Vaclav & Lena

by Haley Tanner

  “Do you like to color?” said Anna. “Come on, we’ll color.” Anna pulled out a chair for Lena at a table where there was one other little girl coloring. This girl looked older to Lena, but not as old as Toast. The girl did not look up when Lena and Anna sat down. She was coloring an ocean of blue around a tiny pink fish, trying to make the ocean come closer and closer to the fish without going onto the fish.

  “Janelle, this is Lena.” Janelle said nothing. Anna pulled a big piece of paper in front of Lena, and then she pulled a big piece of paper in front of herself. Then she put a big box of crayons between them. She took out a brown crayon, and she started to draw a big flower in the center of her paper. It had perfect tapered petals, and once they were outlined in brown, she began filling them in with orange.

  Then Anna reached into the crayon box and took out a pink crayon, and handed it to Lena.

  Lena slowly, carefully, introduced the tip of the crayon to the paper, as if to do so would spark a chemical reaction. Then, staring at the crayon, not at the paper, she pushed the crayon along, barely making a mark on the paper. She was focused on gliding the crayon across the paper. Then she laid the crayon on its side and glided it across the paper that way. She wiggled it back and forth and moved it along in her best approximation of an earthworm. She thought about how she had seen earthworms move, how they scrunched their bodies together and expanded, and she tried to capture this back-and-forth forward movement with her crayon. She thought about her fingers in the carpet, and she thought about the new carpet at this house, and how fantastic it would be to be alone with it, to walk her fingers along its roads, to drive her hands on its highways.

  Lena liked this activity—it required no talking—and she liked sitting at the table and quietly concentrating while other people were quietly concentrating. She wanted to make marks on the paper like the other people—that seemed good—but she also liked the way that she was coloring. Lena’s way, she could color forever without using up any paper or any crayons.

  HOW LENA BECAME A STAIN ON THE LIFE OF THE AUNT

  …

  The people who took care of Lena for those strange hours after Radoslava Dvorakovskaya died, with their caring faces and their protocol and paperwork and best intentions, these people examined the will that Radoslava Dvorakovskaya had left by her bedside table. Radoslava Dvorakovskaya had clearly wished that custody of Lena be granted to Lena’s aunt, Ekaterina. Radoslava, however, was not Lena’s legal guardian and had no authority to will Lena to Ekaterina or anyone else. To complicate matters, there was no paper trail suggesting who should have custody of Lena. Lena had been off the kid grid since her parents had disappeared. In fact, it was unclear whether Lena had ever been on the grid: Lack of an American birth certificate suggested she had been born in Russia; lack of immigration paperwork suggested that she had been born in America.

  Radoslava Dvorakovskaya’s will, which identified Ekaterina as Lena’s aunt, was the only paperwork that even acknowledged the existence of Lena. After much searching and discussing, Ekaterina was determined to be the best legal guardian for Lena. The relation was close; Lena’s parents were nowhere, disappeared by all accounts; and Ekaterina was willing. Eventually.

  “She is how old?” Ekaterina asked.

  “That is old enough for free school?”

  “My job is not making me wealthy; how am I to pay for all of the things? Schoolbooks and food and clothes and things?”

  “Stipend? What is this?”

  “How much is this?”

  “When will the first check come?”

  So Lena goes to live with the Aunt. This Lena remembers. Too clearly and not clearly enough, as that is how memory is.

  It was several days of coloring with Anna before the Aunt came to take Lena home. Lena remembers these days as days of coloring, because they were filled with coloring, as much as she wanted, as much paper as she wanted, as many crayons as she wanted, and she fell into the hours of coloring, and meals came, and snacks came, and some of these she put into her mouth and some of these she did not, depending on who was looking at her and how brave she felt. Mostly she was allowed to go on coloring all day, and when it was time for bed on the second night, she knew the room she was going to, and she knew that no one would disturb her and that she could sleep under the covers, and go to use the bathroom whenever she wanted, and when she woke up, she could color again.

