American Gypsy by Oksana Marafioti Read Free Book Online Page A

water’s too proud. So you, the tea-maker, help by creating motion between them. Every time you pour from one vessel to the other, the liquid gets stronger, richer. That’s what every relationship needs.”
    â€œStrong-smelling tea?”
    Esmeralda tousled my hair. “How much sugar?”
    â€œThree lumps. So why do it thirteen times? Is that like a magic number?”
    â€œIt’s my magic number. You’ll have to find your own.”
    For a while I’d stopped adding new recipes to my collection. Other matters, like getting used to living without a father and learning to answer the phone in English, took precedence. But in my mother’s tiny L.A. kitchen, I started up the old habit, finding its familiarity comforting.
    According to my notes, the first step to making tort-salat was to boil some beef the same way you would if making beef broth. Mom would then put it through a meat grinder she’d purchased at the local Russian market. At the same time, she’d cook eggs, carrots, beets, and potatoes in water until they were soft but not soggy, and then grate them. Next, she’d start building the salad: a layer of potatoes, followed by a layer of beef, eggs, and the rest of the vegetables. A little mayonnaise, spread between each layer, kept everything moist. Mom would repeat the process several more times, and sprinkle some grated cold butter and a generous amount of parsley, dill, and cilantro on top.
    I’d been known to eat tort-salat every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so Mom always made extra, or guarded it from me if guests were coming.
    During those first months in America, we found solace in the familiar foods or in the songs Mom sang under her breath, many of them centuries-old Armenian melodies.
    Ov, sirun, sirun. Inchu motezar?
    Sertis gahtnike inchu imatsar?
    Mi unmech sirov, yes kes siretzi
    Isk do anyraf davachanetsir.
    Â 
    Oh, my beautiful. Why did you come near?
    Secrets of my heart, just how did you hear?
    With an innocent love, I have fallen for you
    Shamelessly betrayed, your love so untrue.
    We often sat on our cots and read out loud from the books we’d brought with us. Mom’s sister, Aunt Siranoosh, lived in Kirovakan with Grandma Rose, and the walls of their living room hid behind enormous bookshelves stuffed with classics, large and leather-bound and intimidating. Aunt Siranoosh used to send me parcels of books from her collection a couple of times a year.
    I’d brought several of them with me to L.A. Alexander der Grosse , by Fritz Schachermeyr, read like an epic adventure of courage, something we needed now. Every time I reached the part when Alexander tamed Bucephalus, his legendary horse, Roxy would exclaim, “Victory!” and shake her fists in the air.
    Our neighborhood looked and felt nothing like the America from my father’s friend Vova’s stories, with houses the size of Iceland and flower beds that bloomed year-round. But maybe this was how people started out before they got their dream. Maybe living in a dump, on a street with cracked pavement and skeletons of cars, made them tough and ready for all that glory they would experience later. I felt determined to find out.

 
    RUNNING AWAY
    Most Romani don’t give a rat’s ass about fitting in. Instead, they shape the world around them, bend it like a spoon. But it mattered to me, and it mattered to my mother even more. Once in America, she wanted nothing to do with her Romani past, which had been anything but typical. For Roxy and me, she envisioned a more conventional future, and soon after Dad left, she developed but one goal in addition to having the most spotless apartment in our building: finding wealthy American husbands for her two girls. Like any devoted immigrant mother, she suffered for the sake of her offspring. “You are Americans now,” she often reminded us. “You don’t need any of your father’s nonsense. I