We Are Not in Pakistan by Shauna Singh Baldwin Read Free Book Online

giving massages. She doesn’t have to speak English for that. She gives “great” massages, say her clients. Olena thought the word “great” should only be used for Party officials or tsars and tsarinas, but here everything and everyone is “great.” Her old country, the Soviet Union, is like Great Britain — no longer great. The newspapers and TV all rejoice that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have declared their independence.
    Would the women she massages think Olena was no longer “great” if she told them she comes from Chernobyl? Maybe theywouldn’t want her hands on their skin. She’d become like her poor Dedushka. His letter says no one talks to him in his new apartment in Minsk, no one visits, so afraid are they.
    Olena writes the check, puts it in an envelope and seals it. She licks a stamp before she realizes it is self-sticking, unlike Soviet stamps. She presses it to the envelope anyway, not wanting to waste it.
    Viktor’s English was always much better than Olena’s, but he has to learn American English in place of the British kind. He works in a microbiology laboratory, testing and labelling. He tells Olena what food to buy: only brands he has tested in the lab himself. This year she gathers rituals as well as religion: replace foods used, no changes in brand or size. Write checks carefully, add them up each month.
    Olena writes the address. Her handwriting looks unfamiliar in English.
    She puts the check on the table in the hall and returns to her seat.
    Her memory — it’s no good any more. Places and faces at home erase themselves slowly, decaying from the core outwards till they are swallowed into black.
    She draws a canary yellow notepad toward her and writes to herself in Ukrainian:
    Take clothes to laundromat
    Write letter to Dedushka
    Make lokshyna for Galina
    Make potato varenyky for Viktor
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    April 1992
    Again Olena is sitting at her kitchen table, writing checks. But now Matushka is also here, sitting before the TV in the living room, a notebook and an English-Russian dictionary beside her. Her arrival was a Passover surprise from Jewish Social Services.
    Four Los Angeles policemen have been acquitted of beating a black man, Rodney King, and Matushka is trying to understand why people are shocked and enraged by the verdict. If there were a God, Olena would thank it for American TV, which fascinates and persecutes Matushka by withholding what she is expected to believe.
    American TV and newspapers all told Olena that the Soviet Union had dissolved, that the Soviet parliament had gone out of existence, but did Olena believe them? She could not believe two republics simply declared their independence and the Kremlin didn’t send in troops to teach everyone a lesson. They told her Yeltsin was installed and the Communist Party was powerless, but did she believe them? Not until Matushka resigned from the Party.
    Maybe she didn’t believe the news on TV because Viktor said Americans give credit to the actor who was in the White House six years ago instead of to Unit 4 at Chernobyl.
    On May 1, 1992, one hundred and twenty dollars will come out of her account for the landlord. And another one hundred and twenty for Jewish Social Services. Now Olena has to write another. Fifty dollars, for Matushka. Fifty dollars Olena cannot save for Galina — how much is that in rubles?
    If Olena doesn’t write this check, will they send Matushka back?
    Oh, she will pay, she will pay. Of course.
    Olena doesn’t talk to Matushka unless she has to. Let her live in her room, Olena in hers. Olena cooks and clean for her, that’s enough.
    Olena puts the check on the hall table and returns to her seat in the kitchen. She draws her notepad toward her.
    Take clothes to laundromat
    W
rite letter to Dedushka
    Make lokshyna for Galina
    Get vodka for Viktor
    Make potato varenyky for Matushka.
    October