LYNNWOOD — Anatoliy Soloviev filled a big plastic jug with water at the cemetery faucet and lugged it 25 yards to the grave. He washed away bits of grass and debris from the black headstone, the one with the photo of the pretty blond woman.
His wife, Alla Solovieva, arranged a bouquet of carnations — yellow for absence, and red, the color of life, for hope. She dried the headstone, making it gleam.
They stood together quietly, said a prayer and shed fresh tears for their daughter.
Two years ago Sept. 22, Anastasia Solovieva King, 20, a mail-order bride from Kyrgyzstan, was murdered by her American husband, Indle Gifford King Jr.
Solovieva pointed to empty plots they own near her daughter’s. They hope to be buried here, too, someday.
“This is where our daughter is, and we want to stay with her,” Soloviev, 64, said, through a Russian interpreter. “We don’t have anybody left over there. She was our only child.”
To stay, the couple will have to unravel some bureaucratic red tape with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They have temporary permission to remain in this country, but no assurance that they will be allowed to stay for the rest of their lives.
They arrived in Snohomish County in early 2001, with suitcases and little else, to attend King’s murder trial.
The Solovievs survived in Kyrgyzstan under the Soviet regime doing what they love — teaching music. After Kyrgyzstan became independent — it is now called the Kyrgyz Republic — they invested their life savings to prepare their daughter for life in the United States. They thought it would be her big opportunity. They also counted on her helping to support them in their old age.
Now their visits to Floral Hills Cemetery in Lynnwood are a Sunday ritual.
They would visit more often except for Soloviev’s six-day-a-week work schedule. He labors most days at fast-food restaurants. In their basement apartment in south Everett, Solovieva gives children piano lessons.
Their lives are also weighted by guilt.
“This is a specially heavy burden for us because we encouraged her to come to America,” said Solovieva, 59. “There is such pain, because I feel I played such a big role in her coming here, and the pain never goes away.”
Anastasia King grew up in her parents’ insular world surrounded by classical music and jazz, free of the influence of even television programs that showed violence.
She played the piano, and in halting English her mother points to a compact disk of Chopin pieces, one of her daughter’s favorites. She was attending the University of Washington and was popular among her co-workers at McCormick’s Fish House in downtown Seattle.
The work enabled her to save a little, sending about $100 a month to her retired parents. That was a sizable sum in depressed Kyrgyzstan.
Neither she nor her parents were prepared for the likes of Indle King, 40, of Mountlake Terrace, the man who convinced her to come to this country and marry him.
Solovieva’s hope was that her daughter would marry a good man who would consider it an honor to have a beautiful young wife. Most of all, she hoped King would be a good friend to her only daughter.
She was wrong.
She learned from her daughter’s diary that the two-year marriage was fraught with problems from the start. Anastasia King spent the first year trying to please her husband, and the second trying to leave him.
She was killed the day she and her husband returned from visiting her parents in Kyrgyzstan. Indle King was charged, convicted and is serving 29 years in prison.
When Anastasia King’s body was found, her parents left their home in Bishkek, expecting to bring her back to that country. But they were forced to bury her in Lynnwood because shipping her body home would have cost too much. Cremation was not an option because of their religious beliefs.
Today, their neat home in Bishkek is empty and being watched by a friend. It is the place where Anastasia grew up, Solovieva says.
It’s where her spirit remains. They can’t sell it until they know whether they will be deported or not. For now, the Solovievs have deferred action status, which includes work permits.
Soloviev has made the most of his work permit, although his jobs pay only about $7 an hour. Instead of applying his drive to the music he taught in the Soviet Union, he is emptying hot vats of grease and making pizzas.
“He’s an awesome guy,” said co-worker Rosie Starr at a south Everett Jack in the Box where he works as a maintenance man. Manager Tonne Carr said he’s quick to learn despite the language barrier.
“He keeps the restaurant spotless. He just has a really strong work ethic,” Carr said.
At the Pizza Hut on 128th Street SW, manager Stacy Maddux said she can’t get him to take a break. “He wants to get his stuff done,” she said. “You don’t get that with a lot of people these days.”
Soloviev says his work keeps him going so he doesn’t get depressed. “Our situation is kind of hard right now,” he said.
The Solovievs say they are grateful for the police work that led to Indle King’s arrest, for the prosecution and the kind words and support of so many people here. All that has restored their faith in the United States and its opportunities.
Immigration lawyer Bernice Funk has applied to the INS for permanent residency status for the Solovievs under a 2000 law aimed at helping women and children who were imported for the sex trade or who end up victims of violence.
Funk said the INS has not yet developed rules and regulations for dispensing residency status under the law. Even letters from Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray haven’t broken the immigration logjam.
Hard work is a way of life for the Solovievs.
Soloviev was born in Russia and moved with his family as a child to Kyrgyzstan. The daughter of a Russian Army engineer, Solovieva’s family lived in Russia until her father retired in Bishkek.
The couple met at a music conservatory, and they went on to open two small state music schools in different parts of Russia. He was the director, and she was a teacher.
In one, they lived in the same place they worked, for a time sleeping on chairs they stuck together.
In those days before Anastasia’s birth, “the new school was our child,” Solovieva said.
She is proficient on the piano, while he plays trumpet and piano, and dabbles a little with the saxophone.
To help sustain them, Solovieva drills young piano students — mostly Russian-speaking youngsters. Sometimes she sits down for a duet during the lessons.
“Good job,” she said in English on a recent afternoon to 8-year-old Oksana Yerina of Everett. Classical pieces, the blues and children’s tunes filled the air.
The couple commemorated the second anniversary of their daughter’s death on Sept. 22 with prayers at the Russian Orthodox church they attend in Seattle. Solovieva baked a Napoleon cake to share with her friends. It was Anastasia’s favorite.
And then, like any other Sunday, there was a private trip to the cemetery, with more prayers and tears.
As on any Sunday, they walked away from their daughter’s grave site and Solovieva’s teary face may turn to a smile when her husband hands her the keys to the car. It is on these occasions that she practices driving on the cemetery lanes.
She never drove in Kyrgyzstan, and it frightens her to think about driving in local traffic. Learning to drive and securing a license, however, would enable her to visit the cemetery more often without having to depend on her husband and his work schedule.
“If I could do that on my own, I’d do that every day,” she said. “I’d just sit there and think.
“As long as I’m alive, I have to visit her grave, because my fate is tied to hers.”
Jim Haley is a reporter for the Herald in Everett
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