The Russian Word for Snow

by Janis Cooke Newman

  thing that had once been there was now gone. Ken walked to the window. From the back, I could see him chewing.

  Irina came back into the room carrying a tray of mismatched bowls. Seeing her, the children in the big playpen rushed over and pressed themselves against the pink and white railings, crying with their arms held in the air. Irina picked up the closest one, a girl with crossed eyes who'd spent the morning reaching through the railings, trying to catch onto the edge of Ken's jacket. Tying a piece of fabric around the girl's neck. Irina lifted a bowl to the level of her chin. As the other children cried to be next. Irina stood behind the cross-eyed girl and spooned the pureed food into her mouth without pausing to let her swallow.

  I turned back to Alex, who was waiting with his mouth open for the small bit of food on the spoon in my hand. Behind me, I could hear the cross-eyed girl coughing, and I looked to see if Irina would stop or slow down. But she just kept emptying the bowl, occasionally taking the next spoonful from the food that was running down the girl's chin. There were tears in the girl's crossed eyes and snot coming out of her nose.

  I swallowed hard against the gagging in my own throat, and did not turn around again until Irina had set the dazed-looking girl back into the playpen and lifted out another crying child.

  In the time it took me to feed Alex, Irina fed nearly all of the ten or so children in the playpen. Then she poured the pureed food from one of the bowls into a bottle, and retrieved a small boy barely old enough to crawl.

  The boy's face looked like something not quite formed; there didn't seem to be enough definition between his nose and his upper lip, as though they'd been smudged together by a careless thumb when they were still wet and malleable. Irina held the boy out to me, opening his mouth with the nipple of the bottle so that I could see inside.

  "This boy has something missing," Anna translated, opening

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  her own mouth and pointing with a pink-polished nail to a spot behind her front teeth.

  "He has no palate," Ken said, leaning over and looking into the space behind the boy's smudged lips. "No palate," he repeated to Irina and pointed to the roof of his own mouth.

  "Da, da," Irina nodded, opening the boy's mouth wider with the nipple. I looked inside at the empty blackness and wondered if this something missing was the reason the boy was in an orphanage.

  I wondered the same thing about the little girl he shared his crib with, a girl with black hair and brown eyes who looked perfect when viewed from the left. Only when she turned to reveal her right side did you see that her mouth kept going— slashing across her cheek like a smear of lipstick, almost reaching up to her misshapen ear.

  And how about the boy I'd seen with the shortened leg, the girl with the crossed eyes? All of these children had defects that American doctors could most likely fix. Had that been what their parents were thinking when they'd sent their children to live in an orphanage? Had that been what the parents of the boy with the missing palate were thinking? That an American family would take him and give him a nose, an upper lip, something hard upon which to form his words? Watching Irina hold the bottle in the empty space of the boy's mouth, I hoped so.

  Over the next few days, we did whatever we could to make Alex notice us. Irina had given us permission to take him out of the big playpen, so each day we lifted him over the railings and tried to tempt him with toys that never seemed to be moved from their positions on the shelves. We'd line up these toys—a stiff-legged doll in a party dress, plastic rings in graduated sizes, a music box with a twirling ballerina—in front of Alex's knitted socks, like contestants being paraded before a judge. Irina, pass-

  ing through the toom with a pot of boiling water, or a folded pile of the cotton rags she used for diapers, would stare at the toys on the floor. Before we left, we'd put everything back where we'd found it.

  Alex mostly ignored these offerings, choosing instead a yellow push-toy that looked like a combination telephone and lawn mower, with red wheels and a blue handle and a plastic duck mounted just above the receiver. Alex would push this toy back and forth in front of the playpen while the other children sat behind the pink and white slats and watched him.

  Once, when Alex passed near me, I tried to get his attention by running a red dump truck along the floor near his feet and making the sound of the engine with my mouth. He stopped and watched the truck move past his socks as if it were self-propelled and had nothing to do with me. Then he pushed the lawn mower/telephone over to where the cross-eyed girl whose name was Olya, was shaking the railings of the playpen.

