Mannequin Girl

by Ellen Litman

  It is, therefore, absurd and unnatural that Kat is forced to spend most of her days in the company of Zoya Moiseevna: Zoya Moiseevna who, according to Anechka, is nothing but a vengeful, dried-up bone; Zoya Moiseevna who calls at odd hours, cleans incessantly, rearranges the kitchen cabinets, and grumbles all day long that she hasn’t raised her darling Misha to live in such a hovel.

  “Is that so?” Anechka asked dryly the first time Zoya Moiseevna volleyed this idea at her.

  “Look at him, skin and bones. He’s lost ten kilos and his socks are full of holes.”

  “Take him back if he’s so unhappy,” said Anechka.

  But of course, Misha wasn’t unhappy, nor would he ever leave Anechka, who at that point was already three months pregnant with Kat. He hadn’t lost any kilos. He’d darn his own socks. Misha? Socks? It was laughable.

  Except Anechka wasn’t laughing. She perched on the windowsill and lit a cigarette. “You decide,” she said to Misha. “It’s me or her.”

  And what could he possibly decide, with her pregnant and already showing a little? March was raging outside—wind, snow, sleet, rain—and Anechka was hunched in her serpent-like way underneath an open ventilation window. Tapered pants, bare ankles, her striped shirt paper thin. And smoking. Smoking was bad for the baby. She’d quit the day she learned she was pregnant, quit easily, with no ill effects, and hadn’t slipped up once until then.

  Zoya Moiseevna was a shrewd enough woman to recognize a losing battle. She collected her parcels and flounced off before her Misha could renounce her. “You idiots, live any way you want.”

  “Thank you!” Anechka called after her, in the voice of a diligent schoolgirl. She’d always been a perfect actress.

  Kat was born six month later, on September 1.

  When Anechka’s maternity leave ended and she went back to work, Zoya Moiseevna made her triumphant, if cautious, return. Anechka had been against it, but they were against the wall: it was either that or put little Kat in a state nursery.

  Installed back in the apartment, Zoya Moiseevna cleaned. She scoured the cutlery, scrubbed the refrigerator inside and outside. Every morning she trekked from her place in Kuzminki to find—what exactly? Dark spots of gravy on the counter, floors sticky with spilled compote, Anechka’s feminine things left in the bathroom. She had a theory that her daughter-in-law, the stinker, dirtied the place on purpose just to spite her.

  As Kat grew from a toddler into a little girl, her grandmother managed to effect in her a certain taste for tidiness: all those mishkas and matryoshkas were brushed and polished to perfection, picture books alphabetized on their shelves. But Kat, at her core, was her parents’ girl: weaned on classical poetry, precocious, moody, passionate. She’d learned to read early. At five years old, she could recite Tatiana’s letter to Onegin—not mindlessly, either, but with the right emotions and inflections.

  She had inherited her parents’ teaching bug. Her favorite toy was a blackboard. She made up her own class registers, pinned back her hair ineptly, dressed up in Anechka’s old shawls. A scarecrow, her grandmother called her. “Boys tease girls like you.”

  Kat said, “No they don’t. They tease dotty old grandmothers.”

  “Let’s make a bet,” said Zoya Moiseevna. “We’ll see what will become of you.” And as she withdrew to the kitchen to make her most prosaic chicken soup, Kat was left with a lost, queasy feeling, an infant Sleeping Beauty, forever cursed. What would, indeed, become of her?

  HER PARENTS are two self-absorbed, beautiful rebels. They leave for school in the morning, always together, always in a hurry, always forgetting something—a book, a dry-cleaning ticket, a key. They come back in the late afternoon, often accompanied by a group of older pupils—adorable, disheveled louts. “How are you, Zoya Moiseevna? How’s Kat?” “Hooligans,” Zoya Moiseevna whispers, fastening her coat on the way out. “By the way, I just washed these floors!” “No problem, Zoya Moiseevna.” They will leave their muddy boots by the door, and Kat will extricate some old slippers from the back of the closet. Those who get no slippers pad around in socks.

  They huddle in the kitchen, and a couple of girls—there’s always a couple, industrious, domestically inclined—rinse the dishes, fry potatoes, put the kettle on. Misha gets out the reel-to-reel tape deck. Anechka’s guitar is tuned and passed around.

