Mannequin Girl

by Ellen Litman

  They arrive in the canteen jiggling with agitation, and soon there are insults and bits of food flying across the table, and whoever’s supposed to be in charge is asking them to for God’s sake behave, while the headmistress up front looks displeased and impatient. Can’t anyone control these deviants?

  Not Anechka Roshdal, that’s for sure. No one at school loathes 7A more than Anechka Roshdal. They are vulgar and soulless. Language and literature enrage them; they see no value in art. A mob, she says, is what they are. Your basic mob, with its small sordid needs and just a few stunted emotions.

  They cram into her classroom at the end of the day, like some bored, maladroit cows, and she stands there, arms folded, eyeing them with contempt.

  Anechka and Misha joined the faculty two years ago, when the school was expanding. For Kat’s sake, they said. To be with her, to monitor her treatments. They promised they would never teach her class. That would be awkward and unethical. But there are some things a new faculty member doesn’t get to decide, and Anechka has been Kat’s teacher since last year.

  “Well then,” Anechka says, “if it’s not the infamous 7A. I’m sure you’ve wasted no time this summer. I’m sure you’ve all worked relentlessly on bettering yourselves.”

  The girls look at her, bull-like. They don’t appreciate her irony.

  “That summer reading list I gave you? I bet you’ve covered everything on it.”

  7A stays silent, and Anechka stays silent, and the pause—excruciating in its futility—lasts several minutes until Nina Petrenko breaks wind and several girls begin to giggle.

  “Oh, right,” says Anechka. “I have forgotten who I’m dealing with. 7A—the model of refinement.”

  There is that humming sound now, the humming that fills every classroom 7A is in—pervasive, unnerving, insipid like static on the radio. The sound of a dozen small animals attending to their small animal needs: Carry on, Anechka. See if we care.

  Anechka has no choice but to get on with her teaching. It’s Pushkin again. Every year starts with Pushkin, and this year they are reading Eugene Onegin. They’ve finally graduated to the lovely turmoil of Eugene Onegin, and it pains Kat that her classmates will foul her favorite book.

  Anechka walks back and forth at the front of the classroom in her oversized sweater and striped, bell-shaped skirt. These floppy wools and tweeds are like her uniform. She is cold all the time; everything, she says, is cold—her classroom, their apartment; even in summer she was cold. It seems like a sign of her recent health problems, or maybe she’s always had poor circulation.

  The floorboards creak softly as she walks, a song to go with her story, and it’s this story, this creaking, the timbre of Anechka’s voice that make her teaching so magical. Here’s young Pushkin in St. Petersburg, Pushkin the fop, in his modish black tails à l’américaine. Pushkin the carouser, the lover of champagne and women. Beloved Pushkin, really just a boy, speaking at the meeting of a secret society. And here he is, exiled and slandered, poverty-stricken and alone. “I saw my life ennobled,” he writes to a friend, “my future meaningful.”

  Teaching has always come easily to Anechka. She has a huge following—back at her old school, and here as well. Her popularity is unrivaled even by Misha. Misha has his own following, though it is smaller, more intellectual in nature. With Misha you can discuss politics, a Literaturka article, an obscure book, Sakharov’s return to Moscow, Doctor Zhivago in samizdat editions. It takes some courage to approach him, though. He has this pensive, nearsighted look—you sense he can’t quite place you; you sense you might be keeping him from something more important.

  There are no such barriers with Anechka. Her girls adore her, and it’s easy to see why she’s loved. She is like a sister to them, or a girlfriend. They kvetch to her about other teachers, entrust her with the secrets of their hearts, share their problems at home (accidents, sickness, divorce). And she encourages these confidences, remembers every story, and even intervenes on her girls’ behalf. A few of them have spent weekends at the Knopman–Roshdal home, the orphans, the unfortunate ones with violent stepfathers and no place to go.

  After class, Kat stops beside Anechka’s desk. She doesn’t know what to say to her, unsure whether to apologize for the atrocious behavior of her classmates.

