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but that she’d done both already and no, thank you, but please you must come see another show.
    At school, I bragged that I knew the lyrics to many pop songs by heart, and some kids, despite my Gyp status, begged me to write them down. When asked to translate, I’d improvise. Anything to keep them talking to me. Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” was a tale of a heartbroken man lost in a country of joyful people in vibrant leotards, and Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” was about women finally getting fed up with housework.
    Russia had plenty of great music of its own, but the bulk of the Soviet music on the radio eulogized our country and its working class. There was an immense difference between the Soviet formula and the Russian. Even Soviet love songs were first and foremost propaganda, ballads of metalworkers or farmers who loved their country first and each other second. But there also was another, more authentic community of incredible poets and songwriters who barely got any radio play because they weren’t Soviet enough. People like Vladimir Vysotsky, a Russian bard who’d reached amazing underground popularity in the sixties and seventies, despite strict censorship.
    Vysotsky sang of politics and love with equal passion, his voice leaving you bleeding for either freedom or kisses. His words eventually got him killed because they made people restless to see change. Some people maintained that he died of a heart attack, while others suggested drug abuse, but my parents, along with many other artists of the time, claimed to know better. To this day, his death remains shrouded in controversy.
    Growing up, I never fully grasped the amount of danger that surrounded my family. Their overly progressive political views put them on the secret police’s radar more than once, and only money and connections kept them out of the interrogation cells. We lived under a strict regime, but I was too young to comprehend what that meant. To me the Soviet government was inside the pages of my history book, in small print and not very interesting. My parents had a good friend, Albert, who was a doctor by profession. He was also an “extrasense,” a kind of psychic with an ability to diagnose patients by running his hands over their bodies, like an X-ray.
    Albert’s skill was considered witchcraft and therefore was illegal. Still, people sought him out. A year before we moved to America, his body was found floating in the Moscow River. Soviets didn’t advertise their special abilities or anything that could be labeled unpatriotic lest they end up like Albert.
    I heard stories like Albert’s often enough that I began to wonder if this was the reason people hid themselves inside luggage in the cargo bays of planes to get out of the USSR.
    Dad relentlessly and foolishly clashed with the Soviet government. So did Mom, by association. Once, Dad spent a night inside a militzia interrogation room for calling the director of the Ministry of Culture khren morzhoviy , or walrus dick. As always Mom came to his rescue with bribes. Our house was searched, attic to basement, for American propaganda after an anonymous “good” citizen tipped off the secret police about having seen my parents receive suspicious-looking packages from America, which turned out to be nothing but my uncle’s presents.
    But my parents managed to navigate the political circus of the time without letting Roxy or me feel the threat. Thanks to Mom, we were now far away from it all. And though our present circumstances screamed downer, one thing I knew for sure: Mom had survived the Soviet Union, and she would survive America, too.

 
    WHEN IN DOUBT, COOK!
    Roxy, as could be expected from a nine-year-old, seemed oblivious to our predicament. She made friends with most of the Hispanic kids playing in the courtyard with no regard for the language barrier. One day she was sitting on the stairs