Apres moi le deluge?

All of the rooms were on the third floor, but the kitchen and the bathroom were on the fourth. As I ran into the kitchen I saw one of my neighbors -Tanya- a rigid, masculine woman in her mid thirties, already missing a couple of teeth, holding on to her daughter with one of her massive hands while gripping tight hold of another neighbor, six year old Dimka, with the other. In what seemed as a surprisingly calm tone, she was instructing her daughter to bite her playmate: "bite him, Natasha, bite him while I can grab hold of him." Natasha obliged. He screamed in pain and I became frozen inside the high pitched sound…
I must have not thought that he was little, for I was his age; all I remember was the redness of their faces and the air of determination. The mother and daughter were indomitable in their conviction that Dimka must be taught a lesson He was screaming and kicking and trying to free himself, but all was in vain. I ran downstairs as fast as I could; the stairs were old, wooden and steep; shaking from a nauseating mix of confusion, fear and empathy, I literally flew down and away, away from “This is what you get for…” discipline of biting and forced constraint and unfathomable, useless high-pitched defense. The flight back to the row of doors each leading into the rooms of one of seven families living in our communal apartment ended at the second door down the hall – my nanny’s room.

"Can't you walk in like normal people?" she asked, “All my dishes are shaking.” She was attempting to sound strict; however I knew that I was now safe from the disturbing events of the kitchen. The screaming was still audible, but I was already quite preoccupied with trying to get up on a chair to reach a jar full of candy that for some reason were called "theatrical." It was hard candy, wrapped in dark green paper, and there was absolutely nothing special about it, except the fact that my parents never had any candy and my nanny always did.
***
I just knew that they did something wrong. Nobody told me what it was, but the suspense was enough. I must have been not more than six, Dimka must have been the same age too, (about a year after the gruesome biting incident we ended up in the same first grade class); Natasha was a few years older. My parents did not let me play with them, but I do not remember them telling me that I could not. I just knew that spending time with the two of them was not something good girls did.
I do not remember where I came from that day, or what I was doing after I ran into my nanny’s room, as every other distant memory this one simply appears out of nowhere and fades without a clear connection to anything that came before or after. But I can easily see Natasha, as though I just saw her come in to borrow some sugar, as she used to. She was big boned as was her mom, with thick dirty blond hair that Russian girls often have, but hers seemed different than most...It seemed dirtier, heavier, and straighter. My thin red curls were probably just as dirty, but the sheer mass of her hair lingers in my memory along with the desire to braid it. And one time I almost got that chance. I remember the buildup of excitement at the thought that I was going to play with that river of hair all by myself. As always, I was in my nanny’s room and when Natasha happened to walk in, instead of completely ignoring me as older girls tend to do with much younger ones, she suggested we play mom and daughter. I happily obliged provided she accommodates one simple request – letting her daughter braid her new found mother’s hair. She agreed, but asked me to feed her – “Mama is very hungry!” – from the tube of special liquid candy that I was holding in my hand that I became completely oblivious in anticipation of being able to brush and braid her hair. What I now know to be the green artificial goo that comes in little tubes is something I would never let my own son put inside his system, was back in the day and place of my childhood highly coveted desert. One could slowly squeeze out of a tube onto a finger or directly in the mouth, either way it was suppose to last for what seemed as a lifetime. As a cynical adult I am well aware of Natasha’s practical motivations. Having been send by her mother on an errand to my nanny’s room (Salt? Sugar? Yesterday’s newspaper?) Natasha saw me with a tube of candy and immediately had her own agenda to rival mine of getting to touch and braid her hair. The latter was never realized, in a loud-hurried swish reminiscent of the popping sound of the last balloon you try so hard to save, the door into my nanny’s room was flung open. My mother and that expression I knew very well. Time to go! In fact, I was not supposed to be there in the first place. I was supposed to be reading in our room waiting for my mother’s return.

As for Natasha, from time to time her mother would chop off most of her hair with what seemed as a kitchen knife, but that is of course my adult cynicism. In that world nobody could afford to cut their childrens hair at SnipIts and there was no SnipIts, the only reminder of the distant America was a poem that most children knew about an aggressive capitalist from United States who owned a bunch of ships and factories but was miserly and lonely. The poet did not care to elaborate whether or not the protagonist was lonely because he did not grow up with twenty five people in one apartment with one kitchen and one bathroom.
***
Natasha was biting Dimka - the son of an alcoholic father and a gentle hard-working mother who had night shifts at the local factory…Everyone predicted that Dimka will end up growing up into a thug ever since he was three years old. During the months Dimka’s dad was out of prison for some drunken fight or a random misdemeanor charge, he would keep busy by drinking, beating his wife and singing on the infamous staircase that lead to the bathroom and the kitchen…the same one where Dimka was being bitten by those he wronged. Before your imagination sketches a pitiful portrait, let me stop you: imagining Dimka’s dad as an abusive husband and a drunk would not serve him justice (justice! HA!) , in fact, his artistic self was certainly dedicated to his marriage, at least while he was on the staircase, for he would only sing one song: an old Russian catchy pop from the seventies – the chorus line began with the very profound statement that a wedding ring was far from a simple piece of jewelry.Getting lost in the memories that are becoming more and more blurry I try to regain my control over them. One second it feels as though I can almost touch them, but just like the possibility of playing with Natasha’s hair it fades into non reality.

The fact that during Soviet times, a lot of Russians lived with a multiple number of unrelated families in one apartment (a room per family) is no longer surprising to anyone, but it does not cease to amaze me how people didn't murder one another, the gruesome killings provoked by the neverceasing wife-beating and drunken singing. I think if fate would put six or seven modern-day American families into a seven bedroom apartment with one stove and one bathroom, nobody would come out alive... It is definite that no one would sing. But here we were families, sharing one stove and one bathroom, with no shower or bathtub..

I ran into my nanny’s room to hide from something my six years old mind could not comprehend, something that I was hoping to leave behind me as I shut the door behind myself and faced my warm, protective caretaker. But every time I see little kids fight in the school yard or a neighborhood playground I realize that regardless of the fact that one had to go to another floor to wash one’s face or boil an egg, I had a happy childhood. If only I knew what Dimka thought.