  When Anechka and Misha joined the school, Kat thought it was a dream come true: the three of them together at last. And at the beginning, at least, it was good. They were new, they had a lot of questions. Kat showed them around the school, explained how the daily schedule worked, warned them about the canteen food. For a week or so, she was important, indispensable. But it wasn’t the way she’d imagined it. No one fussed around her here the way people had at her parents’ old school when she, not yet seven, recited scenes from The Inspector General. She wasn’t a kid anymore. She was an adolescent now, and it didn’t suit her. She wasn’t attractive or particularly gifted, only well-read and moderately smart.

  As for her parents, they still had their magical spark. Within a week the school was buzzing—they were young, married, and dazzling. They wrote plays. They used to be on stage themselves. Rumors abounded. Was it true, a girl asked Kat in the canteen one day, that Anechka was once a famous actress? “She did some theater in college,” Kat explained.

  Anechka herself was always glad to share her tales of student acting. She’d tell her girls anything, really: how her mother passed away, how she and Misha met, how they saw each other from a distance in the lobby of their institute and instantly knew it was fate.

  It’s only with Kat that she holds back these days. Like now, for example: Kat asks her if she’s upset about her class, and Anechka just looks at her as if to say, Why even ask? Then she checks whether Kat’s got her textbooks from the library and whether she’s put away her snacks. “You don’t want the apples to go moldy like last time.” Never mind that last time was almost a year ago.

  Then, before they can attempt a normal conversation, Sveta Vlasenko from 10B arrives. She is Anechka’s best pal, the prettiest girl in the school, the perpetual princess of every drama club production. She often stays at their apartment on weekends, though not because she is an orphan. Her parents are abroad, and when they’re not away, she doesn’t get along with them.

  “You’re looking tired,” she tells Anechka. “7A again?”

  “The bane of my existence.”

  Sveta sits next to Kat on the nearest cot. They have things to discuss, she and Anechka. They always have things to discuss. Sveta flicks something off Kat’s shoulder—a speck of dust, or dandruff. She herself is perfect, with her long and symmetrical body, good clothes, heart-shaped face. Her tangle of long corkscrew hair is held back with velvety headbands. She is soft in all the places where Kat is rough and awkward. She doesn’t move but flows, forming soothing and brilliant shapes, and her voice purls like silver, a splash of small fish in clear water.

  “Some aspirin?” she offers.

  Anechka says yes, and downs two dry pills without water. She does look exhausted. Her complexion is sallow, her lips are chalky. Her hair, short, boyish, sticks out awkwardly, like she didn’t have a chance to brush it properly this morning. Maybe she shouldn’t be so careless with aspirin. Maybe she ought to see a doctor instead. Kat wants to say something, but before she can muster the courage, Anechka packs her bag, puts on her coat, and Sveta says she’ll walk her to the bus.

  “Wait,” Anechka says, and looks at Kat. “What about your birthday?” They were going to buy éclairs for Kat’s class, but as often happens, they’ve forgotten.

  Kat says it doesn’t matter. Her classmates don’t deserve éclairs. She’d rather celebrate at home anyway. They don’t do much for birthdays, but maybe they could get a cake. Maybe her mother could arrange to take Kat home? She’s waiting, but Anechka doesn’t suggest it, and it’s clear she has other plans.

  “All alone on your birthday,” Sveta Vlasenko says sadly.

  Kat shrugs. It’s not that bad, she’s got her Jules.


  “Jules who?” Sveta says.

  “Oh, you know her.” Anechka gestures dismissively. “The diplomat’s girl, the skinny one.”

  JULES AND KAT. Kat and Jules. With names like these, they were destined for each other. Jules’s real name is Yulya Smolkina, but she insists on Jules. She lived in England with her parents for a while, and she claims to love everything English: English names, horseback riding, English cottages, Ivanhoe and Jane Eyre. Her father is a diplomat, her mother an ex-opera singer, and Jules herself is a budding polyglot. She knows some Italian, a little French, but English is what she’s really good at. Her English is better than Kat’s. They like to speak it between classes, swapping quips to the great irritation of their linguistically challenged classmates. They’ve nicknamed their classmates “the gaggle,” a moniker that conveys exactly their dumb, gabbling nature.

