My 20+ Years In America. Based on a true story

* * *

Tonya’s father, Stepan, worked all the time and saw little of his precious girls, but it was always the happiest time when he was home. He was a soft, quiet man who worked hard to provide for his family but never hid his love toward his daughters. He always stood up for them, no matter what the circumstances. Tonya thought that there was no one in the whole world kinder than her father. He not only showed kindness to his own family, but everyone around Stepan at one point or another experienced his kind and giving heart. Any neighbors who needed help were immediately assisted without hesitation and without thought of reimbursement.

Very often after a hard day’s work Stepan would take his daughters and bring them with him to drop off his pick-up truck at work, after which they would take the bus home. One of these times when they were driving, a man flagged down her father and asked which way he was headed. Stepan avoided the man’s question, instead asking him, “Where do you need to go?” After the man answered, Stepan laughed and said, “Well that’s in the same direction I’m going!” and proceeded to drive the man to his destination. After dropping him off, he turned the truck around to go drop off the truck at work. Tonya asked her father, “Papa, why did you lie to that man? We were going the opposite way,” and Stepan replied, “When you lie for something good, it is not a sin. I did not want that man to feel obligated to repay me or feel badly that I went out of my way.”

Years later, when Tonya was married and living in a house with her own family, she learned that her neighbor was a coworker of her father’s. In one of their conversations, he told Tonya, “Your father was a fool. Everyone who worked with him was able to buy their own car, but he never was able to collect enough money even for a motorcycle.” She did not answer, but came to the conclusion that if the world were filled with “fools” like her father, the world would be a much better place to live in.

Sometimes Tonya wondered how her father could still be so kind, particularly after experiencing the horrors of World War II. Every day during the war, he had been sure that he would lose his life, either today or tomorrow. He had always imagined that each day might be his last. In short breaks between the fighting, he never dreamed or made plans for the future when the war would be over. He witnessed several comrades who would speak of their dreams during one moment and then be killed the very same day. He did not focus on the future, but rather lived his days in the present, fully expecting to be killed. The only wish that he would allow himself before entertaining thoughts of death was to sleep on his own bed, on clean sheets and in clean pajamas.

At night during relocation, he and his comrades devised a method to sleep while walking, with two people in the middle and two others on the sides, linked arm in arm at the elbows. The two people on the sides acted as guides so the two in the middle could continue their march with closed eyes. They could change places every thirty to forty minutes. It was not a perfect method, but it was the only way that they could get any rest.

Tonya’s father lost five brothers during World War II. Three of them were killed, and two were declared MIA. Their neighbor, who had been serving in the same battalion as one of his brothers, was captured, sent to a concentration camp and later escaped. He witnessed how Stepan’s brother, Nicholas, was killed. When he returned home, Stepan’s mother relentlessly pursued this information until he gave in and told her how it had occurred.

Her son had been badly wounded and lay on the ground motionless when the German soldiers came around to check the bodies for signs of life. When they reached Nicholas, they saw that he was still breathing and moaning from pain, so they stuck the ends of their bayonets into each of his eyes. Then they pierced his heart with the sharp end to ensure that he was indeed dead.

This information proved to be much more than Stepan’s mother could handle, and she collapsed after hearing of how her son had suffered. After the loss of her children, she lost pieces of her life along with them, paralyzed by grief. It was not long after that she died.

Since childhood, Tonya remembered her father often talking of his brothers, recalling the things they liked to do and his favorite memory of each of them.

Every family in Russia had experienced the loss of loved ones during the war, and people everywhere worked hard to overcome their grief and rebuild what remained of their lives. They looked forward to happier times in their lives and regained their dreams of building families and their hopes of a better future for their children.

