Mother Country

by Irina Reyn

  She tiptoed out of his place holding the mass grave of Soviet soldiers, tiny white squares embedded into faux grass. “A promise,” Pyotor said, handing it to her with a wink.

  * * *

  The Kiev doctor was younger than she expected, and good-looking. He reminded her of Anatoly Solonitsyn, the actor from that Tarkovsky film Andrei Rublev. The same rusty blond hair, sharp jaw, intense light-eyed gaze. He displayed a melancholy cheerfulness as he examined Larissa, encompassing all three of them in the experience. “We look pretty healthy,” and “Can we take a very deep inhale?”

  Larissa performed accurately, on command, the way she always did in doctors’ offices since she was a little girl where she meekly held out her behind to be bruised by the needle. The doctor’s blue eyes had flecks of brown around the iris and Larissa was studiously avoiding them.

  “Here is her vaccination record,” Nadia said, unfolding the paperwork from their regular Rubizhne pediatrician. The doctor looked newly puzzled. When he asked Larissa to come back with him, Nadia naturally followed. When he asked her about her diabetes, it was Nadia who answered. It was the first time it occurred to Nadia that maybe her daughter should be carrying around her own records, that she might have seen the doctor alone, the way others her age probably did. That she was an adult seemed incomprehensible to her, as if her child was nudged into that stage before any of them were ready.

  The doctor turned to Nadia. “You brought the tuberculosis test fee for her?”

  “Yes, I gave it all to the secretary.”

  “Then let’s get her X-rayed.”

  They brought her down the hall to a dark room where the technician handed Larissa a plastic blanket to hold over her waist. In all her other X-rays no one handed out any protective equipment, but this was a hospital the United States trusted and it operated on a higher level.

  “What is this for?” Larissa asked into the darkness. Some pieces in her voice crumbled in places.

  “Quiet.” The technician retreated into her booth.

  “I’m here, Larisska, don’t worry,” Nadia said. “I’m right here.”

  The doctor’s voice floated to them out of the black void. It sounded husky, syrupy. “To protect you reproductively. It’s just a precaution, so don’t worry about that. This is the West for you, it is extra careful. We want you to have many children.”

  “Quiet.” Then there was the click.

  “See?” Nadia said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” the doctor repeated. He walked them to the exit. “So you’re leaving just as the country’s applying to join the EU, huh? You might regret it. Things are about to get a lot better around here.”

  They emerged from the courtyard onto Antonovycha Street. This checkup cost them three hundred, six months of rent. If they didn’t pass the medical exams, if even one vaccination was missing, she would have to come up with the money to redo them.

  “Let’s walk for a while, find a bite to eat,” she said. “How stuffy was it in there? I could barely breathe.”

  “It wasn’t so bad.”

  The workday was concluding, the narrow streets clogged with rushing workers. It didn’t help that cars were parked halfway onto the sidewalks, necessitating a weave around their narrow noses. They passed a salon, a bank, a Thai massage parlor, a fur shop, then a bridal store of some sort, THE WEDDING SHOP stenciled in large, English-language letters.

  “The doctor was cute, right?” Larissa said.

  “Was he? Cuter even than Sergei?”

  “Maybe? Sort of?” Larissa smiled, wove a hand around her elbow.

  To an outsider, the two of them must have appeared more like two friends than mother and daughter.

  * * *

  At the Kiev ballet that night, the women sat in one long row. Her best friend Yulia, her daughter, herself, and Larissa. They were all acting as if the outing was a normal one rather than a conclusion to something, the last time they would see one another in a long time unless one of them found the funds for the international trip. Nadia could barely concentrate on the ballet. The story was ridiculous and remote from her concerns: a village boy decides to leave his fiancée to marry a beautiful living doll. She kept peeking down the row at the profiles seated next to her. Her best friend with her long downward-sloped nose and high forehead looked visibly older. Her daughter, Ida, with her dramatic long ink-black hair and purple lipstick, and her own Larisska, sitting up straight and wide-eyed, utterly enraptured with the show.

