Mother Country

by Irina Reyn

  “For God’s sake, save your wife. She’s going down in flames out there,” one of the men said to Jake, and he followed the gaze to the middle of the campfire, the children breaking out of the circle and Regina pulling several of them back to their spots.

  Jake took a swig of beer. He belonged here more credibly than Regina even if he barely inserted himself into the trenches of neighborhood parenting. It was just that he sank in among the others, his appearance allied with theirs. He scanned the room and his eyes landed on Nadia. For some reason, her heart pounded so loudly, she could feel it thrashing about in her chest. It was a sensation separate from Boris and his benign gaze, a recipient of someone appraising you from all angles. She was glad he had ceded the apartment to the women, that she was never forced into awkward exchanges with him at the end of a long day of nannying.

  He smiled and gave a little shake of the head, a recognition or greeting. He walked over to Nadia, pronounced a stream of English-language sentences at her. In the light, his face was nothing more than lines depicting a spherical shape. But he smelled of salt and his neck pulsed and the black chasm of his mouth opened and closed.

  * * *

  “Come here,” the boy said, leading her away from the ideal moistness where mushrooms grew. No one had ever held her hand, except for Yulia and another girlfriend or two, so the sensation of being pulled along aroused an unfamiliar passivity. The woods around her were turning strange, all the familiar landmarks curling and shrinking and changing shape. There was only the feel of his hand wholly covering hers, leading her with firm resolve.

  Of course there were many hints scattered about her childhood that some trajectory or another would eventually lead her to this particular terrain. She felt a vague haze around the fact that it had come so early in the guise of this schoolmate of Olga’s. They walked out of the open space through which light shone into a path where the trees grew thick and firs clumped together against the sky.

  “Let me just see something for a moment.” He disengaged her basket from her grip and set it on the ground. Next to it, he placed his own. His was empty. He pulled down her skirt and underwear. It was an act of nonchalance, almost mimicking her grandmother yanking her out of wet clothes for fear of catching cold. Her underthings were folded on the flat stump of a tree. He did the same with his own pants and white underwear, briskly efficient. Then he stuck several fingers all the way inside her until pain scissored her vulva. Everything he did with nonchalance, thrust her thighs aside with his knees, balanced his heavy body on top of her ribs. Then with a series of short, stabbing motions, digging inside her. His eyes focused on the patch of grass chafing her cheek, his nostrils flaring soundlessly. She held her breath, took in some air, then held her breath some more, waiting for the hot ache to lessen. It didn’t. After a while, he exhaled and peeled himself out of her.

  Later, she thought that there must have been a basic truth lurking in her upbringing that encouraged her to obey his instructions without question. To lie shivering on top of a veiny root, curiously observe the descent of swallows overhead. But no other option was presented to her and nothing about the eventual act surprised her. If anything, a part of her felt he had earned it, that it was owed him. He had been temporarily rejected by Olga, and in her heart she knew that the egos of men must not be damaged in any way. Where else could the poor guy turn? What other path was open to him? She was sure this happened to all girls, a normal turn into adulthood, as necessary as vaccination. Hers just happened to take place here, in the forest, mushroom-hunting.

  The entire region below her belly throbbed and stung. She was afraid to actually look at the blood crusting her leg or even gingerly feel the damage with her fingers. As she wiped herself with a leaf, pulled on her underwear and skirt, she noticed the telltale thick stem of the rare white mushroom. Pushing aside some mossy undergrowth, she spotted its twin; you’d expect to see them in pairs. It was the first sighting of the entire summer.

  “Thank you,” he said formally, with an awkward little bow, once he was dressed. “So I guess I’ll go find the others.”

  “Wait.” She reached for the two mushrooms—even now, the sight of them gave her so much pleasure, an automatic reaction to the miracle of locating one—and placed them in his basket.

  “You’ll impress them if you return with these.”

  The two points at each temple were still red, a bead of perspiration where his moustache should have flourished. “That’s great of you, kid.”

  She heard his whistle, then her sister bellowing, “Oh Andryusha, where are you already?”

  “See you back at your mother’s.” He sauntered away, in no great rush. With light, almost contemplative steps.

  But she found she could not make her way back home. She stood planted to the spot, the very trees holding her from movement as if to say, Not yet. Her jaw buzzed. Why on earth had she given away those precious white mushrooms? Now he would claim the credit for finding them when the mushrooms belonged to her. She replayed the scene in her mind until it morphed, reshaped according to her will. In her new version, she gave him an identical poisonous mushroom and he ate it right in front of her.

  “Thanks, kid,” he said. He would eat and eat until that easy grin of his froze. His eyes protruded, and he clutched his neck with both hands. His face grew purple and engorged. He fell to the ground convulsing. Oh, what a terrible and endless death it was, a whole body disintegrating before her eyes. But she didn’t move, didn’t even attempt to call for help. Just watched him writhe with excruciating pain. Watched him peel apart into bloody shreds. Why, oh why, had she given away those mushrooms?

  Evening fell and adult voices were calling her name. It was only when her mother’s panicked echoes wound their way through the trees that she remembered where she stood.

