by Ellen Litman
They both stare off into the depths of the canteen. Only now is Kat starting to glimpse what the rest of the students (or patients) here look like. There’s an occasional club foot or hip anomaly, marked by a special boot, a lopsided walk. A case or two of stunted growth. The rest are spinal ailments, and most kids are in braces, the kind she saw that morning on the two singing girls.
“No braces for us, pal,” Igor Zotov assures her. Which for him is probably true—he only has first-degree scoliosis.
Kat tells him hers is first-to-second.
“That’s nothing,” Igor says. “At least we’re not like him,” and he nods almost imperceptibly at a boy not far from them, seated across the table. “His must be fifth degree.”
The boy is Seryozha Mironov. He is pale and freckly, his overgrown hair a shock of tarnished gold, and if you don’t look too closely—or if, like Kat, you only focus on the freckles and thin lips that curve in an impertinent smirk—you might think him just another little hoodlum, the sort who breaks windows and trips up the neighborhood girls. Then you take a better glance, and—dear God, so this is what scoliosis looks like. It’s not just that he’s huddled, neckless, collapsed into himself. His whole body is wrong, a nightmare of bad bones. There’s no way around it: Seryozha Mironov is a hunchback.
Kat knows she is staring. It is her most loathsome habit, the one that drives Anechka mad, because for the life of her she can’t understand why Kat would just seize up, become fixated like that. It’s inconsiderate, offensive. But Kat can’t help herself. It is as if her brain is waiting for the impression to take hold, so that later, at night, it can assail her.
She knows she mustn’t, and yet she stares anyway. And then it’s too late: Seryozha Mironov has felt it. He flinches, his eyes turn hateful, and it’s that hate that finally snaps Kat out of her idiotic trance. She looks away, and almost instantly an apple core flies at her forehead. She knows where it came from.
“Are you nuts, Mironov?” says Igor. “Are you out-of-your-mind mad?”
Mironov grins and gives no answer.
“You don’t treat girls like that.”
“You gonna stop me, Zotov?”
“Suppose I am?”
“Suppose your nose. You’re a weakling, Zotov.” And as if to prove it, Mironov spits, the spittle landing millimeters from Kat’s hand.
“You’re such a pig, Mironov,” says Kira Mikadze. “We as a class won’t tolerate your behavior.”
“Tolerate this,” says Mironov, and he spits at her too, this time his aim more accurate. The spittle settles on the lace-trimmed collar of Kira’s jacket.
“I’ll kill you, you freak,” Kira roars, forgetting her good manners. She lunges across the table, grabbing a handful of his hair, and he, in turn, catches a few of her own limp strands. The girls on either side of them shriek, and then in a flash it’s over and Thumbelina’s leaning over them, consoling hysterical Kira.
She asks who started it, and they all point to Mironov.
It’s not true, not exactly. Some of the blame is Kat’s. She knows she ought to say something. But maybe not? Probably not. There’s a difference, Misha often says, between standing up for your principles and showing off. Kat doesn’t want to be showing off, especially not on her first day.
She stays seated and lets the events take their course.
“Mironov was spitting.”
“And swearing.”
“And throwing apple cores.”
“Zotov tried to stop him.”
Not a gasp, not a whisper concerning Kat. Can it be they haven’t noticed?
Later, at the disciplinary meeting, Mironov has to stand before the class.
“He’s a coward,” says Kira Mikadze. “Only a coward would attack girls.”
Thumbelina kneels in front of him. “What made you do it, Seryozha?” She is trying to glimpse something in his eyes, because she’s the sort who believes in the goodness of all girls and boys, no matter how rotten. But Mironov won’t tell her his reasons, and his eyes are fixed stubbornly on the most mundane spot on the floor. And if the eyes are the mirror of the soul, then Mironov’s soul looks like a steel door bolted closed.
THE LAST bell explodes in the hallway, splitting the day down the middle. Upstairs, Thumbelina is tying her trench coat, her desk already occupied by someone new.
“Rosa Dmitrievna!” yelp the weepers, flinging themselves at the woman who must be 1A’s evening matron.
“You’d think she’s their favorite aunt,” says Igor Zotov. “Never mind they only met her yesterday.”
