by Kelli Stuart
Nina bites her lip and glances up at the ceiling, taking note of a vent that needs to be cleaned out.
“So what did he say?” Elizaveta asks.
“He wanted to check to see how you and Annie were doing,” Nina replies, choosing her words carefully. Elizaveta looks hard at her daughter.
“Is that all he wanted?” she asks. Nina takes in a deep breath and shrugs her shoulders.
“Yes, that’s it,” she replies. She takes a drink of her tea, letting the scalding hot water work its way past the tightness in her throat. Unable to stand the intensity of Elizaveta’s gaze, Nina takes a deep breath and pushes to a stand.
“I’m going to take a shower and go to bed,” she says. “It’s been a long day.” She leans forward and kisses Elizaveta gently on the cheek.
“Da,” Elizaveta murmurs, watching her daughter turn toward the stairs. “A long day.”
Elizaveta
Love, they say, is the emotion of the weak.
Why then did it make me feel so strong?
I watch her leave, trailing behind her a scent of doubt. She’s pushing Viktor Shevchenko away, but she doesn’t really want to. I can tell. I’m old, but I still remember that feeling of hopefulness and bright-eyed desire. I felt it for Igor, and the memory of his youthful face, the eyes that drew me in and held me captive for ten years, pulls me back into a time that felt both infinitely more complicated, and yet also so much simpler than today.
Igor was the only man I ever loved. I met him just as I was beginning to give up on the prospect of love. There were men before him, but they were the type of men that only used me for a short time, got from me what they wanted, then discarded me like a mangy pup on the side of the road. But not my Igor. He was gentle and kind, a good man who loved me fiercely until the day he discovered my lies.
I was twenty-nine when I first caught his eye, a research technician at the Russian National Research Medical University in Moscow where he came on staff to teach fresh-faced youth barely grown out of the young Komsomols. Handsome and quiet, he immediately became an attraction to every single woman inside the university walls.
Life was, of course, different then. We were still dealing with the effects of the war, still reeling from the devastation of those long, dark years when death became the constant bedfellow to us all.
I was rebuilding in more ways than one, meticulously erecting walls around myself meant to keep anyone from getting too close. I’d forged a new path all on my own. I had to. It was the only way to survive. The choice had been presented to me so clearly since those early years trapped in the icy winds of the gulag: Family or State. One had to choose between the two, and each choice came with consequences. To choose Family over State meant that I would live in constant fear of rejection. I was the child of a kulak—a half-citizen considered dangerous by my government due to nothing more than the geography of my birth and my father’s refusal to bend to the will of the oppressive NKVD, the police bent on upholding their beloved Stalin’s Five Year Plan. This status barely registered me as a citizen, and it was drilled into my head that a kulak’s offspring had little to no prospects in life. The child of an enemy of the state did not deserve to be educated the way that a good Soviet was educated. And so, with the echo of Valerya Sergeevna ringing in my ears, I did the only thing that seemed logical at the time—I chose State.
Dima, my wayward and lost brother had long since chosen Family. He’d gone before me, fleeing what he called a wicked and traitorous government. He’d spoken viciously and boldly against the enforcers of State, generating backlash that dogged not only him, but the rest of us as well. I begged him to keep silent, to simply go along with the unit. I tossed around the ever-elusive term “acquiesce” as if I understood it, and our conversations grew more heated with each passing day. I was fifteen when my entire world exploded.
Dima came home frantic that last day. He grabbed a bag and shoved in a shirt and pair of pants, three potatoes, and a loaf of mama’s rye bread. All the while, he barked orders at Mama and me while Tanya hovered in the corner, trembling.
“They’ll be here soon, and they will be looking for me. Don’t talk to them. Say nothing, do you understand?” He stared at us. Mama nodded, but I just looked back in disbelief.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“That doesn’t matter,” he barked. “I simply stood up for what’s right.” He rushed to me, grabbing my arms and squeezing so tight that tears sprang to my eyes. “Don’t trust them,” he hissed. “I know you want to, but you can’t. They are lying to you. Do not trust them.”
