She fills out an application once a year as the rules allow. Each time, she makes sure I buy a money order for a hundred dollars, the price of the petition, and write the name of the U.S. State Department on the front. Then she walks to the post office and gives the envelope to the clerk in person, to witness that it is stamped and sent on its way. In 1993 a phone call comes from Leningrad: Marina, choking on her own words, announces that she has just received a postcard from the U.S. Embassy in Russia. “What postcard?” I shout into the phone because I can hardly hear her across the static of international ether. My mother is standing next to me, craning her neck, trying to hear what my sister says, prompting me what to ask her. “I can’t hear anything,” I whisper, waving at Mama to be quiet. “A postcard!” Marina yells. “About the green card lottery. I won.” My mother throws up her arms, then presses them to her chest, as if her lungs had suddenly emptied of air.
