My 20+ Years In America. Based on a true story

Frola rarely spoke openly of their poverty. Tonya could only recall one occasion when she had not wanted to eat something that her mother had cooked.

Frola burst out, “You do not like it? If you had ever tried to dig through frozen winter soil to find some mistakenly left grain, potato or some vegetables, you would like everything that is edible.”

Whenever Tonya did not like a food, she recalled her mother’s words: “It’s edible.” In general Tonya developed a good appetite and enjoyed most foods. She grew up a very healthy child compared to Ludmila, who was always in poor health and easily became sick.

Tonya was in the 7

grade when she overheard the story about her grandmother from a conversation between her mother and her closest girlfriend. She was shocked to find out about her heritage and that she had a grandfather who was affiliated with the enemy, the White Army. It was a heavy load on her shoulders, and it seemed impossible to carry on normally. She had to keep it a secret for the rest of her life. Would she be able to do that?

The secret was out just before she was to become a member of the Komsomol Party.[2 - The Communist Union of Youth] To pass the test necessary to join, she needed to be a good and honest student, have respect for teachers and elders, be helpful to people who were less fortunate and defend those who were younger. Each student was called upon to do everything that was asked of them by the elder members of the Komsomol Party and its central community. In short, they only wanted the best of the best.

Tonya fit all of these qualities, but she could never be truly honest because she could never expose her deepest secret. She was afraid. She had to pretend she didn’t know about her heritage, at least so her mother would be satisfied in thinking that she didn’t know. She became a member of the Komsomol Party like most of her classmates, but she always felt the contradiction between her conscience and her secret. It was too much for her and began to eat away at her inside.

However, during the summer after Tonya finished the 7

grade, she had an experience that changed her feelings about her family secret. The children from her neighborhood would often go to the river to swim together. Her mother only allowed her to go if she took a safety flotation device, which just happened to be the inner tube from a car tire. A group of children from her neighborhood walked together for more than an hour to reach the river. The portion of the river in which the children swam was not dangerous; it was a slow-flowing, calm river which then entered the much more dangerous mountain river, with its hazardous frigid temperatures, fast flow, and dangerous undercurrents beneath the surface.

Every summer there were always a few tragic accidents where someone drowned. The idea came spontaneously to Tonya that she should attempt to cross the mountain river as a test. She knew an approximate place that was slightly safer, where a few adults had managed to swim across. If she survived, she would forget about her secret. If not, she would take it to her grave, but either way she would not suffer anymore.

She began boasting to her girlfriends about how she would try to cross the mountain river.

She asked, “Who will go with me?”

The girls starting yelling at her, “Are you crazy? Do you want us to bury you?”

She became worried they would never let her try, so she replied; “Don’t worry, if I lose my strength, I will turn back.”

She walked confidently to the fork where the calm river rushed into the mountain river. It was Sunday, one of the hottest days in the middle of July. Tonya looked at the groups of people along the river and felt a little bit jealous of all of them. They lived their lives without secrets; how good that must feel for them. Everywhere people were joking and laughing; some were singing or playing cards or chess, and some were playing with balls. There were groups of drunken people. Most important, she told herself, was not to hesitate, but to be confident.

The cold water crippled Tonya for a few seconds. She had to move fast and not let the cold water paralyze her muscles. In one or two minutes she felt better, and she worked fast with her hands, peacefully breathing in and out to prevent herself from tiring and to keep her breathing in balance. Tonya got a few feet from the riverbank when she heard, “Where is that stupid girl going?”

She was still far away from the middle of the river. Tonya worked hard with her hands to fight the flow of the water. She tried her best to keep herself on a safe path through the current. When she glanced back at the riverbank, she realized that the current had swept her farther down the river, away from the calm area where she would have been able to safely cross. She wanted to survive, but obviously it was not possible: she was losing her strength very quickly. She dove in and out of the water in order to get a few quick breaths of air.

In her mind she continued to hear the words, “stupid girl, stupid girl.” She immediately regretted this idea. She wanted to live, but it was now too late. Tonya struggled to keep her head out of the water for air. It was her last breath.

She had no strength to fight anymore when she felt a strong hand grab onto her and pull her out of the water. She could not hear what the man was screaming. She was choking heavily and coughing up water. The man was behind her, and he kept her head above the water by grabbing onto her hair. When Tonya was finally pulled out of the water, the man screamed and swore at her worse than she had ever heard before.

The man spit out the water that had filled his mouth and told her, “If you had gotten even a few feet farther, I would not have bothered to go after you. You have to thank God that you are lucky. God caught you by the palm of His hand.”

Tonya was still coughing heavily, trying to rid her system of the water. Her girlfriend and another woman ran to her asking, “Are you all right?”

