by Cynthia Robinson
My parents were Maoists long after the Chinese themselves were not. We lived in Berkeley.
I was an anarchist. We got on fine, until I turned 16. I’d spend hours in the bathroom applying make-up and spray-starching the feathered layers of my hairdo. Brenda-we rejected hierarchical titles; Mom, Dad-accused me of being a female eunuch. Larry said my curling iron was sucking all the electricity from our methane-powered generator.
Their churlish complaints drove me out. I packed my hot rollers, platform heels, fun-fur jacket, and moved into our yurt, just behind Larry’s backyard iron smelter. I was happy alone, but briefly.
One morning Brenda came to my door carrying a faded petit-point valise. An old woman stood behind her.
“Ashley,” Brenda said. “Aunt Anastasia is visiting. We decided she’ll sleep in the yurt with you.”
“Not so fast Brenda,” I said, blowing cheroot smoke out the side of my mouth. “We’ll need to take this up at the next Comintern meeting.”
“On discute pas,” the ancient said in a surprisingly supple voice. “Je reste ici. C’est ca.”
Anastasia snatched her bag from Brenda, tossed it onto the coffee table next to my bong. Brenda scuttled off.
“Your parents are Bakunanites,” she said. “I won’t sleep under their roof.”
“I think they’re closet Democrats,” I said. “They voted for Jimmy Carter.”
“Bakunin was a gangster,” Anastasia said. She filched a cheroot and lofted herself into my beanbag chair. She snapped her fingers and made a tilting gesture toward her lips. I handed her an ashtray and reached into my cooler for a can of beer. I opened it for her.
“Bakunin robbed-called it ‘appropriating’ to sound political. Reds are thieves. Mother instructed my sisters and me to sew the crown jewels of Russia into our corsets.”
Anastasia’s gnarled fingers pantomimed stitching. Her cheroot described filigrees of smoke in the air.
“We sewed gems between the whalebone. Soon after, Reds took us to a dacha outside of Petrograd. Then, further away-to the Urals. Captivity-summer, autumn, winter. But never losing hope. Unthinkable they should harm the tzar and family. Queen Victoria was my great aunt, ma chere. Imagine?
One night, they wake us-go to basement they say. They couldn’t look in our faces. Firing squad. Papa, Alexei fell. But not us. Not the girls-the bullets ricocheted off the diamonds in our corsets. Oh the sparks! The peasant soldiers were frightened-made the sign of the cross. Their commander ordered bayonets. C’etait horrible. I fell-only wounded. My sisters fell-morte!-on top of me.
They loaded us like logs into a troika. I heard the horse’s bells tinkling like crystal, steel runners crunching snow. I slipped out, into snowdrifts-under Russia’s purple night.”
Anastasia took a long drag, exhaled slowly, her image indistinct behind a blizzard of smoke.
“The jewels?” I asked
“Ici,” she said, patting her 24-hour girdle.
Anastasia stayed seven months before moving on to another relative-a retired beauty operator living in a trailer in Arizona.
“Your parents,” she said as she left. “Faire la paix. Make peace.”