Armine

   
          "Be afraid of wolves, you will never go into the forest," my aunt said in Russian, as I was helping her move into a subsidized apartment for the elderly in Hollywood. She often spoke in Russian, because in Armenian her Western dialect was undeniable and it revealed her repatriate roots. I have thought about why this mattered to her so much, but there are no simple answers. My parents, brother and I came to Los Angeles in 1976 and settled into a duplex on North Kingsley Drive in Hollywood and two years later Armen did the same. Initially, she lived across the street but soon moved into a back unit of the same duplex, and we thus lived together for decades. Technically not under the same roof, but as close to it as possible.  In 1997, near retirement age and after years on the waiting list, she finally got into the senior citizens's building three blocks away.  It was big deal, because the sisters were now going to be separated. 

          My brother and I referred to them as The Dynamic Duo and my father called them  Poghokagannern-- the Protestants, and this was mainly because they protested everything. For Armen anything and everything needed to be protested.  Mark, my husband, would confirm years later what my father had always said, that the sisters simply liked to be contrary. As daughters of a Protestant preacher, The Dynamic Duo took things at its most literal-- there was no religious creed involved. The consummate expert at large, Armen not only protested anything coming out of anyone's mouth, but she also had the correct answer which needed to be stated. It was always about getting the truth out there. One had to be on guard at all times and no subject was safe.
             
             Betke chish tnel vran. "Put urine  on it," Armen once said, when I complained about dry skin.  Pandum ayd bes eink anum.

            "That's what we did in prison," she continued. "We were walking  under the sun and our skin was burning. Then the Russian women showed us how to do it.  Like this, very simple. Amen ankam chish unaluts, pambagov gam gdorov garnes yev yeresit gkses. Dranits heto aylevs mashkt lav glini.  Just take a little cotton or some cloth, wet it when going to pee and then put on your face. After that, no more problem with skin. So, we started to do that and after that our skin was good!".

            The stories my mom and her sister told about the prison days were truly surprising as they could come at any time, though never when you asked them.  Once, I  took a notebook and tried to write down the chronology of where exactly my mother had gone when trying to track down Armen and my grandfather.  It didn't get anywhere.  At some point, there was the realization that one had to simply take in these stories as they came and then try to piece them together later.

           "Don't tell me about prostitutes, I was their commander," Armen once said as we were driving up to San Francisco at astronomical speeds, as she had already assessed. In the car were four of us, my mother, aunt, myself and an unwitting tourist from Armenia.  Up Highway 5 we were driving to see the eldest of the three sisters and mark the birth of my cousin's baby. With shrubbery flying by us at astronomical speeds, the conversation had started  meandering. To try and liven things up,  I brought a neighboring building in Hollywood that was halfway house for runaway teens and where a friend was volunteering.

             "Don't  tell me about prostitutes, I was their commander!', was Armen's response.
      
            "What do you mean, you were their commander?", I asked, looking into the rearview mirror.
          
             Ayo. Pandum.  "Yes," she said.. "In prison." 

             "You mother bribed someone to relieve me of heavier duties and they put me in charge of the prostitutes. To get them to build a wall.  They were horrible. Pan chi garoghatsa anem. I could do nothing to get them to do anything.  Mors gatn apsosetsa.  I regretted the milk my mother gave me", she continued. 

              My mother remained silent, with her head cocked back in a meaningful way, while the poor tourist seemed scandalized.  I tried to change the conversation yet again, but eventually gave up.  No matter what I did or how hard I tried, there seemed to be no way for me to corral the two of them to behave as I would have preferred them to, like nice Armenian ladies.  It would years before I would give up this effort and much, much later I would fight to have them remain and be see as the badasses they had always been.

             However, back on the day when I was helping Armen  to move,  I had my own concerns as I watched her walk down the hallway. Just as every immigrant kid dreams, I wished I could have bought her a condo, a nice one with a big yard. To take care of them was my obligation, but at the time things did not seem to be going in the direction of its fulfillment.