With no strength left, she fell on the ground and started to cry hysterically. Someone tried to comfort her, but she did not know what she was crying about. Whether it was her happiness or relief over still being alive she couldn’t be sure, but she knew that she would never suffer from her secret anymore. Yes, she was reborn and she was a different Tonya now. Her girlfriend continued to scold her for such a stupid act, but Tonya was relieved that never again would she have to walk down that painful road. She shook her shoulders and left behind the heavy weight that she had carried for months. She would no longer return in her thoughts to the fact that her family had kept from her the secret of their history.

* * *

Tonya’s father, Stepan, worked all the time and saw little of his precious girls, but it was always the happiest time when he was home. He was a soft, quiet man who worked hard to provide for his family but never hid his love toward his daughters. He always stood up for them, no matter what the circumstances. Tonya thought that there was no one in the whole world kinder than her father. He not only showed kindness to his own family, but everyone around Stepan at one point or another experienced his kind and giving heart. Any neighbors who needed help were immediately assisted without hesitation and without thought of reimbursement.

Very often after a hard day’s work Stepan would take his daughters and bring them with him to drop off his pick-up truck at work, after which they would take the bus home. One of these times when they were driving, a man flagged down her father and asked which way he was headed. Stepan avoided the man’s question, instead asking him, “Where do you need to go?” After the man answered, Stepan laughed and said, “Well that’s in the same direction I’m going!” and proceeded to drive the man to his destination. After dropping him off, he turned the truck around to go drop off the truck at work. Tonya asked her father, “Papa, why did you lie to that man? We were going the opposite way,” and Stepan replied, “When you lie for something good, it is not a sin. I did not want that man to feel obligated to repay me or feel badly that I went out of my way.”

Years later, when Tonya was married and living in a house with her own family, she learned that her neighbor was a coworker of her father’s. In one of their conversations, he told Tonya, “Your father was a fool. Everyone who worked with him was able to buy their own car, but he never was able to collect enough money even for a motorcycle.” She did not answer, but came to the conclusion that if the world were filled with “fools” like her father, the world would be a much better place to live in.

Sometimes Tonya wondered how her father could still be so kind, particularly after experiencing the horrors of World War II. Every day during the war, he had been sure that he would lose his life, either today or tomorrow. He had always imagined that each day might be his last. In short breaks between the fighting, he never dreamed or made plans for the future when the war would be over. He witnessed several comrades who would speak of their dreams during one moment and then be killed the very same day. He did not focus on the future, but rather lived his days in the present, fully expecting to be killed. The only wish that he would allow himself before entertaining thoughts of death was to sleep on his own bed, on clean sheets and in clean pajamas.

At night during relocation, he and his comrades devised a method to sleep while walking, with two people in the middle and two others on the sides, linked arm in arm at the elbows. The two people on the sides acted as guides so the two in the middle could continue their march with closed eyes. They could change places every thirty to forty minutes. It was not a perfect method, but it was the only way that they could get any rest.

Tonya’s father lost five brothers during World War II. Three of them were killed, and two were declared MIA. Their neighbor, who had been serving in the same battalion as one of his brothers, was captured, sent to a concentration camp and later escaped. He witnessed how Stepan’s brother, Nicholas, was killed. When he returned home, Stepan’s mother relentlessly pursued this information until he gave in and told her how it had occurred.

Her son had been badly wounded and lay on the ground motionless when the German soldiers came around to check the bodies for signs of life. When they reached Nicholas, they saw that he was still breathing and moaning from pain, so they stuck the ends of their bayonets into each of his eyes. Then they pierced his heart with the sharp end to ensure that he was indeed dead.

This information proved to be much more than Stepan’s mother could handle, and she collapsed after hearing of how her son had suffered. After the loss of her children, she lost pieces of her life along with them, paralyzed by grief. It was not long after that she died.

Since childhood, Tonya remembered her father often talking of his brothers, recalling the things they liked to do and his favorite memory of each of them.

Every family in Russia had experienced the loss of loved ones during the war, and people everywhere worked hard to overcome their grief and rebuild what remained of their lives. They looked forward to happier times in their lives and regained their dreams of building families and their hopes of a better future for their children.

* * *

When Ludmila was born, Frola still continued to work as a cashier at a convenience store. At the end of the day, it was her responsibility to report to her manager and give him the key and the profits for the day. One day she left Ludmila home sick with the neighbor girl. She worried about her child’s well-being, making her anxious all day. All she could think about was how to get home to her faster. After her job was complete, she could not find the manager who was supposed to be on duty at this time. She waited for him another 40 minutes after closing, but she still could not find him. Unable to locate him, she closed and locked the store, taking the responsibility upon herself in order to return home to her child.

