MOLLY
September 1961
Thirty-One Years Before Molly Dies on Mount Aragats
Philadelphia
It cost two hundred,” Papa said in his thick accent, waving his arm at the exhaust belching from the truck that had just pulled away. He pointed to the pile it had left behind: concrete blocks, mortar, wooden beams, and nails. Everything lay in a disjointed heap next to the back door of their butcher shop. Manya, though no one called her Manya anymore, stood next to him and her mother, staring at the delivery. She was ten years old and constantly frustrated by her parents’ choices, like this one, always trying to help them make better ones. It was why she had renamed herself Molly when she started kindergarten. Her parents, Yulia and Lazar, embraced this decision, praised her for it because Manya was Soviet, Molly was American, and while they didn’t agree on much, all three of them were eager to leave the USSR behind. Now her parents were convinced this pile of construction materials would help them live like real Americans, and Molly needed them to understand that was ridiculous.
She held up the issue of Life magazine that had inspired the purchase. The man on the cover wore something called a civilian fallout suit. She imagined him laughing at their family for buying all of this, the supplies Life said every household needed to build their personal shelter. Her parents read Life as a set of instructions on what Americans were supposed to think and do. Since Hires advertised on its pages, they bought the root beer. Same with Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Johnson & Johnson bandages, and General Electric’s television. And because the magazine said they were supposed to be scared of nuclear bombs, they were scared and preparing to survive—with the schematics from the latest issue.
“No one else in the United States is really doing this,” Molly said.
Mama stood with her arm around Molly’s shoulders. Molly wiggled for space, tired of Mama always being too close, but her mother only held her tighter. “Every American is doing this, or it wouldn’t be in the magazine,” Mama said.
“They’re not. It’s stupid.” Just saying the word stupid made Molly feel better, loosened the knot tied in her gut from the frustration with her parents, with this project. The shelter wouldn’t magically make them like everyone else. Anyway, she felt American. It was her parents and their bad ideas, like this one, that held them back.
“Two hundred, for this? For nothing.” Papa spat on the ground.
“It cost two hundred dollars,” Mama said in her perfect American accent, correcting his English. Mama was a linguist, and night after night, for years, she had tried to teach Papa so he could blend in like she did. Molly was embarrassed that he couldn’t do it, that kids at school laughed at him. “Lazar, add ‘dollars’ or ‘bucks.’ And don’t roll the r.”
“The door,” he said to Molly. She opened it and the hinge creaked. The rusted bell overhead rang. “It cost two hundred dollars,” he said, still with a thick accent. He picked up a concrete block from the pile and went inside. Mama followed, carrying a sack of mortar. A white cloud puffed around her from a hole in the bag.
“Can I go play now?” Molly asked. It was Saturday. The store was closed, and all the other kids would be in the park. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t be outside with them, having fun. “Please?”
“No. Start carrying supplies down to the basement,” Papa called.
“Check the list,” Mama said at the same time, wanting Molly to compare the list of what they’d ordered to the actual materials dumped behind their store.
“American kids play at the park on Saturday,” Molly said. She let go of the handle, the door slammed, and that knot in her gut tightened again.
When Mama came back up from the basement, the fringes of her hair were dusted white with mortar. “It’s the sabbath and Yom Kippur. You’re not going anywhere,” she said to Molly.
“We don’t even go to synagogue. What does it matter?”
“We’re Jewish. It matters.” Mama kissed the top of Molly’s head.
“Stop touching me.”
“I can’t stop. I’m your mother. Now check the list. Make sure we weren’t cheated.”
“No one’s cheating us.” Molly groaned and looked back at the magazine. Across from the list was a drawing, a cutout of the finished shelter. It depicted two parents and two children inside. The little girl was brushing her straight hair. The father was lighting a cigarette and the mother was tucking the little boy into one of the bunk beds. The shelves were filled with canned goods and first-aid supplies. They were all smiling. It’s fake, Molly thought. No one stuck in that shelter would be happy while the world outside was melting. She knew it because she had seen pictures of what those bombs did.
Mama looked over Molly’s shoulder at the family in the drawing and her voice changed, fell. “The four of them look perfect. But they’re not real. Don’t believe in the glitz and polish.”
“I know, I know,” Molly said. She rolled her eyes, anticipating what was coming next.
“The veneer wears away, just—”
“Like it did in Berlin,” Molly said, finishing the sentence. Mama always talked about Berlin that way, told Molly that when she got there in 1937 it was a city filled with life and dreams, but when she left in 1941 it was a terrifying shell. And she warned it could happen to the United States, too. “If you don’t believe in this stupid picture, why are we building the shelter?”
“Because your father believes, and we do things for people we love.” She took a deep breath, started walking back inside with another sack. “Keep working.”
