How to Get Into the Twin Palms (3 page)

A different man comes and moves Lev’s car. He is lanky and disheveled and I watch him as he creeps into the front seat and patiently pulls back and forth, trying to get out of the tight spot. He swerves out in one final, impatient turn and drives down the street and disappears. After he moves the car there is shuffling in the apartments across the street. The men from Odessa begin to open doors, water plants. Come alive. It is morning and they are starting the routine of their day. Doing their chores so their wives will permit them to sit in lawn chairs, on their balconies, and watch the cars move back and forth down the street. Our buildings are all squat, two-storied, with balconies. All somewhat the same, tan stucco or white stucco or beige, fading into one another. Nondescript and unobtrusive, always striving to be mildly pleasant and to blend into the California landscape. But our block was different, house plants sitting outside, brightly beaded curtains haphazardly attached to the railing with butcher twine, and faded lace curtains in the windows.
We were still ethnic here. When people walked by, they would point at the windows and say things like, “Why are they drying their clothes outside? Aren’t they afraid they’ll get stolen?” No one’s ever did. Not with Boris hanging out his window everyday, watching everyone go by.

I sit on my balcony and watch people get out of their cars and walk to the small shops on Fairfax and think things like, I was never a good girl, good enough to come back to. And, I want to be more permissive, unlike the wives on my street.

I can’t though. I know myself.

I DIDN’T SEE LEV FOR A FEW WEEKS AFTER
that and I anticipated his return daily. Dreamt up our possible interactions. I learned new words in Russian. Things like:
Vsë tip-tóp!
And
kátit
in case he asked me how I was doing. Did they really mean, “It’s all good”? I wasn’t sure.

WHILE I WAITED FOR LEV TO RETURN I WENT
back to calling bingo numbers at the Protection of the Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox church. It was in Hollywood. I drove there and took Hollywood Boulevard to Argyle and stopped at the 7-Eleven nearby and always got a Cherry Coke. It was a long night there on Fridays and sometimes there were no breaks in between games. I also got a bag of Fritos. I hadn’t had any in a while and it seemed right. They were the spicy kind. I thought the ladies would miss me but they didn’t really. Someone else had started calling the numbers, a woman I knew. She only wore t-shirts with animals on them. Wolves, bears, sometimes dolphins. She wasn’t happy about giving up her place to me. But I was the veteran here. I called the numbers slower and the old people had gotten used to the lilt in my voice. When they called me and told me the other woman wasn’t working out, that I was the only person who could handle the ladies, I strong-armed the Holy Virgin into giving me $50 a game. I climbed onto the stage of the multi-purpose room and sat down next to the large illuminated sign covered in numbers lined across and bingo spelled out accordingly. I sat behind a box full of roiling bingo balls and watched the air pressure inside the box throw the numbered balls into a tornado. The tables were long and full of women. Mostly widows needing to get out, to forget that their husbands were dead and gone because they still had many, many years left
to live. They had photos of their men as their lucky charms. Petite picture frames nestled next to small, childish objects. Plastic birds, broken timepieces, toy cars made by Mattel. They lined them up along the top edge of the bingo tables and spread the cards out in front of them. I began calling.

B 12.

And then another and then another. And then I heard the complaining beginning. The curled bouffants bobbing up and down. Pecking at the numbers with their ink blotters.

I was going too fast. They were grumbling and pecking and finally one called out, “What are you doing? You’re going to fast! Have some mercy.”

I slowed down. N 36. I drawled out the 6. I took a sip of Cherry Coke. My first of the night.