Ironically, the store was robbed that night, and Frola was blamed for what happened. Frola was positive that the manager who was supposed to close the store that evening was behind the robbery because he never showed up at his designated time. He knew her child was sick because she had informed him of her predicament at the start of the day, so he presumed that she would be in a hurry to get home, making her the perfect scapegoat for his crime. Nevertheless, the authorities needed someone to blame, so Frola was accused of robbing the store. She was found guilty, so her only options were to go to prison or pay for the stolen items.

Everything of value in Frola and Stepan’s home was sold, along with all the goods that Stepan had brought home from Berlin after the war ended on May 9, 1945. With Berlin completely occupied, each soldier had been allowed to take anything they liked back to their home in a carriage. Stepan had amassed a sizeable amount of goods from this event. Stepan and Frola were lucky to be able to pay off her debt, and Stepan never allowed her to work again.

All of Stepan’s happiness rested in his daughter, Ludmila, but he longed for a boy. When Frola learned that she would be having another child, she wanted to have an abortion, but he insisted that she continue with the pregnancy in hopes that she would bear a son. Frola felt that it was too soon to have another child because she would not be able to give them each the attention that they needed. It was difficult to bring up children in the severe Siberian climate, especially in a house without any modern conveniences. Nevertheless, Tonya was born 1 year and 9 months after Ludmila.

When Tonya was born, her father was so upset that she wasn’t a boy that for the first time he drank himself to the point where he could hardly walk. He wanted nothing to do with the baby and ignored Tonya for 9 months. One day when he was ready to pick her up with his hands, she was so scared that she started screaming. She did not want him to come close to her. It took some time for him to earn Tonya’s trust and for her to accept him.

As Tonya grew, she became her father’s “boy.” She did all kinds of work outside with him, and he taught her many skills that usually only boys would learn. He taught her to be a survivor, and she tried her best to be who her father wanted her to be. It was total affection between her father and his daughters, and he lived and breathed for them.

* * *

When Tonya was ten years old and in the fourth grade, she first learned about the nearby school of music. One of her classmates was enrolled in the school, and he often talked about his experiences there. Being the curious child that she was, Tonya dreamed of attending herself. She begged her parents to let her enroll, but her dreams were soon dashed with her mother’s talks of money. Nevertheless, Tonya’s father, who always stood up for his daughter, won this battle, and she was allowed to audition. Her mother relented, thinking she would not be accepted and talk of the school would soon be forgotten.

The school of music was a small structure, housing only three practice rooms and a director’s office. Three talented musicians who were in exile during Stalin’s repression, all from the Moscow Conservatory, founded the school. Pianist Georgi Georgievich Struve and violinists Saryan Nicholas Kaprelovich and Anna Vasilevna Dizendor all played a role in the beginnings of the school. After serving time in labor camps under Stalin, they were not allowed to return to their original home regions, but were restricted to living in Siberia.

The school offered classes in piano, violin, and accordion, as well as classes in musical theory. The director’s office also doubled as a classroom for the violinists. Despite its small size, the school of music was exceptionally well regarded and extremely exclusive in its selection of students. Every year, over one hundred children applied, yet only eight to ten of the brightest students were accepted due to its small size.

In spite of these daunting prospects, Tonya was chosen along with seven other children who had been accepted. She was eleven years old at that time and had been accepted only for the accordion class. After completing two years of study, the students begin to learn piano; however, the lessons were only for twenty minutes a week as they were designed to only cover general knowledge.

One Sunday when Tonya was walking downtown, she heard the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata playing loudly over the radio. She was stunned by its beautiful melody, frozen in place as she listened. The music touched a deep part of her soul; at 14 years old, she didn’t know such joy even existed. She fell in love with the piano, and it became her purest source of happiness.

She often stopped on her way to the school of music in an office supply store where pianos were sold. She would wait for a customer to come and open the lid so she could catch a glimpse of its black and white keys. Her heart would leap to her throat, and she was thrilled as she watched their fingers dance over each note; she dreamed that the piano was her own.

Much to Tonya’s happiness, the school of music was moved to a new building in the center of downtown. It became one of the most significant buildings in the area due to its large size and striking architecture. There was plenty of room for instruments, so she would remain at the school in one of its many music rooms to continue practicing, even after formal lessons were finished. Every waking moment was spent sitting at a piano, and the school of music became her home.

The last year of high school, before Tonya’s 10

grade graduation, her father talked her mother into renting a piano so she would be able to practice at home. Despite having such immediate access to the piano, her mother never let her practice more than two hours straight when she was more than willing to stay at the piano all day. It was never enough time. During a parent-teacher conference, the mathematics and physics teacher told Tonya’s parents that she was a candidate to graduate with a gold medal, and that she had good mathematics and physics abilities. After hearing this, Tonya’s mother wanted her to study in school and spend far less time on the piano.