  They speak of famous dissidents, the Prague Spring, someone called Andrei Sakharov. Kat doesn’t know who dissidents are, but she loves the songs—the gruff voices on the tapes, the hindrances in the background. She loves the keen, anxious faces of the students, contained as they are in the six square meters of the Knopman–Roshdal kitchen. She understands, even now, that what they are doing is illicit, possibly anti-Soviet, a secret she has to protect. The same way Misha’s wireless is a secret, with its BBC call signals in the morning. Or Anechka’s typewriter, which she uses to copy stacks of thin, crinkly papers. Later she stashes the copies in the plaid grocery bag. She puts on her oldest, most dilapidated coat, a shrunken knitted cap, and sometimes she and Misha argue whether she should go or he should go. Go where, Kat wants to ask, but she knows they won’t tell her. Not because they don’t trust her, but because knowledge can be dangerous. Some people get arrested, detained. It almost happened to Anechka once, and since then she’s done no more typing jobs, and the old coat and hat have been stowed in the topmost cabinet. They never talk about that. Instead, there are these gatherings with students, forbidden books, guitar songs.

  How bitter it feels the next morning, when the magic vanishes, her parents go away, and she is left again with Zoya Moiseevna. The humdrum of their uninspired days: the grumbling and the cleaning, the radio station Mayak—“Moscow speaking. Moscow time is ten o’clock”—day in and day out, from the morning calisthenics to the music program based on the workers’ requests. “Today we’re reading your mail.”

  Summers are Zoya Moiseevna’s reprieve; this year she’s gone to Estonia, to celebrate the end of her “imprisonment” with Kat. She’s made a big production out of it: Oh, the years she’s wasted! The days she could have spent shopping at GUM, or going to the movies, or taking a cruise on the Volga river. And what did she get in return? Did she ever get a thank-you from Kat? Nope, not once, no ma’am. Nothing but spite and mess and tattling to her parents. Well, let her go off to school then. Good luck with that! Good luck and a road like a tablecloth.

  “Same to you,” said Kat.

  THEY DON’T miss her. She is still in Estonia when Kat’s affliction becomes known. They don’t bother to send her a telegram. Everything’s gone topsy-turvy since the diagnosis: the phone book is scrounged for useful contacts, important phone calls are made. “Hello? Mariya Andreevna? I’m sorry, you don’t know me . . .” Anechka, coiled up with the phone in her lap. Misha, straining over anatomy diagrams.

  Kat is like a finely calibrated device, a needle trembling, attuned to the tiniest deviations in their family life. She frets a lot. She listens. She arrives in the doorway and they halt their conversations and put their books away. “What about school?” she keeps asking. They feign innocence: “What about it?”

  Meanwhile, they’ve scheduled appointments at the Institute of Trauma and arranged for a physical therapist, Maria, a dusky beauty with a birthmark on her neck, to come twice a week from Medvedkovo to give Kat massages. “How bad is it?” they whisper to her in the bathroom, where Maria is washing her hands. She seems to think not so bad. Not third-degree, that’s for sure. The policlinic doctor was probably trying to frighten them.

  Alexander Roshdal and Valentina arrive from Kratovo to help. The summer gets even more chaotic: suitcases, folding beds, buckets of water being boiled every few hours, for bathing, dishes, laundry. And of course, all attention is focused on Kat. “Kat, eat your veggies. Have you done your exercises, Kat?” Even watching TV becomes impossible. “Kat, sit up straight! You’re slumping!”

  The TV is Kat’s distraction. The Olympic Games are starting, and the programs teem with ath
letes, singers, actors. They speak of competitive spirit in the arts and in sports. Stress, obstacles, persistence, and, inevitably, the triumph of the human will. “You’ve got it too, Button,” says Misha. “All it takes is hard work. We’ll conquer this thing of yours.”

  The thing, the bump, the curse. In the face of Kat’s scoliosis, the family has united, gone into fighting mode. To win, you have to think like an athlete; you need discipline and practice, like in sports. They hunker down, become Kat’s very own national team. Valentina’s job is nutrition, Misha’s research. Alexander Roshdal takes Kat on long walks, recites Robert Browning to her. Anechka, of course, is head coach. They seem to think that Kat’s illness, with all its subsequent appointments, is something you can train or cram for.

