‘Slava,’ Henry interrupted. ‘Why don’t you come with me— ‘Julia’s heart went cold and she stood up, clutching the child’s small hand. ‘— for some ice cream. Would you like that? We can pretend it’s your birthday again.’
Julia released her breath slowly, grateful. Everything suddenly felt unpredictable.
‘Yes, Papa! Yes!’ her eyes shone, and she smiled brightly. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Yes, now.’ He held out his hand, and Slava grabbed it excitedly.
‘Will Mama come with us? And Lesia and Maks?’
His eyes moved from Slava’s face to Julia’s, and back to Slava’s. ‘Mama needs to stay here.’
‘Okay.’ Slava skipped as they started to walk. ‘Papa?’
‘Yes, rabbit.’
‘I love you.’
He couldn’t reply, the tears streaming down his cheeks. The pain of his choices would be his alone to bear, his father had warned him of it.
Julia raced back to the house, her feet creating tufts of dust as she hit the ground. She ran to the garden, picking up Lesia and placing her on one hip, and then Maksim on the other, sobbing. She knew she had one last option, and she walked deftly down the familiar path, past their house, hundreds of feet ahead, her body small against the backdrop of the sugar smoke and pale fields and blue sky, to a farmhouse that had become so familiar to her.
When she arrived, she pounded on the door, breathless. ‘Iliya? Iliya,’ her voice was strident. ‘Open the door.’
Silence. She knew he would be home, so she waited, the twins gurgling at her side. She held them to her suddenly, desperately, each time she felt their skin or heard their voice, tears threatened to weaken her anger. She felt fire in her chest.
‘God damn it, open the door.’ She used the ball of her foot to hit the bottom of the wooden frame.
He appeared in the doorway and opened it. ‘Well, come in. This is a nice--’
Julia flew past him into the center of the front room, placing the twins on the floor by her feet. She put her hands up. ‘Spare me the welcome.’ Her face burned with anger. ‘I need your help.’
By the time he and Slava reached Stratford, Henry’s breathing had become more even. He tapped his chest pocket and withdrew a cigarette as they walked, clamping it in the corner of his mouth and wiping the sweat off his brow. Once lit, he sighed and looked down at his daughter. He was grateful that she was at the age where she held his hand often; he needed to feel her cool hand in his, especially today.
When they approached the ice cream shop on Griffin Street, just before the promenade Slava asked for an ice cream, which Henry happily obliged. She chose a sugar cone of sweet vanilla with a cherry on top, and after Henry paid, he took her to sit on a bench facing the Avon. The ice cream glistened as she licked it, her legs swinging happily a few inches off the ground. He watched as families wandered together in the crisp afternoon sun and heard children’s laughter in the playground just beyond.
‘Papa, why didn’t you get one?’ Slava frowned, moving her hair off her cheek with a sticky finger.
Henry took a drag on his cigarette and looked at the water, the sunlight scattering on the ripples like diamonds. ‘I wasn’t hungry.’
‘Because of the fight? Because of you and Mama?’ She licked her fingers as the ice cream melted onto them.
‘No, not really.’
‘Why were you shouting?’ Slava squinted at the view and looked over her shoulder to the park where a few children played. She turned back disinterested and bit the edge of the ice cream. ‘I don’t like it when you shout.’
‘I know, rabbit.’ Henry’s eyes filled with tears, and he looked away as he wiped them off quickly.
He turned back and smiled. ‘Life can be tricky, I guess.’ He shrugged and looked down at Slava studying his face.
‘Is Mama okay? She was crying. And you were angry.’
‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We are okay.’
‘Because you love each other.’
In that moment, Henry saw memories that had would lose their meaning, like tarnished keepsakes: Maksim sitting for hours on the kitchen floor with Lesia, pencils in hand, drawing in bold strokes and pointing. He giggles as Julia sits behind him, clapping at his progress, and he reaches for Henry; Slava with her sister, helping brush her hair after a bath, their soft skin and nightdresses in his arms as he embraces them before bed; Maksim sat on his lap, pointing at drawings in a fairytale, saying ‘Papa’ when he sees a prince, and ‘Mama’ when he sees a princess; Lesia asleep next to him, the moonlight in her blonde hair and across her round cheeks.
