Never Ask Me

by Jeff Abbott

  If Pavel heard this, he ignored it. He laughed at something Feliks said.

  I sensed Kyle studying the two men. It was weird to think what we had at stake with these two strangers. If Pavel said the wrong thing in translation, we might anger a decision maker. If Feliks made us late because he underestimated traffic, we might irritate someone who could stamp a giant red nyet on our application. The thought unnerved me.

  I didn’t like the idea of control slipping away from us.

  The orphanage was down a side road off the main road in a rural area outside of Saint Petersburg, between a scattering of smaller villages. We turned down it, past a large gate and fence. It felt, God help me, a little like a prison. The building was Soviet architecture—I imagined (hoping against hope) something bright, elegant, soaring, a charming old palace built by Peter the Great now turned to the care of abandoned, adorable infants. This place had a brutalist architecture, and it was cold, forbidding, depressing. I wanted to cry. I wanted to snatch up all the babies and run from this place.

  Feliks parked. Another driver sat outside, smoking, and he waved at him. You didn’t think about there being a whole subculture, subeconomy around international adoption. The same agencies hiring the same drivers. Feliks and Pavel had been here before, witnesses to dreams balanced on a delicate point.

  Pavel and Danielle and Kyle and I got out. You, our son, were inside there. I had my two totes full of gifts and a mental list of who’s who and what I should give them, courtesy of Danielle.

  We walked into the orphanage, and I inched out onto the tightrope.

  Chocolates for Svetlana, the receptionist, and Irina, a guard. (Why do babies need a guard? Were they keeping the children in or keeping a threat out?) Perfume for Maria, the caseworker assigned to Sasha, and a coloring book for Maria’s niece, whom we’ll never see but I wished her well. The gifts were accepted with a smile, and Maria made sure that we knew the coloring book was for her niece, not child, as she was not married, and she glanced at Pavel.

  We walked down the halls. Inside one room were a few older children, ten to twelve, listening to a teacher. There were the children never adopted as babies, or brought here when they were older (or adopted internally in Russia and returned for behavioral problems—many of these kids had emotional issues and found great difficulty in adjusting to a family life). They were in uniforms. I saw them for only a moment through the glass of the shut door, and I wondered what they thought when they saw our little parade, people here for a baby, this year’s model, and not here for them. Why do we have to walk past them? My heart jolted for them, but I didn’t stop. I kept walking.

  “History class,” Pavel whispered helpfully to me. “They are learning about the Great Patriotic War. What you call World War II.”

  I wondered if we would get a tour of the whole building, but we didn’t. I wondered what the conditions we weren’t seeing were. Kyle took one of the totes of gifts from me, the heavier one, and held my hand. All the anger and frustration I felt with him melted away. I glanced over at him, my heart feeling swollen. We could and we would do this.

  We entered a room of mirrors. Mirrors on every wall. It was disorienting at first, and I summoned a strange image, prompted there by Pavel and his comment on the history class…If I were a Russian fighter in the Great Patriotic War and I wanted to mentally break a Nazi, well, this room would be my choice. I didn’t like mirrors.

  The carpet in the room was old. There was a worn-looking couch and a couple of chairs, and a shelf full of toys that looked newer.

  Maria announced something in Russian, with a friendly nod, and Pavel told us a detail we already knew. “You will have two hours to sit and play with Sasha,” he said. “No more, so please understand when the time is up.”

  I nodded. Kyle nodded and smiled. We kept smiling at Maria. She didn’t notice. She was immune to smiles of hopeful parents.

  Then there was more Russian, muted but rapid-fire between them, and Pavel frowned. He said something back. Maria responded, waving her hand slightly, a universal signal for “no big deal.” “One moment,” he said to us. “I want to be sure I remember correct English word.” He checked on his phone while my heart prepared to drop.

  “Vetryanaya ospa,” he said. “Chicken pox. Sasha has chicken pox. It is going through the orphanage.”

  “Oh, no,” Kyle said.

  “You have all had it, yes? As children? You are immune?” Pavel asked.

  Kyle and I both nodded. So did Danielle.

  “Ah, so not a problem,” Maria said, in broken English.