  It almost works at first. Kat is tickled by her family’s attention, the extra walks, the tiny bright boxes of juice and sweet cream released for the Olympics, which her team now procures for her on a regular basis. She’d like to see the Olympics—the athletes, the stadiums, the giant wooden mascot bear on Michurinskiy Avenue. Can’t they at least see the bear? Her team tells her no, they cannot.

  “Security, Button,” says her father.

  “Yes,” agrees Valentina, “and also the germs.”

  The germs, the viruses, the danger of foreign people (especially those from Africa), not to mention the American boycott. They talk of it at night, when they think Kat can’t hear them. “A disgrace,” says Valentina, and Anechka says no, the disgrace is sending our boys to Afghanistan. They play cards, as they do every evening, their conversations interspersed with pauses and cryptic remarks: Seven. Misère. Pass.

  “For God’s sake, Anya,” says Alexander Roshdal. “You don’t need to climb up on a gun port. Wasn’t the last time enough? You want to end up in psikhushka this time? The Kashchenko loony bin, like your hero Brodsky? Or go straight to a labor camp?”

  The tension is rising, and it’s different from previous summers. Misha and Anechka bicker. Alexander Roshdal complains. Anechka screams at Valentina for giving Kat some candy. (“It’s diabetic,” Valentina mutters.) They seem to teeter on the verge of total collapse. Kat’s gone in for two X-rays and one appointment with a specialist. A big consultation at the Institute of Trauma is scheduled for August 1.

  She’s been having nightmares. Bandaged bodies, the noise of ambulances. She wakes up in the night, and her only relief is Valentina, who’s sleeping on a mattress on the floor. She’s so close, Kat can reach for her. She smells of lavender. She snores a little, though it’s more like whistling, a soft and peaceful sound. If the nightmares get bad, Kat can wake her. In the dark Valentina tells her stories: how she married her first husband, the captain, and what a birdie of a girl she was back then, with nothing to her name but two dresses and the four years of the war, during which she was a radio operator. After the war, she and her captain met again. “Like in the movies,” she says. She hums a pretty melody, a song called “Sevastopol Waltz,” and as Kat falls asleep she imagines her and the captain dancing.

  ON JULY 25, Vladimir Vysotsky, the beloved and censored songwriter and actor, dies in his sleep from something like asphyxiation. No one’s exactly sure of the cause. He’s forty-two. There are no big announcements in the newspapers, just a brief obituary in Evening Moscow. But the news spreads anyway, by word of mouth or BBC broadcasts.

  On July 28, Kat’s parents go out in the morning. They don’t tell Kat where they’re going and she, at first, isn’t particularly worried. They always disappear. To the department store Yadran to look for table lamps. To the market in Khimki for cherries. But when there’s no sign of them by lunchtime, she starts to get concerned. Why now? Where are they?

  She goes to the local grocery with Valentina. When they return, her grandfather is pacing in the hallway.

  “Was it really necessary? I ask you. Today of all days.”

  “Don’t wind yourself up. They’ll be back,” says Valentina.

  “And what if they won’t? What then?”

  “Didn’t they say it’s just a service for some actor?”

  “Not just any actor, Valya. It’s all political. They’re playing with fire again. Can you imagine if this place gets searched? It’s full of samizdat and God knows what else. Do you know what you get these days for anti-Soviet agitation? Seven years, if you’re lucky.”

  “Are they in trouble?” Kat asks him, and he says, “No darling, your parents are okay. Why don’t you be a good girl and go to your room for a bit now?”

  She has no choice but to obey.

  She sits in her room on the bed. Let’s sum up, shall we? A famous actor/singer turns up dead. On TV, Soviet athletes are winning all the medals, but no one’s watching TV. Her parents are missing, possibly getting arrested. Her big consultation is on Friday, in three days.

  Kat opens her wardrobe. There are her clothes, folded neatly on the shelves, and there, on a hanger, is her school dress. Not a speck, not a wrinkle on it yet.

  She puts it on and stands before the wardrobe mirror, waiting for it to reveal the dainty, nimble girl she is. But the dress doesn’t fit like it used to. It’s awkward, too tight in the shoulders.