Moments later, he rushed out the door and disappeared in the tall, yellow grass of the field. Sunflowers danced in his wake, as if bidding him a joyful goodbye. The rest of us were left to pick up the pieces. We had to put back together all that he’d torn apart, suffering long, cruel days of questioning by the NKVD agents who wanted us to confess to Dima’s crimes. We were to admit our part in his traitorous activity, his blatant dissidence. Why they didn’t just arrest us and throw us into the gulag to suffer the same fate as Papa, I do not know. Mama insisted it was the protection of her God—the God she spoke of rebelliously in the barracks of Siberia—the God she prayed to unashamedly morning and night—the God I begged her to forget, to leave behind lest we find ourselves in greater danger than before because of her open faith.
“I prayed that their eyes would be blinded, and that they would be unable to follow through with their usual protocol,” she whispered after a particularly grueling day of questioning. She stroked Tanya’s hair back off her face as she spoke, and I swallowed against the anger that threatened to drown me.
“God has protected us, dochenka,” she said as she grabbed my hand. “He has answered my prayers.” I pulled my hand from her grip, though, because her words were too foreign and dangerous. The NKVD officers never returned to our home after that day. It was as though they simply forgot about us, though I suspect that they caught Dima and killed him, thus losing interest in our family altogether. I never knew for sure, of course, but I’d grown used to living in the unknown by then.
The day that Dima left was the day I decided I would never trust Family again. We were not a unit, but rather each individuals looking out for ourselves. Mama clung to her faith, and Tanya clung to Mama. I chose to cling to the unit that I could see and grasp. It seemed, on the surface, that that was the easiest choice of all. I didn’t realize that it would require such deep sacrifice. Dima broke my trust in Family, and I never thought I’d get it back again—at least not until I met Igor.
It was decidedly un-Soviet to fall in love, actually. The moment I found myself longing for Igor, desiring his presence, was the moment I began to doubt my decision to walk away from Family. Because to renounce the ones you love means you must forevermore keep everyone else at arm’s length. This is what I did with Igor. I kept him just far enough away to prevent him ever knowing or seeing the real me, but I let him in enough to find those lines between Family and State blurring until I could no longer figure out why I’d separated the two in the first place.
Igor never even knew my real name. He didn’t know that I was the daughter of a man who died behind the barbed fence of a gulag labor camp, sentenced to work for betraying the motherland. He didn’t know that I was the sister of a boy who spoke so vocally against our government that he was eventually chased out of town, never to be seen or heard from again. He didn’t know I was the daughter of a woman who read banned poetry and proclaimed her loyalty to an unseen, forbidden God.
He knew nothing about me, but he loved me, or he loved the image that I allowed him to love. For ten years, I held my secrets, stealthily shrouding them in vague speech and half stories. At night, after Igor went to bed, I’d reach into the drawer beside me and pull out the identification papers that I’d had falsified so many years earlier. I would read the name over and over, Elizaveta Andreyevna Mishurova, and I would recite the details of my rewritten history. I was the only daughter of
intellectual parents, both of whom died in Leningrad at the end of the war. I was loyal to country and sound of mind. I had no siblings and no living family connections. I was alone, and I was a servant of the State.
I recited these facts over and over, hoping to one day believe them. During the daytime hours, when the sun shone brightly and people’s eyes were blinded to the truth, I was able to almost make myself believe the story. But at night, under the watchful eye of the moon, I felt exposed. I’d watch Igor’s chest rise and fall, his even breathing a clear sign that he had nothing to hide, no secrets to fear.
