From Russia, With Love
January 10th, 2008
I hate Los Angeles.
This might seems strange coming form a born-and-bred Angelino, yet it’s the truth nonetheless. It is no coincidence that when I turned seventeen and went off to college I ran as far away from the City of Angels as possible. My grievances against my hometown are many: it’s crowded, it’s dangerous, it’s expensive, it’s uber trendy, it’s polluted, the people are vapid and fake, the schools are terrible, it’s on the Pacific time zone. .(Of course, to be fair, there are some wonderful things about Los Angeles, most notably the weather, bountiful things to do, and the fact that you can drive 30 minutes in any direction and land at either the desert, the beach, the mountains, or the woods. It’s all there for the taking, and within easy reach. But it’s still, at the end of the day, freaking Los Angeles.)
And yet, for all that I harbor no real love for the city, when my mother comes to visit me I do get a little homesick.
When people learn that I’m from LA I’m often asked if I knew any famous people when I lived there. It’s such a funny question to me. My father is in the music industry, and my mother’s sister was a celebrity of sorts back in the 80’s (I think she was the first black female sports-talker or something) so certainly I met a few, and I ran into them from time to time (John Goodman held the door open for my mother at a 7-11 once) but did I ever sit around and jaw with celebrities? Did I know any famous people?
Well, yes, actually. Except she wasn’t famous at the time.
When I was a little girl my best friend was Russian. As in, came from Russia, spoke fluent Russian, the whole shebang. We were fast friends and did everything together—I slept over at her house, we prank called boys we liked, we played dress up in her grandmother’s closet. I used to get her to teach me Russian phrases, but eventually she grew tired of that, and I was so envious of her polylingualism (she also spoke French) that I told her I spoke Yugoslavian just to sound cool. Of course I had no idea that Yugoslavian was not a language, and apparently neither did she because she said, “You do? My babushka speaks Yugoslavian! Let’s try it out on her.”
I wanted to fall through the floor as Julia dragged me into her grandmother’s presence and announced, “Baba, did you know Amber speaks Yugoslavian?”
Smiling, the woman raised an eyebrow. “You do?”
Julia spoke for me. “Yes! Amber, say, “Hello, good morning” to my grandmother!”
I felt my face go red, and I felt like I was going to throw up. But instead of refusing and just turning on my heel and getting the hell out of there, I had the balls to make up a phrase in a make-believe language.
(This is actually not novel. My bother and I frequently played a game where, whenever we out in public, like at a bookstore or the grocery store, we would babble to each other in a fake language. I must say I was good at it; my babblings sounded utterly genuine. My bother, on the other hand, could have been speaking Martian for all that his language sounded authentic. I remember actually schooling him on how to make his fake language sound more convincing. “Nobody talks in solid rhythms,” I explained. “People pause and stutter, they drag their words out here and there and they change inflection.” But none of that helped when his language consisted mainly of, “Bogo pa kiki?”)
After Julia and I had been friends for a while, her cousin moved to Los Angeles from Russia and came to school with us. She was a year ahead of us, putting her in the sixth grade. For a while, we were her only real friends. Not only did she come to school in the middle of the year, but she was Russian. You have to understand, this was the height of the Cold War. We were properly indoctrinated to view Russians as evil and backwards, and most of the kid saw the new girl in just that light. They picked on her and called her names. So she mainly played with Julia and me.
I remember her fondly and well, and not merely because she grew up to be a fairly well known model and actress. I remember her well because I really liked her. She was funny and interesting. She liked to play on the slides. At her birthday party, we had a talent competition where I was voted best singer (naturally!) Her birthday was the day after mine, so we shared that, too. I liked her because other kids were mean to her. I liked caring for her. And the fact that her cousin was my best friend only endeared her more to me.
So, when asked if I knew anyone famous, I sometimes smile and shrug. “I don’t know,” I’ll say. “Sort of.”
The truth is that I don’t tell many people that I was friends with this girl in school because I harbor this fear, a very real fear, that though I have fond memories of her, if someone were to ask her if she remembered me she’d respond, “Amber who?”. It’s terrible to be forgotten, especially by someone you’ve remembered in your heart. And while I know it will never be an issue, (no one will ever interview her at the Oscars and ask about a little black girl) I still prefer to keep her to myself. I don’t want to imagine her forgetting me.