  “Does he feel up to seeing us?” I asked. His needs came first. Would he feel like playing, or would he just want to go to bed? I didn’t care if I wasn’t seeing him at his best. I cared how he felt.

  Pavel translated. Maria said more in Russian, and Pavel said, “She says he’ll be fine. Russian children, very tough. Resilient.” Pavel dazzled us (well, not Kyle) with an encouraging smile.

  Maria left. I looked at the mirrors. “Are they watching us?”

  “I don’t know,” Danielle said. She had been very quiet, watching, probably listing things I was doing that I shouldn’t. “Let’s not discuss it here.”

  Maybe I was distraught over the chicken pox announcement, but I was a little short-tempered. “I only asked…”

  “Well, don’t. Do you want to make an issue of it? So what if they are watching? Assume they are. They don’t know you, and you’re asking them to entrust one of their charges to you for the rest of your life. Stop acting offended.”

  I opened my mouth to snap back, then shut it. “You’re right,” I said. Danielle didn’t acknowledge my apology.

  Kyle was silent, eyes locked on the door.

  Maria reentered, with a young female nurse holding a pox-covered boy, nine months old, blond, frowning at all these new people.

  “Sasha,” Maria announced unnecessarily.

  I didn’t know what I expected when I first saw you. I thought my heart would feel overwhelmed with love and joy, but it wasn’t like that. It was something else, a slower burn. You looked confused and miserable, so in this moment it was no longer about what I felt, what I wanted, but what you needed. I stood and held out my hands, and the nurse, with a smile, handed you to me.

  But you knew the nurse, and you didn’t know me, so you squawked and fussed, and that was all right. I rested you against my shoulder and I gently patted your back (not wanting to make your itching worse) and I thought of the first time I held Julia in my arms, freshly born, and this is different yet in a way it’s the same. I held you. I let you feel my heart beat and I felt yours.

  I wondered why I didn’t think to learn a Russian song, a Russian lullaby. Something you would know. So instead I sang “Cotton Fields,” one of the first songs I ever learned, sitting at my grandmother’s piano, picking out the melody. I sang it softly, the way my grandmother sang it to me, thinking of all the times it’s been sung since Lead Belly wrote it: Odetta, Johnny Cash, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, the Beach Boys. But I heard my grandmother’s alto, strong and vibrant and soothing, and that was how I sang it to this Russian baby who was going to be my American boy.

  I didn’t know if Maria or Pavel knew I’ve written songs for famous people. And I didn’t know if they’ve ever heard this old song. But Sasha fell quiet and still against me, and I kissed his splotchy little forehead for the first time and I kept singing.

  Danielle was watching me like she’d never seen me. It was like she was measuring me as a mother, watching me as intently as the Russians.

  Kyle seemed frozen. He watched us. I wondered why he didn’t reach for Sasha and show the faces behind the mirrors what an excellent father he was. Then I realized no one wanted to interrupt me quieting the baby. Sasha didn’t snake an arm around my neck or put his head on my shoulder. His head was raised, taking in all this strangeness.

  I took him to the mirror and let him get a good long look at his future: him, my child, in my arms. I s
ang softly, and now he watched me and him in the mirror, dancing our little dance. Poor sick little thing. “You don’t know where those places are I’m singing about, do you, sugar pop?” This nickname came unbidden into my head. “We live in Texas, with our little girl. She’s three.” I said this to him but to the mirror as well. To whoever was watching and judging on the other side. “That’s next door to Louisiana.”

  Now Sasha was just looking at me. Was this the most anyone has ever talked to him? Directly? Had he never been sung to? I put my finger on his little hand and he didn’t really grip back. He seemed surprised by everything. I touched his forehead. No fever. Maybe he was on the downside of the chicken pox.

  “Iris?” Kyle’s voice, soft behind me. “May I hold him?”

  I handed him over, checked my internal barometer of love. I smoothed his hair at the back of his head as Kyle took him. Did I love him yet? I didn’t know.