  By the third day she was starting to feel really good, starting to look forward to the next day, to coloring, to getting lost in it so that her eyes hurt and her hands hurt. Everything about the house that had been frightening she now understood. She knew where the food was and where to put your cup when you were done with it. Also, someone new had come, a boy who was younger than her but taller, and who had a head that was very round, rounder than any other head she had seen, so that she was not the newest person anymore, she was a girl who knew things about the place and was comfortable and was there, and she was aware that when the new boy saw her, he would be feeling unsure and afraid, and he would be thinking that she must know everything, which she did.

  Then the Aunt came. Lena had never seen her before, but she had heard of her, from Radoslava, and she thought, for the first time since she found Radoslava Dvorakovskaya dead in the shower, about Radoslava being gone and dead, and she thought about how nice the days had been since Radoslava Dvorakovskaya died, with the coloring and the food and everyone being nice and playing and leaving her alone, and she thought she was happy that her babushka was dead, and she thought that things were going to be even better with her aunt, who she had heard about.

  From Radoslava, Lena knew that the Aunt danced, and wore makeup, and liked to go out late and have good times.

  When the Aunt came, Lena felt so shy, she wanted to say something so that the Aunt would like her, but she could not say anything, because she did not know what to say. Lena was coloring when the Aunt came, and the way the Aunt looked at the coloring made Lena feel embarrassed of coloring; it made her want to stop and cover the little pale circles she had made so that no one could see them.

  The Aunt didn’t act the way Lena thought she would act. She didn’t act excited; she didn’t smile at Lena; she didn’t really say hi to Lena or do anything nice.

  Lena thought that she had messed something up; she wondered how she had made the Aunt upset, how she had made her angry. She thought it could have been really good, to live with the Aunt, but now she had messed it up. She had a lot of questions for the Aunt, but now she felt like she wasn’t supposed to ask them. She wanted to know what the Aunt was to her, how you became someone’s aunt. Lena thought, from things Radoslava had said, that the Aunt might know things about her mother.

  The Aunt and Anna did some talking together; the Aunt filled out a lot of paperwork, and signed things; and Anna talked and nodded, and smiled even when the Aunt did not smile back.

  Then the Aunt came over to Lena and spoke to her in Russian, which was a relief, because Lena had been worried that maybe the Aunt spoke English.

  “You are ready to go? You have any things with you?”

  Lena nodded.

  The Aunt took her hand, and they walked to the front door of the house, and Anna smiled at them, and Lena felt that Anna was maybe a little bit nervous, or something, and that made Lena feel a little bit nervous.

  The Aunt had a car, and it was parked in front of the house. Radoslava Dvorakovskaya had never had a car, and this car looked shiny and new (It was silver! And tiny! For two people only!), and it looked so fancy, and Lena thought that the Aunt must be rich and have many nice things just like this car.

  Lena did not understand yet about cars and leasing and boyfriends and insurance fraud.

  The Aunt went to the front seat of the car, and Lena went to the other side, and she opened the door, and inside the car was not what she expected, because there were things and garbage all over. There were clothes everywhere, and there were soda cans on the floor, and it smelled bad, and ther
e were cigarettes coming out of the ashtray and CDs on the floor, all sorts of things on the floor and on the seats and everywhere. There was a tiny backseat, which Lena did not understand. (There were only two doors? How did anyone get back there?) And this backseat was also full of clothes and other things.

  The seat that Lena was supposed to sit on was covered in things too, and Lena did not know what to do. She sat at the edge of the seat, not wanting to sit on or disturb any of the Aunt’s things. Lena knew she was supposed to buckle her seat belt, but she was afraid to move, afraid to move from her perch on the edge of the seat. She sat at the very edge of the seat for the whole bumpy, bumpy ride, and there was a lot of swerving, and very loud music, and Lena was getting hungry but feeling very sick and not good at the same time. Lena was starting to feel afraid about going to the Aunt’s house, and Lena was starting to miss Anna, and even Toast.