  Of all the children, Alex was the one who was least interested in us. The others clocked our movements with their eyes, pulling them away only when Irina carried in the bowls filled with whatever had been pureed that day. Natasha, a little girl with a perfectly round face who was called Nashty, liked to follow us around the edge of the playpen, always going to the corner where she'd be closest to us. Nikita, a boy with skin so transparent I could see the bluish veins pulsing beneath it, would spend an hour dropping a plastic ring over the railings, hoping we'd pick it up and hand it back to him. Olya liked to wait for Ken at the side of the playpen. When he came close enough, she'd grab onto his sleeve, or hook her fingers into one of his belt loops, not letting go until he'd crouched down and spoken to her.

  Alex barely looked up when we arrived, hardly noticed when we stood outside the playpen calling him. He'd just continue climbing a pile of stair-shaped blocks, or rocking back and

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  forth on the yellow bear, holding tight to its ears. If we wanted to take him out, we had to go to him, climbing over the railings and pushing past the other children who came up to touch our legs.

  It wasn't until the end of the first week that Alex made the first small move toward me. We were sitting together on the floor, while Irina dressed the other children for their naps. The children took their morning nap in cribs that sat in rows on a cement balcony. Even when it was warm, Irina would fold the children's flannel-covered arms and legs into snowsuits, tuck the straps of their brown knit hats into that undefined area between a baby's chin and throat.

  I could never tell what determined the order in which Irina dressed each child for his or her nap; it changed every day. I knew only that when it was Alex's turn, we would have to leave. I wanted Anna to ask if Alex could be last, see if she could win for us an extra bit of time before we had to get back into Vol-odya's car, shutting the door and wondering what we were going to do with the rest of the afternoon. But then I remembered that Irina earned just $20 a month, and that when Alex woke at night, she was the one who went to him. So instead, I'd hold Alex on my lap and wait, silently repeating the names Olya or Nikita or Nashty, as if I could influence who she'd reach for next.

  That day, Irina was changing Olya, shaking thick powder on a rash that looked red and hot and I knew that Alex's turn would come soon because there were only three children left in the big playpen. I put my face close enough to feel his breath, and ran my hand over his wispy hair down to where it was too long at the back. He raised his eyes—gray and blue and possibly green—up to mine, and I believed it was the first time he was actually seeing me. I ran my hand over his hair again, and felt him push his head into my palm.

  Then slowly, slowly, as if moving through water, he raised

  his hand and touched just his fingertips to the ends of my hair. His eyes—gray and blue and now I could see definitely green— were looking into mine, and I was about to say, "Hair. That's hair," giving him a word for what he'd begun to twine around his fingers, but I couldn't make any sound come from my throat. He pulled his eyes away to look at my hair, dark against his hand, and then touched his own, so light as to have almost no color at all. I held my breath as he went back and forth, between light and dark, letting his eyes rest in mine on the journey from one to the other.

  Behind us, Irina zipped up Olya's blue snowsuit with a ripping sound
and carried her out of the room. I tried to recall the name of the little girl whose mouth cut across her cheek so I could make her be next. But when Irina returned, she reached for Alex.

  On Friday, the day our papers were to be signed, we waited for Volodya's car in the lobby of the Radisson Hotel. Outside the glass doors, Mercedes-Benz automobiles pulled up and let out their passengers; long-legged women who looked like fashion models accompanied by short-necked men who dressed like gangsters from American movies. They swept past Ken and me, speaking in Russian and barely noticing us in our orphanage clothes—jeans and T-shirts and sneakers—as they headed to the shops that sold Cuban cigars and children's clothing made by Italian designers.