After Rosa Schwartzburg called “Bingo!” I called a break. There was a shuffling of cards. Dirty looks aimed at Rosa. She had not stopped her winning streak. Ten dollars and a Twizzler. Single stick. Not a pack. She was diabetic. I didn’t understand the Holy Virgin sometimes. All these women were diabetic. Still with the Twizzlers every week. I walked down to the concession table and saw éclairs, hot dogs, and bags of potato chips. The low rent kind. A hot dog was $1.25. A hot dog with relish was $1.75. I found that to be outrageous. I ate it with mustard for $1.25. The ladies crowded around the table, calling out their orders. Frank, behind the table, couldn’t keep up. His stomach brushed up against the chocolate on the top of the éclairs and stripped some off. No one noticed but me. The edges of the éclairs were now smeared and missing chocolate. I wanted one to top off the hot dog but I saw bits of Frank’s shirt fuzz captured in the remaining chocolate and just couldn’t do it. He smiled at me and winked. He thought I didn’t notice, or maybe did and he wanted me to keep quiet about it. Once you got the ladies going there was no stopping them. I ran the numbers and he ran the stand and we were in this together. This Friday night
at the Holy Virgin. Mary pushed up against me. She was wearing a Leonardo DiCaprio t-shirt. His face stretched large over her gigantic breasts.

“You’re calling the numbers too fast,” she said.

“I know. I heard all of you. I slowed down.”

She scowled at me. “You don’t have to be rude about it. Where have you been?”

I didn’t really know what to tell her.

“Away on holiday with your boyfriend?” she continued.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said.

“When I was your age I had six.” She glared at me. Her face was round and her eyebrows overgrown. She had red lipstick on; smeared on account of the éclairs she had just eaten.

“I thought you were already married by my age.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Yeah, I was already married. And he was handsome. So handsome. He treated me like a princess. A doll.”

“I’m sorry, Mary.”

“You need sex. I need sex. Everyone needs sex.”

This was a weekly thing and I was used to her frankness.

“I still need it. You think I don’t have needs? I’m 82 and my libido is raging. Look at Carla. Ninety-two. She wants it.”

I stared at Carla. She was small, hunched over, her curled bouffant was tilted with her head, a little to the left. I didn’t think she still wanted it. But Mary called her over anyway. “Carla, how’s your libido?”

I was starting to panic. I would have to call the numbers again in a second. The other women were getting restless.

“My what?” Carla stared at me. Her eyes said that she still wanted it.

“Libido. I said
libido
.”

“My husband’s dead. What am I going to do? Who cares?”

“The young ones are the ones I want. They can still get it up.
The old ones just squish.” Mary smiled at me. “Get a young one. You don’t want to feel the squish.”

“All right, Mary. I’ll try.”

“You can’t fuck? I can tell in your hips you can fuck.” She shook her head at me as I walked away.

B9

They all stared at me and waited for me to call the next number. They held their blotters – shaking and salivating.

I HAD LEARNED FLIRTATIONS IN RUSSIAN WHILE
Lev was gone, but by the time I saw him again I had forgotten them all. My hair was growing out at the roots. I had given up making it into the Twin Palms. The women had stopped donning their fur coats as the weather became warmer and warmer. The bright days stretched longer and longer. They stomped around the sidewalk in silk and polyester. Bright knits in clashing patterns. They exposed their arms, wrinkled and sagging. The jewels on their hands could not obscure their aging fingers. With the furs gone they looked like immigrants again. Inexpensive fabrics and ill-fitting dresses and pant sets. The older women wore gauzy tops over satin shirts and covered the sag of their arms with volumes of sheer sleeves in melons and chartreuse. Their husbands and lovers clutched on to the fabric and led them upstairs. They were relics of the old world again. They were escaping the villages and gray Eastern Bloc high-rises the Soviets admired, our
bloki.

When Lev parked again I was returning from Fairfax with a loaf of rye in my hand. He said something to me I couldn’t understand, his accent newly thick. He repeated himself. Asked if he would get in trouble for parking here today. I told him I didn’t know. Asked him where he had been, as if I had any claim to him. He didn’t act surprised. He had been in Russia. I nodded. He was trying to shake off his accent again. Re-acclimate. He
drew out his words carefully, overstated them, and asked how the weather had been. I had hoped we would have moved on to more probing topics. He stared at my hair, at the light strands coming in at the roots, making the dark brown look cheap, and fake. My dishwater blond was coming back. I quickly told him it had been hot here. Summer came early.

“In Russia it’s still snowing.”

After weeks of anticipation our meeting was underwhelming. Had he thought about me at all? I wanted to ask him where he went that last night. Who he had allowed to move his car in the morning. Who she was.