Henry watched Slava eat the last of her ice cream and didn’t reply. He stroked her soft hair and remained silent, a storm of images swirling around him.
Iliya closed the door behind him and turned to Julia. ‘What help do you need, exactly?’
‘Henry knows. He knows.’ Her lips quivered as she spoke, and she clenched her teeth.
Iliya dragged a chair to sit down in, the metal scraping the floor. ‘Well then.’
‘But he doesn’t understand what happened, and now--’
‘What do you mean, what happened?’
‘He doesn’t know the truth, Iliya, and he’s going to leave me and take Slava--’
Iliya leaned back in his chair. ‘What truth?’
Julia stamped her foot. ‘LISTEN, will you. I am going to lose my entire family, my life,’-- she gestured to the twins-- ‘if you don’t tell him what happened. Otherwise, I have to admit adultery to him, and lose the two children that you see in front of you. I can’t let him do that, you have to tell him the truth. Please let me keep my children, all of them.’ Her face creased in her anguish. ‘Please, Iliya.’
Iliya looked down at the twins, crawling on the floor happily. He looked up at Julia. ‘Why would he give away...’
The both of them stared at one another and in the quiet, Iliya suddenly understood.
He stubbed out his cigarette and held his hands up, laughing wryly. ‘Listen, this is not my mess to clean up. Your truth is what you believe it to be. And besides, I’m not interested in ruining my marriage and my work- and for what? To solve your unhappy marriage that is in crisis?’ He walked over and stood in front of her, her face now contorted in her helplessness. He wiped her cheek, and felt the scar on her jaw, now dark pink as she cried. ‘Besides,’ he whispered softly and leaned forward; breath hot on her cheek. ‘Who would believe you?’
Julia clung to his arms, disgusted at what she touched, yet pleading for what could be saved. ‘Please please, Iliya. Please...’ she hung her head and kept repeating the word please.
The door swung open, and Julia and Iliya turned to face Elina, her face stony with anger.
‘What the hell is going on? What is she doing here?’ Elina dropped her handbag on the floor, her eyes wide, surveying. She looked down at the doughy twins sat on her floor. ‘What in Christ is happening?’
Iliya smiled, and patted Julia on the shoulder. ‘Poor woman has lost it a bit. Very unhappy with her husband.’ Julia was too tired to glare at him and instead, looked at the woman that she’d once loved as a friend.
‘I don’t care what she’s lost, I want her out of here.’ She shrugged off her dress coat. ‘And you can take your hands off her.’
Iliya raised up his hands and backed away. Julia wiped her eyes with her arm. She nodded, and now realized it had been Elina. Elina had been Henry’s ‘friend’ that had brought her life to a crashing end. ‘Please, Elina, just listen.’
Elina walked over to Julia and stood in front of her, her full length towering a head above Julia. Iliya watched the scene, arms folded. ‘No, you listen. I don’t care for your games.’ Her voice needled and pierced as she spoke. ‘You poor thing, your husband makes you unhappy, you’re a lonely, pathetic orphan,’-- she grabbed Julia’s shoulders and craned down-- ‘and you look to my husband to save you. To give you comfort. Did you enjoy it? Did you?’ Julia grabbed the hands that held her. ‘Elin
a, stop, that’s not what--’
‘And now, you’ve ruined a marriage-’
Iliya shook his head. ‘Elina, that’s enough. She’s apparently going to lose her children...’ Elina shot him a withering look, and he raised his hands. ‘Alright, alright. I’m just...’
Elina turned to Julia. ‘Wait a minute.’ She stepped back. ‘Why? Why the twins?’
Julia spoke quickly while she had the chance. ‘Elina, Henry is forcing me to give them away...’ She looked over at Iliya, who wasn’t showing the least bit of concern about anything that she would say. She was powerless. No one would believe her. ‘He thinks that Iliya and I...’
