Chapter 2

The Dismantlement of Ignorance

AND HE BURST OUT laughing. Evidently I hadn’t expected it. I had expected denial, and shouting maybe, utter disgust, him running away screaming, but I definitely hadn’t expected laughing.

            In all fairness, I guess to some this could be considered as a funny situation. I mean, when you go out of your way to not be found and get rid of your kid, the very last thing you expect is to bump into them in the middle of the street—or well sidewalk technically.

            Part of me wanted to ask him to stop laughing. Another part of me wanted to lash out at him. The word “jerk” was fighting to be shouted soon. The least the dude could do was to be nice and keep his laughs for later. Was that too much to ask for him to act decent for a couple of minutes? He could bitch out all he wanted about me once I was gone. 

            Luckily, I didn’t have to start hitting him with my purse—or well duffel bag actually—because he finally regained composure, though the amusement was still apparent in his voice, and there was a hint of annoyance and maybe even anger in it. “Who paid you to say this?”

            I frowned. Possible crack baby confused here. “No one.”

            He shook his head, letting out a loud breath. He was looking at me with different eyes. Like I was some kind of poor victim of a slasher movie, the idiot one that goes down the stairs even though you scream at the poor bitch TO NOT GO DOWN IN THE BASEMENT GOD DAMMIT! Huh, brain fart… “They compelled you, didn’t they? I’m going to kick those kids’ asses,” he added in an afterthought.

            Huh… okay? I was the one frowning now, confused. “Look dude, you’re losing me here. I wasn’t paid to do anything, I’m actually the one who paid a guy to track down my family and somehow he got through DNA databases, I am not entitled to know how due to illegal reasons, and he got hold of your DNA and TADA, it matched mine.”

            He was shaking his head as I explained my peculiar situation. “That can’t possibly be true,” he simply stated.

            I huffed. This was so not how I had expected things to go. Was he faking? Was he acting? Or was he really not aware that he had a daughter and that she was standing right in front of him. “Re-do the test if you want, I don’t care, I’m calling you daddy until you show my significant proof that refutes my statement,” I informed him. Plus, the next bus would only come by tomorrow so I definitely couldn’t leave before that.

            But the stubborn dude just kept on shaking his head. “It’s impossible, I don’t have a daughter. And my DNA is certainly not in any accessible database.”

            I hadn’t expected that answer, but it wasn’t such a big deal. My resourceful dude hadn’t said where he had gotten his DNA but he had said that it corresponded and our names still matched. Okay, unlike me he had brown hair, but… ever since I had seen his picture I couldn’t deny the fact that we had the same blue eyes. And of course he looked young, in his thirties young—the age someone who had a teenage daughter as a result of knocking up his girlfriend as an adolescent.

            “Look dude, if you’re worried about money or something, don’t. I’m not here to collect money, or bring you to court for paternal negligence, heck I don’t even want you to call me daughter or hug me and treat me to ice cream. Just tell me why. Tell me why the hell I wasn’t worth enough to be put into a decent adopting program? Why you had to keep me forty days before you dumped me at a church? Was it because you realized how much of a shitty kid I was after having me? Or you already knew kids sucked but you tried to have one anyway? If you didn’t want kids, there are billions of ways to get rid of the baby, abortion included. Please, just, enlighten me so I can finally understand and move the fuck on!” I gasped a little for air since I had rambled all of it in one breath. Woah, parent’s issues, table for one please.

            I think part of my speech had been lost on him though because he was just staring at me with really weird eyes. What was it with people and staring at me lately? Had I grown a third eye or a vagina in my face? “Where did you get that?”

            I guessed he wasn’t talking about my imaginary recently grown face-vagina. “My colourful language? Foster care service will do that to you,” I shrugged.

            “No, I mean, the necklace…” he pointed to my neck, “the ring, where did you get it.”

            He seemed impatient when he asked. Good. I was a master at pissing the impatient and practiced in the art of pain in the ass. “Oh my, is the ring special? Is it one of the Rings of Powers? Is it the One Ring. Can I turn invisible with it? Is Gollum around?” I looked behind me.

