Laura Kasischke - Mind of Winter

Because the moment she’d been born she’d begun to die, hadn’t she?

But Holly hadn’t done that, had she? It wasn’t Holly’s fault. She’d only snatched Tatiana out of a terrible orphanage, and brought her here, to the happiest country in the world. To a place full of technological amazement, medication, sanitation—no more garlic around anyone’s neck when there was an outbreak of the flu!

Holly laughed out loud, remembering that.

Then she heard Thuy’s voice calling out to her from the miraculous box she held in her hand (again, that voice, so clear, although her friend was so far away) and she thought of Thuy simply waking up one day from her infant slumber with her hand in the hand of Mickey Mouse. How wonderful. How blessed. How lucky Holly was to have such a friend. To her daughter’s back, Holly said, “Thuy wants to say Merry Christmas to you, honey.”

Of course, Tatty didn’t roll over. She didn’t even sigh in exasperation. She was so peaceful, despite the red velvet dress that looked uncomfortably tangled in her arms.

Tatiana had never opened the shades that morning, but Holly could see through the crack between the shade and the sill that it was growing darker out there.

Still, the whole night would be lit up by this blizzard, wouldn’t it? Holly would turn up the heat. (The heat! Another marvel of their American life together! How well Holly remembered the cold, bare, hard floor of the Pokrovka Orphanage #2 that Christmas so long ago.)

But first she would pull the coverlet over her daughter’s bare back, because she must keep that poor pale blue back covered.

HOLLY PUT THE iPhone down on the floor and, with it, Thuy’s tiny, crystal-clear voice.

Hearing that, Holly pictured her friend as a little girl inside a whirling teacup at Disneyland, her long black hair whipping behind her:

“Becky! Are you having fun? Becky?”

Thuy’s mother had changed her daughter’s name to Becky when they took up residence in California, and it hadn’t been until college that Thuy had changed it back, herself, to her Vietnamese name. It had been one of the reasons that Holly had wanted Tatiana to have a name that spoke of her origins.

Because you can’t just forget where you’ve come from, can you?

Because it was important not to forget, not to pretend, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t that what Holly had been so sure of? Wasn’t that why she kept a box of condoms in the linen closet for Tommy and Tatiana to use, despite Tatiana’s tearful insistence that We’re not going to have sex, Mom. Why do you always have to push these things? Why can’t you just let me be a kid?

And Eric had been furious. He’d said, “Jesus, Holly. All the shit you seem able to keep your head buried in the sand about, and this is when you decide to have to be all open and groovy? She doesn’t need this!”

But what had Eric meant? What did Holly keep her head buried in the sand about? What?

What do you think you’ve kept so nicely buried out there, you bitch?

Holly spun around fast.

She held her hand to her mouth to keep herself from screaming:

The girl in the black dress was back. She stood directly in front of Tatty’s floor-length mirror. She wore the felt slippers of a child in the Pokrovka Orphanage #2.

How well Holly remembered those! They’d all worn such slippers. Those slippers had looked fragile on their feet, as if rags had been tied around their ankles simply to give the appearance of shoes. And this girl in the black dress, her legs looked as if they’d been broken and reset imperfectly. Her arms were limp. Her head did not look as if it rested properly on her neck. Holly had seen that, too! She’d seen children like that behind that door, tangled in their own misshapen limbs, not even bothering to cry. She’d seen them smile.

The girl shouted something at Holly in Russian—but, this time, Holly understood. It was as if she’d spoken Russian all her life! The girl, who was wearing Tatiana’s broken body, screamed, “She has a bad heart!” This girl, even with her limp arm, managed to raise her fist to her chest and pound on it. “Even your fucking neighbor Randa told you! ‘Your daughter’s fingernails are blue! Her eyelids are blue! Why do her lips turn so blue? It’s not even cold!’ And what did you do ? You stopped talking to her! You blamed it on how she reacted to the chickens, but you knew it was because of what she would say about Tatty if you ever spoke to her again: ‘Tatty needs to see a doctor!’ ”

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Holly said. “She was taken to a doctor in Russia. There was nothing wrong with Sally!”

“Fuck you,” the girl said. “She never was Sally ! You didn’t even bring me a Christmas present! Where do you think Sally went when you left her there for months? Who do you think was taking care of Sally then? Who do you think is taking care of Sally now? No American wants a child with broken legs. A child who’s been dropped, or beaten. Or a child who has a bad heart. That’s why you pretended not to know until you couldn’t not know !”

“That’s not true!” Holly said desperately. “I never cared about any of that. I loved you. You were the sweetest, smallest thing I ever loved. I loved you both. I never cared! I would have taken either of you, or both of you! I would have taken you broken, I would have taken your sister with a bad heart. I would have, I did !”

No you didn’t!

Although the scream was deafening, Holly didn’t bother to put her hand over her ears. She knew where the voice was coming from, and she put her hands over her eyes, and she knew that, when she looked up, Sally would be gone.

EVERYTHING, HOLLY KNEW, would be different when Eric got home, when morning came.

She swallowed, willing herself to cry no more. For the rest of the day, she would not make a sound. There was no sense upsetting Tatiana. She would never even have to know. Holly would never tell anyone. It wasn’t something she would even share with Thuy. Just as she had never told anyone about the chickens, and the way, that summer, when they’d gotten the chickens from the farm outside of town, Holly had so stupidly believed they would be happy. That the chickens would stay inside the fence, peck at grubs, live in the lovely little Amish chicken coop she and Eric had mail-ordered for them.

She had never told anyone how, while Tatiana napped, Holly had been lying with a book in bed with the window open—because it was early summer, and beautiful, with a sky so blue it looked as though there were some kind of membrane over the world, pulled so tightly across space that it could have been punctured—and listening to the chickens under the bush outside the window, squawking.

She’d known, hadn’t she, that the squawking was louder than usual? But Holly had allowed herself to believe that they were only squabbling over pillbugs, fighting to get at a worm. How Holly had loved the sound of the chickens! There was, truly, nothing lovelier than a few chickens in the yard. ( So much depends upon…) Holly was sorry that the neighbors didn’t approve (“Suburbanites don’t understand farm animals; this will be a disaster!” one letter to the editor had admonished) but to have your own chickens, to scramble your chickens’ golden eggs for breakfast—

It wasn’t until much later that day that Holly discovered their squawking had been the noise of four hens pecking a fifth one to death. That the worst of it had taken place in Randa’s yard. That they’d chased the victim—the one she’d stupidly, horribly named Sally —through a hole in the fence. By the time that hen made it to Randa’s honeysuckle bush to hide, it was too late.