* * *

When Ludmila was born, Frola still continued to work as a cashier at a convenience store. At the end of the day, it was her responsibility to report to her manager and give him the key and the profits for the day. One day she left Ludmila home sick with the neighbor girl. She worried about her child’s well-being, making her anxious all day. All she could think about was how to get home to her faster. After her job was complete, she could not find the manager who was supposed to be on duty at this time. She waited for him another 40 minutes after closing, but she still could not find him. Unable to locate him, she closed and locked the store, taking the responsibility upon herself in order to return home to her child.

Ironically, the store was robbed that night, and Frola was blamed for what happened. Frola was positive that the manager who was supposed to close the store that evening was behind the robbery because he never showed up at his designated time. He knew her child was sick because she had informed him of her predicament at the start of the day, so he presumed that she would be in a hurry to get home, making her the perfect scapegoat for his crime. Nevertheless, the authorities needed someone to blame, so Frola was accused of robbing the store. She was found guilty, so her only options were to go to prison or pay for the stolen items.

Everything of value in Frola and Stepan’s home was sold, along with all the goods that Stepan had brought home from Berlin after the war ended on May 9, 1945. With Berlin completely occupied, each soldier had been allowed to take anything they liked back to their home in a carriage. Stepan had amassed a sizeable amount of goods from this event. Stepan and Frola were lucky to be able to pay off her debt, and Stepan never allowed her to work again.

All of Stepan’s happiness rested in his daughter, Ludmila, but he longed for a boy. When Frola learned that she would be having another child, she wanted to have an abortion, but he insisted that she continue with the pregnancy in hopes that she would bear a son. Frola felt that it was too soon to have another child because she would not be able to give them each the attention that they needed. It was difficult to bring up children in the severe Siberian climate, especially in a house without any modern conveniences. Nevertheless, Tonya was born 1 year and 9 months after Ludmila.

When Tonya was born, her father was so upset that she wasn’t a boy that for the first time he drank himself to the point where he could hardly walk. He wanted nothing to do with the baby and ignored Tonya for 9 months. One day when he was ready to pick her up with his hands, she was so scared that she started screaming. She did not want him to come close to her. It took some time for him to earn Tonya’s trust and for her to accept him.

As Tonya grew, she became her father’s “boy.” She did all kinds of work outside with him, and he taught her many skills that usually only boys would learn. He taught her to be a survivor, and she tried her best to be who her father wanted her to be. It was total affection between her father and his daughters, and he lived and breathed for them.

* * *

When Tonya was ten years old and in the fourth grade, she first learned about the nearby school of music. One of her classmates was enrolled in the school, and he often talked about his experiences there. Being the curious child that she was, Tonya dreamed of attending herself. She begged her parents to let her enroll, but her dreams were soon dashed with her mother’s talks of money. Nevertheless, Tonya’s father, who always stood up for his daughter, won this battle, and she was allowed to audition. Her mother relented, thinking she would not be accepted and talk of the school would soon be forgotten.

The school of music was a small structure, housing only three practice rooms and a director’s office. Three talented musicians who were in exile during Stalin’s repression, all from the Moscow Conservatory, founded the school. Pianist Georgi Georgievich Struve and violinists Saryan Nicholas Kaprelovich and Anna Vasilevna Dizendor all played a role in the beginnings of the school. After serving time in labor camps under Stalin, they were not allowed to return to their original home regions, but were restricted to living in Siberia.

The school offered classes in piano, violin, and accordion, as well as classes in musical theory. The director’s office also doubled as a classroom for the violinists. Despite its small size, the school of music was exceptionally well regarded and extremely exclusive in its selection of students. Every year, over one hundred children applied, yet only eight to ten of the brightest students were accepted due to its small size.

In spite of these daunting prospects, Tonya was chosen along with seven other children who had been accepted. She was eleven years old at that time and had been accepted only for the accordion class. After completing two years of study, the students begin to learn piano; however, the lessons were only for twenty minutes a week as they were designed to only cover general knowledge.

