The Power of Story

This is a story that was submitted to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society's "My Story" site (you can find this and many more stories like it here). This is such an incredibly moving story that we wanted to reprint it here for our Liberty friends. The stories we tell help to define who we are, memorialize our past and inform the future. We invite you to read Zhanna's story, and please consider telling us your story of immigration. It could be your own personal story, your family's or simply your reflections on the immigrant experience. We would love to be able to share your story with the world!

Zhanna Veyts' story / Written on May 01, 2010 / Emigrated from Kiev, Soviet Union (USSR) to Los Angeles, United States 1989

I picture myself at about three and a half feet tall, the halogen lights beaming down like sun rays, musaq fading into the background as red juice dribbles down my chin.

I am six years old and this is my first time in a Supermarket, ever. My eyes are wide and my mouth gaping—the look of a child who cant believe her luck and the incredible treasure she’s been given.

I am in Vienna, cold in a just-too-small, slightly smelly coat, and it is December 1988. I am a transmigrant, technically, fleeing the oppressive hand of Soviet rule and the collapse of a corroded state. But I’m too little to know any of that.

I am destined for the land of opportunity, the land of Supermarkets and Supersizes and Supermans. There will be Farris wheels and bright colors by night, just like the carnival the week before we left home. I can still see it spinning around me as I am pulled past it by my mother, who is crying and screaming, “I just don’t know, maybe it was stolen, maybe it fell out of this pocket, maybe it’s still here somewhere. I just don’t know.” She’s lost her passport and my father is furious. He is convinced that she is trying to sabotage our departure, whether by hiding it or losing it on purpose, she has suddenly and completely destroyed a plan they’ve been construing together for three years since Chernobyl happened and made it glaringly obvious to her that we had to leave this place of lies and idiocy. For those first few months it was all I could remember them arguing about. “But my family?” she would cry, “your family might be useless but mine has never failed us! How can we leave them now, when my father’s heart is failing and we don’t know if he’ll survive the surgery.”

Gradually she began to give in, though. Maybe she couldn’t fathom splitting our family apart but knew that my father saw no reason not to go. Maybe she believed in him more than she believed in herself. I don’t think I’ll ever really know. All I remember is that before long we were standing in the line behind tens and then hundreds of other “dissidents” waiting for days to get the fateful stamp releasing us from the State and freeing us to go stand in more lines. Lines for selling what we could to get enough money. Lines to get on the list to get airline tickets. Lines to get on the list of immigrants who would be expected beyond the border, first in Austria, then in Italy and ultimately…?

Unknowingly, I stand in the midst of the ellipses. I am suspended, like a broken pocket watch dangling from its chain, caught in the present and rendered mute. My mother walks towards me smiling, knowing that I can hardly contain my excitement to see what she’s finally picked out for me in this immense exploratorium of a grocery store. I have never seen so many colors, smells and varieties of things I don’t even know the words for. I point in want, looking up at her, though she is equally bewildered and also hardened by the knowledge of how few Marks are in her pocket. She is still wearing the same grayblue coat from the day at the carnival, and I see her fingers gripping the coins in her pocket. But in her other hand she holds something shiny, round and alluring.

Pamedor! She announces to me, clearing my confusion and replacing it with pure glee.

“A tomato in the middle of winter?” I think, hardly able to believe my eyes or contain my excitement. I take the fruit gingerly and open my mouth as wide as I can. As I sink my teeth down, the glossy flesh gives way to tenderness, and then pure juice. I feel seeds spilling down my chin and I slurp twice, taking in the tart-sweet syrup. I grin with glee and give out a little laugh, which somehow becomes a snort on it’s way out.

My mother makes a motion for me to pace myself, but I misunderstand and instead reach the tomato towards her, noticing I’ve eaten just a little less than a third of it as I wonder whether it will make its way back. The thought fades as I watch her take a bite: we’ve never looked more alike than in that single moment.

My father approaches, laughing at his devushki, and grabs my mother tenderly around the waist. She turns in surprise and raises the fruit toward him. He leans in and takes a bit, “ne ploho (not bad),” he beams. With a smile that sure, it’s no wonder she’s following the man half way around the world, even with a six year old in tow.

Take another, she motions.

But he shakes his head in my direction, and surely she hands me the remaining fruit, kisses me on the forehead, and takes my small hand in her elegant one, as the three of us walk out together towards the Platz.