This is why it was so very surprising the day my sister showed up at our door. Tanya came in the middle of the day on a Sunday afternoon. Igor and I had been lying in bed, reading lazily, something so rare, as we normally spent our Sunday afternoons walking in the park or visiting the theater. But that day he wasn’t feeling well, and we decided to stay home. When we heard the knock, I was so relaxed that it didn’t even occur to me to be startled or afraid. I threw open the door and blinked in surprise, the image of her standing there foreign and strange. It was like a splotch of paint accidentally dropped into the middle of a serene landscape painting.
Her eyes were red, swimming with pain. She held in her arms a bundle, clutching it tight to her chest as her chin trembled in a rhythm of fear. I didn’t even know what to say, so I said nothing, my heart racing, completely unaware that Igor had stepped into the hallway behind me.
“Can we help you?” he asked, and I jumped, the sound of his voice slicing through the air like a blade.
Her eyes shifted from my face to his, and then back to mine. She jutted her chin toward me. “You can’t,” she whispered, “but she can.”
Igor turned to me, and in that moment I knew that I would lose him, that all the lies and the secrets would now be exposed and would tear through us in one quick motion.
“Do you know her?” he asked. Still I didn’t answer, because what could I say? There were too many words and not enough all at once.
I looked back at her and swallowed hard. “What...” my voice failed me. I shook my head, cleared my throat, and tried again. “What do you want?” I asked.
She thrust the bundle into my chest, and instantly a wail erupted. Igor and I both looked down, stunned, at the tiny face swaddled tight in layers of dirty blankets. Little fists pushed up out of the top of the swaddle, fighting for freedom. I took a step back, horrified at what I was seeing.
“I want you to take her,” Tanya said, and as she did so a sob escaped her throat. It was a deep, guttural sound like the tearing of muscle from bone, so heart wrenching that I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and block it out.
“I...no. I can’t!” I responded, backing away as she moved toward me, holding the screaming child out like a sacrifice.
“You have to take her!” she sobbed. “Take her now. You must!”
Igor stepped between Tanya and me, pushing the baby back toward her and spitting out his words.
“I don’t know who you are,” he seethed, “but you have no right to come to our home and demand we raise your bastard child. Get out of here you crazy woman.”
Tanya rocked the baby close to her chest, sobbing as she gently kissed the little one’s face. She looked back up at me, and I shifted my eyes down, unable to take the accusation.
“It was horrible for us when you left,” she whispered.
My entire body tensed up as her words took root. “Mama died in that place. She died because of you. And I have been alone ever since.” Tanya’s voice broke, each syllable coming out in a pain-filled gasp. “But do you want to know what the final words were that she said to me the last time I saw her?”
I couldn’t answer, couldn’t breathe.
“She asked me to find you and to tell you that she forgives you.”
Tanya buried her face into the blankets, the child in her arms now bright-eyed and silent, looking up as though fully aware of the moment’s weight.
“How...did you find me?” I asked, my words no more than a gasp. She looked at me, disdain swimming through her eyes.
“I have my ways, sister,” she hissed. “I knew you would find your way here, and of course you chose that name.”
I swallowed hard, muted by the anger in her voice. She glanced down at the baby in her arms, tiny squeaks echoing from the blanket. Her face softened.
Tanya looked back at me and shook her head. “I can’t raise this child,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m alone. I have no one to help me, no job, no way to provide for her. I cannot be the one to raise her because if I do, I will fail.” Her eyes bore into mine. “Please,” she whispered. “I need you to take her and raise her. I need you to give her a chance in this world. She’ll have no opportunity in my care, but you can give her what I can’t. Please.”
I heard her voice, but it entered through my ears as though traveling first through a tin can. The sounds echoed, and as I tried to make sense of them the room began swaying. I tried to pull it all together, but I couldn’t figure out the ceiling from the floor, and then everything went black.
When I woke, I found myself on the couch, Igor sitting in a chair across the room. His legs were crossed, a cigarette in between his fingers as he watched me closely. I sat up and looked around, wondering for a moment if it had all been a dream.
“I sent her away,” he said softly. My eyes shifted to him, and I felt the breath pull from my chest in a gasp.
