teacher will smell cheating!” Vaclav says.
Lena sighs, loud and deep, releasing the sound from her entire body all at once.
Rasia is banging around in the kitchen, making it very hard for Vaclav to concentrate, and Lena is acting like a bag of noodles dripping all over her chair, and upstairs in Mrs. Ruvinova’s house, people are watching a movie with a lot of yelling and screaming and gun noises and crash noises. The people watching the movie are probably not Mrs. Ruvinova but Mrs. Ruvinova’s sons, who are big and have hair that always looks wet and who smell like magazines and who wear leather jackets that they never take off and that make a funny sound on Mrs. Ruvinova’s leather sofas.
Vaclav has seen these sons on trips upstairs to Mrs. Ruvinova’s for sugar or flour or vodka. He does not know how many of them there are, because they look very similar. They make him feel uncomfortable and unsafe, because when he goes upstairs and is waiting for Mrs. Ruvinova to give him a cup of sugar, the sons sit on the couch and do not say hello.
Vaclav is thinking of Mrs. Ruvinova’s sons, and of the sounds and smells of his mother cooking, and what she is cooking, which so far is something that has onions and cabbage in it, something that makes a lot of smoke and steam. He is finding it very hard to think of what Lena should write next in her homework assignment about the American Revolution, especially while Lena is not helping at all, is just sitting like a Lena-shaped lump on the chair next to him.
“Get this homework off of the table and set for dinner or else,” says Rasia. She says this in a sweet, warm voice, even though the words that she uses sound mean, because she learned a lot of her English by watching pirated episodes of Law & Order every night while she was still in Russia waiting for the paperwork and the stamps and the cards and the letters that would allow her to move her family to America.
Vaclav closes his binder and closes Lena’s composition notebook, and clears all of the pencils and erasers and books off the table. Lena drags her noodle body out of her chair to go count the silverware, and Rasia asks, “Lena? You are staying?”
“Da,” says Lena.
“English!” says Rasia.
“Yee-us,” growls Lena, as she does every night, because nothing has changed even though something has changed.
Vaclav has to pack up all the homework and put it away, and he feels terrible because he has not even started his own homework and already it is dinnertime, and it feels very late. He is beginning to understand that there will be no time to finish his own homework, and Lena’s homework, and then to practice the magic act.
Vaclav brushes past Lena as he is reaching up for plates, and Lena whispers, “No finish homework, no practice nothing,” in a voice like an old mean cat.
And Vaclav understands that every night from now on he will do Lena’s homework for her, without teaching her anything. He will tell her what to write exactly in her essays, will not even ask her what she is thinking about the question—for example, if she would be a loyalist or a revolutionary if she was alive then and why—he will just do it for her without any help at all, because this is what is necessary, because this is what Lena wants. And what Vaclav wants is what Lena wants, because they are VacLena with no remainder.
EIGHT VACLENA, REMAINDER ONE LENA
…
T he very next day Vaclav and Lena walk home from school exactly as planned. Vaclav walks home alone, while Lena walks with Marina and Kristina to the Aunt’s house and pretends to go inside. They meet up at Vaclav’s house, where Lena does not have to ring the doorbell; she just goes inside through the living room with the cushiony rug and the big, enormous TV straight to the kitchen, where Vaclav is already starting to work furiously on his homework so that there will be time to work on the act.
Lena puts her backpack down next to the kitchen table and goes
Lena sighs, loud and deep, releasing the sound from her entire body all at once.
Rasia is banging around in the kitchen, making it very hard for Vaclav to concentrate, and Lena is acting like a bag of noodles dripping all over her chair, and upstairs in Mrs. Ruvinova’s house, people are watching a movie with a lot of yelling and screaming and gun noises and crash noises. The people watching the movie are probably not Mrs. Ruvinova but Mrs. Ruvinova’s sons, who are big and have hair that always looks wet and who smell like magazines and who wear leather jackets that they never take off and that make a funny sound on Mrs. Ruvinova’s leather sofas.
Vaclav has seen these sons on trips upstairs to Mrs. Ruvinova’s for sugar or flour or vodka. He does not know how many of them there are, because they look very similar. They make him feel uncomfortable and unsafe, because when he goes upstairs and is waiting for Mrs. Ruvinova to give him a cup of sugar, the sons sit on the couch and do not say hello.
Vaclav is thinking of Mrs. Ruvinova’s sons, and of the sounds and smells of his mother cooking, and what she is cooking, which so far is something that has onions and cabbage in it, something that makes a lot of smoke and steam. He is finding it very hard to think of what Lena should write next in her homework assignment about the American Revolution, especially while Lena is not helping at all, is just sitting like a Lena-shaped lump on the chair next to him.
“Get this homework off of the table and set for dinner or else,” says Rasia. She says this in a sweet, warm voice, even though the words that she uses sound mean, because she learned a lot of her English by watching pirated episodes of Law & Order every night while she was still in Russia waiting for the paperwork and the stamps and the cards and the letters that would allow her to move her family to America.
Vaclav closes his binder and closes Lena’s composition notebook, and clears all of the pencils and erasers and books off the table. Lena drags her noodle body out of her chair to go count the silverware, and Rasia asks, “Lena? You are staying?”
“Da,” says Lena.
“English!” says Rasia.
“Yee-us,” growls Lena, as she does every night, because nothing has changed even though something has changed.
Vaclav has to pack up all the homework and put it away, and he feels terrible because he has not even started his own homework and already it is dinnertime, and it feels very late. He is beginning to understand that there will be no time to finish his own homework, and Lena’s homework, and then to practice the magic act.
Vaclav brushes past Lena as he is reaching up for plates, and Lena whispers, “No finish homework, no practice nothing,” in a voice like an old mean cat.
And Vaclav understands that every night from now on he will do Lena’s homework for her, without teaching her anything. He will tell her what to write exactly in her essays, will not even ask her what she is thinking about the question—for example, if she would be a loyalist or a revolutionary if she was alive then and why—he will just do it for her without any help at all, because this is what is necessary, because this is what Lena wants. And what Vaclav wants is what Lena wants, because they are VacLena with no remainder.
EIGHT VACLENA, REMAINDER ONE LENA
…
T he very next day Vaclav and Lena walk home from school exactly as planned. Vaclav walks home alone, while Lena walks with Marina and Kristina to the Aunt’s house and pretends to go inside. They meet up at Vaclav’s house, where Lena does not have to ring the doorbell; she just goes inside through the living room with the cushiony rug and the big, enormous TV straight to the kitchen, where Vaclav is already starting to work furiously on his homework so that there will be time to work on the act.
Lena puts her backpack down next to the kitchen table and goes
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