A hard name

There were reds under the beds
when we were growing up
and someone at school
always ridiculed my name
the name of the woman spy
frozen in a cold war movie.
It has been a hard name to carry
a hard name to explain
but sometimes it starred in a ballet
and took the impossible leap
or came up in Dostoevsky
only to fall in quiet despair
softly at our feet.
I lived with it then
I live with it now.
It keeps its hard edge
in the language my parents
never quite mastered.