He’s been like this all day, drawing near Kat then drifting away, as if unsure whether his link to her might be a gain or liability.
They watch a group of eager girls gather around Rosa. She tells one to sweep the chalk beneath the blackboard, sends another one to wipe the windowsills with a rag. There’s something glacial about her. She is a large, imposing woman, her dark, frowsy hair held back with a silvery barrette. Her skin is faintly yellow. Her black eyes were probably once beautiful—huge, fiery, and even full of dangerous allure—but now they are flat and heavy.
Where Thumbelina was lax and gentle, Rosa is systematic, her mind a collection of lists and seating charts. At dinner she sends Kat to the far end of the table, to sit with the dregs of the class. By contrast, Igor Zotov is somewhere in the middle and Kira Mikadze sits right beside Rosa.
In the dorms at naptime, Kat is assigned to room eleven. Six beds, a wardrobe with a broken door. Next to her are the weepers, and on the other side are Sonya Bronfman, sickly Masha Sivova, and Vera Dinnershtein with her mucusy voice. All the worthwhile girls are elsewhere, and what’s more, they apparently have much better bedrooms. “Nightstands!” says Nina Petrenko, and that alone seems like an advantage. Kat wouldn’t mind a nightstand, too.
Rosa walks in at three o’clock and stands in the doorway to survey them. The nap, she says, is mandatory, an essential part of their treatment, and she’d better not hear a peep from their dorm.
“Knopman, did you finish your dinner?”
Kat says yes, though it’s not true. She found the dinner inedible. Barley soup. Rice and meat with fatty, untrimmed edges. She fiddled with her dishes until nearly everyone left, then stashed them at the busy serving station.
Now her stomach growls; she is ravenous. Per Rosa’s instructions, she keeps her eyes shut. But the noises in the room are irresistible: the rustle of butcher paper, the crackle of aluminum foil. She has to look. The girls, every one of them awake, are snacking on cookies and fruit, unwrapping buttery sandwiches.
“Rise and shine,” Nina Petrenko greets her. “Don’t let our Rosa scare you. She can’t do anything to us.”
“And if she tries, I’ll tell my daddy,” says Vera Dinnershtein. Her parents are in cybernetics, which sounds impressive and strange.
Nina says her mother is a nurse, and her mother’s friend, Uncle Vitya, is a militia man. She doesn’t have a daddy.
Masha Sivova’s father is a pilot, and her mother is also a nurse.
“My mama’s in the hospital,” whispers Vika Litvinova. “If she dies, I’m gonna kill myself with gas.”
“Young people don’t just die for no reason,” says Nina.
“It’s not for no reason. She’s sick with cancer.”
“Wasn’t she with you at the assembly?” Sonya Bronfman asks.
“That was my aunt, you idiot.”
“Well then,” Sonya says, “same difference. If she dies, you can live with your aunt.”
Vika starts sobbing. She flops face down on the bed, and her whole little body begins trembling. She makes the thick keening noise old peasant women make.
“You’re such a cow, Bronfman,” says Nina Petrenko.
The girls close around Vika, hushing, consoling her, rubbing her shoulders, tenderly patting her head, until the wailing lessens to small pitiful hiccups and she is sitting up again, helpless as a baby chick and pink all over.
After that, they retur
n to their beds. For the last twenty minutes their dorm is noiseless, save for the crackle of Sonya Bronfman’s packages. Kat thinks she can smell the contents: mayonnaise sandwiches, soft-spread Viola on white bread.
“You got any treats?” whispers Vika.
Kat says maybe. Some apples in her suitcase, some honey cakes.
“Will you share with me while my mama’s sick?”
Kat says all right.
“I’ll share with you, too,” Vika says. “When my mama gets better.”
YOUR MOTHER’S waiting downstairs, someone says, and Kat thinks it must be a mistake. But when after the evening snack she comes down to the coatroom, Anechka is indeed outside. She is slumped in the chair in her old Bologna trench coat, her hair flat, her lipstick flaking. Her plaid grocery bag sits at her feet. Inside are bread, butter, kefir, three sets of copybooks for grading.
