Russian Red

And just like that, I found myself in Brighton Beach. My favorite place in all of Brooklyn. I didn't think I'd make it here during this emergency trip back 'home,' but a long-time friend made that happen last night. 

I love this area because it's the one in which I feel the most foreign. Throughout my entire life, strangers have always addressed me in Spanish and Arabic, but last night, a woman spoke to me in Russian. She was trying to lure me into Tatiana, a landmark restaurant and signature piece of Brighton boardwalk real estate. So, I figured I'd play the part. I rolled out a pretty convincing 'ya ni gavaru pa ruski.’ 'I don't speak Russian', to which the lady responded with a disbelieving chuckle. I myself was a in a state of disbelief--I look many things to many people, but Russian isn't one of them. As I began to survey my surroundings, however, I realized why she thought I was Russian. It was my red hair. Almost every woman on that solidly Russian boardwalk had fake red hair. Flaming red. Russian red. Vampire red. In that sense, I fit right in. (It looked like something straight out of the Real Slim Shady music video.😀) One lady with shoulder length, fire engine red hair was wearing a green outfit to match her thick green eyeliner. She looked like Christmas, and I must admit, she dazzled my post-Cairo eyes, which have become accustomed to drab and frump of generic America. Even the older ladies donned the same daring shades of red. And orange, and eggplant, and cherry. The one that captured my attention the most was sitting on a bench wearing a chrome silver winter jacket over shorts, blasting Russian pop from her nineties era boom box. My friend commented that it felt like Moscow. I added 'Soviet' to his observation. Not that either of us experienced the Soviet Union-- it's just the kind of thing you know when you see. 

Everywhere we looked, there were more red-haired women. So once we situated ourselves at an outdoor table at Tatiana, we decided to play the ‘let's count how many women have red hair within a ten foot radius’ game. As I studied the women on the boardwalk, I noticed the Coney Island parachute at a distance. It was lit up against that sliver of the infamously starless New York City sky. That site alone slammed me with a rollercoaster of emotion as cranky as Coney Island’s very own Cyclone. Somehow, this strange microcosm of Sovietism that abruptly smashed into Coney Island's inner city demographics (and historic (albeit raunchy) theme park) was part of  what I identified as home. My home home. The one I was born and raised in, before I set out to conquer the world at the age of twenty. I yearned for that time… a time so long ago, so removed from what I have become that it might as well be a past life.... a time in which Brooklyn was my entire universe, in which I didn’t know anything else. And a time when this area was cleaner and less rundown. Not that it mattered. Litter and lifted boardwalk planks aside, Brighton Beach is one of the only parts of New York City that has remained true to its demographics and landscape. It is one of the only parts of the city defiantly resisting change, much like an over-Botoxed, over-filled 58-year-old woman rejecting the unwanted advances of gravity. Bright green eyeliner, red lipstick, and all. 

Two hours and three Sambucca-espressos later, my friend and I eased our way into neighboring Sheepshead Bay. This is another one of my childhood stomping grounds and my second favorite area in Brooklyn. Growing up as a kid in the (at the time) predominantly Scandinavian neighborhood of Bay Ridge, I really had no reason to go to Sheepshead Bay. Yet my mother made it a repeated point to take me and my younger brother fishing on any of the many piers that jut out into that bay. Yes, fishing. Me. Us. Multi-ethnic, bilingual city slickers. I don't remember what we were fishing for or why, but I knew I was scared of whatever I pulled up from those murky waters. And pull up I did. Probably snapper. And bunker, whenever my mom affixed that baitless snag hook to my fishing line. Imagine that. Violently flinging this three-pronged hook into the water, hoping it would stab some poor fish's back, only to then reel it in and throw its bloody body back into the water. (We never kept what we caught because we knew we were basically casting our lines into a sewer). Absolutely pointless and inhumane.  

On several occasions, we planted ourselves on any of these piers covered in dried fish guts and dried seagull poop. We even had some local entertainment—a homeless man who would swim across the bay. We called him "the bum," back at a time when it was ok to phrase things a certain way. Usually, the bum would plop into the bay via any of the staircases attached to either side of the piers that descended into the water. On the days he was feeling extra theatric, he would cannonball off the pier. Sometimes we didn't even know he was there until we heard his fully-clothed body smack the surface of the water. He would then plunge underwater and immediately bob back up, after which he would swim around our taught fishing lines adorned with ping-pong-sized red and white bobbers. Our challenge, then, was to avoid snagging the bum on any of our fishing lines... at least until the helicopter police would arrive to take him to jail. That was the whole point--going to jail meant a hot meal and a warm bed. 

Until this day, I don't know why my mother took me fishing. Or why she went fishing. I suppose it was to please my younger brother, who loved and lived for this kill-time of a hobby. It was also due to her (understandable) mistrust of babysitters. As a result, she dragged me along on these fishing trips. At least she had the decency to bait my hook with worms and whatnot. I wasn't about to handle that slime, blood, and muck.

Standing on one of those piers overlooking the marina in the middle of the night dredged up these long-buried memories from my childhood. God I’m so old, I said to myself. And this pier looks so small. I remember it looking bigger when I was a girl. I gazed into the water as a family of ducks glided by under the moonlight. I felt like crying. How could these moments just vanish so easily? How could they cease to exist except in my memory and in my mother’s and brother’s minds? Were they even real? Why couldn’t I just open a magic door in the air and step into that moment? Relive it right now if I wanted to? Why wasn’t it accessible anymore?

Time is cruel and unforgiving and grants no redos.