            “Are you always this sarcastic and condescending?”

            I snorted. “Oh, no, no, no, I’m not answering anything.” This wasn’t going to be a one way thing, no way José.

            He ignored my comment. “How old are you, eighteen, seventeen?”

            “Seventeen.” I reluctantly gave in. “I’m turning eighteen soon though.” I added that part just so he could know I wasn’t here to stay. The minute I was eighteen I was going all Sayonara Biiiitches on the institution.

            “October?”

            Wow, the little bastard is deductive after all. He was probably mentally going through is unprotected sex list. “Yes.”

            He sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Look, maybe we should go sit and talk. There’s a dinner close by. You look like you could eat something…”

            As if. “Don’t have any money to waste on dinners,” I pointed out.

            He wasn’t having it though. “It’s on me. Come on,” he pressed.

            “A bench would work just as well,” I countered. I didn’t want to feel like I owned anything to the guy.

            “Please.”

            In the end, the prospect of food and my rapidly starving stomach that was on the verge of making the sounds of a small animal in agonizing pain got the best of me and I caved in. “Fine,” I groaned and followed him reluctantly.

            I tried to keep a safe distance as we walked towards the dinner. I mean after all, maybe he really was my biological father but that didn’t rule out the fact that he could be a crazy psychopath serial killer! That’s what Dateline was all about, was it not?

            The walk was unsettlingly quiet. The only time he opened his mouth was to confirm that my name was Oksana. He better not be hating the name, that name was the only cool thing my parents—well apparently mother now—gave me.

            With the entire bus ride where I had kept silent and now this, I was about to go bonkers. I was not used to keep my trap shut and it was not a good thing for me to not talk because then I went into crazy rambling mode inside my head and annoyed my own self. At least talking out loud forced people to suffer with me. For some reason though, I just felt uncomfortable rambling with the man walking beside me. Something about him, about the way he held himself sort of demanded respect, which was weird because respect wasn’t exactly in my vocabulary.

            Luckily, the dinner wasn’t too far away so the little trek was fairly quick. Though it gave me the occasion to see more of Hebron and honestly, with how well the place was kept, it oddly felt like I had stepped in Stepford, minus the zombie-wives—I mean heck, it was supposedly set in Connecticut, it wasn’t exactly like I was making far-fetched assumptions here.

            The dinner he was taking me to looked likw any kind of small fast-food restaurant you’d see in any small town—one story high, a flat roof that probably needed shovelling during winter when it snowed more, the front of the building completely covered with windows, and the rest of the structure made in wood put painted white. What was it with painting everything in white?

            When we stepped through the door, it was obvious that it wasn’t his first visit here. Everyone greeted him by name and looked at me like I was some kind of pariah, but at the same time it was as if it wasn’t such a weird thing for him to walk in with a complete stranger. Weird.

            We sat at an empty booth, facing each other, in complete silence. It was a bit awkward—okay it was a lot awkward.

            The waitress, a busty blonde twenty-year old looking girl, came to our table and gave us the menus, smiling. I think she had caught on the whole silence-treatment-thing going on here though because aside from the standard greeting she wasn’t making conversation.

            Matvei stood up. I frowned at him. Was he leaving already? He caught on my expression and explained himself. “I just need to go to the bathroom. You can order whatever you want.”

            I looked at the plasticized yellow menus that clearly had been used many, many times—the plastic corners were chipping, and the paper was coming out—and then back up at him. “What about you?”

            “Don’t worry, Nala knows that I’ll eat,” he waved at the older lady wearing an apron, behind the counters, in her late thirties maybe. Of course she does. And Nala? Like in The Lion King?

            As he made his way to the bathroom, a lot of ladies in the dinner looked at him like he was pie on their plates. Obviously, their behaviour was understandable. He was decent looking—okay decent looking was the understatement of the year, it just felt creepy to say that my father was hot. Ugh, disgusted shudder, anyone? Anyway, point was, it made me wonder about his life, his love life. My mother was out of the picture, obviously, so had he married anyone? Was he dating? He couldn’t be single.

