24

After Mitya’s confession, Marina made it her mission to make sure that he would be able to be a girl in real life. She approached the project with unexpected zeal, possibly because she felt guilty about the business with Sasha.

Mitya himself did not want to bring it up with her. He didn’t even care much if she was still dating Sasha or not. This reality could exist somewhere in the background, not acknowledged by either of them.

To start with, Marina concluded, Mitya had to have real girl clothes that would allow him to pass for an ordinary female. On a Saturday, she took him to Manezhka, an underground shopping center next to Red Square, which had just opened and boasted numerous boutiques with desirable clothing. There were many beautiful things, dresses, skirts, blouses, in the windows, but they all cost too much.

“Are those telephone numbers or prices?” Marina asked as they admired a dress with a floral pattern in one of the stores. Whenever they liked something, they checked its price tag.

Then, while Marina treated the two of them to a large packet of fries and chocolate sundaes at McDonald’s on the ground floor, Mitya estimated how much each dress or skirt was in milkshakes, burgers, fries, chocolate sundaes. The majority of the items were in the ballpark of 350 McDonald’s dishes—a whole year of scraping the chocolate fudge off the sides of the plastic container.

His new money box was filling up ever so slowly, so Mitya would never be able to afford anything. But Marina told him that they weren’t in Manezhka to shop, anyway.

“It’s for inspiration,” she said. “We need to figure out what you want, and then we can go to the market where I work and buy every­thing there. It’s all the same, made in the same factories, using the same materials, by workers on their ‘third shift.’ See, this is your first lesson in being a woman. Smart women don’t overpay!”

She licked the salt off her fingers and smiled.

After lunch, they went back to the stores and walked into one of them, with rows upon rows of feminine outfits. At first, only Marina was picking up dresses to look at, but then Mitya got braver too. When the sales assistant approached them and asked if the young gentleman wanted the men’s section, Mitya told her that he wanted to buy a gift for his twin sister. It wasn’t something he had been planning to say, just the first thing off the top of his head.

“What a good brother you are,” she said, smiling. He thought about his classmates, the Nariyan twins, and their identical Mickey Mouse tracksuits. Mitya wondered: If he had a sister, would they share clothes? It seemed likely.

“That is an ingenious idea,” Marina told him, once the shop assistant left. “You can pretend to be your twin!”

“I’m not sure it will work,” Mitya said. “Everyone I know understands that I have no sister.”

“Not everyone. You’re growing up and meeting new people. We could go to one of these kvartirniki with you like a girl, and no one would be the wiser. Even Gleb, although he has seen you so many times. People, in general, don’t pay much attention to the details, so as long as you’re insistent, your truth will prevail.”

Mitya liked that idea, so he tried to pick out the girl clothes. But as much as he liked the feminine lace, florals, and satins in the windows, he did not feel anything when he held them in his hands. They seemed to be suited for someone else, for older women maybe. Marina was frustrated with this apparent contradiction.

“So how come the female clothes are not female enough for you?”

“But you wouldn’t wear them yourself, would you?”

Marina hesitated. She used to have to wear dresses and skirts back in Donetsk, especially when around her grandmother, who always reprimanded her for wearing torn jeans. But in Moscow, she hadn’t worn a skirt once.

“Or the other girls at the kvartirniki,” Mitya continued. “None of them are dressed in skirts or dresses, but there is never any doubt that they’re female. So what is it that makes the difference?”

“Now that you’re asking, I don’t even know.”

They stood in front of the mirror and stared at their reflections. The two of them were quite similarly dressed, in dark tones, baggy pants, tops, jackets, and scarves. Only Marina’s clothes conveyed her affection for rock music, with Viktor Tsoi’s face on her chest.

“You’re not even wearing makeup today.” Mitya pointed to her face. “And your hair is not that much longer than mine. What is it that makes you a girl, then?”

“Apart from the fact that you have a penis in your pants?” Marina rolled her eyes. “Well, my boobs? But you most likely wouldn’t have them at your age if you were a girl either. Or my hips. My mama used to tell me I have childbearing hips. But some girls are skinny; models, for example. I think the difference would be more distinct if you were older, shaving and stuff. But right now you look like a girl without girl clothing. Do people confuse you for one?”

