by Kelli Stuart
Only one showed us mercy. Olya, the woman who worked at the table next to mine, offered assistance where she could, rocking Nina when she grew agitated and confused due to the high fever, and offering me a little extra to eat from her own lunch during our midday breaks.
“Your daughter is very sick,” she told me that Friday as I prepared to head home, exhausted from the length of the week. “You need to bring her fever down and get her to loosen up some of the congestion in her lungs.” She gave me three mustard patches that her mother had given to her that morning.
“My mama said to heat these with hot water and put them on her chest for thirty minutes at a time. But don’t put them directly on the skin or they will burn her. Put a rag beneath the patch and then apply it. You can use each patch twice. And have her drink hot water, and then twenty minutes later, cold water. Repeat that all day long tomorrow. This little girl is dangerously sick.” She squeezed my arm then. “Take care of her,” she whispered. “Get her fever down. You will be okay.”
She hadn’t said that Nina would be okay, though, and the absence of that reassurance terrified me.
That was when the fear set in my heart. It settled there like an icy weight, choking out the breath in my body. I took her home that afternoon and held her on the couch, fighting panic that pulsed through me. I swallowed hard against the wild, frantic strangle in my throat, and in the quiet hours of the evening as I rocked her back and forth, an involuntary prayer lifted from my lips, hammering its way out of my soul over and over and over.
“Please,” I whispered to my mother’s God—the One in which I had convinced myself I did not believe. “Please, please, please.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I continued my litany of pleading for hours with Nina in my arms. That was the first time it dawned on me that I could lose the little girl I had so reluctantly taken charge of, and if I did, I might lose myself. She was a piece of the family that I had abandoned, and she was a salve to my guilt. But more than that, I had come to enjoy her presence without even realizing it. I needed her.
I didn’t leave Nina’s side for the next forty-eight hours. I covered her body in cool rags, replacing them constantly as her hot skin warmed them. I put the mustard patches on her chest as directed, and despite the fact that I used a rag to protect her skin, the patch still burned leaving a blistered red square over her breast. I rubbed her feet with vinegar to lower the fever, and I forced small sips of hot tea into her mouth while she slept. I was exhausted by the end of the weekend, but it was worth it as I noticed a vast improvement in her breathing after the fourth treatment.
On Sunday evening, her fever finally broke. She lay in sweat covered sheets, and for the first time she spoke to me coherently, her big, brown eyes looking up at me clearly.
“I’m hungry,” she croaked, her voice hoarse from a week of coughing. I gave her a piece of bread and a cup of hot water mixed with raspberry jam, and I watched with relief as the color began to return to her cheeks. She was so small, then, petite and thin. Her short hair was cropped around her face, and as strength began to return to her features she looked like a cherub. She drifted off to sleep shortly after eating that night, and I pulled out my drawing pad and pencil.
I hadn’t drawn much at all since Igor left. While drawing had once been an unconscious escape from reality, after the incident with Tanya I found it to be a painful reminder of the life I’d left behind. But that night, as relief flooded over me, and the fear that had threatened to engulf me began to dissipate, I needed to feel the pencil in my hand.
I sat on the chair across the room and I watched her sleep, her face relaxed, chest moving up and down without a rattle, and I let my hand move across the paper. I didn’t think about what I was drawing. I simply let it happen the way I’d done as a child. Drawing had once saved my life, and perhaps that night it did again, because as I drew, I let myself imagine that I could be the mother that she needed. I gave myself over to the feeling of love that I’d kept at arm’s length for so long. And when I was done, I looked down and studied my drawing.
I’d drawn Nina. I’d drawn her lying on the couch, her cheeks full and soft. Her hand was curled on her chest, and her face looked peaceful, angelic. In the corner of the page, I wrote “Nina. February 2, 1968. My daughter.”