  Boris Yeltsin was dancing on the cover of the Moscow Times. The picture had been taken at a rock concert called Vote or Lose, and the caption beneath the president read "Gettin' Groovy." In the photograph, Yeltsin was standing in the aisle, his elbows bent, so that I could imagine the jerky little movements he must have been making with them. When I'd first looked at the picture, I'd thought he was smiling; but now I saw that he was just pressing his lips together, and that his hands were clenched into fists.

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  Next to the photograph of Boris Yeltsin was the headline, "Reds Plan Seizure of Power, Communists Readying Russia for Civil War."

  In the story below, one of the president's aides was quoted as saying that if Yeltsin won the election, the Communists would send out what he called their "fighting units." In that case, the man warned, "The Kremlin will have no choice, but to declare a state of emergency."

  "The finger is on the trigger," the man insisted further down the page. "At any moment the trigger will be pulled."

  I rubbed my bare arms, cold from the Radisson's air conditioning, and imagined soldiers with rifles passing through the hotel lobby instead of the long-legged women, armored tanks grinding their gears outside instead of Mercedes-Benz automobiles.

  If there's a civil war, they'll make us leave, I thought. The Russians or the Americans will force us onto a plane and send us home without Alex. And who knows what might happen to him before we were allowed to return?

  "Look at this," I said to Ken, meaning to show him the story about the warnings of the presidential aide.

  But Ken was staring into the video camera, watching the footage he'd shot the day before. I'd come upon him doing this at night in our hotel room, standing in the small space between the bed and the dresser with the camera pressed against his face. "Excuse me," I'd say, and "I need to get something out of that drawer." And he'd step to one side or the other without taking his eyes away from the small boy in the camera.

  "What is it?" Ken asked without looking up.

  "Boris Yeltsin dancing," I told him.

  Volodya's shiny car pulled up in front of the Radisson.

  If I don't step on any of the black squares, I told myself as I walked toward the glass doors, our papers will be signed before the election. I took a small hopping step on a white square of marble.

  Yuri was in the front seat, watching the men behind the Kievskaya train station exchanging out-of-date rubles for foreign currency.

  "Have you heard anything about our papers?" I asked him.

  "No," he said without turning around.

  "But it's Friday." I pulled on the back of his seat. "You said our papers would be signed by Friday."

  "I thought so, yes."

  "So do you think we'll get the signature today?"

  Yuri turned to glare at me. "I do not know." He shot a stream of tobacco-scented smoke out of his nostrils.

  Ken drew me back into my seat. Volodya pulled away from the Radisson, throwing us against the door as he sped out of the lot.

  On Saturday, Irina let me dress Alex for his nap. Handing me one of the blue snowsuits, she pointed to the changing table, and then stood so close behind me, I could feel the shape of her body with my back. I had no trouble sliding Alex's arms into the slippery sleeves, bending his knees into the pants. His limbs seemed to have no will of their own, like those of a pliable doll. He lay on the changing table, not reaching for my fingers, not turning to see why Olya had started to cry, so resigned to whatever I might do to him, it made me sad.

  After he was zipped into the snowsuit, I sat him up to put on the knitted brown hat that was so unflattering and institutional, Ken and I had taken to calling it his orphanage hat. I tied the straps under his chin, and then slipped my fingers beneath them to make sure they weren't too tight. I didn't notice until I'd stepped back that the front of the hat had fallen over his eyes.

  Alex tilted back his head and peered at me from under the brown hat. I waited for him to lift a hand, push the brown wool higher on his forehead, but he seemed to accept that this was the way the hat would be worn from now on. He was so matter-

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  of-fact, sitting with the brim of the orphanage hat resting on his nose, that I started to laugh.

  Irina reached around me and shoved the hat off Alex's face. Then she stepped forward and yanked on the elastic cuff I'd let ride up above Alex's ankle. As she tugged the pants leg, making his body jerk back and forth, Alex reached up and pulled the hat back down over his eyes.