“Oh,” I answered.
“She was your sister,” he said. He drew the cigarette to his mouth and pulled in deeply, slowly releasing the smoke until it formed a momentary film between us, blurring the space that now divided him and me. That was the day that I began hating the smell of cigarette smoke.
“Yes,” I answered, and the truth tasted like a bitter root.
“Yes?!” he exploded. He stood up so quickly that the chair behind him flipped over. I shrank back onto the couch as he advanced toward me, fire in his eyes. “You have a sister who is very much alive and a mother who did not actually die in the revolution, and you have nothing else to say?” He was now leaned down over me, the mingling of anger and betrayal so palpable that I felt the air between us light up. I didn’t know what to say, or where to start. I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
“What is your name?” he asked, this time his voice quiet.
“My name is...” I hesitated. For a moment I didn’t know how to answer. And then I made a choice.
“My name is Elizaveta Andreyevna Mishurova,” I answered, raising my chin slightly.
He pushed himself back and stared down at me in disgust. “Liar,” he said, spitting out the word like it burned his tongue.
I was about to speak again, to tell him that I was sorry, that I had become who I said I was and couldn’t go back. I wanted to ask him to forgive me, and to trust me, but before I could say anything there was another knock at the door. Both of us froze.
“Are you expecting anyone else today?” he asked, sarcasm weaving through the words. “Your uncle, perhaps? Your long lost cousin? Or maybe your dead papa, resurrected?” Neither one of us moved.
I stared at him and he at me until the silence between us was broken by soft whimpers. He growled in disgust and stormed to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. I pulled myself from the couch and walked heavily to the door, preparing the words that I would say to Tanya. “I cannot keep the child,” I whispered as I approached the door. “I cannot keep the child. It doesn’t belong to me. You must find another way.”
I pulled open the door, ready to tell her the news, but no one was there. My eyes shifted to the floor where the child lay alone on the cold concrete, her whimpers quickly escalating into wails. A note was pinned to her blanket:
You have to raise my daughter. You owe this to me, and you owe it to Mama. I pray to God that you take care of my baby. Raise her well and keep her safe. Her name is Nina.
I slowly picked the child up and wrapped
the blanket around her a little tighter. I brought her into the apartment, the feel of her little body against mine uncomfortable and awkward. I couldn’t breathe, each inhale shallow as I tried to move the air through my constricted lungs. I walked into the bedroom where Igor sat sullenly on the bed. He looked at me, then down at the child.
“She left the baby,” I said, my words hollow. Igor looked away, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to speak.
Two days later, Igor was gone, and Nina and I were alone.
Annie
Annie lays her book down slowly and stares out the window. The sun sits high now, the morning fog having long since burned off. She blinks back tears as she runs her hand over the cover of the book, tracing the title with her nail while digesting the story.
She closes her eyes, trying to force the image of George and Lennie from her mind, the outcome of their friendship too painful for her to process. Annie’s stomach growls. Her mother is at work, and her grandmother should be down for her afternoon nap, so she pushes herself slowly up off the bed and waits for the room to stop spinning. She stands up and makes her way softly to the stairs. Taking care to avoid each creak, she walks quickly past her grandmother’s closed door, her heart pounding. She glances nervously at the door, listening intently for any sounds behind the thin wood separating her and the woman who makes her feel unendingly scrutinized.
She tugs open the fridge and suppresses a small smile. Her mother has left two meals, each in its own container, and each labeled. She pulls out the container that says “ANNIE” and pulls it open. Inside is half a turkey and avocado sandwich, sliced apples, a small water bottle, and three Hershey Kisses. Shaking her head, Annie pulls out the sandwich and takes a bite. Immediately the rumbling in her stomach subsides and she feels her head begin to clear. She unwraps a Hershey Kiss and walks over to the wall opposite the kitchen. She grabs a photo album off the shelf and pads to the couch, settling down with the picture book and her lunch.