Blinking my eyes at the memory that’s stilled me, I push myself up off my bed and move stiffly to the closet. Reaching toward the shelf in the back corner, I pull out a small, metal box. I sit on the bed and hold it in my lap, slowly pulling out the few, precious items that I keep locked away. There are Nina’s birth papers, which I had to have falsified shortly after Tanya left. It hadn’t been easy finding someone to help me, but a friend of a friend finally agreed to print out papers for the baby left in my charge, not asking questions about whose she was or where she came from. I pull out the birth notice and read the name at the top: “Nina Igorevna Mishurova. Born January 17, 1965. Mother Elizaveta Andreyevna Mishurova.”
Though I never spoke to Igor again after he left, I managed to keep a part of him with me forever by ascribing his name to the baby. When the man who created the identification papers for me asked her name, that was the only name I could think of to offer her. I couldn’t give her my father’s name, and I didn’t know her father’s name. And so she carries with her still a piece of the man who loved me until he realized he didn’t know me.
With a sigh, I set the paper aside and pull out the small shoes that Nina wore to her first day of primary school when she was six. I’d made sure to dress her neatly that morning, her crisp, black dress with the white, lace collar looking so bold on her tiny frame. I’d tied two giant bows in her hair and given her firm instructions not to ruin her shoes or white knee socks, because they were the only pair she would have for the school year. The first day, she’d jumped in a puddle of mud on the playground and come out of the school sobbing because she had disobeyed me. She was so repentant and upset that I couldn’t even get angry with her. We’d gone home and washed the mud off her shoes and socks together. I run my hand over the faded stain on the side of the shoes.
I reach back down into the box and pull out a yellowed sheet of paper. Unfolding it, I hold it up, studying it in the light. It’s the picture I drew of her the day her fever broke. The pencil lines are faded now, blurred by time, but the drawing is still discernible. And despite all the years that have passed, I find my heart swelling at the sight of her puckered face, little lips parted slightly as she breathed peacefully for the first time in days. I didn’t birth her, but I raised her, and I love her with a fierceness that often surprises me. I only wish that she knew.
Finally, I glance back down at the remaining items inside my box of memories. There are my own papers—the ones that gave me the name that became my identity. And there are the letters, which I cannot bear to read. Finally, beneath those is the small book that brings a quiver of fear to my heart.
It was my mother’s book—the one that she read from during those icy nights in Siberia. This was the book that saved our lives, but it was also the book that made me hate her so many years ago.
It contained the dangerous message of faith that had defined my mother—the message that made me question and doubt everything she said or did. I had not touched that book since the day I lay it inside this box, had not opened it, not because I was frightened of the words inside, but because those words had made me frightened of her. I run my finger lightly over the worn leather cover, and a chill runs down my spine. This one little book made me do a terrible thing. I kept it all these years so that I wouldn’t forget how easy it had been to do the unthinkable. I kept it to remind me why I had to leave, and why I was never able to go back.
Nina
Only she who does nothing makes no mistakes.
Nina puts away the last of the dishes and watches as Viktor talks quietly with her mother in the corner. She glances up as Annie comes down the stairs and enters the kitchen.
“Did you get enough to eat?” Nina asks
. Annie grabs a cup from the cabinet and tosses her mother a glare. She fills it up with water and turns to head back upstairs. Nina sighs and wipes down the countertop.
“Is everything okay?” Viktor asks walking into the kitchen. He sits down at a stool opposite from Nina. She glances at him briefly, then looks away.
“Yes,” she replies, her voice flat. “She’s just...she’s a teenager.” Nina blinks hard.
“Your mother told me she’s been home from school since the accident. Is she still experiencing any pain?”
Nina looks at him again, desperately trying to mask her emotions. “No, I don’t think so,” she answers. “I think she just needed a few days to get over the shock. I’m going to send her back tomorrow.”
Viktor nods. He glances over his shoulder at Elizaveta who sits silently in the corner studying them. “She is a bit formidable, isn’t she?” he says. Nina offers a wry smile.