  When the fiancée rescued the lover by destroying his beloved doll, Yulia turned to everyone and whispered, “That’s what happens when you try to ditch a Ukrainian woman.”

  During the intermission, Nadia found herself gawking at the ceiling of the opera house, the crystal chandeliers, carved wooden furniture, the marble floors, the sumptuous coat check window. She had forgotten how beautiful the structure was, how grand it made you feel to be inside it. “Look what you’ll be missing in America,” Yulia said to her, noticing. She pointed at herself. “They don’t have old buildings like this in your new country.”

  Their eyes met. “Are you implying you’re the old building?”

  “Ha-ha,” Yulia said. “In this case, I was actually referring to the building. But what I really can’t believe is you are going to the embassy tomorrow. Imagine. By the end of the day, you girls will have everything you need to be out of here. You’ll be almost-Americans.”

  “I’ll miss everything about everything,” Larisska said.

  Nadia knew her daughter was nervous, unsure about the whole thing. Even the tiniest changes in her life would invoke anxiety. “We’ll be citizens of the world, won’t we, Larisska?”

  “Don’t be so sentimental. You can help our cause from New York,” Ida said, crackling her gum.

  It was hard to believe the girl was Larissa’s age, they seemed decades apart. In the evenings, she and Yul’ka spent hours comparing their daughters on schoolwork, obedience, boyfriends or lack thereof. Yulia was worried that Ida was always shuffling around in the nighttime. For all she knew, Ida was either selling her body or protesting government corruption in a café around the corner from Maidan square where she and her pierced university friends met every week. During their comparisons, Nadia always pretended to be impressed by Ida’s political convictions, protested that Ida was superior to Larissa in every way, but her heart was always suffused with new appreciation for the self-contained person under her own roof. But now that they were leaving, she wondered if there was indeed something glorious about Ida’s contribution to Ukraine’s change and if Nadia’s own urgency to flee contained a bead of cowardice.

  “What’s wrong with sentimental?” Yulia stuck her tongue out at Ida. “We are best old friends and this one is leaving us.”

  Ida shrugged. “We could have used Larisska here in Kiev. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

  They heard the raising of voices, an employee of the opera house screaming at one of the visitors on the ground floor, “Are you stupid? Read the rules of attendance. No weapons allowed in the theater.”

  They leaned over the railing. A man brandishing a gun was standing among a small group of his buddies. He was circling it in the air with wide, jerky motions. “Relax, lady. It’s just a tiny rifle. I’m expected at the komandirovka later tonight. Do you want to take this up with the Berkut?”

  The friends were shielding him with their bodies, amused. On instinct, theatergoers were slowly edging away from the scene, shrinking closer to the outer walls of the theater.

  A woman, probably his grandmother’s age, did not seem intimidated. “This is a palace of culture, young person, and the rules are very clearly stated. Have your boss call the National Opera of Ukraine and ask for Vira. I’ll be happy to set your boss straight.”

  “I will do that. We’ll see how you like getting no pension.”

  “Please proceed directly to the coat check. No one is afraid of you.”

  “Is that so? I’l
l make you afraid of me.”

  “Calm down, calm down.” His friends were leading him outside and down the front steps. “He’s had a few. Don’t mind him, lady.”

  The crowd dispersed for them, shaking its collective head. There was a pause, then a debate broke out that neatly divided among gender lines. The guy was headed to work after the ballet, what could he do? The opposing female view argued that he could have left it in the coat check and skipped the entire scene. Nadia realized she had been numb with fear the entire time, the knuckles holding her purse were turning white, opaque. Larissa was breathing hard beside her, chin pressed against her shoulder.

  “We’re fine,” she said with an oddly calm voice. “Right, everyone?”

  “Sure, just some loser.” Yulia was already flipping through her program. She was pointing out to Ida the biography of the principal dancer. Her exact age, and look what heights she’d climbed, the lead in Coppélia!

