My mother was a secretary at a brandy factory in Yerevan, and her boss was the president himself. My grandmother—my mother’s mother—was a nurse. The three of us had lived together since my father had died years and years ago. I was toddler. He’d died in an accident at the hydroelectric plant where he worked. Electrocuted—one of six men who died that morning, but the only one who died quickly. The other five would drown, which people tell me is a much worse way to die. I think that’s probably true from the time a guard at the cottage held my head under the water in the bathtub. Nearly drowning us was one of the ways they would discipline us. There are no bruises. There are no scars. The merchandise still looks good. There is even a word for this: noyade. It means execution by drowning. Comes from French Revolution. I looked it up.
My mother’s boss was one of those crazy-savvy, post-Soviet players. He went from communist to capitalist like very exotic chameleon. His name was Vasily. Super smooth. He knew all the angles and how to play them. He was a Russian oligarch who came to Armenia from Volgograd and bought a brandy factory on the outskirts of the city for nothing. It might have been a scandal, but it was just one more factory bought by just one more oligarch.
When my mother died, he was there for me. In the long run, of course, this would be earthquake-level bad. Life-changing bad.
But those first days and then first weeks after my mother died? I felt safe. I felt like princess. I felt that in the end—no matter what—everything would be okay.
…
I grew up speaking Armenian and Russian, but I started learning English in school when I was seven. By the time I was fifteen, I was fluent. This increased my value in Vasily’s eyes: I was exotically beautiful, still slender, still slight. With some TV time I’d be able to speak like courtesan after fucking American bankers when they were in Moscow for business. That was the plan.
My teachers, Inga and Catherine, really used the word courtesan. I think they preferred it to whore.
…
In the years before I was born, my mother told me, Yerevan only had electricity for a few hours a day. Never all day. After the earthquake and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenians shut down the nuclear plant on the earthquake fault line. This was a good decision if you didn’t want two Chernobyls in one decade, but it was bad if you are trying to build democracy. Blackouts made people miss the Soviet Union. My parents’ neighbors said they wished that they lived in villages instead of the city, because the villagers at least had cow shit they could burn to stay warm.
Some people said that peasants in the countryside also ate better than we did, but I don’t remember being hungry.
And by the time I was born in 1996, the electricity was back. I could play with my toys all I wanted after dark.
…
Yerevan was a great city, even after the earthquake and the end of the Soviet Union. As little girl, I thought it had to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. The buildings were made of volcanic rock. The opera house was like palace. There were statues and sculptures in our neighborhood wherever we turned.
And it was in Yerevan where I took ballet. Like lots of little girls, I danced all the time. Unlike lots of little girls, I was very good. I was going to be next Victoria Ananyan—next “Velvet Bird.” My dance teacher seemed to think so. I danced every moment when I was not studying or playing, and then I stopped playing and danced even more. I was at the studio six days a week.
Someday, I thought, I was going to lead a glamorous life in Russia and then in America. But first I was going to dance Swan Lake and Gayane at the Spendarian Opera House. First I was going to train with the Moscow State Academy.