American Dream

Platinum blonde, gray eyes like the polluted clouds over a Kiev sky, heavy black coat covers the dress her mother hated, a young woman in heels and hidden flapper dress, its fringe brushed the skin above her knees, forbidden rouge in her pocket. In 1922, she walked alone for the first time in her life, no brother or lover to accompany her, only the sound of her heels in the snow on Pitkin Avenue. At Abe Stark’s Clothing store, she sees not the suit she pressed her cheek against, not the smooth coldness of her lover’s shoulder under her lips, but a decent man dancing at his wedding. She must marry. The thought turns her away from the dark fabric of love affairs and chases her down to Atlantic Avenue. When she hops the Brighton Line, it follows her, finally catching her when she stops to catch her breath on the beach, the heels sinking into the sand and snow, not so cold for a woman who has seen Minsk, she smiles. Americans know nothing about winter. The coat falls a little off her shoulders, she doesn’t mind. A defiant flick of her finger and her curls shimmer in the cold breeze, winter light reflecting in her eyes, in her eastern European pride, the one her sisters deny, the one her mother hushes up with a stern look that says ‘be American.’ Her sisters are already married, her mother already widowed again, her last husband living long enough to stand before a judge and vouch for her ability to speak English and eat ham, long enough to get her wrapped in the red, white, and blue. She must marry, the waves tell her. Behind her there is a man who watches, concerned about a lone woman on the beach. ‘He will do,’ she thinks, as she turns from the sea into America.