Apprehensively, Valerica placed the phone receiver to her ear. The steady beep that resonated every two seconds stabilized her own breathing. She counted the beeps until someone finally picked up.

“Alo?” her aunt voiced.

“Buna ziua, Nana Stela,” Valerica greeted. Though she had been Americanized since she immigrated to America four years ago, she still affectionately said Nana Stela rather than Aunt Stela when speaking to her aunt.
 
“Valerica, ce mai faci? Cum viata? Bine?”

Valerica ran the questions through her head, translating them. They were simple questions: How are you? How’s everything? But she had to stop and think about them.
 
She had stopped thinking in Romanian years ago. It had become difficult to speak the language, even, since her mother had encouraged her to only speak English at all times. Sometimes Valerica dreaded calling her aunt for fear of what to say.

“Bine,” she finally answered. Good. Not terrible or perfect. Valerica had long ago recognized that American life was simply good, and nothing else.

Her aunt wished her a happy New Year’s. Since Moldova was about twelve hours ahead of America, her aunt and relatives would be celebrating New Year’s in a few hours, while Valerica would just have breakfast now. Her relatives would set up a grand table with the cleanest tablecloth in the house. Grandma would cook the most succulent meals: the corn-flour mamaliga, carmine-colored borsch prepared from beets, fowl jelly soup that always tasted perfectly sour and liquid under Valerica’s tongue, and an assortment of pickled foods Grandma had prepared during the summer.

Pickled watermelon, as distasteful as it sounds, was Valerica’s favorite. She especially missed the refreshing compotes her grandmother stewed in the summer, when fruit was plentiful.

America didn’t lack fruit at any time during the year. That was probably what most delighted Valerica and her mother during their first month in America. Her mother prepared fruit salads every day for months before she realized there would always be abundance of bananas and grapes.

But somehow, the abundance began to disappoint Valerica. May and June wasn’t much to look forward to, now that she could eat cherries for a longer span of the year.

What she most missed was the New Year’s celebration her relatives would soon commence. Her grandfather would sit at the head of the table. Informality, along with home-baked bread, would be passed around the table. Her cousins, Aurel and Oana (and perhaps Gabriel, though at fourteen he considered himself too old for child’s play), would slip under the table and play with the dog until someone scolded them.

Then, once everyone was seated, Grandma would lower the TV volume while Grandpa made the champagne toast, and everyone would shout “Multi ani!” and “Noroc!”

The table would be boisterous and abuzz with conversation. Aunt Violeta would tell her cousin across the table about her new apartment in Chisinau. Grandpa would shout to Grandma to get more wine, the kind that Uncle Abel had brewed in the village. And the kids would whiz around the room, changing TV channels, spilling drinks, and finally sitting down for dessert, which would be a scrumptious torte Grandma had baked.

Over the phone, Valerica heard the commotion that signaled dinner would start soon.

“Tot este bine?” Valerica’s aunt asked with concern after she had lapsed into silence.

 “Da,” Valerica said minimally. Yes, everything’s fine.

Then, when she couldn’t recall any more Romanian to form a conversation, Valerica wished her aunt a happy New Year’s and hung up. Only then did she cease to feel apprehensive. These conversations with her aunt had become emptier and shorter over the years, and she felt traitorous for not being able to recall her own native language.

Valerica was sipping tea at the kitchen counter when her mother walked in, dragging her boots over the welcome mat to get rid of the snow. She had been plowing the driveway since morning. The hard-working skills she had cultivated in Moldova did not abandon her even now, when there were three other people in the house—her cousin and his wife, with whom she shared the house expenses, as well as her own daughter—who might have done the job instead.

“Valerie, have some breakfast,” her mother prompted, always worrying that Valerica didn’t have enough to eat.

Another effort at Americanization was changing Valerica’s name to Valerie. At school, Valerica was known as Valerie Lupescu, though she would have preferred her birth name instead.

Valerica absentmindedly grabbed the box of Domino’s Pizza from last night. Nana Stela would’ve been shocked to see her eat pizza for breakfast, but this was America, and therefore acceptable.

Chewing the dry pizza, Valerica pretended it was Grandma’s scrumptious torte instead. But the taste was too sordid to pretend.

Alina on life between cultures:

The hardest thing about balancing two cultures is trying to form an identity that fits two criteria. When I tell people I'm from Moldova, they ask what other languages I can speak. I say none, because I've forgotten how to speak both Russian and Romanian. I can only understand them when they are spoken to me. I've been Americanized, but not quite, because my mother still lives by the standards of Moldova. She expects me to excel and be the best in everything, because I did not have these opportunities in Moldova.  Sometimes these standards are demanding.

The best thing about balancing both cultures is the stark contrast between the cultures that gives me motivation to succeed. When I look back on the simplistic life in Moldova, but the lack of opportunity, I'm reminded of how much more I can accomplish in America.