Jan

I had never been to a funeral. I never went to a wake, never stood by an open grave as a priest read scripture. All I knew of the ritual of mourning was what I had seen in movies. Sometimes I idly entertained the notion of someone I knew dying, just to imagine what the funeral would be like. How would I act? What would I say to the grieving family? What would I wear? In these fantasies, I always found the right thing to say. It was easy when it was hypothetical, or after the fact, like a clever retort against a bully concocted while standing in the shower. 

There were people I had known, who died when I was young. A family friend, a father, in a car wreck; a friend, who at fourteen, died from complications related to a horrific assault he had suffered at the age of eight.

My parents protected me from tragedy of any kind. They traveled an ocean away to give me a life in a country they felt had a greater sense of justice. Perhaps to them it seemed perverse that someone could die prematurely in the Land of Opportunity. Better, in that case, not to expose me to the unthinkable. 

My babysitter, Jan, lived down the block from my family home. She had been there before we moved to the States. She was still there when I lived at home and attended college in the city. Back in the early years of immigrant life, when my parents struggled to manage credit cards, let alone stay abreast of local laws, a neighbor told them that allowing their seven-year-old to sit at home alone for several hours after school was considered neglect. “Jan watches a few kids after school,” the neighbor told my father, my mother still operating on limited English. 

Every day after school, Jan picked me up at the bus stop. I spent time in her rowhouse with a handful of neighborhood kids, two dogs, and a cacophony of screeching bird cages suspended in the dining room window. 

Jan was my first introduction to American food: holiday-themed Jell-O jigglers cut into shamrocks or hearts or candy canes and bright yellow macaroni and cheese. We were required to wash our hands in the sink before we sat around the counter to drink Kool-Aid out of melamine cups with sippy lids. After we finished munching on pretzel sticks and peeled Granny Smith apple slices, she would wet a washcloth, wipe down our hands, then hang it neatly on the stainless-steel spigot. 

Jan’s husband was named Spiro, a Greek immigrant with a booming voice and a collection of string instruments he played beautifully. He loved to commiserate with me over my knowledge of the balalaika, but I truthfully didn’t know much about it. My grandmother had played it, and it figured prominently in folk art and storybook illustrations. It was always played by a brown bear in high red boots and a white blouse, his head drawn in profile, mouth parted to reveal sharp, smiling teeth.

If one of the children was misbehaving and Jan couldn’t bring order, Spiro would raise his gravelly voice, admonishing us as a group. After the other children left, he would place his hand on my shoulder, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. He would tell me I was a good girl; he had not meant me when he was scolding all of us. I was a shy child, and he made me feel heard. So often I was drowned out by loud, confident kids arguing over a game of Monopoly, demanding a colored pencil, or reaching across the plastic dining room tablecloth to take what they wanted. 

When Spiro died, I was in college, inept and awkward in the presence of other people’s grief. My mother sent a basket of homemade food. My father attended the wake. I sat at home, chewing my nails and terrified to call Jan. I had it in my head that she would pick up the phone and be cruel to me. I couldn’t put the proper words together in my head. “I’m sorry about Spiro.” It sounded so light, so dismissive. “My condolences for your loss.” Too formal. It was what I had heard other people say. I wasn’t sure if it was what I was supposed to say now, given my history with Jan. 

She had watched me grow up, outgrow her babysitting services, yet still stop by for a visit once a month just to say hello. She and Spiro always greeted me warmly. Once she had even told me what my visits meant to him. He often lamented that the other children had “abandoned Jan,” but I knew even then that he had meant the both of them. 

It had been a couple of years since I had visited her. Would she yell at me for that? I knew Spiro had crippling depression. Jan had confided that much in me when I was a teenager. How long had he been ill? Would I have been a balm for his pain, stopping by with poorly made cupcakes or a hand-drawn card? It seemed silly to think I would have had such an impact on his life. I was just a kid. But I wasn’t a kid anymore. And now he had died, leaving Jan alone with her birds and bad hip. 

My father came home from the wake and gently encouraged me to stop by at Jan’s. “I’m not sure what to say to her,” I mumbled. 

“Anything. Just tell her you’re there to check on her. Tell her you’re sorry about Spiro.” The words sounded like I was talking to someone whose dog had died. Jan’s dogs, in reality, had died years ago. I had found those words easily: “Oh, Jan! I’m so sorry. Shadow was such a good dog. You gave her a wonderful life.” Why did I find this so hard? 

I wish I could amend this story, turn fact into fiction, say that I gave it the sitcom two-part special ending. I wish I had showed up and hugged Jan. She had been there for me throughout my childhood, fed me and shown me kindness. She had waved to me, always, when we saw each other on the street. 

But the truth is, I never went over there. 

