Lara Vapnyar - The Scent of Pine

“As the tradition of our camp went, counselors were expected to sit down and eat something with each family, and at first, Inka and I were excited about the idea, but by our sixth or seventh roasted chicken leg and caviar sandwich, all we wanted was to lie down on the grass and fall asleep. But no, we had to eat more, and smile at the parents, and show them how much we loved their kids.

“Alesha Pevtcov, obviously nervous, took Inka’s hand and walked her to his parents’ table. His hair was combed to the right side and smoothed with either water or his mother’s saliva. His parents looked just like him, and, in fact, remarkably like each other, both small and fair-haired, with pale eyes and colorless brows.

“ ‘This is my counselor,’ Alesha said, and blushed. He looked as if he were introducing his bride. Alesha’s mother looked Inka over just like somebody would look over a future daughter-in-law. It was clear she didn’t approve of Inka’s puffed up, multicolored hair.

“Myshka’s parents, on the other hand, looked nothing like Myshka. They were squat and plump, extremely well fed and well groomed, just like prize pigs at the fair. They both beamed at me and kept thanking me for taking such wonderful care of their daughter. When I finally got up from their table, Myshka’s mother gave me a five-pound box of chocolate candy.

“Around three we led everybody to the club for the concert. My kids sang the Pilots’ Song. They wore dark shorts and skirts, and white T-shirts (distributed by Yanina). All the T-shirts turned out to be too big. I helped the kids adhere Danya’s shoulder straps to their sleeves. The kids sang badly, but they looked so small and touching in those bulky T-shirts, with the beautiful golden stars on the blue background.

“And then it was time to say good-bye to the parents. Counselors who had older kids looked at Inka and me with pity.

“ ‘Good luck, girls,’ Dena said.

“ ‘Why?’ Inka asked.

“ ‘Didn’t you go to summer camp as children?’ Dena asked.

“We shook our heads.

“ ‘Then you’ll see.’

“A big procession went to the gates. Parents with children, counselors who were going to take the children back to their units, and a few soldiers. Everybody was calm, subdued, a little tired, a little sluggish. Nobody was talking. We could hear birds and cicadas and the wind droning through the tips of the pines. But once the procession reached the gates, it was as if somebody flipped the channel, and a movie suddenly started, where everybody had a familiar role, which he or she played with varying degrees of sincerity and intensity. Teenage boys would successfully dodge their mothers’ hugs and run off, teenage girls would soon run off too, but not before hugging and kissing their mothers. The smaller children clutched their parents, some getting ahold of the hem of their mothers’ skirts, others hugging their fathers’ legs, burying their faces in their stomachs, grabbing their hands. And as the parents tried to free themselves from their children’s clutches, the crying began. By that time we were pretty much used to children crying, but we had never heard them all cry at the same time. Some sniveled, some sobbed, some wailed, some bawled, some howled, others made sounds that didn’t seem human at all. Then the buses rolled to the gates and the parents looked at us and the other counselors with pleading expressions. We tried to reason with the children. And when that failed, we tried to take their hands, and yes, grab them by their waists and physically drag them away from their parents. When we finally gathered our children and brought them back to our unit, some still sniveling, others calm and energized, Inka said, ‘It’s kind of strange that Simonov didn’t throw a tantrum.’ I was kind of surprised too. And then we saw Sasha sitting on the porch of our unit with his back to the bushes. His face was tear-streaked, but he appeared to be calm. He was quietly showing his new set of expensive felt pens to another boy, whose parents hadn’t come. ‘Look,’ Sasha said, ‘it even has purple and azure and neon green. You need neon green if you want to draw real aliens.’

“A small woman with red puffy eyes sprung out from behind the bushes and ran toward the gates.

“Inka and I exchanged looks.

“ ‘Isn’t that Sasha’s mom?’ I whispered.

“ ‘Oh, no,’ Inka said. ‘Oh, hell, oh, no, she didn’t tell him she was leaving.’

“And sure enough, as soon as she was past the gate, Sasha sensed something. He jumped up, dropped his pens, and ran to the gates. We ran after him.

“He was too late. The buses had just driven away and one of the soldiers was locking the gates. Sasha stopped and looked at the road. You could still see the cloud of dust. Sasha just stood there not moving, not crying, not making a sound, until he doubled over and started to vomit.

“ ‘Don’t you just hate mothers?’ Inka asked as we carried the listless Sasha back to our unit. I certainly did. I promised myself again that I was never going to become one.

“But that wasn’t the worst of it. Now we had to raid the kids’ nightstands and clear out all the food. Kids were allowed to eat in their parents’ presence, but they were forbidden to keep any food afterward so that it wouldn’t go bad. But of course, they tried to hide whatever they could. Just imagine the mess in their drawers! Broken boxes of chocolate, heaps of candy, bananas, banana peels, half-eaten salami sandwiches, half-eaten chicken drumsticks, squashed tomatoes, smoked fish mixed with crumbling pieces of cake. How they cried and begged us to leave them something! It wasn’t even about the food, they must have felt that we were getting rid of the last vestiges of their parents’ affection. The last nightstand was Sveta’s. She stood in front of it and said, ‘Don’t you dare open that!’ Inka tried to move past her. Sveta bit her on the hand. Inka screamed. She got so angry that she pushed Sveta onto her bed, and pinned her down. ‘Hurry up while I’m holding her!’ she yelled. I opened the drawer to scoop the contents into a garbage pail, but there was nothing there. ‘Where is your stuff, Sveta?’

“ ‘I hid it, you bitches,’ she said, ‘you’re never going to find it,’ and started to cry. And then it hit me. There was nothing to hide. Nobody had come to visit Sveta. We were so frenzied that day that we hadn’t noticed.

“I motioned for Inka to leave Sveta alone and asked Sveta to come with me. I took her to my room, opened a drawer and took out the box of candy that Myshka’s parents had given me. I took the top off and told Sveta to pick the most beautiful candy. I felt very good, very proud of my generosity and my pedagogical skills. She reached for the big truffle with a hazelnut on top, but then paused, raised her fist and smashed it into the middle of the box, making most of the candies scatter on the floor, after which she ran into the kids’ bedroom and plopped onto her bed to sob. I wanted to run after her and say that I was sorry, ashamed that I’d thought I could fix it all with candy. But I was afraid to make it worse.

“All the kids had trouble falling asleep that night. They kept tossing and turning, and sniveling, and blowing their noses, but gradually for each of them the exhaustion defeated anxiety. Each of them, that is, except for Sasha. He just kept repeating what he always did, that he was afraid of ‘where he was going when he fell asleep.’ I told him he wasn’t going anywhere, and that I knew this for sure because I came to check on them in the middle of the night and everybody was there, and he was there. I moved my chair up to his bed and he shifted forward and put his head on my knee. I sat and stroked his thin damp hair until his eyes closed and he fell asleep. I put his head back onto the pillow and left the room.