  “She seems very accomplished,” Ida said. “Unlike me, right? Isn’t that what you and Tyotya Nadia talk about? That I need a real job?”

  “That’s not at all what I tell Tyotya Nadia.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Are we fine?” Larissa whispered, uncertain. She held Nadia’s hand, tightly squeezing her palm. “You don’t think he’ll come back?”

  “He’s gone, don’t worry, baby. Of course these uncultured men bring guns to the ballet. A bunch of idiots getting into trouble.” She checked her expression and shifted it into a smooth brave mask. What if I needed a transplant? What if our building was on fire? What would you do?

  “Ida was right. There really is no need to get sentimental. I have no doubt that this you will not miss,” Yulia said. The lights flashed in warning, and they returned to their seats. “I’m sure Americans are much more civilized at the theater.”

  * * *

  An atmosphere of recent drama lingered in the American embassy waiting room the following day. Larissa was long gone by now, the front door banged shut behind. She could still hear her daughter’s disbelief vibrating between her ears. You would go without me? The swish of a mop against wet floor, the murmuring exchanges on either side of a window. It was as if everyone was waiting for her to make a choice.

  “Do you want to go ahead and put in the application just for you?” the woman behind the grate repeated.

  “Yes. I will bring my daughter over as soon as I get there. As soon as my feet land on the ground.”

  “Of course you will,” the young woman said.

  “We’ll just be separated for a few months. For God’s sake, my daughter is twenty-one. She’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sure she will. She’s an adult, isn’t she. It’s time for her to figure out how to live life on her own. Please hand over the paperwork then.”

  “What do you do,” Nadia said, reaching inside her bag—she could have pulled out a mattress, a rabbit, a gun, for all she knew—“when your child becomes an adult?”

  * * *

  After Nadia returned to Yulia’s place from the embassy, she found Larissa gone. She was with Ida, Yulia assured her, the two of them tiptoeing in at dawn. Pretending to be asleep, she could hear their voices in the apartment, the confident sounds of youth condescending to mothers who, in their eyes, knew nothing. It was the first time Larissa was out all night without telling Nadia where she would be and when she would return. In the white light of morning, Nadia watched her with one open eye moving about the room. She was undressing for bed, slipping her nightgown over her head, and collapsing on her pillow. A few hours later, when she was woken up, makeup was smudged down her cheeks, makeup she had never worn before. An adult.

  “Let’s go,” Nadia said, wiping her daughter’s face. “We have to catch the train home.”

  On the ride back, Larissa sat on the opposite corner, tucked herself into a window nook with a paperback. The fields mottled with dirty animals flashed by, the clouds a blur of elastic white. The sounds of the rest of the train were sharp and precise, the footsteps and sliding windows, the distant scrape of forks, plates, and conversation. The train itself hurtling forward, humming methodically on its tracks. A few hours in and Nadia noticed Larissa gulping water, wiping her mouth from the overflow. She sprinted between her seat and the bathroom a few times.

  “What did you drink last night?” Nadia demanded into the thick silence. “You know you’re not supposed to drink sugary drinks. What did you eat?”

  “Mama, I’m twenty-one.” That chin was held high. It continued to be pointed to the country view, to the haystacks and barns and the metal pyramids of factories.

  “That’s no excuse.” But what was she supposed to say? The woman at the embassy was right, wasn’t she? Nadia watched Larissa blinking, all the signs of high blood sugar. But she denied she wasn’t feeling well, and would accept nothing from her mother, not even a cup of juice. Nadia unfurled a Focus magazine, tried to concentrate on the article “The 100 Most Influential Women in Ukraine.”

  Suddenly, she felt a hand gripping her arm. Larissa’s eyes were glassy, staring at her as if at a stranger. “I will never forgive you, you know.”

  “What?”

  This was not her daughter’s voice. “If you leave, I will not forgive you. Do you hear me?”

  “This is how you talk to your mother?”