  Kyle took him and Sasha fussed a little, but Kyle eased down onto the floor in a cross-legged sit and reached into the tote bag. There were toys there. I knew we couldn’t give them just to Sasha—collectivism is still alive and well at the Volkov Infants Home, where all the toys are shared—and he pulled out a stuffed green dinosaur, a friendly looking T-Rex with a smile, not a snarl. Sasha wasn’t sure what to think of this oddity.

  Kyle said carefully, “zdravstvuj” to Sasha, one of the ways to say hello in Russian and the one supposedly to use with children you don’t know well. I think it’s more formal, but maybe that’s appropriate. A sign of respect for the culture. I watched Pavel for a reaction if Kyle said it correctly, but Pavel’s face betrayed nothing; Danielle told Kyle not to speak Russian, but now he’s done it, for no good reason, and Sasha didn’t react to the word (which if you ask me needs more vowels). But he reached for the dinosaur, and Kyle gave it to him.

  Then he wanted on the floor, and Kyle set him down but stretched out along the floor next to him. Sasha crawled to the tote and peered inside.

  “Smart boy,” Pavel said. “He knows where the presents are.”

  “Sasha!” I said in a happy, cheerful tone. He glanced back at me. He wobbled as he stood and he reached into the tote again and pulled out a small stuffed otter. He held it, uncertain. Did he think someone was going to take it from him?

  I knelt on the floor next to Kyle, not crowding him.

  And Sasha gave us both a shy little smile.

  Go home, that interfering woman in the airport told me.

  Nope, lady. Nope.

  The two hours flew. Kyle picked up Sasha, held him over his head, which was an entirely new experience for Sasha, and he giggled and drooled (Sasha, not Kyle). But two hours was a long while when you weren’t feeling good, and at the end of the time he was cranky and sleepy, unused to the unrelenting attention.

  I was holding him, and now his little head was tucked into the mom-space between shoulder and neck, when Maria reentered the room (she had gone in and out during the visitation time in silent observation of us) and spoke to Pavel in rapid-fire Russian. “Time is up. I am sorry,” Pavel translated. “Time for Sasha to go rest.”

  Kyle put his hand on Sasha’s head, kissed his blond hair. “We’ll see you soon, son.” The final word was like a knife through me.

  Maria held out her arms for our son. My limbs felt like lead, but I handed him back to her. Sasha turned away, sleepy again, and Maria was gentle with him.

  I burst into tears. (Oh, I hate crying. I really hate it.) Kyle folded his arms around me. “Goodbye, sweetheart. We’ll see you soon,” I said, and Maria thoughtfully turned so I could see him yawn in answer.

  Maria closed the door behind her. I could see that Kyle—who I saw weep only when Julia was sick and at her lowest with the neuroblastoma—was fighting for control, and behind the mirrors were the faceless administrators watching, judging, saying we were too emotional, too overwrought. I didn’t know what standard we were supposed to meet with these folks. So Danielle embraced me and I let her and I sobbed.

  After we composed ourselves, we met the rest of the staff. Presents were given, from the administrator down to the custodians, who asked us about American music (note to self: bring CDs next time) and were happy to have American cigarettes. Everyone smiled at us, Pavel was the target of gentle flirtations. Maria joined us, having taken our poor sick baby elsewhere, and I asked about the older children, if they could use computer games. Or computers. Or whatever they needed. We’d already spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to get to this point. What was a bit more? I felt dizzy.

  “How did it go?” I whispered to Danielle.

  She squeezed my hand in reassurance.

  It was time to leave. I built a mental list of things to bring in five to six weeks’ time, for when we came back to have the hearing and hopefully take him home.

  “Do you still want him?” Maria asked me, through Pavel. Of course they asked us this. “Yes,” Kyle and I chimed together, Kyle nodding forcefully, and Pavel didn’t need to translate for her. Kyle added a “da” and Maria spoke more Russian to Pavel.

  “Do you have questions?” Pavel translated for her. “About Sasha?”

  We asked about his health, his development, and Maria’s answers mirrored what Dr. Gupta told us in the report.

  After she answered our last question, I said, “Tell Maria we’ll give him a wonderful home. Tell her we’re so grateful to her for the care he’s received here.”

  Pavel nodded and spoke. Maria didn’t betray much emotion. Would she miss Sasha? Or he’d be gone, and minutes later another child would arrive to take his old place. How did Maria do this?

