Things seemed to only grow worse with my family.
Bills were do, my sister Karolina had picked up two more shifts as a waitress that paid barely above minimum wage, Sonya was alone and pregnant and Victoria was thinking about dropping out of school to help my mother and grandmother with their small medical remedies business. Little Paul was even thinking about quitting first grade to find a job walking our dog Pepper and charging five dollars for anyone who wanted to see her do a trick.
Things weren't at their worst but they were pretty bad.
I was surprised I still managed to find work-building houses along the small town that was Baia.
I was equally surprised to find the odd mix of people moving to our small Russian town and that they paid me extra for small jobs to help with the upkeep around the houses.
Yes, the Belikov family's financial situation could've been much worse. Russia's economy had fallen a lot without a real political figure in power and politicians taking unofficial control over the cities and trying to bump each other off.
There were families sharing boarding houses and some begging on the streets but most had resorted to small crimes like robbing whatever tourist had suddenly decided to visit our lovely country or scheming to rip off new comers.
I was one of the lucky twenty four year olds with a job.
I have a big loving family, a roof over head, and food in our stomachs.
I was going to do my best to keep it that way. Despite the fact that most of these corrupt politician's paid my salary and for the supplies used to build homes, I was in now way going to get involved. I did my work and went home and strayed from whatever trouble the politicians and the criminals working under them were backing.
"Where are you off to so early, Dimka?" my mother asked sipping coffee.
I tugged my hair into a ponytail and pushed my sleeves up grabbing the long wooded boards leaning in the corner.
"Fix that hole on the roof. I'm tired of birds watching me while I sleep. I think they're building a nest up there or thinking of building one in my room. I spotted one eyeing my bed."
My mother laughed sipping her coffee.
"Well, be careful. Try to keep quiet if you see the new neighbors moving into the house you built beside ours. They called and said they might be arriving today and we don't want them to think we're loud Russians who make a lot of noise."
"We are loud Russians who make a lot of noise but yeah, I'll try hammering quietly," I joked.
I was outside on the roof less than five minutes when a sleek black Chevy Tahoe pulled into the small driveway beside ours. A tall man with a thick dark beard got out of the drivers seat, a woman with bright red curls out of the passenger seat, and a girl pushed open the backseat door and slammed it shut rubbing her hands together.
"So cold," she exclaimed blowing on her hands for warmth.
"Don't exaggerate, Flower," the driver had said standing before the house. "It'll be a lot colder than this in the coming winter."
He rested an arm on the girl and the red head woman's shoulder and they stared at the house.
From what I remembered building it, it was an upscale house compared to our modest home next door and all of those around it. It had been requested that the house have three to four bedrooms, just as many bathrooms, an office, den, living room, dining room, and a large kitchen. The floors were hardwood and the house itself was made of a mixture of long paneled wood on the inside and a mixture of rock, cement and brick on the outside. I even added two fireplaces in two of the bedrooms and one in the den.
This had been one of my finer house built, a house I could only dream to move my family into or build for them one day.
In my daydreaming the small family had dispersed, the man and the woman headed inside to see their new home.
"Back the car into the driveway without hitting the house and start unloading, Flower," the man said to the longhaired girl who was still trying to warm her hands.
"Sure thing, Old Man. I'll be the man of the house and do what you should be doing instead of playing lovely dovey with mom," she muttered stomping to the back of the truck.
"What was that dear?" he asked from the threshold of the house.
"Nothing," she shouted back faking a smile and waving him inside.
I listened, since the street was pretty quiet being Sunday, as she started the car and backed it into the drive. There was the barely audible sound of the metal of the car hitting the garage and I chuckled to myself.
I heard the sound of her boots against the snow-covered driveway and the slam of the car door, a slur of profanities as she probably checked the damage of the rear of the car and the garage.
I heard the door of the house open and the man exclaim, "Driving lesson number one don't hit anything. Driving lesson number two don't hit a house. Driving lesson number three especially not the house you live in and driving lesson number for don't hit anything especially the house you live in with your father's car!"
I heard the girls scoff.
I continued to pull at the nails and wood on the roof and hammer gently on our house as the man asked the girl to pull the bags from the backseat.
Her boots crunched over the snow and the door of the car opened.
I tugged at the longest piece of wood that was practically rotted from end to end but the nail keeping it attached to the roof was rusted and wouldn't come out.
I gave it one hard yank and the wood beam flew off our roof toward the house next door.
There was the sound of it shattering against the ground and before that a shriek and the clatter of luggage falling to the floor. .
"OUCH! WHAT THE-"
I leapt off of our roof and next door where the girl laid sprawled.
"Flower are you okay!" the man shouted coming from the back of the truck.
The girl sat into a sitting position leaning on one arm and rubbing her head with the other.
"I'm so sorry," I apologized. I pulled at the hand over her forehead. "Let me see it."
"No I'm fi-" she started.
"Rose, honey, let us see it," the man pleaded.
"No, really I'm-" she started again but when we pulled her arm away from her forehead and blood came away on her hand and running down the side of her face she stopped mid sentence.
"Oh great," she laughed as if it was the funniest thing in the world, to bleed from your head and she passed out.
"Rose!"
"It's okay my mother's a healer she can help," I explained.
Before the man could say anything I lifted the girl, older than I had anticipated from the roof, into my arms and toward my house.
The man followed not even bothering to call for his wife.
My mother met us at the door and ordered me to lay the girl Rose, on the couch. She cleaned up the wound and quickly stitched it up to stop the bleeding.
"I heard the commotion from in here," she explained laying a warm compress on Rose's head. She turned her full gaze onto me. "You dropped a piece of plywood on one of our new neighbors?" incredulously.
"I didn't make any noise," I countered. "Although I might have when the wood made contact with her head," I added sheepishly.
"Somehow I thought when you finally brought a girl home she wouldn't be unconscious," she muttered. She turned back to the man perched on the arm of the couch.
"You're daughter will be fine. She'll just be a little disoriented. I'm Olena by the way. We spoke on the phone," she greeted.
"Father of the knocked out girl, Abraham or just Abe. I was hoping Rose would adjust easy here and make new friends by any means necessary but a piece of wood to the head wasn't what I had in mind," he said to me.
"This is my son Dimitri," my mother introduced as we shook hands.
"I'm really sorry. I didn't think any of the nails were rusted that badly."
"It's alright. Considering you had to listen to our little family squabble when we first arrive and made that your first impression of us, we're even. I don't think Janine is going to take it so lightly though. Or Rose for that matter."
I sat and remembered how irritated and irate she'd been upon arrival and tried imagine how dispositions once awaking to find out the new neighbor dropped a piece of wood on her head.
"Well, we'll work it all out if you all come for dinner later. Janine is your wife I presume. I'm sure she won't want to do anything, especially not cook, but dote over daughter upon finding out she's been attacked by a piece of our house," my mother invited.
"Oh we could impose-" Abe started to refuse but my mother insisted.
"Besides it'll give us a chance to atone for our first impressions."
Abe finally settled and agreed to come to dinner.
Pepper walked into the living room and nudged Rose with his wet nose. She stirred as I pulled the dog away.
She moaned and tried to sit up.
She looked at each of the pair of eyes staring back at her and rested finally upon my own.
"You…hit me with wood."
"Dropped," I amended.
"What the hell man?" she tried to shriek but her voice was hoarse. She plopped back down on the couch and rubbed at her head. "It's my first day here Old Man and it hadn't been a good one," she said to her father.
"Think of it as a unique Russian hello," he said trying to hide a smile.
She rolled her eyes and met mine again.
"Welcome to Baia."