The Russian Word for Snow

by Janis Cooke Newman

  And Nashty will be all right, too, I decided. Nashty had a mother—a young apologetic-looking woman who visited her every Sunday, and whom Nashty ignored, as if she had already figured out how best to punish her. Nashty's father had deserted them because he didn't believe the little girl looked enough like him. Her mother had to work. "When Nashty is old enough to be in school, then her mother will come for her," Anna had told me.

  I was less certain of the fate of the little girl whose mouth traveled across her cheek, or the boy with no palate; less sure what would happen to Maxim, the baby who liked to suck on the arms and legs of the other children, or Nikita, the little boy with too-thin skin.

  I'd spent nearly three weeks with these children, and now I was taking only one of them. I felt that I owed the rest something, some gesture or phrase that would make them understand

  Janis Cooke Newman 197

  the limits of what I was capable of doing. But all I could think of was how much I wanted to take my son and leave this place.

  I turned away from the small faces lined up at the railings.

  "Let's go," I said.

  Irina stopped me at the door. She was crying, holding the purple-stained cloth against her cheek. With her free hand, she made the elaborate Russian Orthodox sign of the cross over Alex's head. Then she did the same above mine.

  Ken put down the camera, kissed her cheek.

  I knew I should say something to Irina as well, thank her for wiping Alex's mouth and worrying whether he was warm enough and making him understand about love. But I didn't have the words in Russian or English.

  I put an arm around her white-coated shoulder. Alex grabbed onto her lapel, turning it over across her chest.

  Volodya beeped the horn two more times.

  "We have to go." I released Irina's lapel from Alex's hand.

  We rushed down the hall with the magazine pictures of babies on the wall. Alex was crying, hot tears that fell against my neck. I was nearly running, all the while expecting the little orphanage director to come out of her office and take back the paper, tell us it had been a mistake.

  Volodya's car had no child seat. I held Alex tight against my chest, crossing my arms over his back. I'd dressed him in a T-shirt with a sheepdog on it, that was much too big. The sleeves hung below his elbow. The skin of his arm was the softest living thing in the world.

  "I'm going to show you the ocean," I whispered into the small whorls of his ear. "I'm going to take you to see goats, and to ride on steam-engine trains. I'm going to explain about Big Bird and Christmas, and read to you about mice that run up clocks and blackbirds that have been baked into a pie. And when you nap, I'll stay beside you and match my breathing to yours until you fall asleep."

  198 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  There was garbage in the hallway of Anna's building: paper bags stuffed with wet tea leaves and newspapers smeared with what looked like brown jelly. The only light came from a greasy skylight above a barred elevator that resembled a small jail.

  Ken pressed the button to call the elevator.

  "It not work," Yuri told him, pushing past us up gray stone steps.

  The door to Anna's apartment was metal, and there was a dent near the top that looked as if it had been made by something sharp. We stood in the dark hallway that smelled of rotting fruit and ancient cigarettes and waited for her to open the door.

  "So," she said when she saw Alex in my arms, "you see what I say is true."

  Anna's apartment was no more than two rooms, a kitchen, and a bath. She led us into the living room and showed us a crib with a swaybacked mattress. "I use this for all American families," she explained. Then she demonstrated how her brown crushed-velvet sofa unfolded like an accordion into a bed. "You sleep here." She folded the cushions back and then opened them up again. "You see how easy."

  We stood in the room and admired the ingenuity of the crushed-velvet sofa.

  "We must go now to get new birth certificate," Yuri said and poked Ken's shoulder. "You come."

  "Just me?"

  "Is all is necessary."

  Ken kissed Alex's chin, and my mouth.

  "Bring passport," Yuri commanded. He strode out of the room and into the dark hallway.

  Ken followed him, turning back twice to look at us.

  "I must pack now," Anna said, and left me alone with Alex in her living room.

  I sat Alex on the crushed-velvet sofa. Above his head, electrical

  Janis Cooke Newman 199

  wires looped across the ceiling like Christmas decorations. Everywhere, skinny pipes snaked down walls and along the floorboards. Some of them were hot to the touch.

