But I so loved the idea of going to America. I had met Americans before in Yerevan. By the time I was ten, they were coming all the time. And not just teenagers or young maniacs who believed they were going to rebuild the country. Everyday tourists. I would see them on the Northern Avenue and the Cascades and the Republic Square. They would watch the fountains dance in the square near the government offices for hours. They would have their pictures taken by the opera house or beside the statues of Komitas, Khachaturian, and Saroyan. They were from Los Angeles, which I always associated with the movies. They were from New York City, which would be attacked by terrorists when I was five, but by the time I was ten was simply that city with all the skyscrapers and a harbor with the Statue of Liberty. They were from Massachusetts, which I associated with red socks and only later would learn was the name of their baseball team. But all of these Americans were glamorous. They were like rich Armenians who would visit from Lebanon and Syria and Dubai. Maybe they were even more glamorous.
So, Vasily. A couple years after my abduction, an older girl would tell me that he had probably killed my mother. Or, to be exact, he had had her killed. Vasily wasn’t the type to kill someone himself. He had henchmen. He had bodyguards. They would do the Russian businessman’s dirty work.
I remember correcting this girl. I told her that my mother had died in hospital. I told her how it had not been pretty at the end. Not pretty at all. My grandmother and I were there. My mother died of cancer.
But this girl said that maybe Vasily had poisoned her. Injected cancer into her blood.
This was how naive and how crazy we were that she could believe such thing.
She said I should go to the police to have my mother’s death investigated. But by then I was in Moscow—and I wasn’t dancing. Or, at least, I wasn’t dancing ballet. Occasionally I was dancing naked for (mostly) sweaty men, which usually didn’t even involve a stage and a pole. It involved hotel room ottomans and couches and the laps of the men, and then the bedrooms where I would do whatever they wanted. So who in Moscow was I going to tell? What could people in Moscow do? Answer? No one and nothing. They could and would do nothing. Besides, who would have wanted to help me? Why should someone else get involved? What was the point of rescuing a useless orphan whore?
At the time, that was how I thought.
Anyway, Vasily did not have my mother killed. It was only lung cancer that made it so she couldn’t breathe and was always in agony.
But Vasily certainly swooped in when she died.
And then I was fucked—and that is an American pun, of course, but it was also my life.
…
Why did that older girl think Vasily had had my mother murdered? She overheard Vasily talking to a bodyguard about us when he was visiting Moscow. My mother had seen through his story that he wanted to make me superb dancer. Really he just wanted to make me superb prostitute—which he did.
Of course, I am not sure that my mother would have wanted me even to become a ballerina. She was clingy with me—not just protective, but needy. Many people noticed. They would tell me that it was because of the earthquake, followed by her husband’s death. She wanted me safe in Yerevan with her, not going away to dance in Russia or Europe or America. I would attend university near our apartment and become a doctor. A pediatrician. I would help Armenia. That was the plan. At least that was her plan. Her mother was a nurse, so why should her daughter not become a doctor?
My grandmother disagreed. She had no objections to me becoming a dancer. I think she had decided that being a doctor (or nurse) was overrated. As Americans say, she was “all in” at the idea of me becoming a ballerina. I tried to bob between the two of them, but one wave or the other would knock me down and give me snootful. My mother would tell me I was a good writer. She had a friend who said that maybe I could become a poet if I wanted to be an artist so bad. Maybe I could become a doctor and a poet. When you’re twelve years old, the future seems to have no limits.
But this was all just talk for me. I would tape my toes and I would rub my feet and I would stretch and toss my shoes—especially my toe shoes, which made me so proud—into my dance bag, and off I would go to studio. Some days, I would practically skip down the sidewalk. That was how happy dance made me when I was a girl.
…