One Sunday when Tonya was walking downtown, she heard the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata playing loudly over the radio. She was stunned by its beautiful melody, frozen in place as she listened. The music touched a deep part of her soul; at 14 years old, she didn’t know such joy even existed. She fell in love with the piano, and it became her purest source of happiness.

She often stopped on her way to the school of music in an office supply store where pianos were sold. She would wait for a customer to come and open the lid so she could catch a glimpse of its black and white keys. Her heart would leap to her throat, and she was thrilled as she watched their fingers dance over each note; she dreamed that the piano was her own.

Much to Tonya’s happiness, the school of music was moved to a new building in the center of downtown. It became one of the most significant buildings in the area due to its large size and striking architecture. There was plenty of room for instruments, so she would remain at the school in one of its many music rooms to continue practicing, even after formal lessons were finished. Every waking moment was spent sitting at a piano, and the school of music became her home.

The last year of high school, before Tonya’s 10^th grade graduation, her father talked her mother into renting a piano so she would be able to practice at home. Despite having such immediate access to the piano, her mother never let her practice more than two hours straight when she was more than willing to stay at the piano all day. It was never enough time. During a parent-teacher conference, the mathematics and physics teacher told Tonya’s parents that she was a candidate to graduate with a gold medal, and that she had good mathematics and physics abilities. After hearing this, Tonya’s mother wanted her to study in school and spend far less time on the piano.

However, Tonya was so enthralled with learning piano that she often tricked her mother, skipping her academic classes and going instead to the school of music. At times she would hide her schoolbooks behind her bed, replacing them with her sheet music in her book bag just before leaving for school. While her mother stood and watched her, she would head in the direction of school, but after one block, when she was certain that her mother could no longer see her, she would turn around and head in the direction of the school of music.

When some of the music teachers asked her, “How come you are not in school?” Tonya would smile and reply that the teachers did not show up. They would smile back at her. Everyone knew that her love of music far outweighed her love of academics, and they allowed her to stay and practice. Instead of graduating with an academic gold medal, she graduated the piano class in only two years instead of the seven years it took students on average.

Tonya never attempted to attend nighttime holiday celebrations and dances with her classmates because she preferred to go to the school to practice her piano. Tonya remembered one occasion when her mother had assumed that she and Ludmila were attending a dance together. Wishing as always for more time to rehearse, she did not attend the dance and instead traveled to the school to practice piano without informing her mother. She had assumed that the dance would end at approximately 9:00 p.m., so she planned accordingly to be home by that time. Unfortunately, the dance ended a half hour earlier than originally expected, and Ludmila returned home without her sister.

When Tonya finally reached her front door, her mother gave her the most severe beating she had ever experienced. Despite the pain, Tonya took this beating in silence and with pride, for she was willing to brave any punishment, accepting the fact that there might be consequences for devoting her life to only one passion.

* * *

Before leaving for college, Tonya had never been away from her home for more than a few days at a time. She enjoyed the rigor of her studies, but after just two months, she longed for her home, her parents and the many friends she had left behind. She missed the people she had known her whole life, starting from the first time she could remember, the very beginnings of her memory. The extensive train ride back to her home was costly; however, Tonya didn’t think that her mother would mind. When she saw the love and attention that the mothers of her classmates showered upon their children, she reasoned that surely she would be welcomed home with open arms. This did not come to pass: her mother proceeded to scold her for recklessly wasting money in making the trip.

Unwilling to remain in a home of such hostility, Tonya decided to take a brisk walk through her town in hopes that it would help calm her down. Everything around her was the same, the same narrow streets and sidewalks made of wood and embellishments of stone and brick. She liked walking down the street, meeting the familiar faces of people she walked past everyday. Even the “mayors” of the town were still at their duties! She was glad to see them. She thought back in her mind to the jokes she used to share with her girlfriends as they walked past these men while on their way to school. The “mayors” of the town were actually three mentally challenged men who would spend their time in the center of downtown. No matter the season or the hour, they would be there. Neither the scorching rays of the sun nor the blistering cold seemed to bother them.