Work. It was the one thing her parents agreed on: Above all else, working hard was the way forward, no matter where you lived or what you wanted. It was why if Molly wasn’t at school, Mama watched her do homework or stationed her at the cash register, unless they needed her help with slaughtering and slicing. But kids in America played in the park on the weekend. They didn’t work. Building wasn’t what Molly was supposed to be doing, and now her stomach was so tight she needed water. A drink always helped.
She went inside to what Mama called their home but was really just a room in the back of their butcher shop, separated by a curtain and crammed with rosebushes Mama adored and Molly hated. Molly’s bed was stuffed in one corner and Mama and Papa’s bed was in the other. They had a small stove and a counter with a tiny half sink. Their sheets came from Sears because they advertised in Life. The walls were covered in posters from national parks like Yellowstone. She filled a glass, drank, and felt a little better. But she still thought she should not have to spend her weekends working, listening to her parents tugging one way and another. She took a deep breath and yelled down the basement stairs, “I’m going to the park.” Then she ran as fast as she could, shaking and thrilled that she was breaking their rules, crashing through the door so hard the bell clanged and shook. She heard Mama call after her, but by then Molly was too far away and she didn’t look back. They wouldn’t chase her or make a scene. They couldn’t risk it because they weren’t in America legally. They needed to hide in plain sight, her parents said, and in that moment, Molly loved taking advantage of it. She ran as fast as her saddle shoes would carry her, skirt flying and braids coming loose. It was a release to put space between her and that butcher shop. Every step loosened the pain.
They lived in a part of Northeast Philadelphia some called Little Russia, where all their neighbors were refuseniks like them, Soviet Jews forbidden to emigrate but who found a way to escape. No one knew who had legal papers and who didn’t, and no one asked. But instead of living like they were now free, Molly thought, they all lived like caged animals in a neighborhood that must be just like the one they left. Everyone spoke Russian and ate borscht and herring, slurped soup bones and marrow. The store signs were in Cyrillic. The bread at the bakery was dark and coarse and the dresses at Svetlana’s shop were thick and out of style. The baker called to Molly as she ran. So did the man who owned the shoe shop. They all knew her. Five blocks away, Little Russia collided with an Irish community, and the children all crashed into one another at school and at the park. Bigger kids had tight-knit groups defined by their roots. Smaller kids, like Molly, didn’t care. Her best friend, Catherine, was as Irish as could be, and they laughed at the fact that they both had blond hair and blue eyes.
The park had a chain-link fence around one side. Molly ran her hands along the steel, still shaking from the thrill of disobeying her parents. She hurried past older boys playing basketball and the girls standing in circles. She went straight for the swings.
“Hey,” she said to Catherine, who was already there. Molly started pumping her legs.
“Freak,” Catherine replied. Her pigtails bobbed.
“I know you are but what am I?” Molly stuck her tongue out and they both giggled.
“Did you tell your mom your birthday cupcakes you brought to school yesterday were weird?” Mama used Soviet flour, which felt like grit. She bought it from the baker across the street because it was cheaper. She said no one would taste the difference, but the cupcakes tasted like they had been rolled in sand and everyone spat them out.
“I liked them,” Molly lied.
They played tag and climbed on the jungle gym, skipped through hopscotch and double Dutch with other girls. By the time Molly left it was starting to get dark, and she walked home slowly, thinking about how angry her parents were going to be. They had no right to be mad, she told herself. She was sure that the kids in Life, the ones pictured in the shelter, if they had been real, wouldn’t have helped their parents build it. They probably would have gone out and played baseball or biked around while their father hammered it together and their mother baked cookies. Why did Mama even mention Yom Kippur? Americans celebrated Christmas. If Molly’s parents wanted a real American family, they should have let her play like a normal kid, forget about being Jewish.
Across the street from their store, she saw the baker lugging a box out to the corner. It looked heavy and he called her over, asked for help. “Thank you,” he said when Molly grabbed one end. He grunted and they eased the damp, warped box to the ground.
“What is it?” Molly asked.
“Comic books. Got soaked when a pipe broke.” He lifted the lid and handed her one. It was wrinkled and moist, like the box. She had always thought comic books were for boys, never looked at any closely, but this one was different. There was a girl on the cover. She was about Molly’s age and she looked strong, standing with her hands on her hips like she was in charge.
“This is beautiful,” Molly said. She flipped through, couldn’t take her eyes off the pages, the main character. The colors were bright and the girl appeared to be smart. Her eyes were wide, and she seemed to know what was coming and was ready for it, had already planned her next move, and even the next one after that. “I’ve never seen a comic book with a girl.”
