Andrea White: Radiant Girl

Aunt Olga’s three little girls were quietly playing dolls on our kitchen floor. Next to them, her son, Yuri, an active six-year-old, was being scolded by my ancient neighbor, Oksana Evtushenko. Yuri was always catching bugs or trying to ride on Noisy’s back. In our family, we referred to him as chertneya, or the little devil—not always kindly. As Granny Vera liked to say, “Boys will be boys.” Or sometimes if a piece of mischief was particularly bad, “The snake was always in the garden.” By the time I reached them, though, Yuri had slipped away. Oksana Evtushenko wanted to complain to me about her new cow. “Katya, she’s the most stubborn animal that I’ve ever known.”

In the entranceway, I noticed Galina Galkina. Standing stiffly and still clutching her large, square purse, she was the only woman in the whole room who was wearing the fitted suit of an office worker, rather than the loose skirts and blouses of Yanov. Angelika Galkina gripped her mother’s hand.

Angelika wore a brown smocked dress that matched her eyes and was so beautiful that, for a moment, I was surprised that she was my best friend. I ran to greet her.

After the guests each accepted a glass of horilka , and the children collected cups of kompot , homemade juice, the party began to move outside. I touched Angelika’s hand. “Do you want to see my room?” I whispered. I hoped that she liked my new furniture as much as I did.

Angelika nodded. Although she usually wore her blonde hair loose on her shoulders, tonight her mother had plaited it into pigtails and tied neat brown ribbons at the ends. With china-doll features and big brown eyes, I thought she was a pretty girl, but Mama disagreed. I had never noticed her small, slightly crooked teeth until Mama, who didn’t like her, pointed out how unattractive they were.

I thought her uneven grin enhanced her personality.

I shouldn’t have worried about Angelika’s reaction to my room. At the doorway, her hands flew to her cheeks in astonishment.

“It’s beautiful!” Angelika cried.

It would not have been modest for me to agree with her, but my divan was the finest piece of furniture I had ever seen. Although ordinary in size and shape, the couch was covered in a green fabric dotted with fields of daisies and daffodils, unusual for those dreary days of Soviet grays and dark blues.

I took Mishko, my teddy bear, who Papa had brought back from Moscow, and arranged him so he was lounging on the divan. Both Angelika and I giggled. We were still bending the teddy bear into comical positions when Aunt Olga stuck her head in my room.

“I heard that you got some new furniture,” she said.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“Very attractive,” Aunt Olga said. Always practical, she added, “That divan looks like a foldout.”

Immediately, Angelika and I began trying to figure out how to pull out the bed.

“You’re right!” I told Aunt Olga when we had opened it. “Now I can have two people over to spend the night at the same time.”

“Lyudmila and I,” Angelika suggested. Lyudmila Pikalova was another girl in our class. Angelika liked her more than I did. Since Lyudmila flattered Angelika constantly, I always suspected that Lyudmila’s mother encouraged their friendship. The Galinkos were such important people.

Although I had reservations about having Lyudmila over, I couldn’t deny Angelika anything. “I’ll ask my mother,” I promised.

“Katya, come outside and get supper,” my mother called.

I hated to leave my new furniture even momentarily. With a backward glance, I tried to soak up my room’s cheerful modernity—the new divan, chair, and small desk, side by side with the older pieces, the oak wardrobe and the ancient mirror.

Outside, the moonlight lent the supper the allure of a fairy feast. Huge sticks of salami, domashnyaya kolbasa (that delicious, homemade garlicky-pork sausage), beet-root salad, pickled mushrooms, cabbage rolls stuffed with meat and rice, fried fish, and sweet pies crowded the table. The tablecloth’s kleyonka (plastic cover) didn’t dim the greens and yellows of its border. My mother had hand-stitched the cloth with her favorite pattern, nightingale’s eye. Most wonderful of all, a chocolate birthday cake towered over one end. White candles, waiting to be illuminated, formed the number eleven.

“Birthday girl first,” my mother said, as she handed me an empty plate.

Even though my stomach was already so full of excitement that I didn’t know how I’d manage even a bite, I loaded up with cabbage rolls and beet-root salad and plopped down on the grass.

I spotted Uncle Victor Kaletnik heading towards me. He was about as slight as I was, and I had the feeling that if I wanted, I could pick him up and carry him on my shoulders. When he leaned over me, I quickly covered my ears, but he wasn’t reaching to tug on them.

“How about a game of checkers soon with an old man?” Uncle Victor asked.

“I want to learn chess,” I told him.

“Chess!” he responded, and called to my father, “Very strange, Ivan. Your daughter is an intellectual.”

“Why is that strange, Victor?” my father responded.

“She wants to use her brain to think, unlike her father, who just uses his to recite patriotic cant.” Uncle Victor laughed.

My father and his oldest friend were always joking, but my father’s voice sounded weary when he answered. “Not tonight. I don’t want to argue about politics tonight.”

Angelika settled down next to me, her plate overflowing.

“Why couldn’t your father come?” I asked her between bites.

“He’s at the station,” Angelika answered. Comrade Galkin was the assistant operator of reactor number four.

“Papa swapped shifts so he could be at my party,” I explained. “He starts work at midnight.”

Just then Boris walked up.

I felt my face flush as red as my ears with my newfound love for him, and I was grateful for the darkness. From behind his back, Boris pulled out the gift-wrapped cylinder that I had noticed earlier.

“What’s this?” I asked, and hoped my shaky voice didn’t give me away.

He smiled at me. “Your real birthday present.”

I couldn’t help imagining our great future together. Boris and I would live with my parents until we were able to find a cottage of our own. Inna Boiko would teach me how to make her famous strawberry jam. Perhaps, after Angelika and Sergei married, they would move into a cottage close by.

“I need to give you your gift early, because I have to go pick up my girlfriend,” Boris said casually.

Girlfriend . My heart sank. Some days in the village, I had seen Marta Antropova riding on the back of Boris’s motorcycle, but it had never occurred to me that she could be his girlfriend. I couldn’t help thinking that if the situation were reversed, and I were twenty and Boris was eleven, I would have waited for him forever.

“Go on.” Boris nudged me gently.

I must have been gaping at him. I tore off the paper and opened the cylinder. When I had unrolled the poster, I saw that it featured a red Yava. The newest model. “Oh, Boris, thank you!” I cried.

“You’re the only girl I know who likes motorcycles,” Angelika said disapprovingly, but I could tell that she was envious of my relationship with an older boy like Boris.

“I’m going to hang it up in my new room,” I promised Boris. For the moment, I carefully rolled the poster back up and slipped it into the cylinder to keep it from getting wrinkled. When I looked up, Boris was gone.

The pain of losing Boris didn’t stay with me for long, because Angelika said, “I want you to open my gift.”

Out of nowhere, Aunt Olga appeared with a canvas cloth which she laid on the ground. I scooted onto it, and soon the cloth was piled high with presents in all shapes, sizes and colors. Angelika gave me a Barbie doll. Although she accepted my thanks with a modest “It’s nothing,” both of us knew that only someone with her father’s connections could have brought me such a rare Western gift. Aunt Olga gave me a new bookcase; the Kalitniks, a book of fairy tales and a new teddy bear; my aunt, a set of marble eggs; and my uncle, a matryoshka , a wooden doll with smaller dolls nested inside.