by Nicole Fox
Chapter 2
Zoya
My mother sits silently in the seat next to me, her gaze fixed on the blurry scenery passing outside the window. She hasn’t looked at me since we pulled out of the parking lot. She hasn’t really looked at me since I delivered the news a month ago.
Getting pregnant was not part of the plan. Eventually, sure. But not now. Not when we’d only lost my father a few months before, when my mother was mired in a dark pit of grief. And certainly not when I would have to do it all on my own. No, the pregnancy had been an accident, but my mother didn’t see it that way.
“The baby seemed big,” I say, my voice expanding in the tight space of the car, filling every crevice. I’d spoken softly, but it still felt too loud.
My mother hums in agreement.
“I think the image was blown up, though,” I say, tapping the black and white sonogram image sitting in the cup holder. “I’m not showing enough to have a baby that big inside of me.”
“They magnify it.” She turns to look forward, her face pulled back in an expressionless mask. Her lips, which only a few months ago were constantly turned upwards in a smile, sag towards her jaw. She looks older.
“Did you have sonograms with me?” I ask. “When you were pregnant, I mean? Did they have the machines back then?”
“I’m not that old,” she says, her voice filled with a playfulness I haven’t heard in too long.
“If you say so,” I tease back, but when I elbow her arm across the console, her mouth tightens and she pulls her arms closer to her sides.
I swallow back my disappointment and turn down the long road that leads to the estate where we both work and live. The Levushkas hired my parents as caretakers to the sprawling estate when they were freshly married and my mother was pregnant with me. They were young and didn’t have any skills, but the mafia family found a rare bit of pity for their situation.
My parents were forever grateful to the Levushkas and dutifully held their position for the last twenty years. And now that my father has recently passed, my mother is even more committed to her employer, Boris Levushka. Our employer, really. As soon as I was old enough to work, I started alongside my mother as a maid in Boris’ home. Now that my father is gone, however, my mother has been taking on his duties, as well, leaving more of the cleaning to me.
“We are running late,” she says, glancing towards the clock on the dash and then back out the window.
“We said we would be back at ten,” I remind her.
“Yes,” she says with a frustrated tip of her head. “And it is five after.”
“Boris knows how doctor’s appointments can go, mother. He won’t—”
“Mr. Levushka,” she says. “You should call him Mr. Levushka.”
My brows pull together. “I’ve always called him Boris.”
Growing up on the estate, I had free run of the grounds. My parents kept me inside our cottage when important guests were staying in the main house or when a deal was being worked out, but otherwise, I ran between our cottage and the estate’s kitchens as though it was an extension of my own house. And Boris was always kind to me.
He is a broad man with a thick neck and arms, and his shiny bald head makes his smile look menacing, but he always had a smile for me as a child. I’d seen him raise his voice to other household staff, berating them for simple mistakes, but even once I began working for him, he had a special fondness for me that I attributed to the fact he had watched me grow up.
“That was before,” my mother says.
“Before what?” Before I began working for him? That had been four years ago, so if he minded me calling him by his first name, certainly he would have said by now. Or did she mean…?
Finally, my mother acknowledged the sonogram picture sitting in the cup holder between us. She pointed to it with a stiff finger. “Before this.”
Before the pregnancy. Yes, many things were different before the pregnancy. For one, my mother would look at me. She would smile and laugh. She would pull me into a hug at the end of the day and kiss me on the forehead. Now, I’m trapped in the after. When my own mother is so consumed by disappointment that she can’t even say my name.
“Why did you come today?” I ask, finally voicing the question that had been burning inside of me since she told me she asked Boris—Mr. Levushka—for the morning off. “Why did you come with me if you can’t even bring yourself to look at a picture of my baby?”
She stiffened at the words. My baby. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m alone all day,” I argue. “I spend hours cleaning rooms in silence. Not to mention coming back to the cottage at the end of the day to find you are already in your room. You don’t mind that I’m alone then.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. She is thinner than she was a few months ago, and I want to ask if she is eating. She hasn’t had dinner with me for the last week, but I’d assumed she was eating before I came home. Now, I’m not so sure. “The doctor is different.”
“How?” I want her to look at me. Being silent and waiting for her anger to pass clearly hasn’t worked, so perhaps I should try asking her all the questions I’ve kept pent inside. Maybe I should force her to voice the thoughts and feelings she has been silently stewing over for the last month. Maybe it will help.
“They could give you bad news,” she says sharply, her tone in direct opposition to the concern shown by her words. “You shouldn’t drive after news like that. Someone should be there for you.”
The stone around my heart softens, and I reach across the console to lay my hand over hers. “That is different,” I agree softly. Tears spring to my eyes at the thought that my mother still cares. She still worries for me, still wants to be there for me. However, they dry immediately when she wrenches her hand away and leans into the passenger side door.
“And it shouldn’t be me,” she snaps. “It should be your husband. Or boyfriend, at least. But you do not have one of those.”
Her words slithered down my spine like ice water, sending a shiver through me. “No, I don’t.”
