Daria tossed and turned, muttering in her sleep, but I couldn’t make out the words. Setting down the pillow I’d been squeezing, I stretched my fingers, which were stiff from clenching them. I had to keep going. There were thousands of pictures on Daria’s phone, the earliest from three years ago. I didn’t find any more of me, but that didn’t make me feel better. She had documented other women. She had watched mothers and children. She had secretly photographed people I desperately did not want to find in Daria’s phone, and the situation was worse than I could have imagined, because in that group of former clients, I found the most important one. The pictures of Lada Kravets and her children were recent, taken from astonishingly close up, and there were a lot. That signified a danger I needed to focus on. However, my heart told me to do otherwise—as soon as I had found the Kravets family, I began to search for you. You were there somewhere. I wanted to see your face. Your hands. Your neck. Your car. Your shadow. That terrace at Mimino you liked so much, or that café in Vienna. A picture taken from a distance of a dinner table, maybe with Lada Kravets adjusting her lace scarf and you sitting next to some woman who would clearly belong to you. Even just a glimpse of the places that were your places, the Kravetses’ places, which would tell me the photograph had recorded your breath if nothing else. But if there was no sign of you, my fears might have come true. You wouldn’t be coming after me. Someone else would. Maybe that would be easier.
I recognized you instantly, even though only half of your back appeared on the screen: your right shoulder was still just a little higher than the left, the position of your head familiar. I enlarged the recently taken photo. Lada happened to be looking straight into the camera and appeared so hale and happy, so everything I’d never seen in her before—and completely unaware of the person spying on her children. Lada’s son held his mother by the hand, and a strange woman pushed a stroller with a girl sitting in it. The woman, who I assumed was a nanny, did not have her hair blown out, and a homemade skirt covered the uneven bumps of her hips. Next to them scampered a toy poodle dressed in a Burberry jacket. Based on the buildings visible through the trees, at the time the picture was taken they were in London, in Belgravia. How did you not notice the danger stalking you? Was Daria so skilled that she evaded even your gaze? I’d have thought that after what I did, you would be more alert than ever.
I didn’t know what to think. Of course, I’d considered that, in the end, you might have been blamed for everything. I just didn’t really believe it. You were a survivor, or you had redeemed yourself, that much was now clear. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been in a photograph so close to your boss’s daughter-in-law and her grandchildren. That told me everything important: you were still part of the Kravets family. There you were, of all people. You were older, but you were the same, and you were alive. But for how long if the Kravetses learned that Daria had been spying on them under your care?
I should have dashed straight out of that hotel room. I should already have been on the run. But instead, I searched for more signs of you, greedily scrolling through the camera roll, until I spotted some shots taken of old newspaper photographs. In one of them, Lada Kravets was holding her baby. The blue of the Party of Regions flag glimmered in the background. I remembered well the event from six years ago, and the scene on the phone dragged me back to that room where we stood side-by-side listening to the guest speeches. We leaned against the wall, avoiding the camera lenses. Closing my eyes, I felt your breath on my neck, the warmth of your body at my side, smelled your scent in my sweat. Heat clawed furrows in my back, and my new boots squeezed my feet, even though I’d stretched them for a week with vodka. The day had been full of toasts, speeches, and international speakers. Our country’s aim was to repair the disaster of the previous year when we had been forced to return swine flu vaccines from the United States. Too many people thought their real purpose was to sterilize the poor, that it was pure eugenics. Rumors of American plots spread like wildfire, as did a measles epidemic, again, and the same politicians and businessmen who had spun up the rumor mill were now dripping honey words into the ears of the guests about reviving domestic vaccine production. Lada Kravets and her babies made a good impression at such events, and because I represented several foundations that promoted children’s health, my task was the same: to burnish the tarnished reputation of our country. In order to start production, we had to pry more support from the German delegation. You whispered in my ear that the German guests were irritated about the equipment they had already donated, which had been intended to launch the very production for which we now needed funding. Ten years had passed, and the equipment hadn’t been put to use—there wasn’t even information about its physical location. Feeling themselves cheated, the Germans were angry, and their desire to help was sapped. They simply didn’t trust the new government’s vaccination program.
“You could do something,” you whispered.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like smile,” you suggested. “At least.”
My job was to convince the delegation that new political winds would change everything, and that President Yanukovych was the man for the job.
At dinner, I was placed next to one of the Germans. I told him that, before we added new girls to our lists, we vaccinated all of them just to be safe, and only with vaccines certified by our own doctors. But I couldn’t choke down a single bite of the food and instead pushed it around so it would look eaten, and only drank the wine that had also been poured for the Germans. Then I told my companion that it would be better to give up. Let it go. Our government ministers preferred to gild their dachas with the grants they received. The Germans should personally visit the tuberculosis sanitoriums on which their countrymen’s money had also been squandered, and I was willing to bet they would find neither hide nor hair of any patients.
