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performers had no one to leave the kids with, and Grandpa grudgingly gave in only when he had to. For this reason, Mom sometimes had me stay with Grandma Rose in the small Armenian town of Kirovakan.
    I remember only one birthday party from my entire childhood. I was turning five and Grandma had made me a dress with an orange-pink satin bodice and a tulle tutu so huge I couldn’t see my feet over its starched skirt. It made me look like a blooming marigold. I remember the barbecue fires infusing the air with the aroma of grilled beef and lamb, tables creaking under the weight of food: trays of horovatz (barbecue), pickled vegetables, dolma with garlic sauce, crusty matnakash (bread), crystal bowls full of walnuts and raisins, and sweet rolls called gatah . A crowd of guests, including my aunts and uncles and cousins, lifted their wineglasses to my health and happiness, and Armenian music rose and fell in a rhythmical lilt of duduk (Armenian oboe) and drums. And I clearly remember twirling around the dance floor until my head spun. I love my grandmother for that memory.
    Years later, when I retold the events of that horrible day at Aunt Varvara’s to her, Grandma Rose laughed, her plump middle shaking, and said, “For goodness’ sake! I fed you so much caviar because your optometrist had said it would help with your vision problems.” I was born with a condition that rendered my left eye nearly blind. The doctor had thought that caviar and carrots could remedy that, and although I loved eating both, that eye, to this day, is there only for decorative purposes.
    Now, when I replay that scene at Uncle’s, I come up with all the right things to say, but back then, I just stuttered.
    Only when I stepped into the blinding sunlight did I allow myself to cry. By the time I took the steps up to our apartment, I had a migraine and my nose ran like an open faucet.
    Mom met me at the door, her eyes searching for the bag of silver. “Did she keep it this time?”
    â€œI threw it away in an alley.”
    â€œ Gospodi (my God), Oksana! That set was nearly two hundred years old. What…” She saw my face. “You look sick. What’s the matter?”
    Mom held me while I tried to tell her what happened.
    Although Uncle and Aunt never openly admitted that they didn’t want us in America, they did try, indirectly at least, to stop us from coming. Was the Gypsy side of us so unbearable that they would find any reason to dismiss us with such ease? At fifteen, I assumed that was it, even while it confused me. For the longest time I tried to solve the riddle of that day’s events, but I’m no Indiana Jones. One day I gave up.
    It was the last time I knocked on my aunt and uncle’s door.

 
    SURVIVING AMERICA
    We didn’t own much furniture: a rickety kitchen table with chairs, two cots, and two small couches Uncle had bought for us from a furniture warehouse downtown. At first I’d thought he did it out of guilt, but then I learned Mom had to pay him back as soon as she could.
    Our father had disappeared, and all Roxy and I knew was that he’d gone to Russia for something our mother avoided discussing but cursed about whenever she vacuumed the couch cushions.
    â€œThat’s why he wanted to come to America so bad,” she’d say. “Used me, used my brother. Babnik (skirt chaser) arranging his own fresh start, is he now? Shtob on provalilsya (May the earth swallow him up). Shtob on sgorel (May he burn). Shtob on sdokh (May he drop dead)!”
    I was glad Mom had her cushions to vacuum, and the floor-to-ceiling living-room window to keep washing, and the fridge decorated with Roxy’s drawings to clean out daily. I was glad, because all the activity kept her from blurting out the truth about Dad that I wasn’t ready to hear.
    Often in those first few weeks, I felt an unsettling tug of nostalgia—for Dad and, incredibly, for Russia. I’d started