  She adds the white pinafore and white knee socks. She finds her new shoes, tan with black patent-leather tops. But the girl in the mirror still looks lopsided.

  She tries to put her hair in braids. She is not very good at it, doesn’t know how to thread the ribbons properly or the best way to tie them at the ends.

  The last thing is the satchel. It’s beige, with a giant appliqué of a ladybug. She stuffs it full of children’s books, so full she barely can close it, and heaves it, with some effort, onto her back.

  What she sees in the mirror is an odd little person. Disheveled, hunched over, and lurching to the left. A gnome. A scarecrow.

  Step by step, she erases the damage. She empties the satchel and puts away the shoes. The ribbons are straightened and rolled up. The knee socks disappear into the sock compartment.

  Slowly, lovingly, she takes off her dress, makes sure there’s not a speck of lint on it, returns it to the hanger. Farewell, my friend. She’ll never wear it again. Tired, very tired now, she climbs into her bed, and there she will remain until her parents return in the evening, alive and quite intact—three days before the final consultation.

  2

  SHE ARRIVES AT THE SPECIAL SCHOOL ON SEPTEMber 2, having missed by one day the official start of the school year. She is dressed, confusingly, in a boy’s uniform: blue trousers, a matching jacket, and a flared rain slicker, meant to protect her from bad weather as well as inquisitive stares. Her hair is snipped into a cap of floppy curls.

  As of yesterday, she is seven. Girls her age don’t look like her, don’t miss the first bell, don’t lie to their parents. Her parents are with her. She is safe and hemmed in by them, shielded by their shoulders and elbows. Anechka carries her book bag—not the beige leather satchel with a ladybug they returned a week ago, but an ugly canvas thing that looks like a shopping tote. Misha carries her suitcase, her name pasted near the lock. Her name is everywhere, the name tags ordered hastily and sewn inside her panties and her shirts.

  The school is on the outskirts. But they also live on the outskirts, so it only takes them half an hour to get there. They board the number 90 bus by the fruit and vegetable shop, and twenty minutes later they get off at a desolate spot by a House of Culture and an adjacent textile factory. Kat’s parents consult their notes, while she holds their umbrellas. It’s been raining all morning, on and off, whereas the previous day was sunlit and golden as the city celebrated the Day of Knowledge—songs dribbling from loudspeakers, balloons, bouquets—and Anechka and Misha came home with armfuls of gladioli. Kat herself spent the day on the green nubbly sofa in the living room, trying to read Without a Family by H. Malot and watching a rerun of a World War II movie.

  The school, Anechka says, must be at the back of the park, and indeed, there is a park stretching off behind them, dark, moribund, like
the grounds of a deserted hospital. It’s humid inside the park, the air reeking of decay and rotting timber. A playground with a seesaw, a heap of bricks, a crumpled hut.

  This is not what Kat’s been promised, not the huge leafy campus with multiple blocks and immaculate alleys, flourishing poplars and alders, a swimming pool like a giant aquarium. The paved road ends and now they are in a field of tall, yellow grass. A pond looms ahead of them. They follow a muddy path. Her parents are looking uncertain and a little distressed, and she knows they are thinking that if she hadn’t pulled the vomiting stunt the morning before, they wouldn’t be wandering alone here like idiots today. Or maybe they’re wondering whether the whole thing is a mistake, and wouldn’t it be better to just turn around and take Kat home? Because when she keeps her back straight and pays attention to her posture, you can’t see any deformity there.

  “It’s just a boarding school,” Anechka says. “Like in Jane Eyre, except you get to go home on weekends.”

  “Didn’t she almost starve there?” Misha checks.

  “Hardships build character. Besides, it ended well.”

  Kat tells them she doesn’t remember.

  “Your grandfather read it to you,” Anechka says. She glares at Misha—a plea or a command: Kat’s being difficult.

  Misha moves closer, puts a hand on Kat’s shoulder. “What’s happening, Button?”

  “I just don’t remember the book,” she says. “Is that a problem?”

  “No,” he says, stepping back.

  She won’t make it easier for them. She’s been stoic and brave since the first mention of a special school. It has limited spaces. It is known as one of a kind, innovative, with its complex approach to muscular-skeletal ailments: bracing, swimming, daily medical gymnastics, injections, massages, and more. Children are referred to it from all over the country.