I had my hands full of henna at the moment the doorbell rang. For a while now I’d had the honor of helping Grandmother dye her hair. At first I’d been fascinated as I watched the way she stirred boiling water into the brown powder, poured in a touch of red wine, and covered the floor of the bathroom with newspapers. She had a comb and brush at the ready for me, sat down on a stool, and took the hair tie out of her braid.
The braid was already immensely long. When it was unbraided the hair was even longer, and in the light of the bathroom lamp it shone bright red with silver shimmering roots.
Grandmother combed her hair with a coarse-pronged comb. She smeared the skin at the roots with Vaseline so it wouldn’t take on the hair color. I put on rubber gloves, picked up the brush, and went through the heavy hair strand by strand.
At first she yelled at me constantly because she suspected I wasn’t working carefully enough and just wanted to get through the job as quickly as possible. But that wasn’t true: I liked tasks that consisted of the endless repetition of small, simple steps. I felt like a painter who just had to make a few last strokes before his work achieved perfection. I loved dipping the silver hair in henna, the brown goop stunk like a swamp and gave me the feeling of being part of a magic ritual.
I had just finished the left side of the head when the doorbell rang. It was Saturday, and Grandfather was out with little Tschingis getting some fresh air and giving Grandmother a chance for beauty care. I took off my right glove and went with the brush in my left hand to the door.
I’d last seen Nina shortly after little Tschingis’s birth. I’d nearly forgotten that she used to live here in this complex, too. I wondered why her light blue eyes had once seemed so warm to me. Her empty and exhausted gaze took in the smeared kitchen apron that was supposed to protect my clothes from henna stains. The momentary irritation made her look for a split second like the Nina who had once taught me soldiers’ songs at Grandmother’s request.
“Where is he?”
“Taking a walk,” I said, assuming she meant my grandfather. Nina took a step to the side, and I saw that she wasn’t alone. Behind her stood a woman in jeans and a leather jacket with short blonde hair and a little tear tattoo on her temple, who calmly shoved her foot into the doorway when I went to close it.
I was pushed aside with embarrassing ease, and Nina stepped into our apartment with her new acquaintance. The leather-jacketed woman crossed the room in a few steps. She gestured to Tschingis’s freshly washed romper drying on the laundry line my grandfather had strung across the room. The boiled milk bottles stood upside-down on a sterilized washcloth on the kitchenette counter.
“Anytime soon?” Grandmother, who had already shown an uncharacteristic degree of patience, called from the bathroom. “The only thing you can be sent out to get is one’s death!”
The stranger picked up a baby rattle from the couch with a meaningful look, pressed it into Nina’s hand, and opened the bathroom door. The view of my grandmother, with half of her head covered with a greenish mass, left her stunned. For a moment it seemed as if she wanted to excuse herself, but then she said: “Where’s the baby?”
Grandmother squinted, with her glasses set aside because of the dyeing process. “Do I know you, dearest?” she asked in her most friendly Russian.
The stranger turned to Nina: “What is she saying?”
“Please be so kind as to leave my bathroom, particularly in outdoor shoes,” Grandmother continued before Nina could open her mouth.
“I won’t put up with it any longer, Margarita Ivanovna,” said Nina with a frail voice. “Give me my son back and we can part ways in peace.”
“I can’t follow the conversation,” whispered the leather-jacketed stranger.
“What’s the lesbian saying, Maxi?”
“You can’t do this, Margarita Ivanovna. You are . . . you were a mother yourself.”
“Burglar! Police!” yelled my grandmother.
The voices crackled in my ear. I noticed that Nina seemed more exhausted by the minute, she was already leaning against the wall. In the middle of the chaos I heard with relief my grandfather, who must have just come through the door: “Rita dear, he’s wet!”
Nina, the leather-jacketed stranger, and I pushed our way out of the bathroom, leaving Grandmother on her stool. Grandfather was standing there holding little Tschingis in outstretched arms waiting for a helping female hand. Although he hadn’t reckoned on Nina’s appearance, he smiled happily when he saw her. At that moment I understood that I still had no clue about the adult world.
“Look, Mommy’s here!” said Grandfather, handing the baby to Nina. “Finally she’s back with us. Didn’t I tell you? They always come back, mommies.”
Nina squeezed her son to herself, and little Tschingis let out a deafening scream of protest. Grandmother appeared with a towel over her shoulders.
“You came here with a sword?” she said to Nina. “Got it. From now on you can get by on your own. I don’t want to see you or him,” her voice trembled as she gestured toward the baby, “ever again.”
From that day until her next hair-dye session two weeks later, she walked around with silver shimmers on the right side of her head that reminded me of a halved halo.