Elina raised her hand to Julia, and everyone went quiet. The quiet settled as the three of them looked at one another. Elina looked down at the twins, and then at her husband, and covered her mouth, her eyes widening and cheeks trembling. Her hands started to shake as she pointed at Julia. ‘I cannot bear the sight of you. The both of you.’ Her head shook from side to side, slowly, and she walked up to Julia again, her face and neck erupting in bright red flashes of anger, her eyes full of hurt. ‘Congratulations. You have ruined a friendship, and now a family. Your very own family. You have destroyed it completely. And now you have to live with it all, for the rest of your days. And for what, exactly? A moment of misunderstood kindness? Pity?’
‘It wasn’t that,’ Julia whispered.
Elina cocked her head to the side. ‘What did you say?’
Julia looked directly at Elina, suddenly angry, her voice clear. ‘It wasn’t kindness or pity, Elina. Your husband isn’t capable of any of it.’ Julia’s body tensed at her own words; they undid whatever pieces that had healed so long ago and obliterated them fully.
Elina’s palm cracked across Julia’s cheek, turning it crimson. Elina walked over to the twins and kneeled, touching their soft, warm heads. ‘Well done, my friend, what an example of a mother you are.’ She stood up again and looked at Julia. ‘Those poor babies, it breaks my heart.’ Her face softened for a second and then snapped back into place, as she pointed to the door. ‘You can get out.’
Julia swallowed her sobs and crouched next to her babies, her arms shaking as she lifted Lesia first, and then Maksim, their happy faces searching hers. She turned, Elina and Iliya’s faces watching her, the wall of their bodies standing firm.
‘The truth, Elina.’ Julia said softly. ‘If only you could see the truth. Maybe you will allow me that one day.’
Elina walked past her and opened the door, gesturing to the outside with an open palm.
Julia walked home quietly, her grief unbearable, her sobs uninhibited as her body looked small and worn against the blanket of sky beyond her.
She had lost.
20
Julia hadn’t slept, and barely ate. Henry disengaged from her, from the twins, as they reached for him, not understanding why he would peel their fingers off his legs, not pick them up when they needed him. Julia watched her family as if a voyeur— one that was not allowed to belong— with a grief that had descended over her entire life, as if a sticky film on a forgotten painting, or a glass that was slowly cracking, its fissures about to break and explode and disintegrate.
A part of her had died once already with one man, and now she would die a slow death with another, as he forced her hand. Would she survive this? Would her children? Would her marriage? In the darkest of nights, she wished for nothing else but an end, but her saving grace was their daughter, and there was now a reason why they called her ‘Glory’, and Julia reminded herself of the fact that she would, in fact, have to carry on with this life. Without them.
The morning was warm and quiet, the twins still asleep. Henry had left early to go for a walk, crept out without a word, which she was grateful for. She padded into her room and stood in the doorway, staring at the small bed in the corner with the two sleeping babies. Lesia’s hair was matted on the mattress from sweat. Maksim’s cheeks were lined from his blanket clutched so firmly to his face. The breaths were slow and even. These are the things she would remember, though they would fade over time. A childhood only captured in photographs and stories, existing ever so briefly.
Julia’s fingers curled around a cup of slightly lukewarm tea, thinking about what she had, in the last weeks, decided. In her other hand she was holding a thin, small spoon, stirring the liquid in circles, around and again, the pattern comforting, as if she was tracing the line of her thoughts and reaching the same conclusion, over and over again. She had not put milk in the tea this time, and as a result, she saw the lines of her face reflected in the liquid briefly, before disappearing again and again.
The trip to the courthouse was silent. They’d taken the train into Stratford, side-by-side sat in resentment and heartbreak. Julia had taken Slava across the road to Marta’s, and then asked another neighbor, Olya, to look after Lesia and Maksim. She felt completely bereft at what would happen soon, but ultimately, the choice was made. In order to save her marriage and keep her family intact, she had to make the ultimate sacrifice.
