Medal of Honor, Pt. 3 (end)

There was a deafening, rumbling elevated train overhead and nowhere to play soccer. It rained every other day during June. Neighborhood kids were strange and degenerate. Even the stray dogs and cats outside seemed hungry and ruthless, so unlike the kind animals back home. America was the land of moldy honey and near-expired milk—the kind in Aunt Zena’s pantry, served with disdain to us while her kids stealthily munched on Dannon Yogurt and Pop Tarts. And to top it all off, there was no medal to look at or think about while slurping down the soggy store-brand cornflakes. There was no game to play aside from some Milton Bradley soap opera trivia hand-me-down from my second cousins…

…There was only languor without dreams—a Nintendo without a cartridge. Certain it would turn up, I made a halfhearted attempt to look for my long-cherished sentimental keepsake, historical artifact, and future Halloween trimming, rummaging through my parents’ wooden chest of valuables, soon to be pronounced useless crap. Cheap costume jewelry, several faded fanny packs, tube upon tube of expired Soviet laxatives, ’60s books about American society and culture were all that greeted my chagrin.

I was starting to get worried. Missing was OK—possibly gone wasn’t. Not a soul—Grandma included, knew about the medal—or cared, since the beginning of our tumultuous departure from Russia and through our tempestuous beginning here. Yet here I was: in an increasingly fraught and frantic search amid a hopeless clutter of immigrant filtrate. From room to room (and there were only three) I ran, under and around my cousins, blind to my aunt’s rebuke, deaf to my uncle’s parroted words of castigation. Turning the house upside down for no good reason and incurring my parents’ wrath was one thing. Not finding the medal—that…that was unthinkable.

Running out of places to triple-check and domestic order to upset, I decided to take the last resort. “Grandma…” I asked. The look on her face, strangely, failed to shift from sanguine to suspicious. Grandma, so often the public face of our family—the one whose sterling reputation and demeanor swore integrity to those that would doubt ours—now looked, I could’ve sworn, less than completely candid. She shrugged her left shoulder, I queried again; she shrugged her right and left for the kitchen, where a pretext awaited her.

Suddenly, I felt like the time my parents took away our cancer-stricken cat to a feline clinic—one I’d never been able to find in all my later research—without granting me a proper goodbye. It was a moment of full-blown paranoia that penetrated the credulous walls of childhood trust. Luckily, it was only a moment, because in the next my grandpa strolled through the door, his hands laden with crumpled cellophane Thank You bags.

He flashed me a quick, noncommittal glance and continued in his firm, disciplined stride to the kitchen, where my grandmother was frying potatoes in a 2-inch pool of vegetable oil. “Gramps’, Gramps’!” I beseeched. In a stern voice, he advised I would have to wait, and make myself useful by peeling my cousins off the stairwell for dinner. But in my excitement, I couldn’t wait. “Grandpa, Grandpa, have you seen my medal?—Uncle Seva’s medal?”

In that instant, when I knew I would get no more than a cold shrug, Grandpa showed all his cards—which, in their literal form, were a wrinkled pair of kids’ Wrangler jeans, a brown Bugle Boy short-sleeve, and a shelf-worn 3-pack of briefs made by some unidentifiable Mexican company.

“What’s this for?”

“School starts soon. You have to look nice on first day.”

“Oh, thank you…” Instinctively, I assumed dull-birthday-gift mode. Grandpa fixed his gaze expectantly, as if waiting for the next question. “Thank you, Grandpa. This is nice,” I repeated, suffocating in my words’ inadequacy, as reflected on Grandpa’s screwed-up face.

“You are a big boy, so you understand.” It wasn’t a question. This took a few moments for me to process; it was an answer…

It didn’t matter that Grandma debunked every myth concerning the medal: ...never used it to marry Sveta…never even earned it…purchased, along with a certificate, by Seva’s father from a corrupt general to speed Seva’s return from service… Full disclosure was the last thing I wanted—the first and only was that hunk of metal previously occupying the empty box in my hands.

I stared at the box, fuming. Not one of her excuses released Grandpa from answering for what he’d done; none could unmake him the object of my scorn. I ran out of the house, to the Boardwalk, and scurried underneath—years before it was packed with sand to discourage bums and junkies from dwelling within its fetid folds—surrendering to a torrent of tears gushing from my quaking gut. Like a trucker barreling into a rest-stop bathroom, I found my release, against a damp stone pillar.

*****

After a deliberately silent night, I spied my moment. Emanating from the opposite corner of the room, his carefree, sonorous snore was my bugle for attack. Armed with the articles he’d selflessly acquired for me, I jumped on top of him, slapping him with the briefs and wrapping the jeans around his bristly face. Startled, Grandpa gasped for air and shrieked. I’d never heard my grandfather shriek. Shocked, in turn, I fell off the bed before he’d had a chance to fling me, sliding underneath my own cot, in leftover tears. In the next room, I heard Aunt Zena’s snarling, long-planned bark, muted no longer, “That is it—the end! Either them or me!”

Writhing under my meager shelter, scared out of my wits—but not of my imminent comeuppance, I reached inside the storage box and furiously felt around for it, groping, hoping that I had missed a spot...