Time passed, and my anxiety grew. The longer I waited, the more I thought she was going to be livid. A part of me understood that I would have deserved her anger. But a bigger, more cowardly part of me could not face it. And then it would have been my tragedy, and that wouldn’t have been fair. 

I could have written her a note, a whole letter, thanking her for everything. I could have apologized for not knowing, with my college immaturity, how to broach her sorrow. How to sit with her and give space for grief. It was the least I could have done. 

I know how to do it now, having suffered heartbreaking tragedies in my twenties. I watched the people who were supposed to show up for me in the wake of those tragedies disappear into the woodwork. I understand the pain of loneliness now. I understand the feeling of having someone you love excised, leaving jagged edges and a constricting ache in your chest. But I could not empathize then, and my cowardice overtook my sense of what was right. 

My daughter, Viktoria, was born at the end of 2018, on the Winter Solstice. She was just over a year old when my father suggested we walk down to Jan’s house. “She’d love to see you,” he gushed.

“I never called her,” I murmured, but he refused to listen.

“Nonsense! I’m sure it’s all in the past,” he said, impatient to show off his granddaughter. “Jan loves children, she’ll love Vika.” Of course she would love Vika. Everyone loved my daughter’s fat cheeks, cow eyelashes, and chubby wrists. I was another matter entirely.

At the back door, my father knocked and waited for Jan to respond. “Her hip has gone bad again,” he murmured in Russian. “She’ll be a minute.” I stood at the bottom of the steps, staring at her end-of-season garden. Many of the tomato plants had been spent; a dried-out rosemary bush stood in a planter near my feet. The garden had seemed so big once. I chewed a cuticle, pressing Vika against my chest like a shield. 

Jan greeted my dad warmly, then saw me and my daughter. After a quick glance at me, she focused her attention on Vika and said with a warm smile, “Who’s this?” We did our introductions, talked about Vika’s age, weight, and how she looked just like her father. Jan asked me where we were living. I said I had moved to the West End. 

“Oh, you’re not in Pittsburgh anymore?” 

“No, the West End, like across town,” I said. “Near Southside.”

“Oh, so you’re still in town.” The biting edge of her words said everything she did not want to say in front of my father or baby. You’re still here. You could have come. But you didn’t. The time that had passed stretched out between us like an uncrossable gorge.

“Yeah,” I responded meekly. My dad bulldozed over my anxiety as I stared down at Vika’s blonde head. He asked Jan about her health or her house or something neighbors talk about. For the rest of the conversation Jan did not acknowledge me except for a couple of fleeting glances and perfunctory questions. I didn’t find this particularly unfair. I allowed the conversation to be led by the two adults and attended by the perfect baby, the thing I had gotten right after so many things I had done wrong. 

Jan asked about my husband, and I did not correct her. I told her what my boyfriend did for a living. He was from the Northside. She took in this information, beamed at Vika, and continued speaking to my father. 

When we left, she said, “Thanks for visiting,” looking at my dad, looking at the baby, and not looking at me. I may have said, “I’m glad I got to see you,” or “Sorry it’s been so long,” or maybe I just nodded. I can’t be sure. My mind often tries to fill the chasms shame carves. I pushed the stroller and said to my father in Russian, in case Jan was out on her front porch watering pots, “She reacted exactly as I said she would.”

“What? No, she was fine. She was happy to see us,” he said, completely oblivious to nuance.   

“She was happy to see you. And Vika, obviously.”

“You’re imagining things. It was a lovely visit. Stop being hysterical.”

I didn’t respond, my knee-jerk feminist responses dulled by the painful throb of embarrassment and self-loathing.

I’m thirty-three now. I understand how to hold space for a grieving friend, bake cookies, drop off a brisket, send a “just checking in” text. I call my friends when they suffer family deaths, miscarriages, or just want to sit on the phone and cry. I don’t say anything that starts with “Well, at least…” I don’t turn it into a story about something that happened to me once, unless it’s what they need. I tell my friends to call anytime. I hold my daughter when she bumps her head or smushes a finger. I stroke her back and tell her she can cry it out for as long as she wants, as hard as she wants. 

I do not show myself  this level of compassion or grace, but I’m trying to forgive myself. For Jan, for the countless other mistakes I’ve made, for the fires in my life I’ve set and watched burn with casual indifference. By the time I turn forty, perhaps I’ll like the person I’m becoming and be nicer to her. 

It’s the least I can do. 

-Olga Brindar

Olga Brindar has a BFA from Carnegie Mellon and has completed a residency at Burren College of Art in Ireland. Her non-fiction has been published in the Voices in the Attic anthology published through Carlow University. She draws, paints, and illustrates in addition to writing, and idly dreams about posthumous fame.