“Smuggling a Boy into Baba’s” (Story 10, Excerpt 1)

The following excerpt is the first part of “Smuggling a Boy into Baba’s”. You can read the second part here.

On the Friday that I was supposed to meet Theo in the city, I kept dropping Edgar’s lens caps. One of the models even asked me, in a bitchy tone, why I was staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just daydreaming.”

I was so trapped in my head that even the smell of the Belgian waffles from downstairs didn’t torture me. Instead, they made me nauseous.

I was not sure that meeting Theo was a good idea. No matter how many times I reminded myself that I gave in to him too easily, that I always made myself too available, I still agreed to his every whim. In fact, I was always so mesmerized by Theo that I practically threw myself at him.

I kept checking my skin in the makeup artist’s mirror and couldn’t decide if I was having a good or bad hair day. I wanted Theo to be completely blown away by me, since this would be the first time we would be seeing each other since the end of the semester.

After work, I came home with Pad Thai to share with Baba. She asked me about the Puerto Ricans who made the food. Of course, Puerto Ricans had not made the Thai food.

“They were nice,” I said.

“Huh?” She asked.

I didn’t have enough energy to explain so I went to the kitchen and removed two plates from the cupboard. I often shared takeout with Baba because her kitchen was small and not exactly functional.

The oven didn’t work and was stuffed with old papers, like a filing box. The stove, which Baba mostly used to boil water and heat borscht, was covered with little ceramic trinkets and a picture frame with the paper photo of a child that came with the original packaging. Why couldn’t Baba put a picture of me there?

I spooned some Thai food (less for me, and more for Baba) on each of the plates. My stomach still hurt, and I wasn’t sure how much I could eat, even though the food smelled delicious. I also didn’t want to look bloated.

I brought the plates to the living room and set them on a large ottoman covered with a red and black embroidered Ukrainian cloth. Baba and I watched CNN and ate quietly until she started to shake her fork at footage of violence in another country.

“It’s okay, Baba,” I said. “Just eat your dinner.”

I didn’t like that she watched CNN because she didn’t understand most of it anyway. She would work herself up over things that didn’t make sense to her, and this stress was harmful to her blood pressure. But she would never let me change the channel.

“You go out tonight?” She asked.

“Yes, but not until nine,” I said.

“Where you go so late?” Baba asked, angrily. “What kind of young woman goes out at that time?”

“We are going to a bar, Baba,” I said.

“What kind of girl goes out at nine? What you thinking?”

“No one gets to the bar until 10,” I said. “I’ll be okay. Lots of people go out at this hour. It’s actually very safe.”

“Are you meeting boyfriend?” she asked.

“I guess,’” I said. “I don’t know.”

I didn’t want to eat anymore. I tried to push the noodles to one side of the plate and covered them with my napkin so Baba wouldn’t ask me why I wasn’t eating. I was getting up to shower and throw the rest of my food in the garbage when Baba tugged on my sleeve.

“You go to a hilly billy bar?” she asked.

“What’s a hilly billy bar?”

I could only ever understand bits and pieces of her stories. I understood Ukrainian pretty well, but Baba’s language was not pure Ukrainian; it was a mash-up of words from German, Ukrainian, English, and sometimes even Polish.

The Polish came from the three Polish tenants who lived upstairs and also from Baba’s other Polish friends. The German came from World War II and the period of time she lived in Germany with Dido, my deceased grandfather.

“Oh! At hilly billy bar, you would hear a man with a beautiful voice, singing country songs. Everyone loved those country songs,” said Baba. “When I lived in Germany, I was a cook at a hilly billy bar. That was right after I first met Dido. We were both lonely and spoke Ukrainian.”

“And that was it? You fell in love?” I asked.

Baba didn’t answer my question because she was so caught up in her own memory. I laughed.

“I was in the kitchen, in the back. I made everyone spätzle. The Americans came there to listen to hilly billy. They loved it.”

“I never knew you worked in a kitchen.”

“I hate it. I stopped after two weeks. It was hot in kitchen, and my back hurt from standing,” she said. “The music was nice, but my head spin after while. Too much, too loud.”

“Yeah, I hate when the music is so loud at bars that you can’t talk to anyone.”

“What?” Asked Baba.

I never knew why I bothered to respond because could hardly hear me anyway. We might as well have been in the loud hilly billy bar, trying to have a conversation.

“I remember woman name Hrooba Ashka who kept trying to steal food from us. We think she had a poor French lover who she gave food to. One day Dido saw she steal tomatoes from us, but he was afraid she was going to hurt him. She was very fat.”

Hrooba meant fat, which was pretty much how I felt with my stomach bloated and hurting from nervousness. I was Hrooba Veda.

I still had to shower and get changed. To be honest, I did want to keep listening to Baba’s story about the hilly billy bar, but I didn’t want to be late. It took so much effort to understand her stories.

“Baba, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I have to get ready. I wish I was going to a hilly billy bar, but I probably won’t be.”

I threw out my food and left her there with CNN. Before getting into the shower, I called Mama and asked her to tell Baba not wait up for me. I really wasn’t sure what time I would get home. I knew the bars were open until 4, but I also didn’t know how the night would go.

I might stay for an hour, be annoyed and then leave. Or I might have a great time and stay out all night. I might not even come home until the next day. I didn’t want to set any rules for myself.

After my shower, I spent way too much time thinking about my outfit. Though I wanted to look great for Theo and out at the bar, I would be traveling alone and didn’t want to attract attention to myself.

