.
She was unable to be of further assistance, said the bespectacled hag, clearly taking pleasure in my distress.
I have to say I wasn’t just distraught. I was surprised. For ages I’d thought that Sulfia had about as much drive as a garden slug. The fact that she was able to undertake such a Nacht und Nebel–style operation, to snatch Aminat away, register Aminat at a new kindergarten, and—perhaps most shocking—find a new apartment for two, without a peep to me or her father, did not fit the image I had of Sulfia.
“Say something,” I pleaded with my husband as he sat there in the kitchen chewing stuffed cabbage that evening.
“We have to make sure they don’t take away our second room now that there are two fewer people here,” he said.
He had no idea where she could have gone. For the first week, I kept waiting for a call from her, or at least from the police. The telephone was in the foyer, where all the inhabitants of our apartment could use it. I was the first one there every time it rang, but Sulfia didn’t ring and neither did anyone else.
By the second week I began to feel sick. I dreamed of Aminat, hungry and half-frozen, sitting in her crib and crying. Of how it wouldn’t register with Sulfia because she would be doing some stupid task or other while Aminat suffered.
“You have to call Sulfia at work,” I demanded of my husband as he gnawed on a chicken leg one evening. “You have to find out where she moved.”
My husband said our daughter was an adult.
“But Aminat’s not!” I shouted, and he looked up from his plate.
A week later I put on my maroon dress, let down my hair, made up my eyes and lips in the mirror, and took the trolley to the surgical clinic where Sulfia worked. I prayed she still worked there. I took up a spot in front of the entrance where a few poor, sick people in gray hospital gowns were also standing around breathing in the fresh air. I waited.
God rewarded me and sent Sulfia out after just two hours. She had on the old blue jacket that she’d been wearing since her school days and was carrying a mesh bag. In the bag I glimpsed five shriveled potatoes. It had always been impossible to send Sulfia shopping, especially to the green grocer. She let the worst, most rotten things be foisted on her without ever noticing.
When Sulfia saw me, her eyes opened wide, darkened, and took on a purplish hue. It made her eyes the color of overripe plums. She tried to retreat, but I made a beeline for her and grabbed the sleeve of her wretched coat.
“Where are you going, you turd?” I asked her with a friendly civility only I could muster in such a situation. “Where have you taken Aminat, you traitor to motherhood?”
She squirmed in my grip.
“Anja is my daughter,” she squeaked.
The poor, sick people followed our conversation with intense interest. Sulfia made it difficult for them, however, because she mumbled so much it was impossible to understand her. I had always told her: you must speak clearly and articulate. She murmured that I had alienated her child from her. That I had tormented her. That she was so happy to be free of my tireanny. (“Tyranny,” I corrected her.) That she’d rather live under a bridge than under the same roof with me.
“WHERE IS AMINAT?” I raised my voice a little more.
Sulfia began to talk as if she were crazy: she was the mother of her daughter, she didn’t recognize me anyway, had never seen me before in her life, she had no idea who I was, I should leave immediately, I shouldn’t come near her or her child, it was enough that I had ruined her life.
“You’ve found a man!” I realized, now genuinely surprised.
The sick people craned their necks and one whistled appreciatively.
“Finally!” I shouted. “Good! But where is Aminat?”
At this point Sulfia pulled herself free, opened her scrunched mouth into an irregular oval, and screamed: “Help! She’s going to kill me!”
Shocked, I let go of her sleeve.
Sulfia broke off her steam-whistle cries and ran. I watched her go. I could have gone in, found her workstation, and asked her colleagues for her new address. But who knew what Sulfia, sneaky as she was, had told them about me. I put my hair up into a sober bun with four hairpins and slowly got going.
My stupid daughter walked ahead and I followed. Her blue coat pointed my way. When she climbed onto a tram, I got into the second car. As usual she didn’t notice anything. Through the window of the trolley car I saw how she slumped into a seat with a blank look on her face.
A few stops later she stood up and got out. I hopped off behind her.
I followed her a few steps behind. Then she turned and went through a squeaky door and into a gray high rise. I recognized it immediately. It was the dorm for rural students who came to the city to train for hospital jobs and look for work and, first and foremost, for a husband. This was where Sulfia had moved, and no wonder. Even a much smarter person could not have found a real apartment in the city so quickly, and Sulfia wasn’t smart—she wasn’t even clever. She was a danger to herself and others. But she was a half-nurse, and somebody had obviously taken pity on her and assigned her a bed. Somewhere in this stinking dump was my beloved grandchild.
I asked the woman who guarded the entryway for the room number of Sulfia Kalganova. I said Sulfia had kidnapped a child. The woman readily took me to my destination, up many flights of stairs, down long, dark hallways. Along the way she told me stories from her mess of a life. I listened and offered halfhearted responses so she would continue to lead the way.
The room was small and dirty. Aminat sat in a crib and looked at me. Her face and body were covered with green spots. She had chickenpox; I recognized it right away. I knew children’s diseases well, along with so many other things. Sulfia was sitting on her bed with her hands over her face. Her shoulders trembled. And all of this because she hadn’t listened to her mother.
When Aminat saw me, she grabbed the bars of the crib with both hands and began to rattle them. Sulfia sprang to her feet, aghast, but I shoved her away. She bounced off my elbow and fell over. That’s how awkward she was.