“It should be the father of your child,” she said, pointing again to the sonogram in the cup holder. “He should be the one here to take care of you. Where is he?”
We’d had this discussion too many times to count in the last month, and it always ended the same way. Me, closed-lipped and burning with shame, my mother marching off to her room and slamming the door.
I turn onto the gravel driveway that stems from the main road and wraps around the back of our cottage. It is narrow and bumpy, used only by the very few people who ever make their way to our house.
When I don’t say anything, my mother sighs and shakes her head. As soon as I park our beat-up car behind the house, she throws open the door and marches inside. I know where she is headed—her room. She will hide in there until I go up to the main house to work. Then, she will emerge and go about her day, doing her best to pretend I don’t exist. To avoid me. I can’t live this way anymore. Losing my father was hard enough, but now I’ve lost my mother, too.
I follow behind her, grabbing her arm just before she can grab the handle. She gasps when I grab her, but I’m too angry to care.
“Why are you acting this way?” I feel more like the parent in this moment. Like I’m disciplining a stubborn child. “You cannot just avoid me until the pregnancy is over. You do realize that, right? At the end of this, there will be a child. A baby who will need to be taken care of. Are you going to ignore me then, too? Are you going to continue pretending I do not exist until you join Father, wherever he is?”
“Do not speak to me like that,” she hisses, stepping forward, her nose inches from mine. We are the same height and build, though her body is softer, thicker around the hips and thighs. And her eyes are a deep, dark brown. My blue eyes came from my father. “I am still your mother.”
“You haven’t been acting like it.” My voice is loud enough that she takes a step backwards, but she isn�
�t giving up. Not a bit. Her eyes narrow.
“I’ve been your mother for twenty years, Zoya.” It is the first time she has said my name in a month, and I almost sigh at the relief. Even in her anger, it feels good to hear it. “I have raised you and cared for you in the way I thought was right. I’ve cleaned toilets and scrubbed floors and dishes to make sure you could have a good life.”
“I do have a good life,” I say, lifting my arms to gesture to our modest, but clean cottage. There is a flower bed in the backyard where my father and I planted herbs and a few vegetables. Flowers bloom from the ground in colorful bouquets on the other side of the door. My parents built something here in this cottage, and I am happy to continue it. I had a happy childhood, and that is all I can hope for my own child.
My mother shakes her head. “A better life. I wanted you to have a better life than me.”
My mother had never said so, but my father let slip late one night—after he’d had a bit too much to drink and my mom had gone to bed—that I was an accident. Not unwanted, he’d clarified. But unexpected. He and my mother had only been married a few weeks when they found out. There was no time to be young and aimless and in love. Suddenly, they needed jobs and a house and security. So, they’d come to work for the Levushka family and they’d never looked back. As a child, I thought their life was a fairytale. Love and a warm, cozy cottage, and laughter every night. As I got older, I realized nothing was that picturesque, but still, to hear my mother say she didn’t want the same thing for me—it stung in ways I didn’t expect.
“I didn’t grow up wanting to be a maid,” she says. “I married your father because he was young and handsome and smart. I thought he would go places. I thought we would go places.”
“And I ruined that for you?” I ask, bitterness dripping from every word.
She looks me straight in the eyes and shakes her head. “You did nothing wrong. I gave up, Zoya. I gave up on my dreams and that is what you are doing now.”
“What dreams?” I ask, throwing my hands up. “What have I ever done except be here with you?”
She flings her hand over her shoulder, pointing towards the cottage. “Your walls are covered with your dreams. Your father spent a month’s pay buying you a laptop so you could pursue your dreams.”
I sigh and run a hand down my face. “The graphic designs are…a hobby.”
“They are your future,” she snaps, pointing at me so forcefully I expect her to jab her finger into my chest. “Working here as a maid is a dead end. Who will care for the baby while you clean toilets, Zoya?”
I feel my face redden. I haven’t considered all of the details yet. “Just because I don’t have an answer, doesn’t mean—”
“We can’t afford a sitter. Not on our wages,” she says. “I cannot afford to stay home with the baby while you work. We are only useful to Boris if we are both working. What do you think he’ll say when you have to take days off to stay home with the baby?”
“He will understand,” I say, regretting opening this floodgate. “Babies get sick.”
“And maids get fired.” She hurls the words at me like a slap, and I pinch my lips together. “You may call him Boris, but he is not your friend, Zoya. He is not your friend or your family, and as soon as we are no longer useful, he will find new employees.”
Tears sting the back of my eyes. This is the most I’ve talked to my mother in a month, and all she can do is tell me the many ways I’m failing. I imagined she would come around eventually and offer to help me. Instead, she is simply pointing out the many different ways I am alone. The many different reasons I can’t count on anyone. Not even her.
I push past her and into the house before she can see me cry.
“You can’t run away from this, Zoya.”
I let out a harsh, biting laugh. “You would know all about running away, wouldn’t you? You’ve done an awful lot of that the last few weeks.”
Before she can say anything else, I walk into my room and slam the door shut.
