Juliet Butler - The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep

Dasha Krivoshlyapova is my best friend. She is clever and studies very diligently in order to get her school diploma and thus be able to work with all other citizens of the Soviet Union to build Communism. Dasha is not only very bright and hard working, but she is kind and thoughtful too. She irons the pinafores of girls who have no arms. She helps other girls make their beds in her dorm, and she always cleans up after class and wipes the board without being asked. She does everything she can to help anyone. Dasha never has a bad word to say about anybody, and she never quarrels with anyone or gets involved in gossip, denunciations or rumours. This is because I believe she is incapable of being unkind to anyone. Why? Because she always understands how other people feel, whatever that person’s situation is, and she sympathizes with them and finds a way to admire and respect them. Dasha Krivoshlyapova is the best person I know. That is why she’s my best friend.

He put his piece of paper down after he’d read it and there was silence in the room. I thought they were all going to laugh, I really did. I thought Masha would be the first to start laughing. But she didn’t and they didn’t either. After what seemed like ages, they started smiling and nodding and even clapping in the end. That was the best moment of my life. It really was. Slava never actually says anything nice to me. Not actually anything nice to my face. Not ever. I still can’t believe it. I wanted to ask him if I could keep it, but Masha said that would be stupid, and she’s probably right.

I thought Masha might be cross, as it was all about me, but she had three of the boys in our class dedicate their essays to her, and I only had this one. Besides, Masha’s just been voted Class Leader and she’s been on the Most Popular Pupil of the Week board in the school’s Lenin Corner for three weeks in a row. Everyone think she’s so funny. And she is.

After the lesson, as we were going out, I said, ‘Thanks, Slava,’ because I thought I should say something, and he just sort of shrugged.

‘Hey, Manya! Cuckoo!’ Masha’s waving at Manya, who’s come out with her little pram, with a dolly in it.

‘I’ve got friends today,’ she says proudly. ‘I’ve got friends who are twins like you two. They look just the same. They’re Denticles too.’

‘What’s Denticles?’ asks Masha.

‘ Foo! Denticles is when you look the same. Even I know that.’

Her mum comes out and shouts at her to stop talking to us. Her mum doesn’t look at us, she just goes back in, and then two little girls come out pushing prams too. One each. They follow each other down the grass path, in between the rows of vegetables. One of them stops and takes a pretend bottle out, to feed her dolly, and the other one walks on. I know Masha’s thinking the same as me. She thought that Denticles would be twins who were Together like us. They look the same as each other. But they’ve got a whole body each, not a shared one.

They’re dressed the same too, like me and Masha. I wonder if they got separated? How can you have two people looking like one person? It’s amazing.

I stare and stare at them walking up and down different paths, with their prams.

‘Masha, can’t we ask someone why we’re Together and not apart like them? I mean, ask a grown-up?’

Masha doesn’t look at me. ‘Why? We just are. You’re not going to change anything by asking are you?’

‘But don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to know if loads of people are born Together, or only us? Or is it only one in each country, like Ronnie and Donnie in Amerika? And if it’s only us, then why?’

She shrugs and wipes her nose. ‘Not going to make us single, is it? Not like them.’ She nods at the twins, who are in different parts of the garden now.

I suck my bottom lip while I’m thinking. There are lots of Polio or Palsy or Sclerosis kids, but no other Togethers. The senior kids are all Doing It with each other. I don’t really know what ‘Doing It’ means, to be honest, except it’s more than kissing and it’s nyelzya , but it’s the best fun you can ever have. And you can get babies from it. Olessya says Mila was sent off to the San to get rid of her baby and never came back. She didn’t know why. Maybe she died.

‘But, Mash, don’t you want to know if you and me… if you and me can Do It like the others do, and have babies? Can’t we ask someone?’

It comes out in a rush because I’ve been thinking about it loads, but Masha doesn’t talk about stuff like that. She thinks boys are much better fun than girls, but only because she runs with them, and swears, and smokes and jokes like they do, and she says girls are gossipy, boring geese like me. I like girls better, mostly. Like Olessya and Little Lyuda and Sunny Nina. And I only like one boy. I want to get married like everyone does, and push my baby in a pram. But if I can have babies, will they be Together too? Are we like a breed or something? Is that why Anokhin said we should marry Ronnie and Donnie? I don’t want to marry one of them. I want to marry Slava.

‘ Foo! I’m not Doing It with anyone, ever!’ She spits over the wall in disgust.

‘Well, we might want to, Masha, some day. We can ask, that’s all…’

‘Who’re you going to ask? High and mighty Anokhin? Might as well try and call the Queen of England.’

‘How about Zinaida, the School Nurse? She’s young and not stuffy. She’ll tell us.’

Masha watches the three kids all getting their dollies out of their prams and giving them bottles in the sunshine. She shrugs again.

‘Yeah, could do. But don’t stutter. You make us sound like a couple of morons.’

It starts raining then. Just warm little drops now and then, but the kids all scream and run into the house, leaving their dollies behind. Me and Masha drop down off the wall and look up at the sky. The raindrops splish on our faces and into our open mouths and Masha laughs and grabs me, and we go dancing round and round in the rain like mad things, dancing round and round and round with our mouths open, catching the rain together.

It’s taken me exactly one year to work up the courage to do it.

I’m so embarrassed I want to curl up and die, but I’ve asked everyone else I can think of. Olessya said whether or not we can conceive and give birth is a medical question, but she didn’t see why we couldn’t have sex. Masha was so disgusted by that idea she got up and walked right off. But how does she think we’re going to have children if we don’t have sex? I keep telling her it would be me down there, not her, because we’ve got one pizdyets each, but she still shudders at the thought. And I tremble at the thought. I tremble whenever Slava so much as looks at me, let alone touches me, let alone…

‘Well, we’ve run out of people to ask,’ says Masha. We’re standing in front of the shiny green medical room door. ‘Aunty Nadya looked like she’d swallowed an elephant when you asked her…’ Aunty Nadya comes down to visit us every year and bring us food parcels. She just sniffed when she first saw our short, spiky hair and said, ‘Teenagers will be teenagers. No accounting for taste.’ But when I asked her if we could ever have children, she got so angry she stormed out of the room and slammed the door on us. I can still hear it slamming.

‘She still sees us as children,’ I say.

I do feel terrible though, for asking her. That’s why I’m so nervous now.

‘So, the only person to ask is the nurse.’

‘ Da-oosh .’ I take a deep breath and knock on her door.