For someone I see all of once in two or three years, I have a very conflicted relationship with my cousin. We grew up together and were close enough in age to be sibling-like competitors. She was always a prettier child: cornsilk blond hair, enormous hazel eyes, and the pillowy lips of a Lolita in training. I was taller and darker-haired, wore glasses, and had a tightly-pressed cupid's bow mouth destined to brush against more pencil ends than boys' lips. She did gymnastics, which held back her puberty until well after mine, but the minute she quit, voluptuous breasts and hips sprouted from her tiny, taut frame, giving her the proportions of a Barbie doll. She was also a good artist, more mischievous and imaginative than safe, good girl me. The only advantage I had was one of familial consensus: my grandmother hated my uncle, my cousin's father, and adored mine. In her eyes, I was always the favorite granddaughter -- the first, the smartest, the serious and studious one.
After my parents and I had already moved to the States, on our first trip back to Ukraine, I remember lying on my belly next to her and watching her sketch color pencil pictures of beautiful girls performing elaborate gymnastic maneuvers. She made a game out of it, deeming me the "judge" that had to rate each picture on a one to ten scale, with decimals. I played along at first, but her standards were much higher than mine. If she accidentally drew a girl's leg too long, or if a neck came out a centimeter thicker than a toothpick arm, she'd savage the performance: "Oh, look at that cow trying to do the splits!" she'd laugh, scribbling 4.7 at the top of the page in bright red pencil. I was jealous of her drawing skill and of the astonishing contortions she could perform, right out of those drawings, jutting out her full lips as she kicked one leg back towards her head and pulled the ankle over her shoulder. But when we came back home and developed our Ukraine photos, I realized that in every single picture with me and her standing together, she was on her tip-toes, craning her neck so she could appear to be my height.
The last time I was in Ukraine, we went out to a nightclub together, and she tried for the first time in years to have a serious talk with me. She sat chain-smoking and downing the cheap mix of vodka and fruit juice popularly referred to, in suitably utilitarian Soviet fashion, simply as "drink." She wasn't doing sports or art anymore, or much of anything, for that matter. She'd just graduated from the Ukrainian equivalent of undergrad with a degree in pedagogy but lamented that she hated teaching. Every now and then, she'd take an occasional job as an English tutor, which is where she said she got the money for clothes and makeup and going out. That, or a "boyfriend" whom no one in the family had ever seen, and to whom she'd mysteriously disappear for hours at a time, returning drunk and flushed and giggling manically. When we were on our way to the nightclub, given a ride by nameless middle-aged "friends" who owned a car and matching track suits, I caught a glimpse of a wad of dollars in her purse. But even under the pancake of foundation and tiny sequined top, drunk from cheap liquor bought with dirty money, she was still just as touchingly beautiful, beautiful in all the ways I could never imagine myself being. Slurring, but still shooting out her nervous staccato, she told me how glad she was that I was there, how much she wished we could have grown up together, how she wished we could talk more about everything.... And then the sparkle in her hazel eyes dimmed, she turned away to light another cigarette, and that was that. I wanted to tell her I knew and understood everything, that I wasn't judging her. But I was. She'd been harsher at it as a kid, knowing well before I did how these kinds of things were measured up, but if my judgment developed later, it also ran deeper, much deeper than hers. I went home that night and had a quiet, somber conversation with my mom in the kitchen so my grandmother couldn't hear.
My parents are there now, and the last I heard from my mom over the phone was, "She looks good. Normal." Most of me was contented with that description -- the part of me married to a terrific man, attending the best school in the world, and on the fast track to happiness and success. But there's a secret part of me that still sees sketches of gymnasts marked with red ratings, and that part knows that it's largely a matter of circumstance. If the situation were reversed, it knows I'd be the one straining every muscle, craning and clawing desperately, and pulling every dirty trick in the book just to gain an extra inch.
7 comments:
That inspired a lot of different thoughts and feelings in me. However, the thing I really want to mention is how riveted I was, particularly by the visual writing.
How'd you learn to write like that?
Glad you liked it! I put a lot of heart into this one. However, I'm never really satisfied -- for every one thing that I feel like I say right, there are ten others I wish I could have said.
I think it comes from two qualities: being a voracious reader, but also, even more importantly, being a sponge for certain lexical and syntactic patterns. The part that's "learned" is discrimination, deciding which patterns are better than others in which situations. That's the first lesson you learn in any creative writing class, and unless you're William Fucking Faulkner, it's also the lesson you have to keep working at consciously for the rest of your life.
Happy belated birthday, Maryana.
In some ways, this mirrors the relationship I have with Bitsy. Growing up, there were lots of things she did better, and she's always been much prettier. But while there were individual things I could've been jealous of, my family saw me as more practical, stable, and intelligent. So any envy I experienced was ultimately superficial, because I felt that my status was secure. I never actually wanted to be her.
Unlike your cousin, she hasn't followed any tragic path. I've never had to experience the confirmation of what my relatives always expected: that I'd succeed and she... might not. Do you really believe it's all just a matter of circumstances? Or, do you want to believe that your favorite granddaughter status had deeper roots, and was a symptom of something tangible that all the grown-ups could see?
@ Cassandra: I firmly believe it's a matter of circumstance. I can trace so much of who I am back to my grandmother insisting that I'm "special" and destined to "be somebody." Compounded with the whole move to the US thing, it became a perfect storm of alpha-immigrant determination to show some imaginary censor how much smarter/prettier/better at everything I am. However, as Ryan rightly pointed out, blaming nurture in this fashion is no different from blaming genetics: the "what if our lives were switched" scenario is pretty much analogous to the "what if I was a different fetus" one.
It's interesting that you say you never wanted to be your sister. Maybe I'm too warped by all the Freud I've read, but it seems like the only possibility in these cases is wanting to be or wanting to kill and replace, and that my schadenfreude at the shady lifestyle of my cousin is, unfortunately, a case of the latter.
you've a definite gift for the psycho-biographical portrait. as another reader said, this was riveting. i had heard bits of this story, or allusions to this cousin, before, but fleshing out the personal historical and your constant genuflecting makes me so gratified to have heard the rest, and to know you.
Hey! Wow, you got married? Nice. Yeah, I made a blogger, too. Mostly for photos... I'm either too impatient to write much or I can't figure out anymore what desire it would satisfy (I don't have confidence that it would impress anyone so I frustrate myself out of the act).
I am out of the habit. Mostly I like to stand around looking at things, breathing.
But yeah, Anyway, girl, you're pretty awesome. Sincerely put. Once one begins to grip the contingency in/of being, it all comes around to universal sympathy. Parity. Does this make any sense? If I were born you, I'd be at Harvard, married to a lawyer, breathing. (hint: you are special, as chance would have it..)
Sorry, my soul has been doing some mighty contortions the past 48 or so & its left me feeling a little funny. Silly. And, yeah, belatedly wishing you a happy birthday... still plenty of time ;D Blessings.
Post a Comment