My long sleeveless tank could have passed for a mini dress, but I opted to pair it with tights because I didn’t want to call too much attention to my legs. I also wore a small sweater that I could bunch up and put in my bag once I got to the bar. I really didn’t want to show off too much skin.

No matter how liberated a woman I was, I still didn’t feel comfortable walking around by myself and showing that much skin. As much as I laughed to myself about Baba’s opinions regarding women going out late, part of me still felt the way she did. Sure, I liked attention, but not from men I didn’t like or didn’t want to like.

I was about to leave for the PATH when the house phone rang. I usually didn’t answer that phone because Baba had many friends who also didn’t really speak English.

In order to get to the phone Baba had to leave CNN, walk down the long hallway, and sit down in an overstuffed armchair covered with two different types of Ukrainian embroidered towels. The receiver volume was set to such a high volume that I could hear Mama.

“Don’t wait for Veda,” Mama said.

When she got off the phone, Baba took her blood pressure monitor and began to measure her blood pressure. She kept a notebook next to the monitor so that she could record her blood pressure reading daily.

I couldn’t stand to watch her perform this obsessive task because it reminded me of obsessive things I used to do, like only signing my name on paintings a certain way.

The monitor beeped loudly as if Baba were in danger, and she waved at me to come over to her and look at the screen. The systolic reading was blank, and I got scared for a moment, thinking that maybe I had done something to make Baba ill.

But we tried it again, realizing the machine was wrong. Baba recorded the number, 140 over 72 in her notebook. I sat down and began to roll the white beads of Baba’s rosary between my fingers.

Baba noticed that I was playing with her rosary and told me that she had jewelry that I could wear to the bar, if I wanted to borrow something. Baba showed me a handful of gold-plated chains; they were Baba’s treasures, but I thought they were kind of ugly and poorly made.

One ring looked like something I would get from those coin prize machines at the bowling alley. Another necklace looked like it could have been part of a chain pull for a ceiling fan. I could tell she was trying to keep me from leaving by showing me the jewelry, but it wasn’t going to work.

“I need to leave now,” I said. “Please go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I don’t know what time I’m going to be home.”

I was sad to leave her alone, especially since I still wasn’t sure that seeing Theo was a good idea. I wanted to hear more about the hilly billy bar, which was probably infinitely more exciting than whatever bar we would visit tonight.

At least the PATH station was comforting in its filth and crowdedness. Every time I rode the train, I was less disgusted and more reassured by it. The smell was familiar and not unappealing.

It did not smell of urine or body odor, like one would expect, but of must and old. It smelled like an orange upholstered chair from the 1970s that could be found in an antique store. It had been cool and innovative once. Now, it was just dependable.

I was so used to that smell, but I still noticed it every single time. Some things I could notice over and over but never really think about them. I thought about the PATH train, and I knew deep inside that the smell would later break my heart, reminding me of one of the best summers of my life.

I was so aware of that impending heartbreak, but I loved every detail anyway.

Anyway, I was really happy that I had decided to dress conservatively, at least for the train, because it was crowded. I had to stand, holding a pole so that I wouldn’t fall over. I was pressed up against the people near me, and I was happy to have my sweater so that I wouldn’t be so exposed.

When I met Theo above ground, on 23rd and 6th, he was wearing dark jeans and a grey cotton t-shirt with a black splatter pattern on the front. His face was dark around his mouth, and his hair was just messy enough. But I wasn’t as attracted as I thought I would be.

Yes, I thought he looked great, but he seemed distant; it had been months since I had seen him. My heart sank when I saw his friends.

“Hey,” I said, trying to act casual. “You brought friends?”

“Yes, Veda. Meet Eric and Sam,” said Theo.

“I wish I had known,” I said. “I could have asked Madsy to come.”

He smiled and put his arm over my shoulder, pulling me toward him as if I was his prize. Eric was shorter, but he was very handsome, arguably more handsome than Theo.

Sam wasn’t that good looking, but he was wearing really cool shoes, snakeskin. I liked his taste in footwear.

The four of us walked about six blocks, and actually Theo held my hand, something he didn’t like to do in public. He didn’t like any public display of affection. I remember the one time he hugged me quickly on the quad at school. I was so shocked that I had to run home and tell my roommates about it.

The only time he ever held my hand was when we were alone. He might be telling me a story, so excited that he would grab my hand and hold it tightly. I loved this so much that sometimes I couldn’t even pay attention to him. I was too focused on the feeling of his fingers intertwined with mine.

His hand-holding gave me false confidence, the sense that he could be mine no matter what.

Why I wanted that was a mystery to me. I could tell that Theo was unhappy with himself. He was disappointed with the world, disappointed that his fantasies about life, especially about work and relationships, could never be real.

However, when the passionate boyishness emerged, I was such a fool for Theo. I was addicted to the possibility that he could care about me too.

But I didn’t let it stop me from flirting with the other two as we walked.

“So why would handsome guys like you hang out with someone like Theo?” I asked, clearly joking but satisfied with myself.

Theo didn’t seem to react to my flirtatious behavior. He kept holding my hand and walking straight ahead, through the crowds of people who were always, eternally, walking too slowly for him.

Theo was always in a rush, always ready to get to the next thing. Even in bed, he would jump up immediately after we finished to get a snack, clean up, or get dressed, right away. Lingering was not Theo’s style.

“Well, he promised to buy us drinks,” said Eric. “That’s one reason.”

I laughed. Would Theo buy me a drink? Drinks?

I felt sexy. The air was humid and thick, too warm for the sweater, so I took it off to reveal my bare shoulders.

(Photo by travelswiss)