  Kat’s parents don’t think much of Jules and her family, though they’ve met them only briefly. Too successful, they say. Misha says you don’t become successful in this country without sacrificing something of your decency. You have to be ruthless, you have to step on bodies in order to move up the Party ranks. You adapt by betraying your principles. The country is full of these adapting people—spineless, materialistic. “Look around,” says Anechka. “Look around your own class.” Kat does, and it’s true, the gaggle is a miserable group. But Jules, she feels, is different.

  She finds Jules waiting out in the hallway, her elbows propped on a windowsill. “I have to go see my dad,” Kat says.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Jules warns her. Classes ended twenty minutes ago; they are already late. Margo, their evening matron, gets suspicious when they dawdle. She likes them to return to their homeroom right away. They are in seventh grade, and still she insists they tromp to the canteen together.

  “She’ll kill you, just so you know,” Jules says, but Kat tells her, screw it. “Tell her I went to the infirmary. Tell her I’m already dead.”

  She sprints across the hallway to Misha’s classroom. He is there, in the back, rummaging in the shelves and drawers of the wall unit. His glasses, as usual, are pushed above his forehead. It’s the first day of classes, and already he has misplaced something.

  “Button!” he says. “Do you have any idea how many copies of Woe from Wit I own?”

  “Three,” Kat says.

  “That’s what I thought. Turns out I have five of them. Do I donate them to the library?”

  “Maybe you can sell them or something.”

  “Five bedraggled copies of Woe from Wit? Unlikely. Have you seen your mother?”

  “Of course,” Kat says. “She and the gaggle got reacquainted.”

  “Was it bad?”

  “Same as always.”

  “Poor Button,” he says. “Do you think your mom could use a copy of Woe from Wit?”

  “I don’t know,” Kat says. “She just left.”

  “Already? Ah, yes.”

  She thinks he looks crestfallen for a moment, or maybe she’s simply imagining it. Anechka is always in the spotlight, and Misha, so unobtrusive, is easy to forget. Talking to Misha is easy. There’s a softness to him, and a haplessness. He’s a genius, and like all geniuses he needs to be looked after.

  “Do you want me to help you?” she offers.

  “Nah,” Misha says. “It’s just a book I used to have. It might be good for our new play.” He’s been writing a new play all summer, and he’s agreed that this year Kat is old enough to have a real part.

  “What do you think of me?” she asks.

  “Meaning?” he says.

  “Do you think I have a strong personality?”

  “Is this because of your birthday? Or did your mom say something?”

  “Just a general question,” she says.

  Misha mulls it over. He’s careful with his pronouncements. “I think so,” he says, eventually. “You stand up to your class. That takes courage, if you ask me.”

  Actually, she doesn’t. She bears the gaggle’s anger, absorbs their insults. She’s learned not to react, not to complain, to dress up her hurt in opaqueness. They don’t like her. They’ve never liked her. They’ve nicknamed her Kysya: a searing, dismissive hiss. “Kysya, drop! In your box, Kysya!” Meaningless doggie commands. She puts on the stolid, faraway expression of a Lermontov hero—exiled, misunderstood, estranged, gazing up at the peaks of the Caucasus mountains. She hopes it looks courageous.

  “Seriously, Button, how did your mother do today?”

  Kat says, “She took two aspirins.”

  They look at each other and feel a hazy sort of dread. They’ve long ago learned to recognize the signs of Anechka’s malaise: the sleeplessness, the moodiness, the headaches. The irrational upswings of happiness. And then, of course, the blood. It always ends in blood, even in the months when it doesn’t arrive as expected. They look at each other and know that Anechka isn’t all right.

  THE FIRST loss happened when Kat was in fourth grade. There had been much excitement right at the beginning, a lot of talk of the new baby and how it was growing, and then one day the talk just stopped and the pregnancy books disappeared. For two or three days, Anechka stayed in bed. Once she got up, it was as though there had never been a baby.