            By the time he came back—had he been taking a dump or what—our food had arrived.

            When the waitress had given me my food she had stared at me with an unsettling glare. Maybe it was because I stank. I wouldn’t be surprised, after all the last time I had washed myself was at a gas station bathroom with brown paper towels and that pink-clown-diarrhea-soap. And I had been wearing a sweater in a crowded bus with no AC in the middle of summer. It was a miracle people weren’t running away from me screaming and covering their noses. If I was a scratch-and-sniff card my fragrance would be “Scent of impending doom.”

            Silence settled between us again. Matvei looked sadder for some reason. Maybe he was unhappy with his double-hamburger. Personally, I wasn’t about to complain. I had ordered a cheeseburger with French fries, onion rings, a Caesar salad, Mac-and-cheese and a huge milkshake—the guy had said he was treating me to dinner, hadn’t he—and even though it was only a little dinner in the middle of nowhere, they seriously knew how to make food. Honestly, I could have moaned with delight over the perfectness of it all. Or maybe it was just the fact that I was on the verge of starvation that made my food taste so heavenly.

            A gaze was on me, almost piercing my skull so I looked up from my food, reluctantly because let’s face it I was stuffing my face here. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

            He shrugged before taking a sip of water. “I’m just glad you’re eating, you are very thin and I worried that maybe you…”

            I finished his sentence. “Had some kind of eating disorder because I’m a six-foot-tall stick pole and I basically have an anorexic dream shape?”

            He nodded, almost sheepishly.

            “I hate to break it to you but there’s nice little thing called bulimia which entails gorging yourself in food and then regurgitating it.” He looked seriously worried for a second. “I was being sarcastic you know,” I snorted and shoved fries in my mouth. “I don’t have the luxury of puking my food.”

            There it was, sad look in his eyes again. Weird. “Just eat please.”

            I shrugged and stuffed my mouth some more, but then something dawn on me. Mouth still full—manners weren’t in my vocabulary—I asked, “So, are you making me eat because you wanted to stuff my mouth with something in hope it would stop the sarcastic flow? Because not to shit on your parade Comrade, but I ain’t shutting my mouth anytime soon.” Okay, that was a lie, I had barely spoke in the last thirty something minutes. But I still had a point to make.

            My sarcasm went past him. He frowned. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

            I took a long drag of milkshake from the straw. “I don’t keep count.”

            “Has it always… been that way for you,” he asked, quietly.

            I snorted again. Poor clueless guy. “What? Improperly fed? You know dumping me on church steps wasn’t going to get me discounts at Olive Garden, right?”

            “I didn’t dump you anywhere… I… I didn’t… know…” he trailed.

            “No shit Sherlock. I kind of figured it out with the way you keep staring at me. I guess I barked at the wrong door to get answers…” I took a deep breath and stared down at my food.

            “I’m sorry about that. I wish I could be of more help but all of this is a… touchy subject…”

            Except for our chewing, we didn’t make a sound for a few minutes.

            “Can I ask about my mother,” I finally found the guts to ask.

            He pointed at my chest. “I gave her that ring.”

            “Huh?”

            “It’s a family heirloom,” he explained.

            Aw, now I really couldn’t pawn the thing. I grabbed it, ready to slide the chain off my neck. “Do you want it back?”

            He shook his head immediately. “No. It belongs to you. It’s rightfully yours.” By saying that, was he accepting that I was his daughter? I had a hard time believing that though. ”Do you know where she is right now,” I whispered.

            “No.”

            I smoothed my hair back and played with my pony tail. I so needed to wash my hair, it was getting borderline disgusting. Biting the inside of my cheek I asked, “How did you meet her?”

            Matvei sighed. “Look, I really would rather not talk about her…”

            I placed both my hands on the table separating us. “Well I want to, because obviously, you don’t have the answers I want, therefore I’m going to have to track her down and the info you’ll give me will set me on track.”