“All the time.”

“See, that’s where we should have started. You don’t need dresses, I don’t think. We should doll you up a bit, and tell everyone you’re a girl. We’ll see if it works.”

Marina promised to think about ways of subtly dolling him up for next time, and said she’d find a kvartirnik to go to, so they could try it out.

“What will your name be?” she asked. “I mean, the best girl’s name in the world is obviously Marina, but we’re not going to share a name.”

“Lena?” Mitya said. It was the short version of his mother’s name, and because he looked so much like her, it seemed right.

“I like that, podruga,” Marina said, calling him the female version of the word friend.

Another week passed, and Marina invited Mitya to go to a kvartirnik as his twin sister Lena. Mitya was anxious but calmed himself down by thinking that out of the many different crowds, Gleb’s underground punk friends were the ones most likely to tolerate weirdness. He put on his regular clothes but made specific changes: he put on a few extra pairs of underwear to make his hips seem more prominent, tucked his sweater into his jeans, and tied his hair in a ponytail. He looked in the mirror for signs of boy or signs of girl, but everything had become so muddled, he couldn’t tell anymore.

Marina asked him to meet up at the Smolenskaya McDonald’s so that they could do some additional tweaks in the restroom. It was his first time in the women’s restroom, and Mitya expected a revelation. But it smelled bad like the men’s bathroom, and everyone was too busy to pay him any mind.

Marina brought him lip gloss, hair clips shaped like butterflies, and a girl’s pink sparkly scarf, all of which she had handpicked at her market. Though those things did not change anything about Mitya’s appearance, they gently navigated the decision about the person’s gender in the eyes of observers. As they were exiting the bathroom, Mitya bumped into a fat man, who shouted back: “Watch where you’re going.” He called Mitya “dura,” stupid girl, instead of a stupid boy, durak. It wasn’t nice of the man, but it made Mitya happy, and Marina cheered back at him.

The kvartirnik was at a different apartment than Mitya’s first time, but it was concealed deep in a residential neighborhood again. They walked down a long street, with smaller side streets branching out and disappearing in the depths of residential buildings. Gleb was as aloof as usual, and was unfazed by the introduction of Mitya as Lena. He only had eyes for Marina, anyway, and looked at her little friend from above, indifferently.

Because the majority of the people at the kvartirnik weren’t aware of Mitya’s existence, they skimmed over Lena without pause. But what had Mitya expected to happen? For someone to start beating on him? Or to praise him for being a beautiful girl? He wasn’t sure, but the lack of any feedback felt anticlimactic. As Marina and he sat down on the rug in front of the “stage,” Mitya noticed Seva at the other end of the room, talking to Boris. Seva was deeply engaged in the conversation and didn’t seem to notice Mitya. Mitya wondered if he would see him and recognize him later.

Three bands were playing that night. The first one consisted of all girls, and Mitya thought it was symbolic that he saw that band on his exceptional day. Then, Little Foxes performed. Mitya was glad to have Seva back in a confined space. Unlike during the abandoned-building performance, he seemed to have enough breath to make the proclamations of his songs powerful. The final act was Boris and his band, Solomenniye Enoty, the Straw Raccoons. And again it seemed like they were performing for Mitya, with words that spoke right to his experience, and which only he could understand fully.

I greet life with a bash in the mug.

My hero is Captain Zheglov.

I’m the best ment of an exemplary city

And your heads will be falling off.

Not everyone knows on this planet

How hard life is for a ment.

I place in jail pedestrians and poets

And all similar kinds of dregs.

There are too many of us who are proud,

The leashed ones, and the free-range,

But let the dead bury their dead ones,

We’ll bury the living instead.

Mitya felt goose bumps on his skin and a tingling somewhere between his eyes and nose as he heard Boris sing that. Dusk descended behind the lacy pattern of the shade. Boris was upright but antsy, stepping from one foot to the other and playing with his hands as if he didn’t know where to put them. Finally, he crossed them on his chest, on top of his tight-fitting T-shirt with foreign words. There was nothing prophetic about him at all, drunk, half-blind behind the thick-lensed glasses. And yet, due to an inexplicable link with the cosmos, Boris knew precisely what was happening in the world and sang the truth without even realizing it.