I only stopped my uninterrupted litany when I noticed your long glance from the other table. The Germans were frozen, watching me. I was in trouble, I already knew that, so what did it matter? I would lose you either way. What significance did anything I let out of my mouth have?
The next morning you told me that the delegation was suddenly on its way to the Crimean Peninsula. They wanted to visit the facilities they had been supporting, and you asked whether I had something to do with that. I pulled my jaw behind my fox-fur vest and assured you that I had done my best. In Crimea, the travelers would be greeted by a pile of rocks and an overgrown statue of Lenin in the yard where the miners under treatment at the once magnificent sanatorium had spent their time.
But my behavior toward the Germans was the exception. Their visit happened to coincide with one of the days when my nerves were on the verge of snapping. Still, I managed to keep my head above water and behave normally except for a few scenes, one of which you witnessed then. You still imagined that what we had could endure, and I did my best to make that happen. You held my hand because we were lovers, and I held yours because I was drowning.
Last year my mother heard a rumor that Lada Kravets had moved with her family to Vienna. Mom told me about it in passing, and I pretended it was completely irrelevant to me, even though I soon found myself browsing pictures of Vienna online, wondering what you were doing at that precise moment, whether you still lived in the house I remembered so well. I’d chosen its chandeliers from an antique shop your boss’s wife, Maria Kirillovna, recommended when she still thought we were building a home together. If the family was in Vienna, so were you. Maybe at that very second you were in a restaurant on the banks of the Danube eating tafelspitz; I could taste the applesauce and horseradish so strongly that my nose burned. Or no, it was January, dancing season. You were preparing for an evening in the company of a lady, and that woman would turn her back to you, lift the curls that had fallen from her bun, and ask you to do up the zipper buried tightly in the fabric of her evening gown. I could hear the rustling of the dress and see your fingers on it. That woman could have been me. I could have been dancing the waltz with you that January evening if I hadn’t been forced to flee because our world was not going to change despite the war and the new government. For you the dances are the same, the villas in Nice are the same, the boarding schools your children attend are the same, and the cost of the cars you drive is the same. Perhaps you have a new partner, or one you’ve lost, new business relationships in place of old, but nothing is worse. Perhaps quite the opposite. Perhaps you’re doing better. Perhaps the war has become a lucrative business for you, and you have more money and power than before. Perhaps the emergency laws brought by the conflict have opened up entirely new angles, and why wouldn’t they? The newspapers reported that your boss was funding the Dnipro Battalion to fight against the separatists and that his private army formed an essential part of the volunteer forces. I didn’t believe this was only about patriotism and securing his investments, though that must have been part of it. The criminal investigations launched as part of the Maidan revolution had revealed tangled networks of corruption, causing a wave of suicides by high-profile figures. Never for a moment, though, had I imagined anything like that could touch you.
I’d tracked the progress of the revolution from afar and sometimes was sure that Russian tanks would roll into Dnipro. After the occupation of Crimea, I watched the latest Russian news broadcasts on my computer to see if overnight not just Crimea but all of Ukraine had been added to the Russian map used for weather forecasts. I wasn’t the only one.
When I saw that pictures of the Ukrainian trident had appeared on the wall of the abandoned Parus Hotel, I wanted to be there painting blue and yellow on the street. My head would have borne a wreath of flowers, and our son would have been so excited. We would have hung the Ukrainian flag in the office and sung the national anthem at concerts. Together we would have watched as Dnipropetrovsk began to show its colors—how the statue of Grigory Petrovsky, who gave his name to the city at the beginning of the Soviet era, fell—and heard how Dnipro’s very own Brezhnevian anthem stopped playing in the trains and at city council meetings, ceasing to welcome comrades and workers or cause people to stand. I would have liked to experience even a moment of faith in change, in a new world, a new future, even if it meant being disappointed like so many others. Young men return from the front knowing how to fight. What do you think these veterans will think about the slow pace of change, about how while they watched their friends die, nothing in your life has changed?
During the revolution, I often thought about my boss and imagined how she might vacillate between the Ukrainian flag and Putin’s picture, pacing her office hanging first one and then the other on the wall, finally shoving them both in the closet. The office’s website now says that Russian donors are no longer accepted, but I’m sure Putin’s beautifully framed portrait is still in storage somewhere just in case.
