Red Ticket: My Departure
“My God,” said Anna, “She’s in the rug.”
Every weekend we serialize Red Ticket, Robin Whetstone’s memoir of her time in Moscow in the early ‘90s. Today, Robin gets wrapped up in something, and it’s her last straw. If you need to catch up, go back and read chapters 1, 2-3, 4-5, 6, 7, 8-9, 10-11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21.
Chapter 22: My Departure
by Robin Whetstone
It was 2 a.m. I was sitting at the dinette when I heard the front door bang open. I walked down the hall and peeked around the corner into the foyer area. Lyosha and Alex were leaning on each other, laughing and “shhh-ing.”
Lyosha saw me and straightened up. “We are drunk,” he said. He staggered past me toward his room, patting me on the shoulder and pulling Alex behind him. They fell on the cot and were out.
“Hey,” I said. I walked over and swatted Lyosha’s leg. “Get up. Where am I supposed to sleep?”
“Go sleep with my sister,” said Lyosha, without opening his eyes.
I was not going to sleep with his sister, but where was I going to sleep? The hallway? The kitchen table? The bathtub? I stood outside the door to my room, thinking. The bathtub was probably the best idea. I could get a pillow and a blanket and lay down in there, hidden by the shower curtain. It’d be almost like a real bed. But then, what if morning came and Lyosha’s naked dad turned the shower on me? How would I explain that to Valentina?
The bathtub was too dangerous. I shook my head and went to sleep with Lyosha’s sister. Anna’s room was neat and tidy, with a large rug on the floor and framed posters on the walls. She lay on a narrow couch bed pushed up against a wall. It was barely big enough for one person. I’d have to cling to her back to keep from falling off, like we were bivouacked on the side of a mountain. I didn’t know 16-year-old Anna very well and was not about to nestle under the covers with her in the middle of the night.
Instead, I lay down on the floor, in the middle of the rug. I lay there on my back, blinking up at the ceiling. I felt like a discarded sock. Worse, I was starting to get cold. I curled into a ball, hugging my legs to my chest, but it was no good. I was not going to sleep like this.
I sat up and looked around the shadowy room. The rug I was on was rectangular, and covered most of Anna’s floor. I scooted over to the edge of the rug that was closest to the door and, lying on my back, grabbed the fringe with my right hand. I held tightly to the fringe and rolled in the other direction as hard as I could. The rug followed me as I rolled across the room and over to the far wall. I lay rolled up in the carpet, hidden from sight and toasty warm. I finally fell asleep.
What seemed like only minutes later, I heard the sound of voices talking and opened my eyes. I could see light at the ends of the tunnel of rug I was still rolled up in. It was morning, and the family was standing in the hallway in front of the side-by-side doors to Anna and Lyosha’s rooms. I could hear them out there, discussing me.
“Where is she?” demanded Valentina.
“I told you. I don’t know,” said a hung-over-sounding Lyosha.
“Maybe she left,” said Anna.
“No,” said Lyosha. “I told her to sleep in your room. That’s the last I saw of her.”
“Oh no,” I thought, “here they come.”
“No,” said Lyosha. “I told her to sleep in your room. That’s the last I saw of her.”
“Oh no,” I thought, “here they come.”
They were going to be furious when they found me, because, on the list of despicable things a person can do in Russia; e.g.:
* Position yourself at the corner of a table. (“You will never have children!”)
* Forget to look in a mirror before leaving the house. (“Bad luck! You will be killed!”)
* Sit down on anything made of stone. (“You will catch an internal cold and never have children!”)
By far the most monstrous is:
* Have anything to do with the floor. (Incoherent screaming.)
Do not set your bag on the floor. Do not drop your hat on the floor. Sit on it? I’d done that, once. But now I was not only on the floor, but also wrapped up tightly in something else that was on the floor, the family getting ever nearer as they entered Anna’s room to look for evidence of my disappearance.
“Anna,” said Valentina, “What happened to your rug?”
I heard footsteps approaching. I closed my eyes, bracing myself. A pair of hands gripped the top of the rug, unrolling it back out across the floor and exposing me, the tasty filling. I lay at their feet blinking up at them as they stood around me in a semi-circle, staring and silent.
“My God,” said Anna, “She’s in the rug.”
“You stupid, stupid girl,” said Alexander, throwing up his arms and heading toward the kitchen.
“But why are you in the rug?” said Lyosha. He and his mother and sister looked down at me, waiting for an answer.
“You were drunk.” I said. “I had no place to sleep.”
“Didn’t I tell you men have no shame!” yelled Valentina, stalking out of the room.
“Lyosha,” I looked up at him from my spot at the edge of the rug. “Lyosha. I have got to get out of here. I cannot live with your family any more. Do you understand? You have to help me find an apartment. I have got to move.”
Lyosha stared back at me, his face puffy from a night of drinking and the unusual angle from which I was seeing him. “OK,” he said. “OK.”
Click here to read the next chapter.
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