Roses & Ruin

Chapter 26 (Lexi)

        I remember I was seven. I don't remember the color of my bedspread or what toys I had in my room back then, but I do remember one night waking in the middle of the night to my mother gently shaking me, telling me to keep quiet and come with her. I asked mom where we were going because I could tell it was still very late and dark outside, but all she told me was that we were going for a drive.

We tip-toed out of the house and into a waiting car. There was a man at the wheel of the car and he sped off with me in my mother's lap without even a seatbelt on.

I noticed a familiar bag on the floor of the back seat. It was my bag and it was packed. The slightly larger bag beside it must've been my mothers.

        When I peeked up at her she looked worried. Her eyes were fixed in front of her watching the road as we drove further and further from home. "Mama?" I kept peeking up at her from behind my messy bed head that kept strands of my pale hair over my face. 

When she finally glanced down at me I remember her warm fingers brushing my hair back and away from my forehead. "Kuda my idem?" (Where are we going?) I asked for a second time. "V priklyucheniya" (on an adventure) she told me.

        It blurs a bit after that, but from talking with my mother years later about that night and some of my own foggy memory as a little girl I know what came next was my mom handing the man who drove the car a thick envelope.

The man had thick eyebrows and an even thicker mustache. He had sweat circles under the pits of his shirt and he was as twitchy and cautious as my mother.

He handed her an envelope too.

The man's hand was heavy. I felt it when he gave the top of my head one heavy pat as my mother thanked him a hundred times. Everything was done in whispers. Everything was rushed that night. Mama took her suitcase and I took mine and we walked into a bus station and an hour later we were driving far far away.

        Later in life my mother explained to me that the man I remembered was a friend of my mother's father, my grandfather. He knew shady people who did shady business like making falsified passports and ID cards.

We took a bus out of Russia because it was easier than taking a plane. Less of a paper trail. From Russia we went to Ukraine and from Ukraine we took a small charter plane to Moldova.

My maternal grandpa and grandma fled Russia too once they helped us flee, but we couldn't go to the same place because it was too risky to leave a trail so big.

Mom cried a lot about that. I do remember that, but she tried doing it at night when she thought I was sleeping.

It was my grandparents that told my mom they had friends in Moldova to host us for a few weeks while we set up travel to the U.S.

        We spent a brief amount of time in Romania, where our falsified passports now said we were from, and while other plans were being set in motion. Those months passed in a daze of trains, buses, and planes. Strangers who let us take beds in their homes and smelly motels...and then America. My first home in America.

Most kids get told stories about the big bad wolf to teach them lessons. I was taught why I wasn't allowed to talk about papa or where we used to live. The big bad wolf.

I remember my brothers a little bit from back then. My eldest brother was 10 years older than me though, and the second was 5 years my elder, so they weren't hanging around me much.

I do however remember my little sister a lot. She was my half sister, we had different mother's, but we were close in age and played together.

        I reunited with my half sister when I was forced back to Russia as a teenager, and that was a silver lining in an otherwise upsetting situation. She didn't remember as much about me as I did about her. Mila is two years younger than me, so she was only 5 when I left. We look a lot alike though, more than you think half sisters would.