After the concert was over, Mitya followed Marina out of the living room. There were people everywhere, drinking, smoking, talking, but Mitya, though he wanted to be around people as a girl, began feeling uncomfortable. He sensed that Marina wasn’t having fun either. After all, she didn’t know anyone well and was cautious around this crowd.

“Let’s find Gleb,” she whispered to Mitya with wine on her breath, and he nodded.

Mitya was delighted when they found Gleb outside the apartment, on the staircase, talking to Seva. They were discussing chemistry again. When Marina and Mitya approached, Seva seized the conversation, though Gleb seemed eager to continue without including them.

“You look familiar.” Seva squinted at Mitya.

Mitya was so excited that he almost blurted out that they had met before. But he took a deep breath and braced himself.

“You must be confusing me with my brother. I’m Lena, and I’ve never been to one of these concerts before.”

“Oh, welcome. I’m Seva. So did you like it?”

“Yes, everything my brother has been telling me about kvartirniki was true. And you do indeed make great music.”

“Can I ask you a thing?” Seva said to Marina and Mitya. “I need the female opinion. The first band that played, where the girl was singing, what did you think about the lyrics?”

“I liked them,” Marina responded. “Especially the one where she didn’t want to open the door, even if god was coming. I feel that.”

“I liked them too,” Mitya said, and hoped that it sufficed as an answer. It seemed that an inability to answer a question demanded of a girl could be his downfall.

Seva was more preoccupied with his part of the story. He wrote all his lyrics from the girl’s perspective himself, and was concerned with making them seem authentic.

“I would love to see you at the concerts again and to discuss this. I need as many different women’s opinions as I can get to be able to write as a woman.” Seva smiled.

“Why don’t you ask a woman to write?” Mitya asked. “Like the girl who sings.”

“I’m not exactly sure that she understands it all the right way,” Seva responded.

It didn’t make sense, but Mitya chose not to argue. He was observing the way Seva was watching him. It wasn’t drastically different from before, but there was something new. It was as if a flicker had lit up in Seva’s eye, and instead of talking to the person in front of him, he was reacting to them, the exchange inducing a sort of heat. Mitya couldn’t quite describe it or say how he felt it, but it seemed similar to the way Gleb and Sasha looked at Marina: a longing look that bathed Mitya in energy. It was the first thing that felt different from being a boy, and it was immensely pleasant.

Seva talked more, but Mitya wasn’t listening. As a boy, he would listen, because there wasn’t anything else. But now he wanted to take pleasure in the gaze, and watched Seva’s eyes move as he tried to give all his interlocutors equal attention but kept slipping back to Mitya, to Lena.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go, I need to study for the exams,” Seva finally said, and made a point of shaking Mitya’s hand. “I hope to see you here soon.”

Mitya smiled because he noticed how Seva did not mention his blood sugar or his grandmother. He wondered if this was because Seva liked Lena and did not want to seem like a child in front of her.

The three of them left, too, soon after. In the metro, Marina talked Gleb out of taking them, insisting that she had to bring Lena home to her parents and it would take too much of his time. Once Mitya and Marina were alone, Marina almost started shaking him to extract his impressions. Mitya told her that not that much was different, and shared his thoughts on the warm energy he’d felt from Seva.

“He likes you, that’s for sure,” Marina said. “Do you like him?”

Mitya couldn’t say. Feeling the attention was nice, but because he had the previous encounters with Seva to compare it to, he knew that this energy wasn’t directed toward him in general, just Lena. And what if he wanted to feel the same while remaining a boy? What if he wanted to send it toward someone while remaining a boy?

Marina noticed him lost in thought and squeezed his arm.

“It’s okay; it’s too much for the first time, I know. But I wanted to show you that you can be whatever you want. Don’t ever think you can’t, okay?” Marina sounded like a movie character, a kind teacher who helps children realize their true potential, or make life decisions.

Mitya was grateful to her for showing him that. But now the issue had become even more complicated, instead of less. He didn’t know what he wanted to be.