“Well that’s an understatement. How did she take your recommendations?”
“She didn’t really say much, actually. She just nodded her head. I was prepared to recite a little Pushkin to soften her up, but I didn’t need it,” he says with a crooked smile.
Nina lets out a genuine laugh, releasing some of the tension that knotted its way into her shoulders. Viktor smiles in return. He watches Nina closely, noticing the strain that never seems to leave her eyes. Even when she laughs, she looks wounded. He stands up and walks around the island to where Nina stands, and leans back against the counter, crossing his arms and letting out a long sigh. Nina grabs a rag and wipes the counter beside him to busy her hands.
“I would really like to take you out to dinner,” he says quietly.
Nina glances over his shoulder at Elizaveta who is picking at imaginary fuzz on her skirt while look up repeatedly at the two of them.
“Is she watching?” Viktor murmurs.
“She’s trying to pretend that she’s not,” Nina whispers. She can see her mother’s mouth pinched tight in a grim line. Viktor’s mouth stretches into a wide smile as he looks expectantly at Nina.
“Viktor,” she begins, turning her back to Elizaveta and lowering her voice. “I just don’t think I can. Things are...complicated right now.”
“And the fact that your mother likes me and is pushing for this doesn’t help matters, does it?” Viktor asks, his eyes searching hers. Nina opens her mouth to protest, then thinks better of it and shrugs.
“Look, I’m not asking for anything permanent,” Viktor says. “Just a dinner. Alone. So that maybe you’ll feel comfortable enough to really talk to me without your mother staring at the back of your head.”
Nina glances back over her shoulder again and almost laughs as Elizaveta quickly averts her eyes. She turns back to Viktor and takes in a deep breath.
“Okay,” she says. “This is fine. But just one dinner, and do not say anything to my mama about it. Okay?”
Viktor holds up his right hand and nods firmly. “Deal,” he says. “So...tomorrow night? Will that work?”
Nina nods her head, suppressing a smile. “Text me where and what time, and I will be there,” she replies. He gives a discreet thumbs up before turning around.
“Okay, well I am going to head out,” Viktor says, clapping his hands together lightly. He turns to Elizaveta who looks at him in return. “Elizaveta Andreyevna, I will see you in a week. I look forward to hearing how you’re doing with your exercises.”
She waves her hand at him. “I do not need you to remind me,” she says. Then she turns to Nina. “I don’t need it from you, either. I’ll walk around the table a few times, but not with you two staring at me like I’m a child taking her first steps.” She hobbles into her room and shuts the door behind her as Viktor stifles a laugh.
“She is definitely a tough bird,” he says with a grin. He pulls his coat off the hook by the front door and Nina opens it, letting him step out into the fading evening light. The sky is painted in red and orange above the hills on the horizon. The air is crisp, and Nina can feel the impending winter working its way toward them. Viktor turns back to her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he says. Nina swallows hard and offers a thin smile. She watches as he walks to his car and backs quickly down the driveway.
Wrapping her arms tight across her chest, Nina looks out at the fading sky. She thinks about all her years in Moscow when she’d stand on the balcony of their little flat and try to watch the sunset. The skyline, cluttered with buildings, always seemed to hide it from her. As a teenager, she’d climb the stairs and push her way out onto the roof of her building, hoping to catch a few lingering moments of the sun before it hid behind the walls of brick and mortar, but it was never really enough. She was just chasing the sunset, but couldn’t ever catch it.
The first summer she lived in the States, Andrew had taken her to a cabin in the mountains. He’d gotten them a little place as high up as he could, and on their first night there she stood at a clearing in the trees, and she watched as the sun melted into the horizon, for the first time catching hold of the moment when one day came to a close. She’d leaned into Andrew’s chest and breathed in the scent of him, and she’d thought that perhaps that would be the grandest moment of her life. She wondered if life would always be as sweet as it had been in that split second when she stood in front of the sun-kissed horizon. But sunsets have a way of fading from view.
