“To move to United States.” She shook her head, reflectively. “Life in the Soviet Union was not so bad. You did not have to think about having food, paying bills. You had zero concerns really—as long as you didn’t…how do you say…stand out of crowd. And most people didn’t. They didn’t know better, what they were lacking. But after Gorbachev, everything changed, everything. For first time you could see beyond iron curtain. You could watch CNN or BBC. People realized how shee-it their lives were compared to Western countries, especially the US.”

I stared at her, digesting what she was saying.

“Let me tell you about one day,” she went on. She was getting worked up, and I didn’t want to interrupt her. “I was walking back from the school where I taught. I was carrying bags. You know, I carried bags everywhere I went—everyone did. This was no fashion statement, Jack. We didn’t know when basic commodities would be available. So better to be prepared, right? I passed a grocery store near my building. There was line, forty people maybe, waiting in cold. I didn’t know what they were waiting for, but I didn’t want to miss out on getting something—anything was better than nothing—so I joined line too. I waited maybe one hour. Snow started to fall. My fingers and toes were frozen. My face and lips and nose, frozen. I remember a car pulled over on the road. The driver took the windshield wipers from trunk and attached them to car. They go automatically, there is no off switch, so you have to take them off in dry weather or they fall apart. I watched him from the line, him and his old car, thinking he was very lucky, because he had car. I got angry. Because why did he have car? Why couldn’t I have car too? Why did I have to stand in line? Standing in lines was for grandmothers. That was their purpose in life. They wait and wait and wait for whatever might be at the end. But I was no babushka. I was about to go to front of line…bud in…when another woman tried this first. A man yelled at her. She yelled back, saying she had kids to feed. The man, he seemed drunk, he punched her. She fell to the ground, bleeding in snow. No one helped her. They didn’t want to lose spot in line.”

I was shocked. “You didn’t help her?”

“Of course I did. I couldn’t let her lie there in snow. I let her go in front of me in line. Others were not happy. They yelled at me too.”

“Did you ever reach the front of it?”