Kat can never decide whether Anechka is truly beautiful. She has a strange, off-kilter face. Some days, when she’s well-rested and the light falls at a favorable angle, the answer is yes. Her gypsy eyes glow, her skin looks smooth and luminous. Other days, she is at best a plain Jane. Today is a bad day. She looks like she needs a good meal and a nap. Kat offers her a cookie she saved from snack.
“You eat it,” says Anechka.
“You don’t look too good. What are you doing?”
She shrugs, as if to say she herself isn’t sure. “Just thought I’d check on you, that’s all.”
They sit side by side in the chairs, their shoulders touching, their fingers interlaced. Kat’s classmates, en route to their walk, keep glancing at them jealously. Anechka closes her eyes, her face hollow, pale, and for a moment it looks like she’s stopped breathing altogether. It worries Kat that she’s not sensible. She can go all day without eating, for example. She just forgets. One time she fainted outside her classroom.
“You better go home, Mom.”
“What will you do?”
“My homework,” Kat says.
“You have homework? Already?”
“It’s not a hospital, Mom. It’s a school.”
Anechka nods. “Sure, sure. You want to come home with me, baby? Just for one night?” She’s not herself today: hasty, impulsive, tipsy with some inexplicable sadness.
Kat thinks of home: the sizzle of potatoes on the stove, the sofa piled with soft pillows, the three of them snuggled together, reading or grading papers, while on TV the news program ends and the weather forecast scrolls across the screen. But then tomorrow they’ll have to reenact this morning’s wrenching business. The tense, hurried breakfast. The impasse at the bus stop (Anechka insisting they must take a cab and Misha, predictably, resisting). The trudge through the park and the rushed farewell in the hallway on the second floor. But worst of all would be watching them leave again, their easy carriage as they descend the stairs, their perfect, splendid backs.
“What do you say?” Anechka nudges. “You want to do it? Should I speak to that matron of yours?”
Kat tells her not to. She says, “I like it here.”
3
THE SCHOOL OPERATES MONDAY THROUGH SATurday, each day regimented, sliced into intervals, controlled by the jangle of electric bells. The occupants arrive Monday morning, their suitcases bursting with fresh laundry and replenished snacks. Inside, their routine never wavers, from the wake-up call at 7 a.m. to lights-out at 9:30 p.m. Morning calisthenics are held outside, whatever the weather. Lunch comes after third period. Dinner, at half past two, is always followed by nap.
By week two, Kat decides that she does indeed like it here, or that at least she’s not unhappy. She falls gratefully into her new communal schedule. She loves the consistency, loves that they always return to the same well-lit classroom. She loves the compartment in the base of her cot; the stacks of newly wrapped textbooks; the plants in their birch-colored holders, which need watering every afternoon. Above all, she loves the soft clucking call of Thumbelina: “Come along, my chickens. Hurry up, my doves.” They gather up under her wing and there’s safety there, and certainty to every undertaking.
There’s much she doesn’t know: how to get to the gym or the music room; how to make her bed so the quilt looks flat. In medical gymnastics, she puts her leotard on inside out. In art, she fills her jar with scalding water. No big deal, Thumbelina tells her, when the jar cracks in half.
The school is just like any other school. They follow the same curriculum. The treatments haven’t started; they haven’t been evaluated or even cleared for swimming lessons yet. The only things different are the cots and medical gymnastics.
She does well enough in her classes, though she’s not exceptional. Her penmanship is poor; she sometimes gets distracted in math, her mind drifting off to her parents’ school. She wonders what they might be doing at that moment. If it’s third period on Tuesday, Misha’s got his rowdy fifth-graders, or if it’s after lunch on Wednesday, Anechka’s got her 8B. Galochka P. is in 8B; she’s always been Kat’s favorite, saving for her the cheese rolls in chocolate that the school serves for lunch once a week.
Thumbelina calls out Kat’s name, and it takes Kat a minute to remember where she is. And to think that at home Anechka and Misha must be thinking she is conquering the world with her intelligence. She’ll have to tell them otherwise.