“That’s Mary Marvel. I was gonna leave this here for whoever picked it up. You wanna take some home with you?” Yes, of course she did. He handed her a stack. “I have others in the basement, boxes that stayed dry. Let me know if you want more.” She thanked him and crossed the street. Mama spotted her, ran outside, and flung her arms around Molly.
“We were so scared,” she said, kissing Molly’s head and hands, arms and shoulders, anything she could reach, while Molly tried to pull away. Mama’s long blond hair fell on Molly and mixed with hers, indistinguishable. There was no blood shared between them, but their coloring was the same. People told Molly how much she looked like her mother all the time. It took all Molly had not to tell them their connection was a lie, because she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone she was adopted. Her real mother was named Anna and Anna still lived in the Soviet Union. She had given Molly away, and Molly wasn’t allowed to talk about her because she was dangerous. Mama and Papa refused to tell her what that meant, but she understood she couldn’t cross that line. Besides, Mama loved it when people talked about how much she and Molly looked alike, and Molly loved seeing Mama’s expression when the subject came up, the only time her lips broke into a full smile.
“Yulia, you should be yelling at her, not kissing her,” Papa said.
“I thought she was gone.” Mama held Molly even tighter.
“We’re in America,” Molly said. “Of course I was fine.”
“People disappear here, too,” Papa said.
“I was only at the park. I told you where I was going.”
Mama pulled back enough for Molly to see that her face was blotchy and red, covered in tears. “You can’t run away. Do you understand?” Her voice turned hard, and Molly knew a punishment was coming. “You’re cleaning the display cases for a week. Go to bed.” Then, “Wait. What’s in your hand?”
“Comics.”
Mama shrugged like it didn’t matter, then kissed Molly again. “I was so scared.”
“You’re scared all the time,” Molly said. “Catherine’s parents aren’t ever scared.”
“I’m sure Catherine’s parents never had to live through what we did. We never want you to know why we’re scared,” Papa said. Molly kicked at a chunk of sawdust on the floor. Papa continued, “Mollushka, we can be anything in America. We have opportunities here that Jews, Soviets, don’t have. But it’s fragile and we must be careful. That’s why we worry.”
“What do you mean it’s fragile?”
“We’ll explain when you’re older,” Mama said.
But Molly was tired of her parents putting off explanations. “What happened in the Soviet Union? What is so fragile?” Her voice got louder.
“Go to bed.”
“Why should I listen?” She clenched her fists to the sides of her head, squeezed her eyes shut because this was frustrating, infuriating. “Talk to me about what happened. Why should I do anything you say when you don’t tell me? Your shelter is stupid. You’re stupid. You’re not even my real parents.” She said it because she knew it would hurt.
“Watch that tongue,” Papa said in an even tone, not rising to her anger. “Bed.”
“I hate you. I hate this store.” She kept going, harder because she couldn’t stop herself by then. “My real parents would never do this to me.”
“You don’t know that,” Mama said, unfazed. “Double math assignments tomorrow.”
Molly wanted to yell and scream more, but by then her stomach hurt so much she couldn’t breathe. She bent over to ease the pain, to suck in air, and when she looked up, Mama and Papa were already carrying a candle and their small table through the curtain, out to the front of the store. The steel roll-downs were closed to protect the glass front and they made the space entirely dark. When Mama and Papa wanted privacy, they sat together out there, drinking vodka by candlelight next to the cooler that held slaughtered chickens, herring, chunks of beef. The hum of the refrigerator drowned their voices so Molly could never hear what they said. She pictured them huddling, whispering about her punishment. “I hate you,” she yelled one more time. They didn’t respond, and she flung herself onto her mattress and cried. She tried to be loud, hoped her parents would come to comfort her, to apologize, but they didn’t.
When her tears were gone, she looked up at the webbed cracks in the ceiling, a hundred lines crooked across the old plaster, and she remembered the comic books from the baker. Molly pulled her flashlight out from under the corner of her mattress and began reading. Mary and her twin brother, Captain Marvel, were separated at birth. At the age of twelve they were reunited, and Mary realized her superpowers. While both used the same word, Shazam, to invoke those powers, her brother’s powers came from Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury, while Mary’s came from Selena, Hippolyta, Ariadne, Zephyrus, Aurora, and Minerva. A comic book with a powerful girl at the center and all kinds of superhero adventures took her mind off the anger. Molly read page after page.
At one point she heard Mama speaking in a loud voice and Molly stopped cold. “Anna cares about science. Yes, she built the atomic bomb for the Soviets, but for her it was a lab experiment. I know her. She wouldn’t build a weapon to kill people. Not our Anna, not Molly’s mother. She just wouldn’t do it. She built it, they stole it and now they’re using it to threaten America. That’s what’s happening. She lost control of her own science.” Molly’s heart sped up, her body tensed, and she tried to make sense of what she’d just heard. Her birth mother, Anna, built the atomic bomb? Maybe Molly had heard wrong. Surely her parents couldn’t have kept a secret like that. Molly strained to hear more, almost fell off her bed by leaning so far over the side. Mama continued, “It’s always been about those ripples she saw. Space-time, then gamma rays. She never imagined people would be building shelters, terrified like this. She wanted to make the world better.”