          Seeing her walk down the corridor, with the institutional lights and sprinklers, I had a twinge of remembrance and yet it was not my memory. I worried that the institutional aspect of a government building might scare her or remind her of a past horror, but  I was wrong.  Whatever she felt, fear wouldn't be a part of it. Showing courage is what she did, always.  About twenty years later, sitting on the couch in that very same apartment, she said as much.  In and out of hospitals, she infuriated everyone around her but always remained defiant.  Maro, her caregiver, remarked about this. 

         "Oh," she said, "I learned that in prison. You can never show that you are scared."  Yerpek chi bedke tsuyts das. Yes adi pandum sortvetsa.

         And so it was on that day of the move, walking down the corridor.  Whatever she felt, fear wouldn't be shown.  My mother and she were now going to be apart. 

         "There is the phone, of course, " my aunt said, "but she won't be able to come in just to talk the way she did before."  This was something that aggravated my mom to no end.   "She do everything she want, but if you ask her, it is always for me," my mom always said. It really drove her crazy and they bickered all the time.

          As we drove up to Armen's new building, we ran into a man I knew.  I didn't know him that well, but had seen him for years at the house of a friend of mine.  Our families didn't socialize but my mom would always hint at some strange connection.

          I said hello and introduced him to my aunt, who of course recoiled and acted strangely. Once we were safely in the apartment, the phone rang and I answered.

         "So, what you are doing?" my mother asked.  She'd called while we were in the act of moving. She knew this.
        
         "Not much.  Moving."  I answered and told her about the man downstairs. My comment was followed by short silence.
         
         "What is he doing there?" she asked.
    
          "He said he came to visit his mother-in-law's something," I answered.  Ekel a kesuri ch gitem inchu tesni.  Each  possible relation has a specific name in Armenian, however because  my mom never had a handle on it, I was and remain cluess.

         "So, tell Armen who he is, " I said.  I just knew there was an odd connection.

          "Tell her he is Nara's relative," my mother said. Vechu dun bidi kas? "You come home after?"

          "I don't know, Let me see how it is here." I hung up, and turned towards my aunt.

          "Nara's relative," I said.  "That's who that man downstairs is."

           I saw my aunt's profile as she looked down.  Lav, sandrs ure?  "Where is my comb?  I can't find my comb."

          "Who's Nara?" I continued.

          "Oh, the woman who sent me to prison," she said. "Why can't I find my comb?" She was still looking on the floor around her.

           "She sent you to prison?" I asked.

            Ayo. Bayts, vat mart cher. "Yes, but she wasn't a bad person," Armen said. 

           "She had her good points. She was nice to a lot of people", she continued.

           "So, she was nice to a lot of people..." I repeated.  I could understand my aunt being infuriating at times, but sending someone to prison for this seemed out of proportion.

            "Yes, where is my comb?" She opened the closet door. Sandrs ure?

            "So, she was nice to other people, but you she sent to prison?" I asked.

            "You could say that," she responded.

            "So why you specifically? I mean, did you piss her off or something?" I wanted to know.

            "Ah, politika!" she laughed. "I found my comb," she added and picked it up form the top of her desk.

             That was pretty much it on that day. Someday, I m going to write a book, I had thought, but how can I if they never tell me anything. 

             My mother and Armen passed away within nine months of each other. Actually, all three of them did.  My mother, nine months later my father and then two weeks later, Armen.  Though none of them spent much time talking about how the past had affected them, their stories were always there.
         While clearing out Armen's apartment, at the top of a shelf in the closet we found a box.  In it there were photos, newspaper cutouts, diplomas, work commendations and  my grandfather's letters. In the box, we also found a notebook  filled with poetry written by her friends in the hard labor camp in Kirza. It was a remembrance gift upon being freed on August 26th of 1952. Along with the notebook there was a small piece of paper with a picture of Armen as a young woman and an official stamp-- it was the document stating that she was now free.