The three men had steadfastly remained at their posts, two inside the grocery store and the other just outside the door. The men inside the grocery store often masqueraded as inspectors, watching every customer who walked past them, peering into their bags as they left the store. The customers usually laughed and simply played along the best they knew how. The other “mayor” acted as a policeman. He always had a pencil and a small notepad of paper, and would walk around the cars of the customers, stopping, staring and pretending to write something down. Occasionally he would babble something unintelligible in a demanding tone to one of his “offenders,” but this was always shrugged off and laughed about later. They were essentially harmless, and the townspeople regarded them as fixtures of the town. Like well-loved pets, everyone nurtured them.

Seeing the “mayors” reminded Tonya of her two best high school girlfriends, Natalie and Nina. High school in Russia continues only until the tenth grade, and the girls enjoyed every minute of it. They had been nicknamed the “trio” by their classmates, an inseparable group of friends bound together by their commonalities and their love for one another. They were always full of fun and laughter, sharing jokes and lightening the spirits of everyone around them. Nina was considered the jokester of the trio and delighted in gently poking fun at them all.

On one occasion she said, “Tonya, yesterday I saw your future husband, but he was out of his usual place.”

Tonya asked, “Who was he?”

She jokingly replied, “Don’t pretend you don’t know! He’s a ‘mayor’ of course! A policeman!”

The girls doubled over with laughter, and Tonya joked back, “But your husband was so annoyed with his customers this morning. I’m afraid he might lose his job and won’t be able to support you!”

This type of joking continued on until the “mayor” assigned to Natalie was brutally murdered one week before they graduated high school. Somehow, their jokes had lost their appeal with his death, and they never again commented on the men as they walked past them.

The loud babbling of the “mayors” brought Tonya back to her present reality, and she surveyed the busy scene around her. As she walked on, she thought to herself that she was glad to see that the other two were still alive.

The workings of the town continued on as usual, as people went about their daily business struggling to survive. Soon after, she came upon Natalie’s house and thought of the many happy times she had experienced there. She was always happy to visit with her girlfriends, and sometimes she thought that their mothers loved her the same way as they loved their own daughters, but their kindnesses only extended so far and never fully filled the place of emptiness between Tonya and her own mother. She had wanted to knock at the door, but she would never dream of telling them of her mother’s scolding and of their argument over finances. Tonya hated money, even talk of it. Money, or rather the absence of it, had brought so many problems to Tonya’s life that it was enough to make her mind shut down. There was never enough to make ends meet, and it seemed to be the root of all hostility between her and her mother.

Dusk was quickly approaching. Although Tonya was used to the darkness of night, the increasingly cold air chilled her to the bone, and she reluctantly made her way back to her parents’ house and to the stillness that awaited her there.

* * *

Tonya was a junior in college when she decided to travel home on the weekend before the First of May, the most important holiday in Russia. Everyone had traveled home to be with their loved ones, and she did not want to remain at the college alone. She wanted to be near those she loved most on this holiday. Although Tonya was looking forward to the upcoming vacation, she had no idea that this visit would turn out to be one of the most devastating visits in her memory.

She had just found out that her friend, Ivan, who had been her classmate from first grade through graduation and was lovingly known by everyone as Vano, was brutally murdered by a gang of teenagers. He was returning from his girlfriend’s home late at night and ran into a group of eight or ten teenagers. They had asked him for matches to light their cigarettes.

He answered, “I’m sorry, boys, but I’m not a smoker.”

After he said these words, they began to beat him with the hard, flat knuckles of their fists. They kicked him with their boots and then knocked him to the ground, nearly unconscious. The outer fence of the school of music was next to them, and when the strength of their own bodies began to fail them, they pulled wooden stakes from a nearby fence with the nails still protruding from the wood. They beat Vano with the fence posts until he stopped attempting to defend himself and lay motionless on the ground.

