Were You Ever Really There?

You were not my friend. I was 12, you were 16. At that age, a four-year gap seems enormous. But I always looked up to you and longed to be your friend. It's just that you had so many other friends closer to your age that I felt shy around you all. Not sure half of them even liked me.

You lived behind the fence separating our little apartment complex from your small two-family house. Your mom was raising you alone, just like mine did. Too many women at the time in the Soviet Union were left behind by their good-for-nothing alcoholic husbands to be single moms. The difference was, your mom was much older than mine, probably by 10-15 years. I never knew your mom's exact age, and it didn't really matter. When you are 12, anyone older than 40 seems like an old person ready to croak any moment.

Your mom was a teacher. Not at my school, but at yours. Everyone was saying she was building her career up together with you. When you went to the elementary classes, she taught at that level, when you entered middle and high school, she leveled up. At 16, you were in the last year of school and your mom was looking for administrative jobs with the university you were set on entering. She was a good, devoted mother, now that I think about it. At the time, she seemed overly strict and judgmental and we all were afraid of and avoided her.

I had a crush on you. You looked like a burned-by-the-sun Apollo, with your straw blond curly hair, blue eyes, straight nose, youthful plump lips and chiseled jaw. Always tanned because you spent so much time outside. God knows how much time I spent watching you from my second-floor apartment balcony, fantasizing about us reading a book together in that hammock you'd built. And kissing, on the cheek, of course. It was all innocent in my mind, just wanted to spend time with you.

You loved being outside, with your friends, or reading a book in your little garden, or doing some yard chores. You were tall, too, for your age, and played both volleyball and basketball really well. Maybe I am exaggerating how handsome you were. I have not a single picture of you as they were an unaffordable luxury at the time. Your image is blurred in my mind now, but it's still very handsome.

I think your mother could tell I had a crush on you, just by the way I was shy and loopy around you. If she did, she never told you, though. I knew because had you known you'd probably have started avoiding me. Instead, you treated my like a little sister you never had.

I'd always beg my 14-year-old friend, who was among your friends, to call you to play with us. Your mother hated it when we climbed the fence to do that. She'd open the door, look at us strictly and say, "What is it, young ladies? Can't you just walk around the block and knock on the door like normal people? This is not the type of behavior expected from girls your age, even if you wear pants!" We were tomboys. She'd call you anyway and you'd almost always came out and played with us.

You were game for anything. We played a lot of tag, jumping rope, ball, and just hung out, telling each other stories. You found my children's horror "black hand" stories endearing. We also played a lot of checkers and chess and sometimes you even let me win. I would tell you were giving in but it still felt good to win. I'd brag about it for days afterwards. You'd just smile.

On that late spring day, your mother sent you to a local grocery store for a loaf of bread. We had a huge storm the night before, and the strong wind knocked down the power lines. I remember we were without electricity for hours.

On the way back from the store, you decided to take a shortcut. You almost reached home when you saw an electric wire in your way. You of course didn't know it was live. You grabbed it to push it away. One of the neighbors saw you falling on the ground, convulsing violently. He ran to you, grabbed a thick stick and tried to pull the wire away from you, shouting at you to release it, but your hand was clinging to it too tight.

The neighbor said you'd died almost immediately. Didn't even cry, just yelped in surprise when you fell. When the police arrived about ten minutes later, you were still clinging to the wire with your right hand and to the bag with a loaf of bread in your left.

You were buried three days later in a closed casket. Both our schools showed up and our little yard was overflowing with people coming to say good-bye. Everyone loved you.

Your mother moved away about two months later, after the school year ended. My mom said she went back to the village she'd come from, to live with her parents. I still cannot imagine how she coped with losing her only son.

With every year, the memories and images of you are fading away more and more. It's like you were never there and sometimes I wonder how much of what I remember really happened and how much I just made up to fill in the gaps. But you were indeed there. You died in 1982 and your name was Igor.