Something else is required to conquer the world, something more than declaiming nineteenth-century poetry from memory. She found “Winter! The countryman enchanted” in her primer, but what does it matter if she is the only one who knows where it comes from? Does it matter that she can recite pages from Eugene Onegin, and not just the nature bits? Not unless you’re also in possession of a twenty-two-piece marker set, pink and green scented erasers, a pack of foreign bubble gum, a luminous pencil case made in Romania or the GDR. Kat’s pencil case is wooden with a plain squeaky cover and a pokerwork squirrel on the top. No one’s ever been impressed by a pokerwork squirrel.
It’s worse in the evenings, when Rosa comes in. She never praises Kat for anything, never forgives her blunders. Whenever she addresses her, she uses only her last name. You can always tell who Rosa likes, because she calls them by their first names. There’s Kira Mikadze, Rosa’s deputy, ready to apprise her of everyone’s transgressions and mishaps. There’s pretty, pony-tailed Alina Nesterenko; Tanya Kushina, quiet and responsible; Lida Kravchenko, with her chiseled Mongoloid face; Inna Smirnova, whose father is a Party functionary. These are Rosa’s homing pigeons. During homework hours they carry little missives from her to other matrons, and when Rosa herself must step out, she tells one of them to watch the class.
On their evening walks, a retinue of girls follows Rosa. Her favorites cling to her arms. They are trailed closely by other hopefuls, the girls from the middle rungs. Even the weepers, who in the dorm at night say nasty things about Rosa, all but sprawl at her feet.
“Slave mentality,” Igor Zotov calls it. Like Kat, he keeps away from this circus, and Kat suspects that his arrogance is why he’s not one of Rosa’s pets. Slave mentality, his father told him, is a uniquely Russian quality. Igor says people in Russia are like dogs. The worse you treat them, the more they adore you. “That’s why Stalin was so popular.”
Kat knows a bit about Stalin. From the kitchen gatherings at home, she’s already figured that he wasn’t a good person. She knows about the cult of personality. She knows about the big mosaic portrait that used to grace Arbat subway station a long time ago, and how it was destroyed one night by a group of strange men in civilian clothes. There’s also a song her parents play sometimes: “And on the left side of my chest, Stalin’s profile. And on the right side, Marinka full-face.” If only she had listened harder, she could remember the rest of the song. Igor, it turns out, knows lots of songs. Banned songs, he says. Blatnie songs. Made up by criminals, in labor camps. His favorite one is about the Bermuda Triangle and an insane asylum.
Though maybe it’s good that she doesn’t remember the words to “Marinka full-face.” What if it’s also b
anned? She might even embarrass herself; her grandmother says she has a voice like a crow. It’s best to just stroll next to Igor and listen to him murmur his songs. Sometimes he puts his arm around her waist, the way adults do. At night, the weepers ask if she is going to marry Igor Zotov.
But not all attention is welcome. There’s the curse of Seryozha Mironov, who stalks them, pelts them with sticks and rocks. “Bride and groom,” he chants. “Bride and groom. No brain and no room.” There’s nowhere they can hide from him. They are restricted to the small paved square where they do morning calisthenics—that, and the rough empty lot at the back of the block. The rest of the campus is off-limits.
They are, however, allowed to walk the short distance to the entrance gates and watch the arrival of visiting parents. Unlike Kat’s parents, these parents don’t arrive through the hole in the back fence. They come by a different bus, which takes them from the subway to the campus. The more lavish of them show up in cars and cabs. Or, in the case of Igor Zotov’s mother, in a black government Volga.
She comes to visit him on Wednesday. In the semicircle just outside the gates, the Volga swings sideways. A woman emerges from the back, as dazzling as a TV variety performer. A tall, pouty beauty with long blonde hair and pearly eyelids and lips—though up close you notice that her nose is a touch too broad, her lower lip too thick, and there’s something else marring her face, a hint of unhappiness or boredom. She toddles up to Kat and Igor on her incredible hairpin heels, and Igor doesn’t introduce them.
A boy like Igor Zotov! Rosa gets a puzzled expression whenever she spots him with Kat. What does he see in her? Kat’s sure it’s her intellect. She may not have the right kind of school supplies, but her parents have taken her to all the major art museums. She’s read The Three Musketeers and seen films with Fernandel and de Funès. No wonder Igor, himself a cultured person, appreciates her company.
But Igor’s attention is inconstant. It flickers into being and fades again, and each time she wonders if she’s somehow disappointed him.