Toward the end of this project, I became less sure about whether my family were, in fact, outsiders in West Texas, where I spent my early childhood. Or rather, whether we maybe started out as outsiders, but did not end up that way. Did people really only hire my father for translation out of practical concerns? Or was there an element of wanting to reach out and learn? There was the family who used his services to adopt a baby girl from Russia. Perhaps less nobly, another man had my dad translate his correspondence with a mail-order bride. If they hated Russians, why would they want them living in their home? And the proselytizing was persistent—proselytizing usually is—but if they hated Russians, why would they want them in their Heaven?

When I was researching this book, I spent some time interviewing my parents about Midland. My dad harped on it. He mocked a hypocritical Bible-school teacher we knew (“Did you know I saw him in the car with his mistress?”) and berated his petit-bourgeois former bosses, one of whom banned him from walking across the hall to talk to my mom during work hours.

As my dad and I shook our heads and chuckled, I noticed my mom sitting there silently. We were used to this. Unlike my dad and I, who have a tendency to narrate every minor twist of our boring lives—ask him about the time he accidentally handed a fifty-dollar bill to a cashier—my mom reacts to things on an as-needed basis. Send her a sixteen-paragraph email, and she’ll write back, “Got it, thanks.”

“I liked them,” she said, finally. “I miss the Midland people.”

My taciturn, agnostic mother loved the warm, in-your-face Christians. She liked how they, knowing we were new and friendless, included us in every barbecue and Christmas dinner. The bless-your-hearts had a certain fakeness, yes, but to my mom, their attempts at friendship were enough. It was the effort that counted; it was the effort that said, “We see that you’re refugees with beet-based foods. We’re going to pretend that, despite your strange accents and mannerisms, you’re just like us.”

Russians, to my mother, were too cold and impersonal. She dreaded even going to the store in Leningrad, since by being so bold as to enter any establishment in the U.S.S.R. you were signing up to be barked at by a sales clerk. In Midland, meanwhile, she literally felt she had more freedom—to shop, to socialize. Rudeness was a quality West Texans neither possessed nor understood.

Yes, Midlanders at times asked nosy questions, but my mom appreciated their interest. When she fumbled her English, they were patient. If she’d never had Mexican food, they would take her out for it that very day.