The Crazy Lady

When I say my host mother is a little crazy, that she’s slightly nutso, I assure you that I’m being more than generous in my evaluation. Sure, in her heart, Katia means well. She’s a nice person, a good woman. She’s strong and independent and she’s managed to raise two incredible children on her own. I have the utmost respect for the obstacles she’s overcome in her life and the success she’s found. That said, I still think she’s a little coo-coo.

Yes, many of my grievances against her are more a matter of culture clash than anything else. It drives me crazy, absolutely crazy, when she sits down next to me and she’s so close she could easily lick my neck. I don’t see why our thighs must be touching when there is an entire couch we can be sharing. I don’t see why she must speak to me with her face literally two inches away from the side of mine. She takes the term “close talker” to whole new level. I don’t see why she must giggle her high-pitched giggle directly into my eardrum or why she must from time to time, reach over and adjust my hair like I’m her little pet. Really, I think that’s what irks me the most about her: she treats me like I’m her little pet or her little doll or her moronic child. All the time, I find myself thinking: lady, what the hell are you doing?

This thought most recently crossed my mind when she tried to spoon-feed me my dinner. We were having potatoes (yes, a shocker). When I came to the table, I saw that there was a side of sour cream in bowl sitting next to my plate. I drizzled a spoonful of sour cream onto my potatoes because to me, it was the logical thing to do. As I did so, Katia started gasping and shaking her head saying “Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni!” Her gasps scared me. I thought something really horrible had happened, like maybe she had set herself on fire. Then, while I was still sitting at the table in utter confusion, she took a forkful of potatoes (sans sour cream) and shoved it into my mouth. While I was chewing and mentally registering the fact that she had just shoved potatoes into my mouth, she came at me with a huge spoonful of sour cream.

It happened in slow motion, this big spoon coming towards my face like, “Open the hatch!” She tried to feed me another bite, but I waved her away and resumed eating my own potatoes. She protested again, but I told her that I like my sour cream on my potatoes. Katia has since shoved food in my mouth on three other occasions. Her tactic is the element of surprise and it works because I never quite know when there is going to be a spoon or fork heading full steam for my mouth. I try to protest, but she’s incredibly insistent and in the end, well, in the end, the hatch opens.

I particularly dislike going out in public with her because she insists on holding my hand when we cross the street. The first time I went out with her, she dragged me to the bazaar where we zigzagged back and forth across the street more times than I could count. Each and every time we crossed she sought out my hand, even when it was in my pocket. Now this might seem like a trite complaint, but think about it; think about being a grown adult and being tugged around like you’re two-years-old.

As I learned last week, when out with Katia, there are things worse then hand holding. We were going to develop my pictures from New Years, which she had been obsessed with doing since the moment I took them. There is one guy in town who develops digital pictures and we were on the way to his “studio”. As we walked, Katia started leading me around by my scarf. That’s right, by my scarf, like I was a little puppy. She would take my scarf and I would whip it out of her hand and a few moments later, she would take it again and I would whip it out of her hand. For most of the walk, she was talking and giggling and pulling me around by my scarf. I, on the other hand, was stone-faced, utterly unamused, purposefully ripping my scarf from her clutches hoping she’d get the point. She didn’t. I finally ended up tucking my scarf into my jacket.

I was incredibly grateful to finally get my pictures developed for her because she had been making me show them to her on my computer daily. She liked to linger on the ones that she was in and touch the screen and say, “Class, class!” Everyone is vain, and well, Katia’s no exception. She has lots of pictures of herself displayed around her room. She has lots of pictures of herself – mostly headshots that all look the same – on her camera phone. She made me look at all the headshots on her phone. She had more than one folder of them. It was incredibly dull and slightly awkward. I mean, after the 15th one, what can you say anymore? Nice hair?

Katia has a strong personality. Her personality makes her a successful manager at the meat bizaar, but it makes her a bit much to deal with if you’re not a pork loin. She’s used to things being done her way on her time to her liking. Sometimes I find her behavior a bit erratic. The other night, I was watching TV with Yulia and Misha. Katia had been watching a show in her room, but decided to come in and join us. She told Misha to change the station to the program she had been watching. When he didn’t do it right away, she screamed at him. It was a loud, abrupt scream and it startled me so much I jumped. Every once in awhile, she’ll just scream. Now I’m more used to it then I was before, but it still takes me by surprise. I’m sure that Misha must deserve it some of the time, but for the life of me, I can’t understand why we must go from calm questioning to crazy person screaming without any reasonable in between.

When I first arrived here, I needed to do some laundry. My two main sweaters needed to be washed. It wasn’t a big deal since they just needed to be hand washed and that’s not too hard. Well, the minute Katia saw that I was hand washing my sweaters, she marched into the bathroom and told me that she would wash them for me in the machine. I said thank you, but no, these sweaters need to be hand washed. She insisted and insisted. I tried to sneak into the bathroom and finish washing them, but she’d poured out the water they had been soaking in. When she heard me in the bathroom, she ran in and told me to leave, that she’d wash my sweaters for me. I was new to town and I wide-eyed and naive, and I let her have her way because it wasn’t worth the fight. Two hours later I pulled my sweaters out of the washing machine. They were tiny. She had shrunk them to the size a 6-year-old might wear. She walked by and saw me madly pulling on them, trying desperately to stretch them back out and she just smiled, apparently not noticing that – at her insistence -- my two main sweaters had become doll clothes.

Shrunken sweaters I can get over. Mostly I blame myself for not sticking to my guns. What really gets me though, is the fact that Katia really does think I’m stupid. Just tonight, I heard her telling Yulia that I don’t know how to eat a tomato. How can a person not know how eat a tomato? Does she really think I’m that dull? She told me to cut my meat and put it on my kasha. I understood her. I told her I understood her, and yet, she kept showing me how to cut with the knife – pointing out the sharp side even! – miming it for me saying, “Understand? Understand? Understand?” Today when I was leaving the apartment, she stood pressed up against my side watching me unlock the deadbolt saying, “Uh huh, Uh huh, Uh huh” like it was miraculous that I was managing without her help.

I’m sure that I must drive her as crazy as she drives me. Culture clash tends to go both ways. For one thing, I know it really bothers her when I brush up against her wallpaper. I try not to; I really try to consciously think “Middle of the hall away from the wall, middle of the hall away from the wall.” Sometimes I get careless though, and I forget to think about it, and my arm or my side or my back will brush up against the wall as I round a corner she’ll give an exasperated sigh and tell me to stay away from the wallpaper. (“Understand? Understand? Understand?)

I know it bothers her that I’ll leave the house even when she tells me I’m “not allowed” because it’s too cold. Once she tried to lock me inside when she saw that I was leaving, but I just kept putting on my boots and my scarf and my coat. She locked the door and took the key and told me I may not leave. She called Yulia in to tell me what she said (even though I understood) and Yulia said, “Mom, she’s 23, let her go.” And though she pouted, Katia did let me go, because really, she had choice. She’s not my mother. I have a mother, in America, who thankfully, is the polar opposite of Lady Coo-Coo.