  Leaving Alex on the couch, I flipped the suitcases on their sides, thinking I'd unpack. But Ken had taken the key with him, and everything was locked.

  When I turned back around, Alex was standing on the crushed-velvet cushions, reaching for one of the electrical wires that dangled over his head.

  "No!" I shouted.

  He made a grab for the wire, and the motion of his arm unbalanced him. For a moment, he hung in the air, poised between flying and falling, and then he toppled forward. I caught him, letting his weight hit my chest, his momentum push me back into the locked suitcases.

  "You're all right," I said, holding him so tight he kept looking up into my face. "I've got you," I told him, wondering how I would keep him safe in this apartment built before the revolution.

  I sat with Alex on the floor and listened to Anna in her kitchen; the whoosh of her refrigerator being opened, the clatter of a plate hitting the table. It was past noon, time for lunch, but she did not come into the living room to offer us anything.

  I wondered if Alex was hungry. By this time, I would have fed him whatever the orphanage had pureed together for his midday meal. I thought I should go out and buy something— milk? yogurt? baby food in little jars? But I had no idea how to strap him into the backpack carrier, and I didn't know where I was in relation to any of the places Ken and I had found to buy food.

  Afraid to take my eyes off Alex, I carried him to the window and looked out, trying to spot a grocery store or a market. The street in front of Anna's building had been partly excavated, dug up and then abandoned, the pavement left jagged like the edges

  200 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  of a bite. Across the way, was a building with gold letters that spelled out bahk for bank. Beneath the letters, a guard stood clutching a rifle.

  I carried Alex back to the velvet sofa, uncertain how long babies could go without eating. Perhaps like the crib, I thought, Anna keeps baby food for her American families. And I tried to work up the courage to go into the kitchen and ask her for some small thing for Alex. But before I could, he'd fallen asleep in my lap with his fingers still in his mouth.

  I rested my head on the arm of the velvet sofa which made a little crunching sound. Alex had one hand buried in my hair, and I could feel his quick heartbeat with the bones of my rib cage, like a mother feeling the heartbeat of her unborn child. Breathing in, I noticed that his skin still smelled like boiled cabbage, but less so.

  Anna left for Spain early the next morning. I heard the Lion King alarm clock in her daughter's room buzzing before it was light, heard the sound of the shower and of something heavy being dragged past the living-room door. At each sound, I sat up and looked into the swaybacked crib, making certain that Alex was still there.

  When I woke again there was a square of sunlight on the blanket, and Alex was standing at the side of crib watching us.

  "Look who's up," I said.

  Ken raised his head. "Hey," he called out.

  Alex was still wearing the T-shirt with the sheepdog on it because we'd forgotten about pajamas. His small face was solemn.

  "Bring him into bed with us." I patted the place where the sun hit the blanket.

  Ken lifted Alex out of the crib and handed him to me. I rubbed his belly through the sheepdog on his shirt. He smiled and I smiled back—a reflex action, like b
linking or breathing.

  Outside, all the car alarms in Moscow seemed to be going off at once. Inside, Ken was touching each of Alex's toes, telling him about the pigs who had gone to market.

  In adoption, everyone tefers to you as a family. Maggie spoke of us as "the Newman family." Anna called us "one of Yuri's American families." I thought it sounded dishonest, like telling someone who is very ill that they look much better.

  But now, listening to Ken explain to Alex about the pig who'd had roast beef and the pig who'd had none, I felt like a family.

  "We really need to give him a bath," Ken said, lifting Alex's hait which had begun to clump together. "He's been with us two days, and who knows when he last had a bath at the orphanage."

  We'd never seen a bathtub at the orphanage, never seen Irina wash the children. "They do not have hot water here for umm ... six month," Anna had told us when we asked about it.

  "We'll wash him in Anna's tub," Ken said. "You can go in with him."

