a key in the door
and then there was russia.
those summers
were a smaller world
with smaller air.
for the first three years
they locked me in.
from the outside.
my husband and my mother-in-law
went out to shop
and click…
the key turned
and i was sealed
in a tiny studio
with a child.
they called it practical.
i didn’t speak russian.
i looked like a gypsy, they said…
the only brown person in the village…
so people would be less likely to knock
if the door was visibly locked.
practical.
imagine it:
walls inching closer,
minute by minute,
that sick thought looping…
if there’s a fire,
if something happens,
how do i save my child
when i’m a prisoner
in a place i’m supposed to call family?
after the third year
i refused.
i made myself impossible.
and she got furious,
locked herself on the balcony all day,
calling me disrespectful,
calling me american
like it’s a disease,
because i demanded
a duplicate key.
but it wasn’t just physical.
it was spiritual.
the message was clear:
you are safer
when you are contained.
she was soviet to the bone,
hard as frozen dirt,
suspicious of everything,
welded to rules
like it was religion.
even the dishes.
after cooking
the first rinse water
had to be collected
and carried
to the toilet.
dirty water
like penance
to the goddamn commode.
laundry was a crime scene.
she lost her mind
because i used six mugs of hot water
instead of four,
as if the moral order of the house
depended
on the exact number of mugs.
and not once…
not one breath…
of appreciation
that i was trying.
learning their language,
cooking their food,
standing inside protocols
with my dignity
trying not to crack.
but she loved my son.
open, urgent, almost fierce.
she adored him
even though he looked like me.
and i told myself
maybe that meant
somewhere inside her
there was tenderness…
just never taught
how to become words.
they had no friends.
none.
the house felt like a sealed jar,
and every visit
filled me with dread…
though i loved the regular people,
the ones who still knew
how to laugh
and linger
and be human.
she died in 2019
and the trips stopped.
his father died
when he was eight
and she raised him
to become her.
now he’s in his forties
and i watch it happen…
the lips hardening,
the stubbornness,
the unbending insistence
on “the way things are done.”
it makes me anxious
in a way i can’t explain.
like watching a door
slowly close
and knowing
you’re still inside the room.
and here i am
in my forty-seventh year
wanting something
so simple it feels obscene:
room for beauty.
room for softness.
room for breath.
maybe only this…
to be witnessed.
to say it out loud
quietly, honestly,
without apologizing:
i want more
than survival.
i want the beauty of life.
© Sreedhari Desai