  They did not exchange a word for the remainder of the ride, Nadia pretending to be immersed in a list of influential women, Larissa staring out the window. The countryside was slick with rain, a slimy coating of gray and green. When the train pulled up to the station, Larisska grabbed her overnight bag and shoved her way to the exit. To give her space, Nadia took her time gathering empty plastic pouches with cookie crumbs and Orangina bottles. Children! If she wanted to be petulant, Larisska knew her own way home. Nadia felt a deep exhaustion grip her. She thought of what awaited her in the days before leaving by herself. She could hardly think of what would befall her on the other side.

  When she descended, a crowd of onlookers were gathered, a curious concern in their postures, and she knew. Larissa was sprawled on the ground, her skin the white-yellow color of eggshell. She was shaking, her knees spasming. Her face was contorted at an unnatural angle.

  “Someone help her, she’s having a seizure,” Nadia screamed, elbowing at the crowd to create a wide berth for her. “We need an ambulance. She has diabetes.” She whipped her head around, saw someone drinking a Coca-Cola. She grabbed it from his hands and tried to pour it down Larissa’s throat. Her daughter’s eyes were fluttering, trying to focus on a single spot.

  “I’m right here,” she kept saying, dribbling the sweet soda inside Larissa’s mouth.

  It felt as though there were voices offering advice but no one was bending down to help her with the physical work of revival.

  “Is someone calling?” she barked.

  “If you call them, you better have cash,” some useless interloper warned, and indeed when the ambulance arrived, the first thing they asked was, “You got any cash?”

  “Yes, yes, some. I can get more.” She would call Pyotor for it at the hospital. She would rob a bank, or steal some old lady’s purse. She unfolded a few bills in her wallet. “Here’s something. Just take her.”

  One of the women started to protest that it was not enough, not nearly enough.

  “I’ll get more to you, for God’s sake. Have a conscience. My husband will meet me in the hospital.”

  “Bring cotton, alcohol, syringes, insulin, water, orange juice.” Satisfied, they began hauling out the stretcher from the back of the van. They transferred Larissa into its drooping center. An unabashed crowd had formed, openly staring at the attempt to lift a body off the ground.

  Nadia was ready to bite their heads off. “What are you looking at? It’s just diabetes.”

  When they took her away on a stretcher, Larissa spoke, weakly. “I didn’t drink anything.” Her eyes remained closed, her voice dim and faraway. “I didn’t eat anything either. But I didn’t ch
eck it this morning.”

  “That’s okay, everything will be okay. Lay your head back down.” She took her baby’s hand, but it slid away from her, and in the ambulance, it remained inert by her side. Her teeth were chattering, forehead clammy with perspiration. Nadia kept smoothing her daughter’s hair from her face. She did it so repeatedly, her hand tired and the hair was slicked down, oily and flat. There was nothing worse than this helplessness of not being able to will her daughter to recovery. She felt chewed up, desperate, constantly in motion: checking her pulse, applying the back of the hand to her forehead to ascertain heat.

  She leaned into her daughter’s ear. “I promise you, Larisska. I will bring you over. I swear it on my life. Do you hear me.”

  Larisska’s eyelids fluttered but there was no response. How could you ever leave me now, was what Nadia heard in the silence. What kind of mother leaves a daughter in this condition?

  “I promise you. You will not be alone here for long. I will move mountains and you will be in America with me within a year. Darling, dearest, baby, your mama’s right here. She’s always here.”

  They arrived at the hospital, Nadia carrying one side of the stretcher herself, tossing what remained of her money at anyone who threatened to separate her from her daughter. She continued to hold her hand as the doctor spoke only to Larisska and said it could have been worse but she would have to better monitor her sugar. It was the first time a doctor didn’t address directions to Nadia.

  Larissa nodded, sipping her juice. Her skin was approaching its normal blanched-almond shade. She was not entirely her old self nor did she give any indication of remembering I will not forgive you. Nadia pressed her hand and kissed her. But the person in the bed was someone other.

  Pyotor arrived to hand over the materials and the large stack of cash he must have borrowed from neighbors. His eager presence was a relief for once.

  “This must be your husband,” the doctor said.