  Irina stepped back from the stubborn cuff and saw that the hat was once again over Alex's face. I heard her make a tsking sound, before pushing the hat back and looking Alex over carefully, checking zippers and cuffs and mittens, muttering in Russian. When she was satisfied, she clapped her hands together in a small bit of applause.

  Alex turned his head to look at me and yanked the hat back over his face.

  This time Irina laughed, a sound both light and sudden that she quickly caught in a hand covering her mouth. Beside her, I laughed until tears came from my eyes.

  For the first time, the little boy in the orphanage hat felt like mine.

  That night, Ken and I went to the ballet—not the Bolshoi, but the Moscow Classical Ballet. Bolshoi tickets were difficult to get. Unless foreigners were willing to pay inflated prices, they had to buy their tickets from scalpers. Ken and I had seen these ticket sellers, grandmotherly women in flowered housedresses who stood on the street and hissed, "Bolshoi, Bolshoi," at us as we went by.

  Tickets for the Moscow Classical Ballet could be bought at one of the street kiosks near the big hotels.

  Our guidebook had a section titled "Useful Expressions for Buying Tickets." "Useful Expressions" contained only three possible performances one could buy tickets for: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, making me believe that at any time

  in Russia, at least one of these must be playing. We were going to Swan Lake.

  The Moscow Classical Ballet performed in the Kremlin Palace auditorium where the Communist Party Congress met when Russia had still been the Soviet Union. All of the seats in the Kremlin Palace auditorium had straight backs that forced the people in them to sit upright.

  Our seats were miles away from the stage, and when the townspeople came out in Act I, they were so tiny that we could barely tell they were dancing. Acres of empty chairs stretched in front of us, and as soon as the lights dimmed, the Russians began scurrying around, looking for better seats.

  "We should move closer," I whispered to Ken.

  "But these are our seats," he said, showing me the ticket stubs in the dark.

  We watched the tiny townspeople dance around until the first intermission. When the lights came up, we were alone in our section.

  "I feel stupid sitting back here," I said.

  "We'll move when the lights go down."

  Once it was dark, we slipped out of our row, walking hunched over, though there was no one behind us. We found two seats farther down on the aisle. I sent Ken in first, making him sit next to a woman with a large purse on her lap.

  During the second intermission, I stood and stretched my back, which was stiff from the Communist chairs. The woman beside us with the large purse sat staring at the stage, as
if the dancers were still there.

  Just as the lights were beginning to dim, the woman nudged Ken. He looked over at her, and she gestured with her chin at the purse which was now open on her lap. Ken lifted his palms to show the woman that he didn't understand. The woman nudged him again and jiggled her legs a little to make the purse move.

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  "I think she wants you to reach into her bag," I whispered to Ken.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know."

  The woman shifted her legs so the purse would be easier for Ken to reach into. I saw his arm move toward the dark opening, and I resisted the urge to yank it back.

  A thin tinny sound came from inside the purse, and when Ken removed his hand, he was holding two pieces of foil-wrapped chocolate.

  "Shakalat," the woman whispered, the word sounding much the same in Russian as in English. She smiled at us, making me feel we were favorite grandchildren for whom she often hid treats in her large purse.

  I unwrapped my chocolate and put it in my mouth, letting the thin square melt on my tongue and fill my mouth with sweetness.

  After the ballet, Ken and I walked up Tverskaya Street, looking for a place we might find a drink, or a taxi back to the hotel. A stack of the next day's Moscow Times sat outside a deli called New York Sandwiches, waiting for the carrier to finish his cigarette and bring them inside.

  "Let's check the weather," Ken said, pulling a paper off the pile. "Partly sunny, high seventies," he read. And then he stopped walking and grabbed my hand.

  "What?" I asked. "What is it?"

  "Just a minute."

  He read, and I stood staring at an ad for a software company in which a man was punching his competition with a boxing glove.

  "There's been a car bombing. Someone from the Moscow mayor's office."