Saving Anna Karenina

Part 26

Start with Part 1, and read a short synopsis of the original book.

In a salon area were garish vinyl sofas, a TV, and half a dozen patients. A man laughed to himself. Others dozed. One girl had a pillow and a stuffed toy with her; she sucked on her thumb. Everyone awake stared at Anna and Patti. They went into a small, charmless dining room and waited in line while an angry woman called out last names.

“You don’t get yogurt!” she said to one exhausted man with body odor that wafted through the room. He had strings hanging from his pockets and long curls in front of his ears. He looked Russian, Anna thought — a monk, perhaps.

“Avram! I told you no yogurt until you fill out the kosher form! We can’t meet people’s dietary needs just by guessing! You gotta FILL OUT THE FORMS!” The woman touched the man on the arm and he flinched.

“Try not to touch me,” he said.

“Are you Russian?” Anna said to him in a whisper. He looked at her with red-rimmed eyes, his eyelids trembling desperately to stay open.

“I’m Jewish.” He slumped away to a table and sat down to eat. Anna waited meanwhile, but her name didn’t come up.

“You’re new,” said the servant. “We got extras for the new people, but I can’t promise you’ll like the menu.” She pulled out a tray from a rack and handed it to Anna. Patti had disappeared, so Anna sat next to a ravaged man with a beard. She smiled at him and looked over the tray — eggs, various containers whose contents she could not distinguish, a bread roll. She began to eat the eggs.

“I’m gonna write a book,” said the man at the table in a raspy voice. “It’s gonna to be called, ‘Wake Up America!’”

“I hope you do,” Anna said.

“I need to get my shit together first,” said the man, while chewing his food.

“What does that mean?” said Anna.

“I’m a crackhead. My name’s Kurt by the way.” He offered her his hand. She shook it lightly and made a note not to touch her food with that hand. “You know what my book’s gonna be about?”

Anna was too busy eating so she shook her head to answer him. Although the food tasted bland, it replaced the taste of vomit in her throat.

“It’s gonna be about a white guy who moves to the ghetto and gets ruined by all the immigrants and hood rats. Everyone’s doing illegal shit, and he gets hooked on drugs. At the beginning he’s this hopeful young white guy from rural Pennsylvania and it’s the only neighborhood he can afford. By the end he’s got AIDS and a wicked crack addiction. He’s in a psych ward and he doesn’t make any art and his fuckin’ leg’s falling asleep from haldol injections. Uhhh!” He screamed and shook his leg.

“But what about your family?” said Anna.

“People don’t have real families in America,” he said. “Didn’t you know that? They outsource everything. Babysitters raise kids, therapists take care of emotions, drugs take care of pain, and when none of that works, well, you wind up here.”

He laughed contemptuously. “But you never hear about that shit. You hear the opposite. For example. The President’s got everyone believing that the ghetto’s gonna save America. It’s fuckin’ absurd. Gimme a break, Obama. People in the ghetto are the most corrupt common denominator. They don’t practice birth control, get five welfare checks a month for their fuckin’ kids while they sell heroin to 25-year-old art students from the Midwest or fuckin’ New Mexico. And immigrants don’t give a shit about America. They only give a shit about their people, in Cuba, or fuckin China, or the Dominican Republic. They’re wiring money to them every month.”

“Why should the immigrants care about you?” said Anna. She munched on cucumbers.

“I don’t expect them to care about me!” Kurt bellowed. “I just want ’em gone. Ship ’em back to Santo Domingo! To Kingston! To Te-gu-ci-fuckin-galpa!”

Now the servant was shouting behind them.

“You don’t get seconds!” Anna turned around to see her slapping the hand of a large man who was reaching into the rack of food trays.

“God, what a fucking bitch,” said Kurt.

The other patients, many of whom were brown, and probably from these places Kurt mentioned, were looking with angry eyes at their table. Anna could see how his opinions would be hurtful to them, and she didn’t want to appear sympathetic to him. She rose.

“Patients to their rooms, all patients to their rooms,” said a man’s voice. “Doctors’ rounds at nine o’clock.”

“Hey nice to meet you lady,” said Kurt. He was shoveling applesauce into his mouth so hurriedly that some had migrated to his mustache and beard.

“I am an immigrant, and I want to go back home,” said Anna. “I can’t.”

“That’s what they all say,” muttered Kurt.

This is part 26 of a serialized novella being published each Thursday. It is a speculative sequel to Leo Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

I’m the author of Oh, the Places Where You’ll Have a Nervous Breakdown.