February 15, 2016

It's all witchery

by Ksenia Anske

"Hey, mom. Thank you for calling me to wish me Happy Birthday."

"Ksenechka! Listen to this. I found these old photographs with everyone. Everyone is there, at a big table."

"Who?"

"Great grandma's relatives. The sisters, and the aunts, and the uncles. When grandma is lucid, she points out to me who is who."

"How is she doing?"

"She is stable, not very good, but stable. There are moments...like tonight, I thought she would die. She stopped talking, and she only looks at me now, and there was such sadness in her eyes. Then the other day I caught her pinching her nostrils. I said, 'What are you doing, mama? Stop it.'"

"Oh no."

November 15, 2015

My stories will never end

by Ksenia Anske

"How are you, mom?"

"I got bitten by a rat."

"What??"

"There was a family of rats in the basement but the cats chased them out, and now they moved to the attic. They ate a hole in the ceiling and one of them fell through and dropped to the floor. I didn't see it but I heard it. Terrible squealing."

"Good God..."

August 21, 2015

Where my crazy stories come from

by Ksenia Anske

Every time I call Russia, I hang up the phone bewildered. Was it true? Was it fiction? How can I separate the two into bits that make sense? Primarily I call my mom, sometimes my half-sister, sometimes my cousins or my step-mom, but most of the family drama comes from my conversations with my mother. I have just started reading The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton and got to thinking. This is human shit and blood and sweat that we're all wallowing in and yet are afraid to expose. She wasn't, Anne. She turned herself inside out and dropped her guts on your face, whether you wanted it or not, but you related. Of course you did, it was the hidden stuff that gave you nightmares.

And I thought, maybe I should stop being afraid of exposing all this family drama I have dangling over my head. I fictionalize it, because I don't want to hurt anyone, having been hurt so many times by other people that I know how painful it is. And yes, I'm a storyteller, and this is the stuff of life. And unless I commit it to paper, it eats my insides like acid. Perhaps that's what Anne did, perhaps that's why in the end she killed herself. It's not easy being naked among those who are clothed. You get pinched and cut and slashed and, in the end, beheaded.

May 10, 2015

I love you, mom

by Ksenia Anske

I called my mom and told her that in US today everyone celebrates their mothers. She laughed. She was pleased there is such a day, because there isn't one in Russia. Before I could say anything else, she told me, "I understand what you wanted from me now, when you were little." I said, "What's that?" She said, "I'm reading this book about the dissociative behavior and where it comes from...I understand you now." I said, "Thank you." This floored me. And something else, too. I realized it was my mother who taught me to seek answers to life's riddles in books. She would always read something to try to understand things. I said, "I'm so glad you're reading it." She told me how under-educated children's psychologists are in Russia, and how her mother in turn liked to put her into a psych ward every time she had one of her "moods."

February 23, 2015

You are responsible for your own happiness

by Ksenia Anske

My mom called. My first thought was, "Grandpa died." My second thought was, "She needs money." I was wrong, grandpa is still alive, although barely holding on, eating only yoghurt and coughing out his cancerous lungs. But I was right, she needs money. My heart sank, because right now I don't have any. I have filed for bankruptcy and spent the last of it on attorney fees. Whatever I have made at RadCon needs to stay there for my Amtrak trip, because March will probably be the first month that my boyfriend will be supporting me, as I have no more ghostwriting income at the moment. All this sped through my head as I told her that I have no means to help her right now.