"I used to do stand-up. Then in the summer of '08 a guy blew his brains out at the end of my set," says Ekaterina in Russian. She's sitting on the floor, back unnaturally straight against the bright pink couch that she and Naz's uncle found on Facebook marketplace last week. Laika is sleeping in her lap. Naz observes the hairs on Ekaterina's head quiver when she dips her chin. She wonders if she could ever get her hair so light.
 
"Do you want to watch TV?" Ekaterina doesn't let Naz respond. But Naz always says yes to Ekaterina anyways. The two watch a straight-to-DVD movie from the early two-thousands that's playing on the first channel they tune into. The movie's already in its second act. Naz knows that Ekaterina probably doesn't understand most of the dialogue, it's far too colloquial. Her English still isn't great.

Naz wants to ask about the guy who killed himself, but that's not the way things are done. Ekaterina tells stories and Naz listens. She tells exactly how much she wants Naz to know. No more and no less.

"I tried doing stand-up one more time after that," Ekaterina begins when the credits begin to roll. Naz watches the names flashing on the screen; "but then—when I got on stage, I suddenly went blind. I could hear people murmuring, there was clinking of glasses, creaking of chairs against the floor. But I couldn't see. My god! I've gone blind! I thought. I only realized when I got off the stage that I had my eyes closed the entire time. Ha!"   

Ekaterina laughs with her whole body, throwing her head back, and Naz watches her face. Laika finally wakes up from the makeshift earthquake. The dog jumps off the blonde's lap and climbs up to sit next to Naz, nuzzling her face into the younger girl's thigh.

Ekaterina is thirty-three. Naz spends every Thursday evening with her while her parents pretend to go on dates. Their uncle-husband has begun working night shifts as a school janitor at the local middle school. He met Ekaterina on a dating website three years ago and married her the day she flew in from Ukraine. Naz's mother called her a shlyuha—a whore in Russian—and insisted that the white woman would taint their Kazakh blood. What kind of woman meets men over the internet? Ekaterina tells Naz on Thursday that she is sterilized.

Naz's phone chimes with a text from her mother asking if Naz can stay at her uncle's for the night. Ekaterina lets out a shriek of laughter.   

"Oh, they must be having so much fun on their date," she smiles. Naz mirrors her smile and doesn't say that her parents have been fighting more and more. They think they've been hiding it well, Naz appreciates the gesture.

When the two crowd in the bathroom before bed, Naz brushes her teeth as she sits on the toilet and watches a naked Ekaterina sing as she rubs a night cream on her face. While she marvels at all the woman's beauty, her attention is held by a delicate tattoo an inch above her neatly trimmed pubic hair. Naz can't read Russian, a result of her mother's disdain for it. But Ekaterina told her that it was a line from the short story "A Gentle Creature" by Dostoevsky.

А я òумала чmо бы меня осmаeиmе mак.

But I thought you were going to leave me / And I thought you were going to leave me.

Naz googled the quote. It took a few tries to find the right story. Some translators preferred the title "A Meek One." A story about a young girl who marries an older man and ultimately jumps out of a window to her death. The words inked onto Ekaterina's body are the words the girl says when her husband tells her he will not leave her. Only when you finish the story do you learn how sad she was when he said that.

When the two girls lie in bed, Ekaterina begins to cry.

"Your uncle has a lot of nightmares. They weren't so bad in the beginning. He would just wake up sometimes and go sit in the kitchen for an hour or two for a smoke. I didn't even know at first, but then he started turning on the lights and leaving them on until the morning. Goodness, he would just turn the lights on and leave to sit in the kitchen! I tried following him, to calm him down you know? But he just wanted to sit there and smoke his cigarettes. His fucking cigarettes. And he cries. He cries so loud. And now he screams in his sleep sometimes. But still the lights are what bother me the most. I can't sleep with the lights on."

Naz reaches out her hand and finds Ekaterina's hand clammy and shaking.

"I don't think he and my mom like me very much," Naz says. "But I like you a lot."

Ekaterina squeezes her hand.

"Could you tell me some of your jokes?"

Ekaterina starts to quietly mutter in Ukrainian. Naz looks at her and finds her eyes shut. Not just closed, but almost like she's using her entire body to keep them as tight as possible. Her face is distorted this way—her eyebrows angled in, her cheeks taut, creases pressing on her forehead. But she's still so beautiful, Naz thinks. She doesn't understand what Ekaterina is saying, but she listens attentively. When Ekaterina's whispers slow down and at last cease, Naz listens carefully to her quiet breathing.



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