When Vano regained consciousness, there was nobody around. The teenagers had left him in the street to fend for himself or to die. He somehow managed to crawl nearly one hundred feet back to his girlfriend’s apartment and all the way back up to the fifth floor. He could not stand tall enough to reach the button for the doorbell, so he used the remainder of his strength to knock on the door.

There were very few people in the town who had working telephones in their home, so it took quite some time for Vano’s girlfriend to find a telephone and call an ambulance. Despite the ambulance, Vano’s injuries proved to be too great, and he died on the way to the hospital. He only had enough strength left to tell the paramedics that he had never met anyone from that group before. His single mother worked so hard to bring up her three sons, and she lost two of her boys. Vano’s oldest brother had been killed two years earlier. He was a talented artist. No one was ever charged with those crimes.

Ironically, Vano was killed next to the school of music, the dearest place in the entire town to Tonya. When Tonya used to sneak out to the school of music, she had been sure that nobody knew about her secret practice sessions, but one day Vano’s friend had come to Tonya during a class break and asked her, “Why don’t you ever come to the dance? Vano is always very sad about it. Don’t you notice at all that he is in love with you?”

Tonya studied his face for signs of teasing, but deciding to herself that he was inquiring seriously, she replied, “I’m just busy with practicing the piano.”

“He knows it too; sometimes he waits and follows you until you get home safely. He knows all your tricks to lose strangers. If he did not know where you lived, he would not have been able to follow you. Vano said that even if you do not pay attention to him, at least you do not pay attention to anyone else. So he said he will wait for the day when you leave your black box of keys and join his company.”

Tonya was very upset to hear about Vano’s unrequited affections toward her. If he liked her so much, he could have told her himself, without the need of a messenger.

“I don’t want anyone to pick on me about his love towards me.”

Tonya quickly recalled the long year of fourth grade when one boy had come up to her during class and kissed her on her cheek. All of the children had started to laugh hysterically and teased her about it mercilessly, particularly the boys, until it reached a point where she no longer wanted to attend school. As if they could not find enough hours during the school day, they teased her whenever they met her on the street, even outside the school, walking with her parents. She had the strength and courage to handle it in public, but when she was left alone at night to her own musings, she cried. Since then, she had never let any boys come close to her.

Tonya had fought for this independence to the point where it became problematic at school. After one parent-teacher meeting at the school, her mother came home and punished her.

“How long will I feel ashamed from hearing that you are always fighting with boys?” her mother had said.

The tables in Tonya’s classroom were grouped in pairs with two students seated at each table. At Tonya’s desk, there was a boy who was assigned the seat next to her at the table, and his mother asked the teacher to move her son away from Tonya. After this parent-teacher meeting, her mother punished her by forcing her to kneel in a corner of her bedroom. She told her to apologize and give her word that she would not fight anymore with boys. Tonya refused to do so, because she had not started the fight, she had only fought back in defense. When those boys tried to push her, pull her braids or pinch her, she only did what she needed to protect herself. She had no idea whether or not the boys would leave her alone, so she could not give her word that she would not fight anymore.

Tonya’s mother had been furious at her refusal, so she sternly told her, “Then you will stay here on your knees and think about your behavior until you are ready to apologize, even if it takes you the entire night.”

Tonya stayed there for a long time, and when her knees gave out, she began to lean on the wall. She thought that at least this way, she might be able to get some sleep. During the night, her father had eventually picked her up with his strong hands, rubbed her legs to get some feeling into them and put her to bed…

Vano’s friend, noticing the look of worry in Tonya’s eyes, answered, “Don’t worry, I told you without Vano’s permission. Nobody knows about his love for you but me. I just feel sorry for him, to see him so lovesick.”

Tonya replied, “All right then, let’s forget about it. I do not know either, and you did not mention it. If he wants to wait for me, let him wait.”

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.