The year i started becoming Russian.

In 1985 I was like any other 7 year old American girl. I watched the Cosby show, had a crush on Kirk Cameron, wanted to be Madonna when I grew up, and knew how to make the fastest cobra knot in my class. I grew up in Brighton Beach, and at the time, my friends parents were from all over the world: Vietnam, El Salvador, Germany, Turkey. Some of my friends parents were “just American”, like mine, but mine were also Jewish, and so there was that. Unlike most of my friends, both of my parents were American. Sort of.

My mother’s Russianness isn’t something that was entirely hidden, but it also wasn’t very obvious. I never heard her speak Russian, or any language besides Brooklynese. I heard my grandparents’ accents and knew they were different from my mother’s, but I just assumed that’s how all old people talked, at least all the all the old people in Brighton.

In the spring of that year my grandmother’s younger brother Boris aka “Berchik” came to visit the United States from “Russia”. He didn’t speak English and I heard my grandmother, aunt, and mother speak in Russian together for the first time. I don’t remember all the details of their trip, but not surprisingly I do remember one which was related to food.

We took Berchik for a low key dinner at The Kings Plaza Diner. The idea was not to be too showy or fancy, just a nice, simple family dinner. My aunt ordered her uncle the steak. It arrived at the table first, and he thought it was for all of us to share. He almost cried when they told him it was just for him. He thought my mother and Aunt paid the restaurant to give us all giant sized portions. That was about all I remember about his visit.

A year or so after Berchik’s visit his older brother, Sasha, came next. I also don’t remember much about that visit, besides that Sasha brought his wife, Rema and they brought us chocolates from Russia. I didn’t like chocolate to begin with, but this chocolate smelled horrible. My father told us not to eat it. And my father eats everything. Sasha and Rema left, but I was told that they’d be back.

Four years later they came back. This time it was for good. Sasha and Rema moved from Russia to New York City, but they didn’t come alone. Berchik came with them and brought his wife Tanya and their son, Genna. Sasha’s daughter and her family also came, and some of their friends came too. Now there were about 15 new family members. Two of the couples were named Ina and Valery. I didn’t know which one was related to us and which ones weren’t. My brother and I referred to all of them collectively as “the Russians”, sometimes we still do.

Berchik, Tanya and Genna lived with us in our apartment in Brighton for the first 6 months of their American life. They didn’t speak English and my brother and I didn't speak Russian. I hated Genna, and he hated me. He is 6 years older than I am and we never got along. We still don’t. I liked Tanya because she wore a lot of colorful makeup and her blonde hair was always in a very high beehive.

Soon after they arrived my mother took Tanya to Aufrichtig's, which used to be the main grocery store in Brighton. (Now it’s probably a luxury Italian Fur shop.) When Tanya saw the produce display she pulled her smock up and started loading up the potatoes, bubby style. My mother realized what was happening and told her to take only what she needed and if she wanted more we could come back the next day. Tanya couldn’t believe Aufrichtig’s would be open the next day. I was so bored by this shopping trip. I could have been listening to Madonna.

When we came home from food shopping Tanya asked me to help her cook. My mother never asked me to help her cook and so I was surprised, and intrigued. She took out the potatoes and motioned for me to peel them. This wasn’t cooking, this was labor. I sucked it up and worked with her for hours. With my lame and lazy American pre-teen approach to help, she made vareniki and pilmeni, or what I used to call pierogi. She made so many that we had trays lining the kitchen and foyer floors in our apartment. There were too many to fit them all in the freezer. We gave some to my grandmother and to my aunt. I brought the vareniki and pilmeni for lunch every day for weeks. I was out of the sandwich swap at lunch, and my junior high school friends told me that I was Russian. I didn’t want to believe them, but I did love the lunch so much. Was I really Russian?

If I were Russian, as my friends kept insisting that I was, I knew I was different from the real Russian kids who went to my school. They didn’t speak English, they came in in the middle of the semester and they were much better at math than I was. They didn’t use hair gel, and none of them had Bon Jovi jean jackets. They were definitely not cool. And I was so cool. (Except that I know now that I was also definitely not cool.) It was later explained to me that I was Russian, I just wasn’t OTB. It was the first time I heard the expression and it didn’t make a lot of sense. My Russians flew here from Italy...

About my mother

My mother, Anna, was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine in 1951. Her father was born in Poland, and because of Polish support for Israel at the time, they were able to leave the anti-Semitism of the USSR behind and emigrate to the Middle East when she was 5 years old. With her mouth taped shut, my mother and her family boarded trains and boats for a long journey which led them to Israel 8 years after its birth. Hardly the advanced country that exists today, Israel was young and underdeveloped. Her family lived in a hut on a mountain side in Atlit.

A professional soccer player in the Dnipropetrovsk, my grandfather became a butcher and my grandmother, a former nurse, plucked chicken feathers for work. My grandfather brought home chicken fat and my mother and her sister ate Schmaltz sandwiches for lunch and dinner. It took five years to get a visa to come to the United States, where my grandfather had an uncle. They never planned to settle in Israel, as many did at the time. My grandfather had his heart set on America.

In 1961 little Anna was just 10 years old when she sailed towards Lady Liberty and arrived at Ellis Island.  Her first home was in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where she discovered what are still some of her favorite things: Television, Bugs Bunny, potato chips, pretzels, hot dogs and pizza. The new American family quickly learned and embraced the language of the land, and made it the tongue of the house as well. Now my mother has a thick Brooklyn accent. (Imagine a 5ft tall, blonde, female Donald Trump sans the comb over and sadly, the millions.) It didn’t take long before she started to forget Russian and Hebrew and schmaltz sandwiches. Fast forward 15 years and you’d never know about my mother’s journey or past. When asked the common “what are you?” question her answer is always the same: American. When I remind her of her birthplace she claims that it was just a geographical error, she was really meant to be born in the USA.

When she had children of her own, my mother never thought to teach us the Russian language, or to incorporate Russian culture at home. That was fine until 1985, when strange speaking relatives began to visit us from Russia.