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watching the kids cannonball into the pool, the next she was getting into trouble for splashing pool water at the neighbors’ windows right along with them.
    She knew where everyone lived and what kind of food they had in their fridge, and soon the neighbors started to send gifts back with her: a basket of a sweet bread called pan dulce or a plate of homemade enchiladas. At first, Mom was wary of eating things prepared by strangers. In her mind it was “stuff that looks like food but is made entirely of millions of germs from unwashed hands.” But she eventually grew too curious. She’d often pick the food apart to see how it was made and then try to make it herself.
    Roxy’s chirpy mood bounded in counterpoint to my own. We were surrounded by foreigners like ourselves. Where had the Americans gone? Sometimes I braved the world outside the gate to see if I could spot one. Little by little, I wandered farther until I found the DollarDream Market, a convenience store owned by two Hindu brothers. Their parents, Raj and Shubi, spoke as little English as I did, but they always grinned. They ran the business, but their only responsibilities seemed to be ringing up customers while always keeping one eye on the Bollywood musicals blasting from their TV.
    I strolled through the aisles, amazed at the crowded shelves and the abundance of products made in China. I began to notice things I’d seen before, inside the packages Uncle Arsen sent when we lived in Moscow.
    Every time I’d gotten a package from Los Angeles, I gained new friends. They loved the gum that came in crinkly, see-through wrappers, and the shiny hair clips with Disney characters. I had clothes with Michael Jackson and Elvis and Marilyn on them. For my seventh birthday, Uncle sent me the “Thriller” jacket, like the one in the video, red with black stripes. My friends drooled over it. Having an entrepreneurial spirit, I took reservations for the privilege of wearing it and charged ten kopeks a day.
    Inside the DollarDream those gumballs sold at ten per dollar, and the hair clips inside the giant buckets by the cash register were a mere quarter each. There were the three-dollar watches with grinning Mickey Mouse dials, and the celebrity T-shirts, a bargain at three for ten dollars.
    Had everything Uncle ever sent us from America come from the DollarDream Market? Later I discovered that wasn’t so. The “Thriller” jacket was from a swap meet two blocks up. As an expert bargainer you could get it for twenty bucks.
    When I told Mom, she didn’t seem surprised. “It’s the effort that counts, not the cost of things.”
    I remembered with how much care Mom had wrapped the antique tea service in terry-cloth towels and crumpled-up newspaper, the fight she put up when the Soviet customs officer fussed over it. “Why didn’t you bring a couple of matryoshka dolls for Aunt Varvara, then?”
    â€œThat would’ve offended her,” she said, “and I have more class than that.”
    *   *   *
    I’d learned long ago that food is a beautiful language.
    When my parents first got married, Grandma Ksenia, dad’s mom, hated my mother, and she measured that feeling with food. In Romani culture, multiple generations live together, and for a long time Mom found herself under a hostile roof. Ksenia avoided her daughter-in-law, refusing to eat at the same table with her. (To be fair, she scoffed at eating with the rest of the band when touring, always requesting a tray of food be delivered to her dressing room.) If they saw each other by chance around the house, she’d say things like “You’re getting fat. I’m not here to support a leech, so make sure to stay away from my pantry.”
    During the first months my parents were together, Dad often sneaked sandwiches into the bedroom. In the morning, Grandma often noticed the missing loaf of rye or the pitcher of milk