  What is there for a Lena-type person to do in this situation? What is there to do when you are a person who is young and small? When you own only the clothes you are wearing and the one barrette clipped into your hair, which is always sliding out of place and getting stuck in the knots behind your ears? When you do not have a phone or any phone numbers to call? Even if you thought that someone, like Anna, might be able to help you and make you feel better, even if that might be true, how would you call her? How would you even begin to think about how to make a plan to get out of the situation you are in, which is making you feel very, very, very bad? Even if you start to feel, in your aunt’s car, that you would like to be anywhere else in the world, that you do not want to go where you are going, what can you do?

  WELCOME HOME, LENA

  …

  The Aunt parked the car on a street that was very pretty. The street had many trees with their leaves all in colors, and there was a sidewalk and a little grass next to the sidewalk and cars parked all around. The Aunt’s house was a house split in two pieces, up and down, and the Aunt (and now Lena) lived in the up part, so you walked up stairs, up, up, up to the door of the apartment.

  The Aunt looked for a long time for keys in her purse, standing wedged between the open screen door and the real door, rumbling around, rumbling around, and she took out a square pack of cigarettes. Lena knew what these were because some of Radoslava’s friends had smoked them when they came over, and Lena knew that these were bad and not for kids, because Radoslava Dvorakovskaya had forbidden her to touch them, or to handle the little burned dirty pieces of them that people left behind in their teacups and in glass dishes that Radoslava Dvorakovskaya had set out on the table.

  “Hold this,” the Aunt said, and handed the pack of cigarettes to Lena. Lena felt strange, because she was not supposed to hold cigarettes, but she liked that the Aunt asked her to do something and that the Aunt had talked to her—that was good—and that the Aunt trusted her to hold them and not do anything bad.

  The Aunt found the keys, and she pushed open the door. The Aunt stepped inside, and Lena followed her.

  Lena took two steps and stopped. Ekaterina took many steps, dropped her purse on the couch, went into a room, and shut the door.

  Lena stood still and looked all around her because she didn’t know what to do. Everything looked exactly the same as it had in the Aunt’s car. There were things all around. There were too many of some things and not enough of other things. There was a carpet, which was white and very squishy, and covered all of the floor. There were a lot of spots on the carpet, spills and stains and little hard gray-black holes. There was a big leather couch that was black with some places where a rip let some of the white insides come out. There was a table in front of the couch, and it had glass on top, but it was covered all over mostly with garbage, with cans and glasses and ashtrays and some white boxes that used to hold food.

  There was a kitchen that was separated from this main room by only half a wall, not a whole wall, and inside the kitchen also there were things everywhere, boxes and cans and wrappers everywhere, but one of the cabinet doors was missing, and Lena could see that at least one of the cabinets was totally empty.

  Then the Aunt came out of the room, and she was wearing a bathing suit, in two pieces. Her body was orange, or mostly orange, and she had an earring coming out of her belly button. She picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and pulled them up and buttoned them fast, and she did this as though she was angry at her own two legs.

  Lena was still standing there, just two steps inside the front door, and the Aunt was acting like Lena was not there at all. The next thing that the Aunt did was the strangest thing of all. The Aunt rubbed shiny pink gloss from a little pot all over her lips, and then she pulled aside one of the triangles of her bikini top and rubbed the same shiny pink gloss all over her nipple, and then she pinched it, three times, and then she put the triangle back on it, and then she did the same to the other one. Finally she picked up a sweatshirt from the floor, and she put that on.

  “I am going to work,” she said, and then she picked up her purse, and then slam-slam, the doors closed behind her, and she was gone.

  Lena was relieved that she was gone. Lena was also very hungry. She looked in the kitchen, and there wasn’t anything really that looked like food. She ate some rice out of a container in the refrigerator. The rice was cold and white and grainy, but Lena ate all of it.

  She went to the couch and made a spot between some clothes and some magazines, and she fell asleep.