  “I’m here, I’m fine, I fell asleep,” she whispered, her voice finally growing louder. “This way!”

  * * *

  “Thank you,” Jake was saying, presumably about the quality of her work or her care of Sasha all those years. She was nodding furiously with that dopey I-can’t-understand-you smile.

  “I congratulate you. On Sasha’s birthday,” she offered when the precise words were located.

  Behind him, she noted that Regina was not allowing the children to reject her activity. She continued to press crayons into hands—if they illustrated first, maybe the narrative would explode out of them, was probably her thinking. A few of the children were openly rebelling, busy decimating unopened bags of marshmallows. A stick fight broke out, the mothers involving themselves in a separation. More than one girl was sobbing. Out of character, probably out of contrarian perversity, Sasha was the only one following instructions.

  Regina’s panic at the unfurling disaster was transparent. Yet another birthday party devolving into chaos, another typical and unoriginal celebration. Nadia understood that immigrating from Russia was Regina’s unique story. It was the bright color she had splashed her life with, and it was imperative that she transfer the shreds of its uniqueness onto Sasha. But this color was being muted right in front of her by all these indifferent kids and their impatient caregivers. They were all trying to differentiate their own kids as rare beings, to set them apart with their own sparkling stories.

  Someone was tinkering with the wall switch and the forest was giving way to a princess palace, voluminous with unicorns and purple tiaras.

  “No,” the boys protested. The images kept changing, desert to outer space to savannah, none of them seemingly meeting expectations.

  The nanny next to Nadia was pulling her charge out of the fray, hoisting her into an uncomfortable snowsuit and buckling her into a stroller (a six-year-old in a stroller!). Nadia wished Jake would rescue the party by reminding Regina that it was better to let the children entertain themselves however they wanted. But he was observing as though one of the guests, just drinking that beer and grinning as if he did not know the frenzied state of his wife’s mind.

&nbs
p; For God’s sake, she would do it herself then, march up to Regina and pull her aside, Leave them alone! Nadia was on the balls of her feet, ready to push past the ineffectual Jake. Why couldn’t Regina stop herself, pull back from all that control, stop caring what others thought? Why couldn’t she apply a little perspective?

  Of course, Nadia didn’t move. They were all watching, weren’t they? The mothers, the fathers, the neighbors, the nannies. Here the community was always on alert, waiting for any little infraction, any crossing of the line between adult and child, boss and employee. Interfering would not help Regina with the women she was trying to impress, the self-selected gatekeepers that forbade entry into a private coven of mothers. Their faces were hard at the unruly happiness of their offspring.

  The wall once again took on the image of the forest, awash with the sound of artificial wind and birds, the empty rustle of projected trees. Parents were grabbing their children by the elbows, maneuvering coats, scarves, amidst the screams of siblings. They were reprimanding them all the way toward the exit, but Regina continued to stand alone in the center of the forest with an eager, vulnerable smile: Come back. Tell me more. Don’t be afraid. I’ll write it down.

  10

  Poppies for the Living

  Ukraine, 2008

  On the riverbank, she watched maidens in white dresses putting the finishing touches on their wreaths. They flitted across the moonlight, light as water nymphs, helping one another hang ribbons and plait hair. Larissa was flitting around everyone in an ornate traditional peasant dress, but Nadia pretended she was not paying special attention to the emotional tremors of her daughter, that she was here like everyone else in Rubizhne, enjoying the holiday.

  It was Ivan Kupala, a festival brimming over with too much ripeness. It celebrated the peak of summer, and by some inevitable default, the height of a woman’s desirability. Girls lost their minds over these silly pagan rituals and it looked like Larisska was one of them. It was just a week after her twenty-first birthday and Nadia had never seen her daughter so frenzied, yanking her friends toward the bonfires, holding her red-and-white wreath in place with one hand. She had recently gained a little weight and the roundness in her face lent her a fresh spark of health. The dress she had embroidered herself, hunched over it night after night, going over it with complicated cross-stitching.

  “Please,” Nadia prayed, “let the wreath float directly to him.” Or sometimes she rephrased the wish. Let him pluck her wreath out of the water with intent.

  Who knew that her daughter’s entire happiness, the alleviation of her own guilt, rested in the nimble fingers of one Sergei Zagdansky? From the looks of him, he did not seem up to the task of shouldering so much intergenerational hope. His two front teeth were spread apart like curtains, his hair spiky and bleached blond, a shadow of moustache smeared across his upper lip. A cross was dangling over his Nike T-shirt. He was wearing a tight black swimming suit with a white heart stamped across his upper thigh. It was not at all clear that he was romantically interested in her daughter. In fact, he appeared to be flirting with one of the other girls, one who looked eerily like a young Yulia Tymoshenko, with a white-blond braid woven around the top of her head. But then all the girls looked like the prime minister tonight on the Day of Ivan Kupala. A holiday brought back from Ukraine’s pagan past to make them all feel Ukrainian again.

  Catch the goddamned wreath, kid. She almost said the words aloud.

