My Sergei (20 page)

Going on this tour was so different from our amateur days. We opened that year in Great Falls, Montana, I think, and the finale
wasn’t ready until the actual day of the show. Everything was always coming together at the last second. It was hard to keep
all the cities and towns straight, places like Muskegon, Fort Wayne, East Lansing, Kalamazoo, Erie, and Binghamton. Not exactly
Paris or Copenhagen.

On the road during our first Stars on Ice tour.

But we never really got tired of life on the road. The hotels were always nice, sometimes even beautiful, and in each city
we discovered our favorite restaurants. We saw friends all over the country who had moved from Russia, and Sergei loved to
go to hockey games whenever we could, which was pretty often. I hated the suitcases, wearing the same outfits for months at
a time, packing them up after a late show and a reception, sometimes leaving at two o’clock in the morning. Those receptions
were never fun: sitting at a table and signing autographs for the sponsors and their friends as they walked in. They’re all
eating food, drinking, and you have to sign while you’re sitting there hungry and thirsty.

The Stars on Ice bus was fun, though. It had bunk beds, a small kitchen, two televisions, a refrigerator, and several couches.
It was a good spot to talk and relax. But I must say, I missed cooking whenever we were on tour. I even missed cleaning. Sometimes
at restaurants I felt like going into the kitchen and saying, “Excuse me. Can I help you with something? Washing the dishes,
maybe?”

We finished that tour in the late fall of 1991, won our first World Professional Championships in December, then flew back
to Moscow to rejoin the Russian All-Stars. Tatiana had booked us for some performances in Spain, but when we got down there,
something went wrong, and the show was canceled. We ended up staying in a little hotel outside Barcelona, waiting for this
mix-up to be straightened out. We stayed there two weeks, playing soccer, drinking wine, eating delicious food. But we were
not getting paid. Not four thousand dollars a week. Not a dime. Tatiana kept telling us that any day now it all would be settled.

Finally Sergei told Tatiana we couldn’t wait any longer. We had the New Year’s show coming up in Garmisch-Partenkirchen again,
and for that we were definitely being paid five thousand dollars. Paul Theofanous, meanwhile, kept sending us faxes at this
little hotel, telling us to leave because he had work for us elsewhere. But the faxes never arrived, because there was only
one person who worked at the hotel, and he didn’t know how to work the machine. We ended up having to take a train out of
there to Madrid, then having to buy expensive business-class tickets to Moscow in order to get there in time to get a visa
for Germany. So many problems I don’t even remember. And that, unfortunately, marked the end of our working relationship with
Tatiana Tarasova.

W
e always had a problem deciding where to go after the
end of one tour and before the start of another. It was a lot of trouble flying back and forth to Moscow, and we didn’t have
a home in the United States. After Garmisch, the Stars on Ice tour picked up again in mid-January, and in the interim Sergei
and I decided to spend ten days with Lynn and Bill Plage near Denver. Lynn handled the publicity for the tour, and the Plages
were old friends of Scott Hamilton.

To get around, we borrowed a huge old car from some friends of the Plages, a Lincoln Continental, which was bigger than anything
either Sergei or I had been in. It was quite a confusing automobile. You had to turn the radio off when you parked it, or
the battery would go dead, which happened to us on two different occasions.

One night we drove to Denver to see Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt’s show, and on the way back to the Plages’ we got lost.
You know how when you are lost and looking for turns, maybe you don’t pay so much attention to the speed you are going? Well,
this must have happened, because suddenly a police car was behind us with its light flashing. But no siren. We didn’t know
anything about this rule, so we kept driving. In Moscow the police cars always turn on the siren. Finally this Denver police
car played its siren. Then Sergei stopped.

It was a woman police officer, and she came around to Sergei’s side of the car. He handed her his Russian driving license.
She started asking him questions, but the car was so huge I couldn’t hear what they were, so I couldn’t translate. I tried
to tell her he didn’t speak English, but she couldn’t hear me either. I had to start yelling.

She said, “What? What are you saying?”

I got out of the car so we could stop yelling at each other. Then things got very scary. She reached for her gun and screamed
at me, “Get back in the car!” Something so rude. I wasn’t used to people speaking to me this way. I didn’t know this rule
about not getting out of the car, and now she was threatening to shoot me.

Finally she calmed down and came around to my side, and I explained we were figure skaters who were lost. She recognized us
then but told us we couldn’t drive this huge car anymore. She said to get in her police car, and she would drive us home.
But first she wanted to take us back to the station to introduce us to her friends. Of course we agreed to do this. It didn’t
seem as if we had a choice.

• • •

At the end of January, I started to feel strange. We were touring with Stars, and we used to have our dinners in the afternoon
between the practice and the evening show. All of a sudden, I couldn’t even smell the food. I was hungry for it, too. The
next day, I couldn’t smell coffee, and I love the smell of coffee.

I wondered what was going wrong with me, and immediately thought, Maybe I’m pregnant. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant, but
I wasn’t using birth control, either. If that sounds crazy, I don’t really have an explanation. As I’ve said, Sergei and I
never really planned anything.

When Sergei and I returned to Moscow during a break in the Stars on Ice tour, I talked to my mom right away. I hadn’t said
anything to Sergei. I was too shy to tell him what I suspected. My mother took me to the hospital, and they gave me a series
of tests, and sure enough, I was pregnant.

My first thought was, I don’t want to have the baby. I was so young—twenty—and I was worried about missing a whole year
of skating. So I told my mother, “Let’s make an appointment, because I probably should have an abortion.”

She listened and said she’d talk to the doctors about this appointment. She wanted me to wait for her in the hallway, and
she went to see them by herself.

