Sipping shit slowly can kiss my ass; I want results, and I want them fast. Six shots go down and the sweat starts up. There is a tipping point, and it begins in your gut. You are either going to puke those shots into the sink or you'll start feeling better. Slowly...
Unless you've been there, you can't imagine how slow.
Hands shaking mean glasses breaking so you always drink out of plastic. You use the fuel to stop the shake, but it won't make you feel fantastic.
It won't make you feel at all if you're lucky.
In the whole ordeal, there's just a blip where you land right where you wanted. Then you've gone too far, you can't come back. Your thoughts are becoming stunted.
Somehow on autopilot, you find yourself in bed. Five hours to pass before the mass, you wake up in your aching head. Then off to work, nine hours straight, and then you can return. To the kitchen shelf where you keep your wealth, and you feel the whiskey burn.
(Saving space for Mader comments)
ReplyDeleteMikhail rose from his perch at the kitchen table when at two in the morning Feodora—wet, crying, hair streaming everywhere—comes through the door.
ReplyDeleteThe initial fury in his eyes melted into compassion. His arms around her were fierce. Hard. Too hard. She pushed away. “Take your phone,” he said. “Next time take your phone when you have a tantrum and leave. I was worried sick. You could have had an accident. I thought you could be dead. If your mother hadn’t contacted me—”
Anya’s cries started from upstairs. They’d woken her. Feodora turned, walked away. He followed. “And you left her. I was asleep and you left her—”
“Shut up,” Feodora said. It was the first time she had ever told her husband, or anybody, really, to shut up. Instantly she regretted it, but she couldn’t stop from going to Anya. Cooing sweet things, she gathered the baby up into her arms and held her against her shoulder.
Mikhail lowered his voice to an angry whisper. “You can’t just leave like that. What if I wasn’t here? What if—”
“What if, what? You are an able-bodied parent with two ears, you could have just as easily gone to her.” She considered stopping at that, but didn’t. “And if you were not here,” she added, “I would never have left her alone.”
“So this is my fault, now? Because I have to travel to earn money for this house, for the food on our table, for—”
“Shhh. Don’t be mad around our precious, no?”
“This isn’t over,” he said. “We need to have a serious discussion about this folly you’re playing at.”
“What folly?” she said. “I find my birth certificate in a secret drawer in my father’s office that says I am not my parents’ child, and you call this folly for my wanting to know the truth?”
Mikhail said nothing.
“You are the one who always says that the truth will set you free.”
“Stop quoting me back to myself.”
“But it’s true,” she said. “And I am just learning of these truths. I am just learning that I am not as my parents have always said I am. And I am supposed to just accept this without thought, without question? I am in reality Ukrainian, do you know what that means?”
“It means that you were trafficked as a refugee, and technically a Polish citizen, into the country that invaded your parents’ homeland. Which makes your parents, as much as I love them, into accessories in a war crime.”
She gave him a baleful stare. That kind of talk could get them into deep trouble. Often she worried about him saying such things when and where others could hear.
“It means that I am an object of pity,” Feodora said. “A second-class citizen. Regardless of your ‘truth,’ in this country Ukrainians are the war criminals, and if it’s true that my parents were soldiers, then I am the child of war criminals. That is how they see this here.”
Mikhail smirked. It made the sharp planes and angles of his face sharper, almost painful looking. “So you are responsible for the so-called sins of your proverbial fathers?” he said. “You, as a three-month-old infant, chose to be a Ukrainian born in a Polish refugee camp, then chose to be taken to Russia and given to Russian parents.”
Delete“You’re mocking me now. But you know as well as I do how things are looked at here.”
“I’m thinking maybe it’s time we talked again about moving.”
Anger and fear flashed through her. “You know I can’t leave my mother, not now! She just lost, my father just died—”
“Interesting,” he said. “Interesting that this is the first thought you have of your parents—not the ones who spawned you, but the ones who raised you. In your heart those are your real parents. Not the Ukrainians.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s new to me. They’ve had twenty-one years to adjust to this. I am only just learning. Please, Mikhail, you if anyone should give me that grace.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” With a smile suddenly gone shy, he eased the baby from her arms. “I’m taking you back to bed,” he told Anya. “While Mama goes and has herself some Mama juice.”
She sighed, her shoulders relaxing a few millimeters, while she watched him walk away. Yes, in the refrigerator was the last of a bottle of good white wine with her name on it, but it could never blot out the truth.
Maybe it was time for them to leave. While they still could.