© 2007 LEA POVOZHAEV ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WHEN RUSSIA CAME TO STAY A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts Lea Povozhaev May, 2007 WHEN RUSSIA CAME TO STAY Lea Povozhaev Thesis Approved: Accepted: __________________________________ __________________________________ Advisor Dean of the College Mary Biddinger Ronald Levant __________________________________ __________________________________ Faculty Reader Dean of the Graduate School Neal Chandler George Newkome __________________________________ __________________________________ Faculty Reader Date Joyce Dyer __________________________________ Faculty Reader Jinny Marting __________________________________ Department Chair Diana Reep ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all of the instructors in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program who have extended their wisdom and care, sharing the secrets of the writing life. Particular thanks to Dr. Jinny Marting, the first to allow me an opportunity to ink what follows. Thank you for granting raw ideas breath. Thank you, Dr. Phil Brady and Dr. Neal Chandler, as you witnessed the earliest genesis of what follows and offered genuine consideration and challenge. My advisor, Dr. Mary Biddinger, eternal thanks for believing in what I have striven to accomplish—a story of faith, family, and multiculturalism, for which there remain, still, more questions than answers. Thank you, Mary, for the space to continue wondering. Dr. Joyce Dyer, thank you for sharing your knowledge of and love for the evolving genre of creative nonfiction. Thank you for the passion and dedication you show to the craft and to your students. Mom, you are always my first reader. Through you, I believe. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page SECTION PROLOGUE ......................................................................................................... v I. FAMILY ............................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE................................................................................................ 3 CHAPTER TWO ...............................................................................................14 CHAPTER THREE ...........................................................................................33 II. FALLING IN LOVE ............................................................................................58 CHAPTER FOUR .............................................................................................61 CHAPTER FIVE ...............................................................................................84 CHAPTER SIX .................................................................................................105 CHAPTER SEVEN ...........................................................................................118 CHAPTER EIGHT ............................................................................................150 CHAPTER NINE...............................................................................................184 CHAPTER TEN ................................................................................................201 CHAPTER ELEVEN.........................................................................................220 CHAPTER TWELVE........................................................................................246 CHAPTER THIRTEEN.....................................................................................270 CHAPTER FOURTEEN ...................................................................................292 III. CONVERSION.....................................................................................................312 iv CHAPTER FIFTEEN ........................................................................................313 CHAPTER SIXTEEN .......................................................................................330 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN .................................................................................346 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ....................................................................................360 CHAPTER NINETEEN ....................................................................................382 EPILOGUE...........................................................................................................398 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................411 v WHEN RUSSIA CAME TO STAY 1 1. Author’s in-laws from Russia, Tatyana and Viktor Povozhaev, with grandson, Viktor Jr. vi DEDICATION Dedicated to my family—past, present, and to come. May we eternally abide builders in the legacy of faith. 2 2. Author and husband Dima. vii “[M]emories and recollections won’t give me total access to the unwritten interior life of these people. Only the act of the imagination can help me. If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.”3 4 3. Toni Morrison, The Site of Memory, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, William Zinsser, ed., rev. and enl. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 192. 4. Author’s wedding; beginning in front and moving clockwise: author’s grandparents, parents, Dima’s host parents, Russian friend, Russian parents, host family’s grandmother. viii “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”5 PROLOGUE When Russia came to stay, she nested in my heart by chance. And she gathered there—in thin blue days, Dima’s hand warming mine; in frozen awe as I tread St. Petersburg’s crystal snow to her ancient Church; in Grandma’s thick arms spilling over the small wooden rocker, as she rocked and sewed, rocked and sewed, our small home becoming a deeper fold of past and future. Ours was one life, woven with disparate strands—Dima’s Russian childhood and family, my American; his Orthodox culture, my Protestant; his restful nature, my sharp passions. Like a bird coursing through Ohio air, the journey became our life. Faith is red like blood and anger, passion and fire. “Are you seriously going to burn that entire Christmas tree? Dima! You’re freaking me out. The thing’s blazing. Put the gasoline down!” A fury of arms slapped the night cracking above the tin roof of the garage. “You are definitely a pyromaniac,” a smile pulled the corners of my thin lips. Hugging bare legs close to my chest, the fire raged against the shins. He stoked the blaze with his old hockey stick. 5. The Student Bible, New International Version, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), Jn. 3.8. ix “I can’t believe my parents and Grandma will be here in three days.” His wide eyes glowed in the firelight, “It’s going to be crazy for them to be here, especially Grandma. They might have to drug her to get her on the plane.” “Wonder what they’ll think of our neck of the woods. You think they get that the Holmeses are rich and we’re not?” I said. He looked up from the dancing fire, “Oh yeah, they understand. They know exactly how it is for us.” Nodding my head, I doubted they could. He had come to America at thirteen to play hockey, leaving his mother and father for nine years. Grandma was issued a visa and visited us in high school, but his parents came to the States for the first time to celebrate our wedding. His father, clad in his red and black checked robe softly climbing the mound of his belly, leaned a full face over Dima and cupped his large head in his hands. He breathed deeply the sweet-flesh scent of his boy’s scalp. I backed out of the Holmes’s bedroom and left for home, my parents’ house. We were to be married in days. His parents’ first visit, a stretch of six weeks, was almost up. The mantra repeated: appreciate this time. Think of Dima and his family instead of yourself. It’s been eight years since he saw them. The internal argument came easy, visceral: they hang sheets over windows, slurp soup, refrigerate peanut butter. Tatyana inhales jellybeans with wine. x “I don’t know,” my voice broke. “Mrs. Holmes, I love Dima—and his parents. But. This is so hard—” Susan squeezed a close-pin over the wet shorts, her face concentrated. “How long did you stay at Sea World?” Always calculating. “We were there from eleven till eight. Honestly, I was really trying to be patient. I mean, we stared at the seals for two hours! It wasn’t so bad until around six. That’s when I started hinting we needed to leave. But he would not speak up! He’s driving me crazy.” “Maybe he didn’t see a reason to. You weren’t there all that long—” she sifted through the utility room for a clothes basket. “Well, by eight we were. And I said so. Tatyana was mad at me. She wouldn’t look at me or talk. I could tell, she was thinking I was a selfish American.” “How do you know that? Maybe she was just tired?” “No. When we got into the van, she was actually pouting. And when we stopped for gas and I was alone with them, I couldn’t handle it. As soon as Dima got back, I made him translate. I told them I was sorry, but it was getting late and stuff.” “It wasn’t that late.” “I know. But his mother actually said that I have childhood playing in my butt, whatever that means.” A subtle smile rested over Susan’s plain features. “Do you want a glass of wine?” she asked. * xi Five years later, Dima and I faced