I pulled my little girl out of the bed, grabbed the tattered blanket, and wrapped it around the child. Aminat clasped my neck.
I carried my priceless bundle out of that hellish building, flagged a private taxi, and rode home. A grandmother who had just rescued her grandchild. I didn’t have anything against my daughter Sulfia. I was happy to live as a family in our two rooms. Mature parents, young inexperienced daughter, little grandchild. It all fit. I was a fundamentally generous person, and I valued the interchange between generations. Helping support Sulfia in raising my grandchild didn’t bother me at all. Neither did drawing Sulfia’s attention to her own frequent mistakes. All I ever wanted was for her to improve herself.
What had happened now, however, was just not acceptable. Sulfia had endangered the child. She had left her alone and sick and had gone off to work. Of course she hadn’t been able to find a new kindergarten for her. She had infected Aminat with chickenpox she probably brought home from the clinic—despite her medical training she didn’t understand basic hygiene.
My mission was to save Aminat from squalor. Nobody else was going to do it. To every other person on earth, Aminat was nothing more than a neglected, unkempt little snot. It wouldn’t have been long before she had abscesses and lice.
As far as I was concerned, there were no two ways about it: Aminat would stay with me.
For a while after I’d saved Aminat, Sulfia didn’t have the heart to come by our place. She just called constantly and sobbed into the phone. Eventually she quit saying anything at all, but kept on calling. The phone would ring and all I’d hear when I answered was crackling. It disturbed Aminat’s afternoon nap, so I unplugged the phone.
I sent Kalganow to re-register Aminat in her old kindergarten, but it turned out to be difficult. It was only possible with the consent of the mother, as she had the right to custody. I thought about ways to relieve Sulfia of this right. It would certainly have been better for all parties—better for her, for Aminat, and, of course, for me. But Kalganow said a trial like that would hurt both me and him professionally, as everyone would then find out what an awful daughter we had produced. I gave Kalganow a big bouquet of gladiolas from my garden and told him to give it to the principal of the kindergarten and to compliment her. The obstacles to registration evaporated.
Stethoscope, my sweet
Almost as soon as I saved Aminat from the dorm, I took up the fight against her chickenpox. She had big pustules on her face and body where she had scratched the chickenpox sores and caused secondary infections in them. She was basically one single pus-dripping pustule, and she had been such an attractive child.
I treated her sores with a concoction of boiled oak bark, taking it in stride when the compress ruined two entire sets of sheets—the bark left behind brown stains that couldn’t be washed out.
Her sores quickly healed thanks to my treatments, and the bark poultice fell away in flakes and revealed the extent of the damage. I could see some deep pits in her skin left behind by the pustules. It filled me with great sorrow. And it took awhile before I was once again sure she was the best-looking child in the world.
It was important to me that Sulfia not sneak off with her again. So I told the kindergarten principal that Aminat’s mother had sustained brain damage and was no longer allowed to look after Aminat on her own. The principal wanted to see some sort of certification from a doctor. I went to our live-in neighbor Klavdia. She got me papers certifying that as a result of an insect bite, Sulfia had difficulties with routine tasks, adding that anyone who came into contact with her was obligated to offer help. This doctor’s certificate was pure gold: from then on, everyone avoided coming anywhere near her.
She turned up one day and stood with her face pressed against the chain-link fence that surrounded the schoolyard. She watched the children swinging and playing in the sandbox. She never said a word and remained on the outside of the fence, but one of the teachers grabbed Aminat and took her inside. I had guaranteed that response with careful planning—and gladiolas.
When Sulfia called shortly afterward, I told her that if she ever got near Aminat again, she’d better have her things packed and ready because I would make sure she landed in the loony bin. And coming from me, it sounded extremely convincing.
At first Aminat lagged far behind in verbal skills. I had even begun to worry whether she might be slightly retarded. I kept repeating words to her, but she just ignored everything until one day her little mouth opened and out came an entire sentence: “When is stupid grandpa coming home from work?” From then on, she never stopped talking. At all. She talke
d day and night. And said peculiar things.
I was a good role model for her. She paid attention to the way I spoke, and to the fact that no Tartar words ever slipped out of me. Aminat needed to speak perfectly. She looked Tartar. She didn’t need to sound Tartar as well. I didn’t have any family left, but with Kalganow’s country relatives I’d seen what could happen. First you start saying a few Tartar words, then you forget the Russian equivalents, and the next thing you know you’re illiterate. That wasn’t going to happen to Aminat. She was going to be the best, the prettiest, and the smartest. A Soviet child without any ethnic or regional identity, said Kalganow proudly. In a rare instance of accord, we both wanted the same basic thing for our granddaughter—even if our reasons were different.
Each day after kindergarten I talked to her about how her day had been, correcting her grammar as we spoke and trying to expand her vocabulary.
“Electricity, my dear,” I told her when she tried to stick a nail file in an outlet.
“Communism, my dear,” I said when I managed to get hold of a bunch of bananas for her and let them ripen on the windowsill, giving her just one each day so they’d last for a while.
“Gravity, my dear,” I told her when she fell down yet again. It happened often; Aminat was incredibly clumsy during her first few years. For a long time, she couldn’t distinguish between left and right or stand on one leg. Spinning gracefully in a circle, like other little girls, was beyond her capabilities.
I took her to ballet lessons at the Center for Youth and Culture. They didn’t want to admit her at first. Until I let slip where my husband worked. Aminat got a spot.