Laura Kasischke - Mind of Winter

“No,” Holly said. “Tatty—”

“I’m not Tatty.”

Holly gasped, put a hand to her mouth. She said, “No.” She was ready to deny this with no idea what she was denying, and no idea why she was trying to grasp her daughter’s wrist so tightly again. Tatiana broke away and ran back toward her room, and Holly ran after her, but she wasn’t quick enough, and the bedroom door closed between them, and there was the sound of the hook in the eye, and Holly, hearing that, began to cry, backed up in the hallway, leaned against the wall.

“No,” she said again, still denying, and she put her flooding face in her hands, tried to suppress the sound of her sobs, ashamed to have her daughter hear them, as if to cry was to admit something, to acknowledge the truth of it.

AFTER THAT LONG winter back in the States, with their Baby Tatty waiting for them in Siberia, spring had come like a pastel explosion. It was so dazzling to look out the back door at the roses budding and the lilacs blooming that Holly almost couldn’t do it, and finally the day came that they could return to the Pokrovka Orphanage #2:

Holly and Eric had walked through the orange doors, said a quick prevyet to the nurses, and gone straight to the crib.

Tatiana! Baby Tatty! Their daughter!

Her hair was longer, and her eyes were not as large in her face, but her cheeks were flushed, and she looked as healthy and beautiful as she had three months earlier, even if she was too thin—

But all the toddlers at the Pokrovka Orphanage #2 were too thin! None of them had the chubby cheeks of American toddlers. None of them had fat little arms and legs. There was only so much food at the orphanage, and only so many nurses to feed it to so many children. Holly and Eric had given the nurses an extraordinary sum of money before they’d left after their first visit at Christmas, at the advice of the Canadian couple. By Russian standards it had been thousands of dollars! They’d been sure to imply that, if Tatiana was well taken care of while they were back in the States without her, there would be even more money when they returned to fetch her. Anya, in particular—they’d paid her, when they’d left to return to the States, as much as the poor girl probably made in a year at the orphanage!

And although Eric and Holly were rich beyond the wildest dreams of these young Siberian women, Eric and Holly were not rich. It had been a sacrifice, that money. It had been paid so that the Tatiana they left behind at Christmas would be the Tatiana they returned for in the spring: happy, healthy. Well-fed.

They would leave their little Tatiana in her crib in that terrible gray orphanage over the course of a bitter winter, return to their comfortable home, and when they came back, she would be there, shining as they’d left her, the same baby they’d left, but with only those few subtle changes:

A little thinner. A little paler, bluer, with longer hair, with smaller eyes.

But they’d paid so much money, and they loved her so much. It was impossible to think that she’d suffered in their absence, to see the thin limbs as some sign of—

What?

THEY’D LOVED HER so much, from the first moment they saw her on Christmas Day in her crib. They would have taken her home that moment, if not for the Russian bureaucracy, the iron-fisted rule that they must leave her behind and return for her three months later. They’d been given no choices in that matter.

But how could you explain that to a baby when you placed her back in her crib in such a place, and left? How could you explain that, even later, even now that she was a teenager? How could you tell your daughter We left you there without us, knowing how cold it was, how neglected you would be, that anything could happen to you—but we loved you, we loved you so much, we paid so much money for them to take care of you, so that when we came back you would be the same child we’d left behind us! Money was all we had to offer, and we offered it all!

You could never explain such a thing to a child. But it shouldn’t have mattered anyway! Tatiana could not possibly have any memory of that time, those months after they fell in love with her, and then left her, could she?

Holly forced herself to stop crying. She went to her daughter’s door. She said, “Please. Tatty,” to it.

But she felt panicked now, no longer in control at all, and as she lunged for the door she could smell her own adrenaline on herself, under her arms and at the back of her neck—the smell of damp children’s sweaters in a small, institutional room.

Surely Tatty wouldn’t do anything to harm herself, would she?

Holly pushed hard on the door, meeting with the hook and eye, and then she took a step back, realizing how little pressure it would take to break through the hook and eye:

It wasn’t a security system. It was only a psychological divider. Holly had simply wanted Tatiana to feel that there was a place she could have privacy when she needed it—the way Holly had needed that when she’d wanted to write. When she’d needed to be alone. When, as stupid as it seemed to her now, she’d expected to uncover, in her private mind, behind a locked door, in a small room, a poem.

Oh, perhaps she’d expected Tatiana to write those poems! Perhaps she’d thought her daughter would write her own poems for her!

But Tatiana had no need of poems. And she hadn’t wanted the door between them to be locked. That had been the problem all along, hadn’t it? Holly was the one who wanted to be alone. She should never have had a child! She had been made barren for a reason—and she’d always known it, although she’d never allowed herself to think it! Once, she’d slapped Eric, hard, when, after she’d burst out crying on a Monday night when Tatiana was four years old and demanding macaroni and cheese instead of the chicken breast she’d been served (this, after work all day and ballet class all night), he’d said, “Maybe you never wanted to be a mother, Holly. What did you think it would be like?”

Yes, she’d slapped him. But he’d known!

Worse, she’d known: He’d been right!

No.

No. She had wanted it! All mothers became frustrated. All mothers had regrets. Holly loved her daughter. Her daughter was the one thing in this world that Holly had been born to love. Without Tatiana, there was nothing; there had never, ever been anything without Tatiana. If—

HOLLY PUSHED GENTLY on the door between them again, not breaking it in, but feeling how easily the lock she’d installed there would give way if she pushed harder.

She said to the door, loudly, her voice shaking, “Tatty, I’m so selfish. I’m a selfish person. But, God, I love you. I love everything about you. More than I ever knew I could ever love anything, I love you. Please, please, stay in this world with me.”

There was no sense in trying to protect her pride now. Every minute of Tatiana’s childhood had been leading to this moment, and the only thing that mattered in Holly’s life now, the only thing that could ever matter was showing this beautiful creature how much she had been loved from the very beginning .

This child that Holly was so privileged to have—having cheated, having cheated fate , for this child she was so privileged to call her daughter!

To the door, again, even more loudly, Holly said, “I never wanted anything more than I wanted you.”

Really?

Are you so sure?

Remember, you wanted to be a poet, Holly. Even this morning, after sleeping so late, you just wanted to be alone, you wished—

“No! I haven’t been the mother I could have been, true, but please, Tatty, let me try again. Let me keep trying. Now I know. Now that I know, I—”