The pictures on my walls flutter in the breeze from the door closing. There are pen and pencil drawings hanging above the little desk in the corner of my room, but as the pictures begin to expand outward and take up more space, they turn to color—paints and markers—and eventually, computer animations.
Before I had my own computer, I spent as many free hours as I could find at the library. I used the software on the computers there, paying thirty-one rubles to print out what I made, and tacked my artwork up on my walls. I started by copying pictures I found in magazines or characters from television, but as time went on, I began to create my own. Aliens with purple skin and golden hair invading Earth, turtle-like creatures flying through space and playing soccer with the planets, and flowers as tall as trees casting shade over silver lakes filled with glimmering fish.
They were the imaginings of a child. Nothing anyone would care about. No one besides me, that is. Or my mom.
Regardless of what my mom thinks, my art is for me and me alone. Putting it out into the world—hoping for anyone else to care—is only asking for heartbreak. And life has enough of that already. No need to pile on.
I slip out of my flats and into a pair of cloth sneakers, pull my long brown hair into a heavy ponytail, and walk out of the cottage and towards the main house without looking to see where my mom is. I have to focus on my real life. On what matters: scrubbing Boris Levushka’s toilets until they sparkle.
Chapter 3
Aleksandr
I didn’t sleep much after parting with Mikhail, and I feel the weariness in my bones as the plane begins to descend over St. Petersburg. It is early, fog rolling across the water that stretches into the horizon. It’s a beautiful view, but I’m in no mood to appreciate it.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Levushka?” the flight attendant asks, leaning forward to give me a straight view down the front of her button-down shirt. If I remember correctly, it was buttoned up to her neck when I arrived. Now, it barely covers her cleavage. She mentioned her name when I got on the plane, but I made no effort to remember it. We rarely use the same attendants twice. No one outside our operation should know too much about our movements. It is an unnecessary risk.
I shake my head and wave her away. She brought me coffee at the start of the flight, and I made the mistake of smiling at her. More than anything, it was an attempt to lighten my own mood. Mikhail’s predicament is a dark cloud over my head, and I wanted just a tiny ray of sunshine. Unfortunately, life couldn’t give me even that much. The attendant may only be working this one flight for me, but that doesn’t mean she knows nothing of my reputation.
She, like most of the women I come into contact with, knows all about my wealth, my family connections. If she was smart, she’d run in the opposite direction, but based on the way she has sashayed up and down the aisle of the plane the entire flight, doing her utmost to give me a peek at what is under her polyester skirt, she isn’t smart. She does a poor job of hiding her disappointment as she sulks to the back of the plane.
The airport is small and there are no other flights taking off or leaving. I see my uncle the moment I step off the plane. He is standing next to a shiny black car, leaning back with his legs spread wide beneath him, his meaty hands shoved down in his pockets. Mikhail and I take after our mother’s side of the family—tall and narrow—while my father’s family has always been squarer in stature.
“I thought I’d be collecting Mikhail,” Boris says.
Many people swear they can’t tell us apart, but those closest to us can. Even from a distance, Boris has no trouble.
“Are you disappointed?” I ask flatly.
He shrugs, bobbing his head back and forth like he isn’t sure, and then tips his head back in uproarious laughter. The sound feels too loud for how early it is, but that is how my uncle has always been. Too brash, too loud, too much. It is why he scares people. Not because he is scary, but because he is startling. Because he isn’t afraid to operate
outside the confines of normal human behavior.
He pulls me into a quick hug, slapping my back once with the palm of his hand, and then steps away. “It is good to see you, Aleksandr.”
I nod. “We should go. The flight took off later than I’d hoped.”
Boris raises an eyebrow and then chuckles to himself as he walks around the back of the car. “Yes. You are certainly nothing like Mikhail.”
I decide to take his comment as a compliment.
The warehouse isn’t far from Boris’ home in the countryside. The gray metal building sticks up from the rolling landscape like a blight, but the benefit of the rusted old structure is that no one wants to go near it. Anyone who doesn’t have business there will naturally do their best to pretend it doesn’t exist, which makes it the perfect location to meet contacts and conduct exchanges. Plus, its location between the shore and an airport offers several modes of escape should things go awry.
As we pull in, Boris surveys the gravel lot, preparing himself for such a possibility. Know your exit. It was one of the first things my father taught me.
“Cyrus is here,” Boris says, tipping his head towards a black truck barely visible beyond the corner of the building. He grits his teeth. “He arrived early.”
Being the first to a meeting is beneficial. It is the same as being the host. You are there to welcome whoever arrives after you, and it ensures no traps or tricks can be laid before your arrival. Cyrus apparently understands this as well as we do.
I have a gun and a knife stored at my hip, and I press my hand against them as we cross the parking lot, ensuring I can access them easily. A quick draw is important. One second can be the difference between life and a bullet to the head. Though, I’m not expecting much from Cyrus. We’ve met with him before. As a longtime partner of our family, he relies on us to make up a large percentage of his business. Crossing us would be bad for his bottom line, and in the business of importing weapons, the bottom line is the only thing that matters.