  The walls of Anna's bathroom were covered with thick rubber hoses that trailed from the faucets and crawled up the walls. A frayed clothesline that held a wrinkled slip sagged above the tub, which was deep and claw-footed. Beneath it, Anna kept pieces of wood whose purpose I couldn't determine.

  I ran the water with the door closed. Every minute or so, I'd test the temperature with the inside of my wrist, though I didn't know why that was preferable to using my whole hand. For some reason, I kept remembering the warning my mother would give me whenever we made bread together: "Don't let the water get too hot, or you'll kill the yeast."

  When the tub was half rilled, I took off my clothes and got in. The lukewarm water barely covered my hips.

  "Ready!" I shouted.

  202 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  "Let's go see Mommy," Ken said, opening the bathroom door.

  Alex looked at me in the tub and started screaming.

  "That's Mommy there," Ken told him, stepping closer.

  He was yanking on the neck of Ken's T-shirt, pulling in the direction of the door.

  "Try handing him to me."

  Ken unhooked Alex from his shirt. "Go to Mommy." He set him down on my chest.

  I leaned against the cold porcelain of the tub. Alex was kicking his feet like a small frog, trying to climb up my body.

  I cupped some of the bathwater in my hand and let it flow down his back. "See how nice," I told him.

  He screamed in my ear.

  "Let's just get it over with," Ken said.

  "I want him to get used to it first."

  "I don't want to keep him in there too long."

  Ken wet his hand and rubbed it over Alex's scalp.

  Alex howled and shook his head, spraying me with tears and bathwater.

  "He's too afraid."

  "It's only water," Ken kept telling Alex, dipping his hand in the bath and passing it over his head. "It can't hurt you."

  Alex was shrieking.

  "He doesn't understand anything you're saying."

  "He understands my tone."

  Ken opened a bottle of Russian baby shampoo and poured it over Alex's head. Alex kicked his legs harder and clutched at my shoulders, but we were both slippery with soap, and he kept sliding back into the water.

  "We have to stop."

  "I just need to rinse the soap out." Ken filled his hand with water, let it fall on Alex's head.

  "This is taking too long."

  He dunked a plastic drinking cup in the tub. "Tilt his head back a little."

  "Hurry up."

  "Cover his eyes."

  I put my hand across Alex's forehead, making a little visor.

  "He's slipping."

  Ken held the cup over Alex's head.

  "It'll just take a minute."

  "Do it!"

  Alex started to slide, and I took my hand away from his forehead just as Ken emptied the cup over his head. Shampoo and water poured over his eyes and into his mouth. Alex started coughing and sputtering.

  "What are you doing?"

  "You were supposed to cover his eyes."

  "Take him from me."

  "There's still soap in his hair."

  "Take him!" I was afraid that if I stood, I might drop Alex's slick body back into the water.

  Ken wrapped Alex in one of Anna's thin towels and lifted him out of my arms. I got out and stood at the side of the tub, dripping onto the floor.

  "Give him back," I demanded.

  "He's fine here."

  Alex had stopped screaming and was whimpering into the side of Ken's neck.

  "Give him back!" I grabbed Alex away from Ken.

  "He was fine." Ken's arms hung at his sides. The front of his T-shirt was soaked.

  "I am never going to do this to him again."

  "He just never had a bath before."

  "I won't do this again."

  "He'll get used to it. He just—"

  "No!"

  "You can't give him sponge baths forever."

  "I won't let you do that again."

  "What?"

  204 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  "I won't let you make him cry like that."

  Alex burst into tears, and I imagined how we must look— the big people who were supposed to be taking care of him screaming at each other beneath the rubber hoses.

  "Take him into the other room." I put Alex back into Ken's arms.

  Wrapping myself in a towel, I sat on the floor. From here I could see the wooden slats under the tub, and a kind of basin for washing clothes. I couldn't stop picturing Alex grabbing at my neck and screaming to get out of the bath, couldn't stop thinking how I'd let the shampoo and water run into his eyes and mouth.