When Andrew quit coming straight home from work in the evenings, Nina would drive out to the highest point in the city and try to catch the sunsets, but they eluded her as they had in her childhood. When Andrew left, she stopped looking altogether.
It wasn’t until she first took Annie to the mountains that she remembered the magic of seeing the day fade away. When Annie was five, the two of them stood at the highest peak in the Smoky Mountains, and Nina had picked Annie up.
“Look, darling,” she’d whispered, pushing Annie’s wispy blonde hair out of her eyes and pointing to the lowering sun. “This is a moment to make a wish.”
Annie had closed her eyes, but Nina gave her a gentle shake. “No, my dear,” she’d said. “This wish you must make with your eyes open. You have to wish just as the sun sinks into the earth. Then your wish will come true.”
“I wish for a puppy,” Annie had whispered moments later, lisping the words out through gapped teeth. Nina smiles at the memory. The next afternoon she and Annie went to the pound and picked out a roly little black and white dog that Annie named Sunset - the dog that Annie loved dearly until her grandmother came to town and started sneezing uncontrollably. Annie had sobbed when they dropped Sunset off at her new home. It was one more reason for her to harbor bitterness toward her already difficult grandmother.
Nina sighs and walks back inside. She glances at the stairs and longs to run up to Annie’s room, to pull her into her arms and apologize for all the ways that she’s failed her. But the sky has grown dark, and the time for making wishes come true has long since faded away.
Annie
Annie grabs her lunch tray and steps into the crowded lunchroom. She glances at the table in the back where James sits by himself, hunched over the table reading his book. Taking a deep breath, she walks toward him.
“Hi,” she says, stepping timidly up to the table. James looks up, his sandy blonde hair falling over his forehead.
“Oh,” he says. He clears his throat. “Uh...hi.”
“Can...can I sit down?” Annie asks.
James takes in a deep breath. “Sure,” he answers, gesturing toward the seat across from him. Annie sets her tray down and sits. For a moment they remain silent, each avoiding eye contact until Annie finally speaks up.
“I want to explain...” she begins.
“Listen, I...” James says.
They both stop and look at one another, an uncomfortable silence filling the void between them. “Go ahead,” James says.
“I’m sorry you had to find out about my...um...situation like that,” Annie says. She shifts her eyes
around the room, avoiding James’s gaze. “It’s just, I haven’t really told anyone about it. My mom just found out, and she’s freaking out. Toby won’t even talk to me. My grandmother will probably have a heart attack when she finds out. I just...I don’t know what to do, and I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything.” Annie blinks back tears.
“Annie, listen,” James says. He leans forward, pressing his elbows into the table and looking hard at her. “I get it. You and I don’t know each other that well, and that’s a huge secret. You don’t owe me an explanation, okay?”
Annie nods.
James takes a bite of his sandwich. He holds up the other half and offers it to Annie. “Please take this,” he urges. “I have no idea what that is on your tray, but I cannot let you eat it in good conscience.”
Annie wipes her eyes and smiles. She takes the sandwich. “Thanks,” she says. “I think it’s supposed to be meatloaf.” She glances down at her plate, and the brown lump of meat swimming in curdled, grey liquid makes her stomach turn.
“Uh, I think they’re using a broad definition of the word ‘meat’ with that stuff,” James says making a face. Annie smiles.
They fall into silence as they eat. Annie opens her mouth once to say something, then closes it and takes another bite. James watches her closely.
“So...do you want to talk about it?” he asks. His voice is gentle, offering her the freedom to decline, which Annie appreciates. She shrugs.
“I don’t really know what to say,” she says. “It’s embarrassing.” She looks around the cafeteria at the students milling about, happy and carefree. “I’m going to be that girl,” she says softly. “I’m going to be the one they talk about when I walk by. I try so hard to make sure no one ever notices me, and pretty soon I’m going to be seen for all the wrong reasons.”
