I can’t get her face out of my head.
There was a screech and then a loud thud as if someone dropped a bag of flour from a third-floor window. I found myself on my knees on the black asphalt in the middle of Santa Monica and Poinsettia, bent over her body. Her bald head was shiny with sweat as I held her hand and leaned in to see if she was okay. Blood dribbled from behind her ear and pooled on to the ground. Her chestnut wig lay flaccid, illuminated by headlights. Her eyes were bulging out of her skull. There was a deafening scream coming from the man that hit her with his car.
I had just walked past her. Past the faded Cyrillic signs selling pickled tomatoes and smoked fish, fluorescent orange caviar, jars of dusty jam made from tiny strawberries from the other side of the world, cans of slimy pickled mushrooms found only in this neighborhood, the neighborhood I grew up in, the one my parents no longer live in, the one I rarely visit these days.
Cars rubber necked by while I held her body in the middle of the intersection. I imagined what she was going to do tonight. Saw her sitting on a white ornate sofa coated in plastic, eating microwaved chicken katleti, watching Alla Pugacheva on Channel One, waiting for her kids to call. I imagined the green glare of a dispensary sign casting shadows on the old rug that hung over her sofa. Most of the Soviet refugees who immigrated to West Hollywood in the ‘80s and ‘90s had moved to North Hollywood, The Valley or Glendale somewhere more affordable, more suburban. Why was she still here?
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “They are on their way.” I couldn’t remember how to say ambulance in Russian. An off-duty paramedic arrived and told me not to move her. He averted traffic, as I whispered to her. “My name is Diana, I was born in Minsk, I’m here to help you.” “Diana?” she repeated over and over. The medic told me to look through her purse that I didn’t realize I was cradling all this time, as if it was my own. I found her name, Lyubov, written on the orange Access Services card in her wallet. Her name meant ‘love’ in Russian. I held her hairless head, so delicate like an egg until they put a brace on her neck and lifted her up on a gurney. I didn’t catch her last name.
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You can find Diana on Instagram at @druzova