The courthouse was small, white, set on a patch of grass dotted with two benches out front. It was formal and plain, and as they strode in through the door, Julia felt the heaviness of her footsteps as they clacked loudly on the floor.
‘Yes? Do you have an appointment?’ The secretary was pale and blonde, her straight, shining hair pulled back in a bun at her neck, her cheeks flushed as if she had just run back into the room, embarrassed.
‘Yes, we’re here to sign a declaration, the consent to adoption order. We called a week ago.’ Henry tapped his fingers on the counter, Julia stood with her arms in front, holding her bag. Numb.
‘Name?’
‘Rudnick.’
‘Yes, I see you here. Have a seat, Mr. Bennett will be with you in a few minutes.’
In the minutes as they sat in the waiting room, Julia was confronted with panic. I don’t know English very well, how do I know what to say? What do I do? She looked over at Henry, he was standing at the window, looking past the town, towards the sky, towards the fields that had turned gold in the dense summer heat.
Joseph Bennett was a man with greying hair and limited knowledge in how a suit should fit a man’s body properly. His round face was accentuated with jowls on either side, and his tawny hair was thinning and almost entirely absent at the crown, due to a very poor diet. His career in family law had seen him though 20 years of adoptions, and this case didn’t seem at all unique, as the family were migrants, and he expected as much with people who had little intelligence to know when to stop having children. He was the sort of man to declare it’s not like they have any other entertainment for themselves, dear lord. Leave the thinking to the rest of us, over dinner with friends, holding his crystal glass of wine in his fine little hands. And so today, he would meet his new clients, and go through the extremely tedious process of rehoming their children.
Julia saw him walk through the door, holding a folder of documents, and she searched his face, wondering if he would listen to her. ‘Nice to meet you both, I'm Joseph Bennett, I’ll be helping you with your declaration’, he held out his hand. Henry shook it and followed him as he ushered them both into his office.
Henry started speaking as Bennett shut the door. ‘We don’t speak English very well, sorry, so you need to explain to us where we put our names. My wife,’ he pointed at Julia with vague interest, ‘She’s worse. Tell her what to do please.’
‘Mr. Rudnick, I understand your concerns, but not to worry, I’ll help guide you towards the best solution for you and your wife. Now, do you understand what you’re here to do?’
‘Yes, we have two children we need adopted.’
Bennett nodded, turned to Julia. ‘Madam, do you understand, is this why you’re here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, well, the first thing we have to do,’—he shuffled the papers around on his desk and found a white form, fed it into his typewriter—’ is fill out this declaration, it’s a s
tatement that you need to sign, telling me the details that led you to decide to adopt your children out to a new family. This won’t take long.’ Bennett leaned forward, folded his hands on the desk. ‘So. What is the reason, for my records?’
‘My wife got pregnant with children that are someone else’s. These are not my children, I'm not their father.’ Every word felt labored, but Henry steeled himself at each one.
Bennett swallowed abruptly at the admission, and then looked over at Julia, and wondered if the words this man uttered were correct, for he’d never heard of such a thing, though similar things have probably happened in the world. ‘Is this a fact?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you the truth? That he forced himself on me?’
The men looked at each other, and the power of the truth and the freedom of the words that she’d wanted to say for what seemed like most of her life--even if they didn’t believe her-- crashed through the room and created a deafening silence.
Julia’s eyes glistened. ‘Would you listen?’
‘Madam, I hardly— ‘
‘What about understanding what happened to me? Can I tell you what happened?’
‘Madam. Is there a police report?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if this man assaulted you, as you say,’ Bennett looked over at Henry and saw nothing but a stony face, so he looked back at Julia. “Then surely you would have reported it?’
Henry spoke first.
‘No.’
Bennett stayed silent.
The keys clicked, spelling out black letters: ‘Julia’, and then, ‘wife of Henry Rudnick’.
‘So. When did you commit adultery?’ And despite her freedom in that moment, she was trapped again.
‘July. 2 years ago.’
‘And, who was he?’
Iliya.
Motherland Page 18