  We walked out of the building. The air was crisp with the promise of snow. Feliks was standing by the car, talking to a woman.

  A woman with hair covered by a scarf, but dark-framed glasses on, glasses like the warning woman in the airport.

  And suddenly I was sure, the set of her shoulders, the turn of the part of her face that wasn’t hidden behind the scarf.

  It was her.

  The warning woman. Here. Here, where Sasha is. She followed us—from London, from our arrival in Russia, to the very spot where my child was, the child she warned me against taking. She was not going to stop us from getting Sasha.

  My rage, my anger, was like a bursting flame.

  I ran to her. Feliks glanced at me as I reached for her, grabbed her arm. She turned toward me. I yanked the scarf away.

  It was not the warning woman.

  Similar age, similar build, similar nose, but now I saw the eyeglass frames were a lighter shade of brown and her hair was dusted with gray.

  She cried out in surprise and shock.

  Kyle looked at me like I’d

  Completely.

  Totally.

  Entirely.

  Lost my mind. I glanced over at him and saw Maria stared at me in shock. Looking for signs of instability, of aberration, of a reason to say no, because they can say no to us and some other family will get Sasha.

  Pavel hurried forward as the woman yanked her arm away from my hand, mouthing off at me in a torrent of Russian. I babbled an apology that no one heeded.

  “That’s one of the administrators,” Pavel said to me. “Galina. She is in charge of purchasing supplies.” Pavel’s voice was tense with me, but his smooth-flowing Russian was conciliatory with the wronged woman.

  “I’m sorry…I thought she was someone else,” I said.

  Pavel said something in Russian, short and brief, and the woman looked mollified. Feliks said something to Pavel. Pavel didn’t translate. There was one gift left in the tote—perfume—and I gave it to Galina. She took a deep breath and nodded her thanks, but took a step back like I might snatch it from her hands. I also gave her the fake Louis Vuitton tote and she nodded, the ice slightly melted. Pavel said more, tried to laugh very softly. She didn’t laugh, but she kept the gifts.

  I nodded to her, just saying “I’m so sorry” again and again, and she nodded to Kyle and Danielle.
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br />   We got into the car.

  The doors all slammed, and then there was just a stunned silence.

  “What the actual hell were you thinking?” Kyle said, his voice like a blade.

  “I thought it was the woman from the London airport,” I said, my voice thin and broken. What had I done? Kyle gave off this cough of frustration, of anger, of dismay.

  “One step forward, a dozen steps back,” Danielle said. “They aren’t going to remember you singing to that boy. They’re going to remember you charging across a parking lot and grabbing an employee’s arm.”

  “It will be fine,” Kyle said. “We can bribe our way out of this.”

  I made a noise in my throat.

  “No, you can’t. Maria and the administrator write a report on today and send it to the judge. There’s not a lot of sympathy in this country for anything that looks like mental or emotional instability among adoptive parents. They don’t have to say yes to you when they can say yes to the next family, who doesn’t accost people.”

  “Stop the car,” I said. Pavel murmured, and Feliks stopped. I got out. I marched back up the road to the Volkov Infants Home. I walked in. I saw Galina talking with the guard. I approached her and she looked at me. I say, “Mne ochen zhal.” I had heard Kyle practicing it and telling me what the phrases meant, trying to interest me. “I’m really sorry.” He thought that would be a useful phrase for him. Yet I was the one who needed it.

  She saw in my face the whole awful mix of sorrow, worry, and fear, and she offered a diplomatic smile and nod.

  I said it again. “Is OK,” Galina said.

  I hoped it was enough. What if they said no? What if they made us wait, offered us another child much later? Sasha was my boy, I realized with a jolt. He was my child, and leaving him here was the hardest thing I could imagine. Now there was the possibility I would never see him again because I was stupid and rash. What had I done to myself, to Kyle, to the hopeful life for this poor boy that we just wanted to love? I had a vision of him now, ten or eleven, learning about the Great Patriotic War in an ill-fitting, worn uniform, with no one to love him, a prisoner of this place until he was eighteen. Because I was a fool.