Free Moonlight in Odessa by Janet Skeslien Charles

they never come back. I will. I promise.’
    ‘You’ll miss your plane,’ I chided as she caressed the tears on my cheek.
    ‘Always so proud,’ she chided right back, touching her cool forehead to mine. ‘I’ll miss you .’
     
    At my stop, I got off the bus and wound my way past the crude concrete high-rises, past the rusty kiosks, past Harmon’s beat-up BMW. How long would he visit Olga here, so far out of the city? Was it just sex? Or more? Did her little ones call him Papa? Neighbors grumbled because of all the remont , remodeling, going on in her flat. They were fed up and jealous of the incessant hammering.
    He had never come all the way out here to see me.
    After dinner, Boba and I sat on our worn blue sofa. ‘Where is Olga? I haven’t seen her for weeks. You must miss little Ivan.’
    ‘She’s probably busy painting,’ I replied, hoping I sounded nonchalant, hoping she wouldn’t dig further. ‘Do you want to see the letters? Maybe there are photos.’
    Distracted, Boba chose a ‘valentine’ and opened the envelope gingerly. We were surprised to see the letter was typed. A pity. So much is revealed through handwriting. Boba looked at the photo while I translated the letter aloud to her. ‘Hello. My name is Brad. I have a ranch in Texas. I’m looking for someone dependable and sincere, and pretty . . .’
    ‘Look at him.’ Boba held up a photo. ‘He’s not too bad. He has kind eyes.’
    ‘Just what any girl wants,’ I chided gently, ‘someone who’s not too bad. Listen to this. “Hello, my name is Matthew. I’m a dentist and live in Colorado where I enjoy skiing and rafting. I have four Great Danes . . .”’
    ‘He sounded good until he mentioned the dogs. Think of the fur you’d have to sweep up.’
    That was my Boba, ever practical. What would I do without her?
    I knew exactly what Olga would have said about Brad. ‘Look at him! He could crack a concrete wall with that forehead!’ She would have held the photo of Matthew next to her face, batted her eyelashes flirtatiously, and said, ‘What do you think? A good match?’ I smiled as I thought of her mischievously putting Brad’s photo in with Matthew’s letter and vice versa. I sighed. What had I done?
    ‘How interesting that they want our women,’ Boba said, looking at the letters and photos spread across the coffee table. ‘Why can’t they find wives in America?’
    I didn’t know. After translating six letters, I took a break, stretching my neck and shoulders. Anywhere I looked in the room, stern icons stared back. I was careful not to say anything about religion. Boba had suffered as a Jew in the Soviet Union – it had been noted on identification papers that we were not Ukrainian, but Jewish. We were not just of another religion, we were of another race. An inferior race.
    Boba said that Mama hadn’t been allowed to study at the university because she was Jewish, that there had been a quota on how many Jews were allowed a college education. I don’t know how she did it, but Boba went from the Jewish nationality to Ukrainian on her documents (bribes?) and to the Russian Orthodox religion in her heart (denial?). As with everything, she did it for me, so that I would have the right last name and the opportunity to pursue a higher education. So I didn’t dare say anything about the nine icons watching me.
    Reading words of hopeful men and wishful women was more interesting than writing business reports for Harmon. I didn’t mind spending my evenings with these letters, translating the men’s thoughts and yearnings. Boba and I sat on the sofa, she looking wistfully at the photos while I wrote. I became quite good at reading between the lines – or so I thought.
    On Saturdays, when I met with clients at the Soviet Unions office (Valentina Borisovna’s living room) to teach them English and translate their letters, I told them about my online dating experience and urged caution. But they were convinced that American men