  When Lena woke up, it was dark out, and she didn’t know what time it was, and she didn’t know how to turn on the television to make things less scary, and she didn’t know where the light switches were, so she stayed on the couch, and she tried not to cry, because she was afraid to start.

  THE BATHROOM STALL IS STILL A BATHROOM STALL

  …

  Lena thinks about the days she spent alone in the Aunt’s apartment, and the day she met Vaclav. Lena doesn’t want to tell Serena anything about Vaclav. Vaclav she keeps packed away inside her chest, in her rib cage, tucked between her delicate ribs and her pumping heart, so special, so sacred, is he to her, she cannot even bear to speak his name out loud to anyone; he is a secret she will keep with her forever; like a child’s sacred talisman blanket, she cannot stand for anyone else to touch him, even with their ears.

  She is afraid to touch the perfect memory she has of Vaclav. She has wondered about him, especially in the last few years, but she has been terrified to take him from her memory and risk losing him to real life.

  Lena thinks about the bedtime story Vaclav’s mom told her. She remembers it, almost word for word. She thinks about the ending, about how the boy can’t stand to go to the castle window on the last night, that he would rather forfeit his chance, to continue to not know. As terrified as she is of ruining her perfect memory, she doesn’t want to lose Vaclav to the safety of not knowing. She wants, now, to call Vaclav, and she wants to find her parents.

  “I mean, being adopted at nine, it’s just fascinating,” Serena interrupts her thoughts. “What was that like, suddenly having, like, a brand-new mom?” Serena asks.

  “Yeah, it was kind of scary, kind of really happy,” Lena says.

  Lena remembers the first days she spent with Emily as the best in her whole life. She remembers Emily showing her the house, telling her that it was her house too. She remembers Emily telling her that this was going to be her home, forever, that she was never going to have to move or leave ever again. She remembers the first time she saw her room, with her very own bed, a big four-poster bed with blankets and lots of pillows. She remembers that there was a big closet, filled with empty hangers, and that Emily said that they were going to go buy Lena any clothes she wanted to put on the hangers. For Lena, it was perfect, it was a dream come true.

  Emily remembers things differently.

  WHAT EMILY REMEMBERS

  …

  Emily was terrified. She took Lena through the house, showed her how to use the microwave, how to use the stopper in the bathtub, and how to turn
the TV on and off, because she didn’t know what else to do. Lena said nothing, and her face was blank. Emily had been worried that Lena would be frightened, or shy, or very moody, but she seemed to be completely gone, totally noncommunicative. She had read about parents who adopted neglected children from Romanian orphanages, how the children wouldn’t attach, would never be normal, perhaps would even become sociopaths. She’d read about parents who, after years of struggle, decided finally that their children needed more than they could give, that they had to send their children away, to institutions.

  Days went by, and Lena didn’t speak. Emily took her to see a therapist, a lovely woman in an office with toys everywhere, who, after an hour-long session alone with Lena, called Emily in and told her that Lena would need hours of testing and extensive therapy. Emily looked at Lena, sitting in her little chair, appearing more terrified than ever.

  The therapist told Emily to bring Lena back the next week, that they would start testing, and that Lena needed to be seen three to four times a week. Emily took Lena home, and Lena watched from the kitchen table as Emily made grilled cheese sandwiches.

  “We’ll never go back there again, and you never have to speak again if you don’t want to,” Emily said, “but I’ve made you this grilled cheese sandwich, which is hands-down the best sandwich in the tristate area, and it would be really great if you said thank you.” Emily put the sandwich in front of Lena.

  “Thank you,” said Lena.

  “You’re welcome,” said Emily, stunned.

  Over the next few days, Lena started talking, asking questions, even smiling at TV shows. She didn’t talk at all about her aunt, about what happened before. It was like she was born nine years old, like she had no memory. She cared about what was right in front of her; she asked Emily if pigeons had names, what sidewalks were made of, and where the colors in paint came from. Mostly Emily made up the best answers she could, and Lena seemed satisfied.