Cousins, and a Few Others

by Brina Novogrebelsky

cousin (masculine) = dvayurodni brat

cousin (feminine) = dvayurodnaya sestra

two = dva

We’re sitting on the curb of a house in my neighborhood. It’s either summer or late spring. We’re all in velcro strapped sandals and striped t-shirts. Adina’s shirt is sky blue, white, and navy. Mine is baby pink, orange, yellow, and red. There are a few skinny gold ones in there, too. Eugene’s is a darker red than mine, almost burgundy, white, and black. My mom loves to photograph my cousins and me in matching outfits. Seven, three, five. Stripe, stripe, stripe. My shirt matches the bright pink flowers behind us. This means that I win! Six round pink cheeks and I’m the only blonde in the trio. Little teeth on display. As usual, our eyes are glancing in three different directions. As usual, we’re holding hands. As usual, I’m in the middle. I’m the youngest; I’m the only child; I need to be sitting next to both of them. 

This is our natural order. One of us is distracted, another is sleepy, the third might actually know where the camera is. Sometimes, Eugene is pouting while Adina and I laugh so hard we snort. In other baby photos, it looks like we know [1] our grandfather. In all the photos we’re holding hands, or someone is holding me because I’m too small to hold myself up, or I’m grabbing one of their faces because I’m obsessed with them.[2] 

         I don’t speak any English and have trouble enunciating my r’s. I call myself Mina. Our grandfather is still alive. I don’t go around telling people, “Dedushka’s legs hurt and Mama cries.” Adina and Eugene’s house in Dumont, New Jersey is my second home. I recently had my first steps there. 

brother = brat

sister = sestra

Eugene = Zhenya

Adina = Adya

         We go to the Dumont Swim Club where we explain to Eugene’s American friends what piroshki are. “Are those Russian?” In my head, I’m pretending that Adya and Zhenya are my siblings. “Yeah, well, no, sort of, our grandma is from Belarus.” Babushka and I share an ice-cream sandwich. Adina and Eugene get Choco-Tacos. Gross. “No, that’s not Russia, yeah we speak Russian but we’re not Russian.” Babushka and I are staying at their house for my summer break. She and I share a bed and I puppy-eye my way into not brushing my teeth. Actually, Babushka did grow up in Russia because the Germans didn’t get all the way to the Ural Mountains. But she’s not Russian. 

relative (masculine) = rodnoy

relative (feminine) = rodnaya 

shish kebabs = shashliki

Eighth grade is starting in a few weeks. We’re in Dumont for my summer break again. I’m twelve years old and get my period for the first time at the house. Adina is the only person I tell. I'm ashamed waking up to stained sheets, Babushka laughs at me for not telling her the  night before. She congratulates me on entering womanhood. My great-grandmother Blyuma, who I’m named after, yelled at her daughter for crying the first time she got her period. How dumb of her, to not know about the blood when no one had taught her about it. Blyuma had a black mustache and died with a glorious grey braid. The women in our family can thank her for our thick hair and stubbornness. 

Thirteen, fifteen, seventeen. Eugene dyed his hair purple in the spring. It’s a gross peachy blonde now. The chlorine and Brighton salt-water strip him from his purple hue with every swim. When I dyed my hair purple, I didn’t have to bleach it so I didn’t have this problem. I win! Adina loves dying people’s hair. Hers is long and auburn from henna. She looks like a fairy and I love it. 

         In February, I’m fifteen and try taking antidepressants for the first time. Exactly three weeks later I’m sweating out the meds and don’t want anyone to touch me or look at me or speak to me or be in the same room as me or dare give me something to eat. Eugene sits next to my bed and shows me some game on his phone while I pick at cold shashliki. 

I just graduated high school and my favorite people are moving further north in Jersey. Eugene plays a 12-bar blues on his guitar while I shittily improvise about saying goodbye to the house we grew up in. 

         Adina speaks the best Russian out of the trio, even though I’m the one who lives in the Soviet-memory-neighborhood. The old country isn’t old for us when we’re only a generation away from Soviet trauma. Leftist boys are enamored by my personal knowledge of the USSR. Eugene and I forget different words, which is lucky when we talk to Babushka. We hold each other up. 

non-Jewish = goyishe

I am lucky to have blue eyes and straight hair. I am lucky to be living in the second most Jewish place in the whole world. Spasibo bozhenko for making sure Stalin died when he did. My mom told me that in old Russian, the word was spasibog, meaning save us God. Later, the g got dropped and it became the word for thank you. I’m realizing it’s kinda repetitive to say spasibo bozhenko but that’s just how colloquialisms go. Bozhenko is a nickname for God.

         It’s coronavirus summer and Eugene got a job in Brooklyn, so we trade bedrooms. My aunt got Adya these huge CONGRATS GRADUATE balloons that take two months to deflate. We joke that she loses her college degree once the balloons are fully dead and in the trash. One night I hear a bear breathing outside my window. Adya and I collect our trash that the bears carried into the woods three or four times a week. Zhenka drives home on the weekends and helps us with the trash. I’ve yet to see a mama bear but on one of our night walks, Adina and I saw a cub run down the road. We were too excited to record it. Zhen gets fired from his bean-sorting job in Brooklyn; now we share both our bedrooms, alternating between the woods and the city. Adina, Eugene, and I listen to “Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club on every car ride and every dance session on the porch. We’re leaving the Jersey house in the goyishe neighborhood to go to the Brooklyn house in the ethnic enclave neighborhood. I laugh the hardest I ever have when Adina makes fun of Eugene for how he pronounces ‘soup’ on a drive back to my neighborhood. I think he’s just saying it in Russian: soop. Adina disagrees with conviction, but I keep on laughing and snorting until we get to Brooklyn, not caring who wins this grand argument of ours.