  The next time, it took longer. Something must have jammed inside Anechka, and months after her last appointment she kept circling back to the fresh devastation of the loss. She and Kat would be leaving school on a Saturday, crossing over the curved bridge in the park, and Anechka would begin to weep. You couldn’t talk to her when she got like this, unstoppable, almost hysterical. She’d say, “Shut up, Kat. Just shut up.” That bridge in the park behind the school—they both knew it wasn’t safe. Icy in winter, pointlessly steep. There was always an unfrozen patch of water underneath, and there were rumors of women—always women—who had slipped.

  Why is it so important? Kat tried to ask Misha. Why is Anechka so hell-bent on having another baby? But it was always too untimely or indelicate, and surely Misha had no answer; surely it was something he would have liked to understand himself. Unless—and it’s too difficult to even contemplate—he also wants to have another child.

  He and Anechka have dropped their dissident activities. Misha says that the movement has ceased to exist—the journals are shut down, the dissidents imprisoned or exiled. At last year’s Human Rights Day demonstration, twelve people were detained, right at the center of Pushkin Square. Anechka stayed home that year, and though Misha was there, he didn’t get close; he watched the demonstration from across the street. Without the movement, the two of them have grown aimless, their ambitions truncated, their concerns too domestic, mundane. Misha works on drama club plays, while Anechka longs for a baby.

  Stuck at school, Kat spends countless evenings worrying about Anechka, about the park and the bridge, about the likelihood of yet another pregnancy (so far there have been six), and what it will be like if one turns out to be viable. No one has asked her if she’d like a sibling (the honest answer would be no) or shown concern for her feelings. With each loss, her mother has gotten more brittle, their relationship more faltering and tense, and at times Kat can’t escape the sense that Anechka is somehow blaming her. If only Kat hadn’t fallen sick. If only she were more exceptional. More like Sveta Vlasenko, less like herself. And maybe if Kat can astonish her mother and prove that she’s unique, she won’t pine for this other child, this second chance, this saving grace.

  “YOU REALIZE what time it is?” Margo says, when Kat sneaks into the canteen.

  “Sorry,” Kat says, in a tone that makes it clear she’s not particularly sorry. “I had to see my father.”

  “You had to?” Margo mocks her. “You mean to tell me he, poor thing, can’t function without your help?”

  Everyone knows she despises Kat’s parents, their dissident leanings and liberal tastes, the fact that they read Solzhenitsyn and Orwell in class instead of the district-approved authors. Their grooming is questionable, their manners
too informal and generally lax. They are not even properly Russian. No wonder their daughter manifests all sorts of strange affinities and can’t keep to a common schedule.

  Margo is a machine, an automaton; her carriage is impeccable, her every gesture is exact. She looks pretty good for her age, which Jules says must be in the area of fifty-seven. She dresses the same every day: flat shoes, white turtlenecks, dark skirts (all cut the same), tan stockings that never get stained, even in autumn when it rains constantly. She’s never sick, she’s never late.

  Kat, on the other hand, is often late. You can say it’s a bad habit, an affliction. She’s late for dinner and she’s late for nap, and when she gets to the dorm, she’s greeted by the gaggle’s mayhem.

  But how on earth did they become this gaggle? They were diligent girls all through the early grades. Their marks were above average. They got pennants and honorary notes each May, naming them the detachment of the year.

  In fourth grade they left their old classroom. They now had to shuttle from lesson to lesson—alone, uncared for, adrift. No longer contained by Rosa, or loved by Thumbelina. They had too many teachers. Their evening matron was a flake. There was a series of substitutes, which didn’t help with the already unraveling discipline.

  It is uncanny how they’ve all ended up in one class, a gang of wretched girls who have embraced their deformities, grown to crave everything angry. Anechka says it is because they are unwanted. They stay at school for five days, and on the sixth day they return to their imperfect families. Mothers, divorced or abandoned. Mothers, remarried or otherwise engaged. Mothers who drink. Mothers who can’t stand the sight of their daughters’ bodies.

  In fifth grade they got a new matron, Margo. She’d worked with juvenile delinquents in the past, and she treated the gaggle with the same steely distrust. Some said it was exactly what they needed—a firm, unyielding hand. But Margo with her militant ways has only made them more embittered.