  “Did you say something, dear one?” Her own date was Pyotor, the widower next door, with whom she had pleasant sex a few Saturdays a month. A longtime coal worker, he was retired with a pension at fifty. He had droopy eyes and a practical hoarder’s sensibility. Once, under his bed, she spied a dizzying number of food shopping bags, and another time, an outrageous amount of salt shakers in his kitchen cabinet. When he got drunk, he tended to proudly announce that he belonged to the fourteen percent minority of Donetsk residents who did not vote for Ukrainian independence in 1991.

  No one blamed him for his eccentricities because his wife hung herself eight years ago. They were all shocked, of course, that she left herself so flagrantly for Pyotor to find. The women in the building thought it had to do with her temperament and profession—she was a redhead and a regional actress—who had choreographed it this way for ultimate revenge, the final act of dramatic tragedy. On the day it happened, no one could attest to a scream or any other expression of horror—they pictured him entering the apartment, taking in the sight of her, cutting her down, and making the appropriate phone calls for the funeral. He never once raised the topic but Nadia disagreed with her neighbors’ assessment. His grief was drilled deep and compartmentalized for the rest of his life. She and his dead wife did not overlap in his speech, and for that she was grateful.

  “Did you say something,” he patiently repeated.

  “Was I talking out loud? Just a mishmash of silly thoughts.”

  “How was your weekend in Kiev?”

  A crucial part of their love entailed telling each other nothing, asking nothing of each other. “We had a lovely time. Larisska bought a new pair of shoes.”

  “Well, I’m happy you’re back.” He had drawn his legs closer to his torso. In his mouth was a reed of wheat. He too was looking at the young ladies, who were giggling in their symbolic preparations. The vinok they wore around their scalps were voluminous with flowers. They scattered to the water, thick braids twisted over their heads or draped around a single shoulder. On the other side of the bank, the boys started to gather, to ready themselves for the reception of the wreaths. Larissa and her friend were handing out candles for those who were sticklers for tradition.

  Nadia jumped up. “I’m going to help distribute.” She crawled over the feet of picnickers, some dressed in regular clothes, others costumed in traditional Ukrainian garb. On one blanket, an accordion was playing, on another, a guitar. Despite herself, she looked for the bulky outline of the technolog. She heard he was back in town from Severodonetsk, unemployed from the chemical plant there. Her former coworkers said he had put on a lot of weight, making him almost unrecognizable. She scanned the tired faces of older men. He wasn’t here, and that was a relief too. One less complication standing in the way of her escape.

  The meals dotting the blankets were modest to say the least. Since the pipe factory closed sixteen years ago, the technolog and the rest of them had dispersed to new and part-time and uncertain jobs. After fifteen years of going back and forth to Kharkov, she herself was barely holding on to a bookkeeping position at the city museum, a temporary job given to her because the director was Yulia’s sister.

  She approached Larissa’s circle. Her friend, Galya, handed her a pile of candles, but Larissa held her head low, her vinok covering eyes and eyebrows. “I’ll do it myself,” she said.

  “Don’t be like this,” Nadia whispered. “Tell me what you’d rather I did. Do you want to stay here forever?”

  “I said I will do it myself.”

  Larissa’s friends circled her, nudging Nadia out of the circle. It was time! It was midnight! The bonfire was finally ablaze. The wreath encircling the dewy head of the Tymoshenko look-alike was a vibrant mix of purple carnations and green herbs; it could not be confused with Larissa’s, which was mainly white and red, dandelions and daisies mixed with red poppies. When Sergei saw them floating toward him, there could be no mistaking his choice. If he would only pick Larissa’s. Everyone would “celebrate” their wedding, they would take a cleansing swim at dawn, and Nadia could leave knowing her daughter was absorbed in a relationship, happy. But she was worried, so worried. She could glean no public indication of his interest.

  On the count of three, a long row of girls in white robes set their wreaths on the water, pushed, and let go. By the distant orange of the fire, Larissa was chameleoned into the group, plunged into its black hole. It was amazing to Nadia that her daughter could still earnestly believe in these pagan rites. That jumping over a bonfire meant good luck or a sunken wrea
th meant there would be no wedding or wishes would come true if you discovered a budding fern. Shouldn’t magical thinking be eradicated by the time you reached twenty-one years of age? Look around, she wanted to yell at all the girls. Barely any of your parents have a decent job here and you are enacting dreamy, medieval peasant rites!

  Still, the wreaths as they dappled on calm waves were a beautiful sight. It was as though they were being pushed along by the current, the drooping branches of sturdy oaks, and the gentle exhale of wind. Nadia watched as twisting forms of woven flax floated toward some unknowable destiny. A few of the vinok were illuminated by candlelight, which may have sounded like a good idea in medieval times but was simply impractical; candles could set the wreaths on fire or just fall over and be extinguished.

  Pyotor’s arms were wrapped around her, the grizzle of his beard chafed against her collarbone. “I think our Larisska might find her husband tonight.” He was being particularly cuddly tonight, something she wasn’t appreciating at the moment.

  “You think?”