“Don’t be naive,” Papa said, his voice also louder than usual, as if he was finally mad. “She had to know. There’s only one reason you build a weapon. To kill. Period. And if you design it, build it, you’re guilty. She’s guilty. Anna is guilty.”
“Shh,” Mama said, and their voices dropped. Molly leaned back and felt the weight of what she had just heard like an anvil on her chest. She didn’t understand everything. Space-time, gamma rays, and ripples were all new words, but her instinct was to defend her birth mother. Surely Molly didn’t come from a woman who could build a bomb to kill millions of people. But her parents didn’t lie to each other—which meant Molly’s birth mother built the Soviet atomic bomb, the reason behind that stupid shelter in their basement.
“No, no, no,” Molly said. Her brain was spinning with too many ideas, all underlined with a new kind of panic that if her birth mother built a nuclear bomb, then she was a murderer, or she would be because when countries have bombs they use them. That’s what Molly had seen in all those books at school. Weapons were always used. Surely Mama was right, Molly tried to tell herself. Anna wasn’t a villain. If she built the bomb, she couldn’t have ever wanted to use it. If her mother were a murderer, Molly would know. Wouldn’t she? Molly went around and around in circles before she convinced herself that Anna was like the superheroes Molly had been reading about. Her power was her brain. She used her brain for good, and evil characters, the Soviets, took what she did and used it for bad. “That’s it,” she said out loud, convincing herself. “Anna needs to fight them so her work is only used for good. For good guys.” The notion helped settle her a bit. She turned off her flashlight, stuffed it back under the mattress, and rolled herself into a tight ball. She tried to imagine Anna in a cape and boots flying over Billy Penn on top of city hall, racing to catch the bomb before it fell on their city. She listed all the ways Anna could save the world with nuclear powers, imagined what it would look like for her to fight and regain control of her work. Molly must have fallen asleep, somehow, because the next thing she knew, Mama was kissing her, telling her it was time to wake up and get ready to open the shop.
“You scared us yesterday,” Mama said at breakfast. She and Molly were at the table. Papa stood nearby at their tiny stove. “We can’t lose you.” Molly rubbed her eyes, was waking up slowly. “We can’t always do what we want—”
Molly interrupted, “I heard you talking about Anna. Is it true she built the bomb?” Mama’s face went white. “You don’t think she’s a bad guy. Right?” Molly pushed.
“It’s complicated.”
“Then it’s true. She did it?” Molly kept going. “Papa said she’s guilty.”
“Your papa sees in black and white. I envy him for that. I love him for that.” Mama’s voice was quiet, shaken. She kissed the top of Molly’s head. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Molly knew that when Mama said that they were done, she wouldn’t talk about it again, only Molly wanted more. She pushed. “Anna built the atomic bomb for the Soviets. Is that why we ran?” Mama was on her feet before Molly even finished the question. She walked to Papa and he handed her a steaming glass mug. Papa’s Soviet mugs, coffee, and blackened cezve pot that brewed on the stove were the only un-American things they refused to give up. “Papa, I heard you talking about Anna. She built the bomb. You never told me.”
His face had turned the color of ash and his fingers shook. “You weren’t supposed to know.”
“But I know. You have to tell me more.”
“We…we can’t.” He turned and walked through the curtain to the front of the shop. Mama followed and the conversation was over.
When the store opened, her parents put Molly at the cash register, a job she hated because she had to talk to customers. Her only relief came during lulls when she could read her new comic books. The baker had given her all twelve issues in the Mary Marvel series. Molly read every crinkled copy that day. Mary Marvel could fly. Bullets bounced off her. She could conjure lightning. Molly couldn’t get enough because she’d never seen such a powerful, smart girl, and Mary had Molly dreaming she could be just as strong and confident.
“I’ve never seen you read for so long,” Papa said after the late day rush. His voice was bright and lively, as if their morning conversation hadn’t happened.
Molly couldn’t let it go. “My birth mother is a superhero,” she said, defiant. Her papa’s earlier disgust, the word guilty were both still running through her head, keeping her angry. “Her power is building bombs—for good. I know it has to be for good. I heard you last night. Why do you hate her?”
“I don’t hate her.” His voice softened, was tender even, and it surprised her. “I love Anna, actually. She’s my family—not by blood, but the bond is just as strong. ...
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