Instead, I said, “It must have been very cold.”

He smiled and said, “Like Poland.”

I smiled and nodded. Wanting him to say more so I could answer him.

“So it was good?” was all I could come up with.

He pulled out his buzzing cell phone and I saw the rings tattooed on his fingers. He smiled at me and turned away. Walked down the street.

He was a thief. A prisoner. He had black ink puckered in squares on his forefinger and pinky. How had I not seen them before? He looked back at me and waved as he walked away, toward the Twin Palms. It was the most attention he had ever paid me. He remembered me and remembered I was Polish. He looked thinner today. Younger. I had wished him back and he had come back.

ON WEEKDAYS I RUN FOUR MILES AROUND
the track at the high school across the street from the stores that sell Gefilte fish and latkes. I run and watch the old women push carts and pull groceries and go back to their apartments called The Hawaiian and The Tropical. They walk slowly, hunched over. One step at a time. Some wear
chustki
on their heads. Some just simple buns. They push and pull and walk down the street back home. My grandmother is doing this walk, in Poland. She leaves her tenement and makes the walk, past the decaying shops to the market. To buy small wild strawberries. Soups and potatoes. She carries the bags home, slowly, careful on the uneven sidewalks. She walks back to her empty apartment, the one room she occupies in the large apartment with high ceilings. Her room is crowded with crocheted tablecloths, photographs of us, small trinkets mismatched and misshapen, and her blaring television carefully tucked into the corner, directly opposite her sloping twin bed. She only watches American shows from the 1980s. Soap operas like
Santa Barbara
.

 

One man’s voice is dubbed over the American shows and he is the voice of Polish TV. He does the men’s voices and the women’s voices. He does the children’s voices. He does the voices of dogs and cats and birds. His voice is hypnotic.

I watch these old women in my neighborhood make this walk and I know that I never will, this old woman babushka walk. I will never wear a
chustka
on my head or put my swollen feet into perforated Eastern Bloc shoes with their American brand names. I will not crawl down the street, hunchbacked and slow. These are remnants of the old country and I am not that anymore. Or I never was.

 

They used to come to America, my grandparents. They took over our apartment in Poland, giving up their own village home because the Communists would only allow one dwelling per husband and wife. They took over our apartment in case we ever wanted to come back, in case America did not work out.

When they visited, it was always for a few months, and nearly every day they would wait for my parents to go to work and take out the old green Buick. My grandfather would pull it out of the driveway carefully, and my grandmother would put me in the backseat and beg me not to tell.

I never would. I would stick my head out the back window and pretend I was flying. My grandmother would play with the radio dials while my grandfather drove and looked out for police because what they were doing was not allowed. We would only drive around the block a few times but it felt like forever. I was free.

My grandfather taught me how to ride my bike.

My bike was pink and had tassels and it seemed much too big for me. He shouted commands at me in Polish as cars passed us and I wobbled. He had stuck the wooden handle of a broomstick in the back of the seat, above the wheel. He kept me riding in a line by holding on to it tightly. We lived in a brown-grassed cul-de-sac in Texas. Where the Air Force families lived. Not us, we were just immigrants. They were all transients and I never knew who most of them were, moving one year after another. We slowly rode past our house with the large Reagan/Bush
poster in the front yard. It was red and white and blue, and most importantly, American.

When my grandfather let go of the broomstick handle I sailed down the street, felt the wind, felt the concrete beneath me and felt free for once. Until the pack of boys with the new and clean bikes saw me fly by, long broomstick handle bound to my bike, toothless grandfather trailing behind me. I felt my cheeks burn as they laughed, pointing at the broomstick, and I rounded the corner, falling out of sight.

“
Głupia!
” My grandfather came up and pulled me off the ground. I left him, my bicycle, and the broomstick on the street and ran for home.

MY UNEMPLOYMENT CHECK CAME EARLY THIS
week. I was going to try and make it last this time. I had to make sure I did not answer the phone between 9 and 7 if my mother called. As far as she knew I was still an employee of the FastTrak Employment Agency.