It wasn’t until much later that she told me what she did. She knew I wasn’t going to listen only to her, and that I could
be very stubborn when I set my mind on something. So she went to the head doctor and convinced him to tell me that an abortion
would be dangerous.

This doctor came back a little later to where I was waiting and explained to me very gently that if I had an abortion now,
there was a good chance I’d never be able to have any more children. He cited the example of a famous Russian ballerina to
whom this had happened, and this example made me afraid. He said it was too early to schedule such an operation anyway, since
I was only three weeks pregnant. Even if I still wanted the abortion, we’d have to wait another three weeks. So we left it
that I’d go home to think about it.

My mother came back and asked me what the doctor had said. I told her they were concerned it might be a problem, and she said,
“Yes, that’s a good point. It might be a problem. Maybe you should also talk to Father Nikolai about this question.”

I was very confused and undecided. I was scared of this operation, and also a little bit excited at the idea of being pregnant.
That night I still said nothing about the pregnancy to Sergei. He was out late with some of his friends, which upset me, of
course, and the next morning I was still angry with him. I felt sick, and somehow we got into a silly argument. I don’t remember
what it was about, but my hormones must have been making me crazy, because I suddenly blurted out, “I’m pregnant. I’m feeling
bad, and you don’t even care. You could have had a baby, but I’m going to go have an abortion now.”

Sergei was shocked. “Is it true? What are you talking about?” He forgot that I was mad at him, forgot the argument, forgot
even the talk of an abortion. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” He was so excited, and kept holding me and kissing me. “Why
didn’t you tell me, Katoosh?”

We called my mother, and the three of us went to another hospital. I think my mother wanted another opinion, to make sure
I wasn’t too little to have a baby. They did the tests all over again, and I learned my due date was September 20.

I remember coming back from these tests and seeing my mother and Sergei sitting in the hall with these big grins on their
faces. They were so happy. Meanwhile, I was worrying: We’re going to miss a whole year. We’re not going to skate. What’s going
to happen to my body? How am I going to get back in shape?

The first child is scary for a woman. But all they were thinking about was the baby. “We’re going to have a baby,” Seriozha
kept saying, touching me and holding my hand. He looked like a cat lying on its back in the sun. And my mother, too, was excited,
saying: “I’m going to have a grandchild.” So there were no more decisions to be made. I was happy that they were happy, and
they were so sure about my having the baby. Even my father thought it was a good idea. My mom had been twenty when she had
me, and he said it’s better to have children when you’re young and have energy.

I went to talk to Father Nikolai, who has five children of his own. He told me, “It’s so important that you have this first
child, because it’s a gift to you from God.” He asked if we had been using birth control, which is not sanctioned by the Russian
Orthodox church. I told him we had not. Father Nikolai said, “After you have this child, then you can use birth control. But
this first one is a real child from God, because it is a child born from love.”

Sergei and I didn’t tell anyone else. I remember staying at home and watching the Olympic Games in Albertville on television,
and being so nervous and excited for our friends Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, who after a bronze and a silver, finally
won a gold medal in ice dancing. Tatiana had helped get them ready, and it was truly a gorgeous program, intricate and flowing
and dramatic. Afterward we called them to congratulate them. Watching them skate was what really made me want to compete in
the Olympics again. It was the first time this thought settled in my head.

In the pairs, Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev, the Russian pair from Saint Petersburg, were good. I liked their short
program very much, and was happy for them that they won. A part of me wished I was there, although I knew, because we had
turned professional, it was impossible. I wasn’t very sad, not terribly. I never said to Sergei that I thought it was too
bad we weren’t competing. But after watching the other pairs skaters I did think that we still had the energy and technical
skills to compete with anyone. And Sergei was thinking the same thing. We had heard that Brian Boitano had written a letter
to the International Skating Union, requesting that professionals be allowed to compete in the next Olympics, which were just
two years away. So we knew there was at least a glimmer of hope we’d be able to come back. But Sergei and I didn’t discuss
it.

I remember quite well that the first person, outside the family, to congratulate us on my pregnancy was Paul Theofanous. Sergei
told him, and Paul’s immediate reaction was, “Great! Congratulations! You’re going to be a father!”

This is very American. In Moscow, the attitude is quite different. The reaction of friends is more like, “Oh, you’re pregnant.
Lots of work ahead.” It’s not bad news, but it’s certainly not something that you congratulate someone about the way people
do in America. It says a great deal about what kind of life people in Russia expect.

We told Paul that I wanted to keep skating in the Stars on Ice show as long as possible. When we returned to the States after
the Olympic break, Byron Allen, the producer of the show, took me to a hospital for another set of tests, and here they told
us that we were having a baby girl. I thought it was a boy. I was sure of it, in fact. I believed the doctors weren’t seeing
it well.

I’d only had morning sickness one time, but my body was definitely changing. I couldn’t drink coffee or eat chocolate, and
I couldn’t figure out why I was always so weak, why I got tired so fast. I used to get mad at myself when I couldn’t skate
through a whole program without getting exhausted. We were still doing our
Nutcracker
long program in the show, plus another number, plus three group numbers, and I was so tired by the end. Every night I flopped
into my bed thinking, Oh, this feels great. I’m going to have so much energy tomorrow. But I never did.

I couldn’t get it into my head all that was entailed in having a baby. I didn’t expect my body to grow so fast, and I got
so upset when I couldn’t fit into my skating costume. I was crying in my dressing room. Lynn Plage was trying to help me with
my emotions. I fell a couple of times doing the triple salchow throw, so we changed it to a double salchow throw. Also, I
was thinking I shouldn’t eat a lot or I’d gain too much weight. It was just stupid, but it was a lot for me to handle then.
I was worried about whether or not I could finish the tour.