            “You’re not going to find her,” he simply stated.

            Yeah right, that dude didn’t know me. “So she really was a Russian prostitute slash crack addict.”

            “What? No,” he automatically exclaimed, outraged.

            Good to know. “Then why don’t you want to talk about her and why wouldn’t I find her?” That’s when I looked in his eyes, really looked in his blue eyes and I saw it. “She died, didn’t she?”

            He looked down at his empty plate and then at the space beside it, gathering the crumb he had made with the tip of his fingers, making a little pile. “I don’t know…”

            I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. “You don’t know? What? Did you deport her back to Russia,” I retorted.

            “I didn’t even know she had come to America, let alone that she was pregnant,” he admitted, almost in defeat.

            “So she really is Russian?” All I got was a nod. Well, good enough for me. “Are you Russian or American,” I inquired because it had been something I had wondered about—I mean he didn’t have any accent, he sounded pretty American to me.

            My suspicions were confirmed. “American, but my family is from Russia.”

            “And you go there often?”

            “For… business, yes,” he answered, almost reluctantly. Was it because his job was being in the Russian mafia? And my mother was not a sex-slave at all but some kind of Russian drug lord. “I’m sorry, it’s just I didn’t expect my day to take such a turn,” he explained in a breath.

            That I could understand. But there were just so many things I wanted to know… like the next thing I asked. “Did… did you love her?”

            “Yes.” There was no faltering in his voice when he said that one word.

            “Can… can I know her name?”

            “Diana” He pronounced it with a Russian accent. It was kind of cute.

            I asked the next best question. “Do… huh… do you have a family now?”

            “No.” I had wondered if he had a family, but honestly I could kind of understand why he didn’t have one.

            I hadn’t seen it before but now I did. Whatever he had with my mother, it had been more than just a one night stand. It had been something life-changing, something he couldn’t forget. Something that didn’t allow him to have a family without her. “She broke your heart or you broke hers?”

            He shook his head as I had been asking the question and he still shook it as he answered. “It wasn’t like that. We weren’t meant to be.” It looked difficult for him to admit that last sentence.

            “She was already married?”

            “No, it was just not meant…”

            I wanted to scream bullshit, but I figured we weren’t there in our relationship just yet, if this could even be considered as a relationship. At least it wasn’t going so badly. But I wasn’t going to stay any longer. I mean, he was an okay guy, I could see that much but he wasn’t going to provide me with any good answers. Obviously, he was looking for as many answers as I was.

            I got up on my feet.

            “Wait, where are you going?”

            “Don’t take this the wrong way dude, it was really nice of you to offer me dinner and all, honestly, very nice, but I can see you don’t want me here, and I don’t really want to be here. I’m not even sure why I came here in the first place, but point is, you don’t have the answers I want therefore I’m not going to annoy you with my presence any longer.” I grabbed my duffel bag and swung it over my shoulder.

            Matvei got up on his feet lightning fast and grabbed my arm. “Wait, wait, wait, wait.”

I forcefully pulled my arm out of his grip—father or no father, no one was touching me. I was annoyed now. It would have been nicer to leave on the previous good note. “What?”

            “Do you…” his gaze shifted from left to right, making sure no one was paying attention to us and asked in a low voice, “do you ever get angry?”

            I looked at him like he was the crazy one now. “Excuse me?”

            “Do you ever get so angry that you’re almost out of control,” he continued.

            “What are you asking me?” Seriously!

            “Have you ever stayed longer than two years at the same place? Does something bad happen whenever you try to stay some place for too long,” he demanded in a rush.

            Okay, true creepy fact aside… well this was just creepy. “You know foster care isn’t exactly the perfect place to not move around a lot, and either way, I don’t see how any of this concerns you!”

            “Look, just…” he ran his hand over his face and hair, and huffed in impatience. “I know you want answers, and I have answers Oksana, you’re just not asking me the right questions.”

            I crossed my arms over my chest stubbornly. “And what should I be asking you?”

            He looked at me dead in the eyes. “What am I?”