  I tugged at the edge of the towel, trying to tuck it between me and the gritty floor. The tile wall behind me was cold and hard, but I did nothing to make myself more comfortable. I just sat there until my skin dried and I was certain Ken had put Alex to bed.

  We didn't give Alex any more baths. Instead we washed him with a small cloth, soaping him while he squirmed on the bathroom floor and grabbed at the clawed feet of the tub to get away from us.

  The election came and went. We spent the day listening out of Anna's window for gunfire, or the sound of something exploding, but the only cries of alarm came from cars that had been bumped or broken into, and we were so used to these we'd almost stopped hearing them.

  Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist candidate who didn't like Americans, did not win. Neither did Boris Yeltsin. The voting between the two men had been so close that there would be a run-off election sometime in the next month. By then, we'd be home with Alex.

  We had to stay in Moscow another week, the length of time it would take to get Alex's Russian passport and his visa from

  the U.S. Embassy. We spent much of that week discovering how little we knew about babies.

  "Should we get this soup fot Alex?" I'd ask Ken, holding up a can of Campbell's chicken noodle.

  "You think he might choke on those?" he'd say, trying to determine the length of the noodles from the picture on the label.

  We did all of our shopping at 7 Continents, the Western-style supermarket a few blocks from Anna's apartment. We'd strap Alex into the baby carrier on Ken's back, and let him chew bits of leather from a lipstick case my mother had given me, while we tried to decide if there was anything hazardous in the foods on the shelves.

  Until we discovered 7 Continents, we'd shopped mostly in the Russian-style Yeliseyev's. Before the revolution, Yeliseyev's had been a mansion. Now it was a grocery store with crystal chandeliers, marble pillars, and white-jacketed women who worked behind mahogany counters. Each counter sold something different—dairy products or produce, canned meats or bread— although the yogurt might be found behind the broccoli, and the Raisin Bran shelved with the cans of tuna.

  Yeliseyev's was a Russian market, which meant that customers did not take their own items off the shelves, but were waited on by the white-jacketed women. Ken and I would
stand before one of these women, pointing to a box of Earl Grey tea or a jar of honey. As the woman made her way along the shelf, we'd chant, "Nyet, nyet, nyet," until she got to the item for which our phrase book had provided no translation. Once our tea or honey or container of milk was placed on the counter, the woman would give us a small piece of paper that we'd take to a cashier in a little gilded cage. Only after we'd paid and the cashier had given us a receipt could we return to the counter and pick up our purchases.

  This process had to be repeated for each counter. And in front

  206 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  of every counter, there would generally be a long line. Sometimes, it would take Ken and me two hours to buy orange juice (at the produce counter) and a box of sugar (next to the bread).

  In 7 Continents there were shopping carts and cooked chickens, aisles of tomatoes and baby food and peanut butter that we could handle ourselves. But the prices were much higher than Yeliseyev's. One day, without looking, we bought a box of Kel-logg's Corn Flakes that cost ten dollars.

  Alex ate his meals at Anna's tiny kitchen table, beneath a wall calendar that each month featured a different photograph of stainless-steel cookware. There was no high chair, so Ken and I would take turns sitting Alex on our laps and spoon-feeding him tomato-rice soup and pureed beef and potatoes from little jars.

  Anna's kitchen had a three-quarter-size refrigerator covered with stickers from The Lion King —her daughter Victoria's favorite movie. It also had enormous cockroaches that did not scurry away when you turned on the light or surprised them in the silverware drawer. We kept everything in the refrigerator: Cheerios and English muffins and the small, hard cookies we bought for Alex.

  One afternoon, I cut a banana into small pieces and gave it to Alex in a shallow bowl.

  "Go ahead." I pointed to the banana slices.

  Alex looked at the little yellow circles.

  "Banana," I explained.

  "Ehh . . . ehh . . . ," he said, making the sound that meant he wanted something.

  "You can take some." I edged the bowl closer. I remembered reading that children learned by playing with their food.