Twelve Hours From the Past

March 5th, 1989

2:00 a.m.

         It's way past my bedtime and yet I can't sleep. I keep running over the events of the day in my head and I can feel the bed almost shaking with me. "This couldn't be happening," I thought again, for the umpteenth time this day. Today I said good bye to the house where I grew up, but it wasn't even the same house. The walls were bare, the rooms stripped of all the furniture, my father walking around the last boxes and bags that I will see again on the train the next morning. I remember not crying when I stepped out the door. Thirteen is still too young to understand the finality of leaving behind all you know and love, at least that's what my parents seem to think, for they pay no attention to my personal grief, but I understand. The pain grips my heart again and this time it's real, I feel the intake of breath stop because of the sharpness of the pain where I can feel my heart beating wildly. I take short breaths, waiting for the pain to recede. It does, in a few minutes my thoughts turn back to events of the day.

         After my mother and I left our apartment she took me to my grandmother's house. It is here that I now lie with my eyes open in the middle of the night, afraid to move, lest I bring the attack back. I think back to December 27th, 1988. I remember saying good-bye to my best friend. She was leaving to United States with her family. The same sense of finality in her apartment that day as I saw today in ours. Tears, boxes, relatives, train tickets on the counter, all the signs of people no longer belonging were visible and yet, I couldn't accept it. Didn't accept it until I came back to my apartment, then the dam broke, I have never cried so much and with such despair and yet I didn't really know what I was crying about, the loss still didn't seem real.

3:00 a.m.

         I still can't fall asleep and so I am looking around the room. All the furniture is familiar, I've been here so many times. This is my cousin's room and she is sleeping on the bed next to me. I move and get up to sit at the table so as not to awaken her should I start crying again. I don't think I have any tears left so I just sit with my head in my hands and that's how I fall asleep.

10:00 a.m.

         I feel someone shaking my shoulder gently. It's my uncle, he came to wake us up and found me still slumped over the desk where I fell asleep a few hours ago. He doesn't ask anything, simply says, "Breakfast is ready, grandma is waiting for you in the kitchen." I get up and walk to the bathroom as if nothing is different from all the other nights I've spent in this house. My grandmother and my aunt are both in the kitchen when I come in. They are speaking softly and don't see me walk in.

         "...close to ten, I think. He already went to the train station and ..." they see me and fall silent as I make my way to the table and sit down. Grandma smiles and gives me my breakfast as my cousins walk in, the younger one runs to the refrigerator and my grandma goes to talk to him. My other cousin, Innochka, sits down next to me. I offer her my plate and she takes half of my sandwich, we eat in silence.

12:00 noon

         I am sitting in my grandmother's living room, watching cartoons with my little brother and my two cousins. I am looking past the TV set not even seeing the cartoons. "This is just a bad dream and I'll wake up and have to go to school." I whisper this again and again, and yet even as I whisper those words, I know that they are nothing more than a feeble attempt to push away the reality, to lock out the truth of what is about to happen.

12:15 p.m.

         My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. I see my mother walk in and at the same time my aunt gently closes the door to the living room. Gradually the voices in the hallway become subdued and all I can hear are incoherent sobs. In the haze that is overcoming me as it did last night I hear the door to the apartment open and close again and as I look out the window I see my mother leaving. Even from the height of the fourth floor I can see her head in her hands and her shoulders shaking as she is shaking, still crying as she walks to the bus stop. She is going to meet us at the train station.

12:50 p.m.

         The last half hour or so passed in a fog. All I can remember is this one sentence playing over and over in my mind: "I will be brave, I will not cry."

         My aunt walks into the room and says that it's time to go. As my brother and I walk out into the hallway, I can feel the stabbing pain coming again and start taking shallow breaths to prevent it from overpowering me. We are met by my grandmother in the hallway. Every word that she said that day is forever etched in my mind and yet I could not repeat them if I wanted to. We say good-bye and I look around for my cousins, but they already went downstairs to the car. I turn back to my grandmother and think again that I must not cry, but then my grandmother breaks down and begins to cry. I could live through anything but that. As the first tears roll down those dear cheeks, everything I had promised myself suddenly becomes meaningless. I only want to scream, cry, and comfort her. I want to tell her that I will stay, that I will never leave her, the one person from whom I learned to true meaning of love, and yet I feel as if it is my fault that she is crying. I know that it is ridiculous, but the awful feeling of guilt would not leave. Still, I hold back the tears and give her a hug again.

         The five steps that I took from my grandmother to the door were perhaps the most difficult ones in my life, but I made it. As I step out the door I hear my aunt saying to my grandmother that we will be together again soon, and I hate her for lying. "We'll never be together again," I think bitterly, "never again," and as I step on the stairwell I hear the door slam shut behind me.

         I feel the finality of that sound. It signals the end of the life I know. The life where being sad meant crying for a few minutes and then going to my room and curling on my bed with a good book. Now I had no room, no book, and no place to go, only cabin #12 on the train that was to take me thousands of miles away from my birthplace and the people I loved.

1:30 p.m.

         The train station is filled with people, most of them our relatives and friends. My parents and my uncle are already there when my brother and I get there, but I don't even notice them. The train will leave in forty-five minutes. Everyone is coming up to me, crying, wishing us luck. I can hear them, but I am still blinded by tears and deafened by my own grief, so personal and deep that it cuts into my heart and I can find no sound to express what I feel. I keep quiet and even manage a few smiles at some encouraging words. All I can see is my grandmother's face, her eyes, her tears, and the vision would not go away.

2:00 p.m.

         We have finally boarded the train, fifteen more minutes. Suddenly I am enveloped by fury, I just want to scream, "Leave me alone, don't pity me! Just let me be!" but I don't say anything. Behind me, in our compartment my mother is crying and my father is trying to make more room for us among the baggage. I look at my watch; two more minutes.

2:14 p.m.

         I feel tired now and all I want to do is lie down and stop fighting all the grief and pain. The train whistle blows and the train begins moving, slowly picking up speed. It's over. But then again, maybe it's only the beginning.