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dresses.
    Ruslan and I met on a concert tour when I was six and he nine.
    The ensemble had performed the last show of the evening in the Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod, and most troupe members had returned to the Hotel Friendship. It was close to eleven, but on account of a raucous poker game going on inside our room, I was able to sneak out to explore the building, which, from the outside, looked like a flying saucer.
    I crept down the stairs to the second floor, and about ten feet away saw a woman beating a boy. He rolled into a fetal position as her fists flew into his ribs and face. I stood in the middle of the barely lit hallway in my pink pajamas, my feet momentarily growing roots. My parents never hit me, but I’d witnessed plenty of battles on the road, so I did what I’d seen other women do time and again.
    I rushed the boy’s assailant with a screech, waving my arms in the air. Shock registered on her face and that tiny reprieve gave him a chance to crawl out of reach. I grabbed hold of her arm and bit down, and the woman struggled to shake me loose. I remember still digging my fingertips into her flesh when somebody jerked me away from behind. Next thing I knew, my father had me up in his arms.
    The woman hollered, “I’m bleeding!” I recognized her then. Kristina, a dancer Grandpa Andrei had recently hired.
    â€œYou’ll live,” my father said with a glance at the tooth marks on her forearm.
    People crowded the hallway. Their voices soon rose in argument.
    â€œYou could’ve killed your own son,” someone said. “Have you no shame?”
    â€œHe’s stronger than he looks,” Kristina said.
    I wrapped my arms around Dad’s neck, my eyes on the boy as he ran a sleeve across his nose, smearing blood over his face. He stood, one hand on the wall for support, and dipped his head at me in acknowledgment.
    Ruslan and I spent whatever time we could together. Only I knew that sometimes he slipped drops of valerian into his mother’s glass so that she slept through the night without chasing him with a knife, and no one but he knew I once stole a cucumber from the school cafeteria kitchen on a dare.
    It was not unusual for the Roma boys to perform (many preferred that to going to school), but Ruslan was obsessed, practicing his guitar for hours. Whenever he had to sit a number out, he’d pace until allowed to go back up. That’s how he was. Once he set his mind on something it swept him like an avalanche.
    The first time Dad auditioned him, everybody grew quiet and the people rehearsing nearby drew closer to listen.
    â€œHe’s a wunderkind,” Dad exclaimed later while Mom attempted to shorten the sleeves of his magenta stage coat with my father still in it. “It’s like fire shooting out of his fingertips.”
    â€œThat’s all the boy thinks about,” Mom said. “Not healthy. And now he’s dropped out of school! Again!” Ruslan had dropped out at the age of nine to beg on the streets, per his mother’s instructions. He went back, but struggled through every day.
    â€œHe’s not good at academics, but with fingers like his, who needs algebra?”
    â€œHe should have other interests, kick a soccer ball once in a while.”
    When I was nine and Ruslan twelve, Grandpa Andrei ordered Kristina to leave. She had a habit of stealing husbands or, more often, borrowing them for a night. Ruslan’s father was a mystery many band members often and without shame bet money to solve. Kristina was also a heroin addict and Ruslan often suffered the rage that came with the high.
    When Ruslan’s mother left, she didn’t say goodbye. He himself showed no emotion as he watched her get into the taxi from the hotel window. He had decided to stay with the troupe.
    Later I found him sitting on a ratty yellow couch down in the hotel lobby with his guitar case propped against the wall. He was softly tapping a rhythm