I let Daria’s phone rest in my lap and massaged my face. I was in a hotel room where I shouldn’t be, and I was looking at a woman I shouldn’t be with, as she slept on top of the covers. I was remembering things best left forgotten, and that slowed me down, as feelings often do. I straightened my numb legs and stood up to listen to Daria’s breathing, wondering whether her sleep was as deep as before and whether she would invent some way to end me if she didn’t see me when she awoke. If she assumed I’d fled, would she snap? I decided to throw more sleep sand in her eyes. Thinking I could make out the familiar scent of valerian root, I navigated to the bathroom. And there it was, a bottle of Corvalol. After mixing a generous amount of the barbiturate into a glass of water, I lifted Daria’s head and spooned the liquid into her mouth. Mumbling, she spluttered and swallowed. On the bedside table I wrote a note in which I promised to return for breakfast, then removed the memory stick from her laptop and returned the phone to its place under her back. Covering my head with my scarf, I slipped past the reception desk in the lobby. Every step I took was shaken by the throbbing in my chest and the fear boring into it, and yet with each step I longed to be able to take your arm. Every footfall ordered me to head to the harbor or the airport. But I didn’t do that. Too many questions about Daria still hung open, too many lives were in danger. And I couldn’t disappear without saying goodbye to my mother—she would be sure that I’d been killed.
At home I pulled the suitcase I had brought with me from Dnipropetrovsk out of the attic. I didn’t allow my mother’s long look to trouble me: I claimed I was just making space in the storage room for my winter clothes. She didn’t say anything, not even about the strange time of night for housekeeping, but I waited for her to go to bed before opening the suitcase.
The scent of Tobacco Vanille still clinging to the clothes filled the entryway like a box of winter apples fetched from the cellar, and I held my breath for a moment. I didn’t know whether Karl Marx still had his prospekt in Dnipro or whether Leonid Brezhnev’s portrait and commemorative plaque had already disappeared from his birthplace. Since the revolution, there were hundreds of cities and tens of thousands of streets that needed renaming in Ukraine, along with all the Lenins and other statues to be toppled. But while the Lenin Prospekts and Gagarin Prospekts had already or would soon experience this fate, the contents of my bag hadn’t changed since my escape.
Pulling out a wrinkled dress that should have been folded in tissue paper, I wondered what I’d been thinking when I packed it. It might have gone perfectly with my snakeskin pumps, but in Helsinki it was useless. Had I thought I would continue my life the way it had been? Was that why I had brought it? Or was it because of you? My boss had given me the dress for a philanthropy gala, one of the endless events we used to attend to build relationships. Charity had become fashionable once the moneymen in Ukraine realized what a good way it was to buy honorary Cambridge doctorates and attract the brightest Hollywood stars to headline their soirees. It laundered money, it provided legitimacy, and it could make any face respectable. This was the dress I wore to the party in Zaporizhia, where we sneaked out during intermission, you and I. I was afraid of what my boss’s reaction would be if she noticed my disappearance, and yet I followed you into the shadows of the theater’s pillars all the same. I had begun to wheeze within an hour of arriving in the city, and after listening to my breathing for a moment you told me a story about the teachers who had warned girls all over the country about boys from Zaporizhia. Marrying one of them meant, as part of the deal, getting Zaporizhia as a home. You winked and remarked that you’d moved away from here ages ago. My heart skipped a beat, and you suggested a little walk; we would have a better view of the theater’s handsome façade from the small park on the other side of the Lenin Prospekt that ran in front of it. I would be able to see the entire pediment atop which stood a statue carrying both a harp and a hammer and sickle. There was something in the position of the female figure that reminded me of my boss. At the statue’s feet, two Komsomols held a banner, and for a moment I wondered if you were teasing me, suggesting that I was like an adoring young zealot with my boss. When I heard the bell signaling the end of intermission, I started for the door, but you took my arm. Under your smoldering gaze, I suddenly felt an irresistible urge to get drunk and forget everything.
I’d received the shoes from you later, as well as the ankle boots, which I had packed in their shoeboxes with shoe trees shoved in them as if I had endless space in my luggage.
Acacia petals had stuck to the bottoms of the pumps from our last walk together. I picked them off and held them in my palm. It had been May, and the park was as white as winter as we waded through the acacia drifts and poplar fluff, which fell on us like snow, and you told me about receiving a beating when you lit the cottony fuzz on fire at your babushka’s house. It had burned well.
I threw the shoes back into the suitcase. I hadn’t used either pair here once. The life of a person without a car in this Nordic country contained too many grates, too many rubber mats full of treacherous holes, and altogether too much slush for heels. Or maybe I’d wanted to save them because I didn’t have a man anymore to give me expensive gifts. Pressing my nails into my palms, I tried to change the direction of my thoughts. But I couldn’t. The moment when you surprised me on my way into the Passage Mall was too vivid in my mind. Daria and I had already moved to the Silverleaf dacha for the process, and I had come to downtown Dnipro to buy boots. When I heard someone shouting my name, I stopped and was surprised to see that you had been waiting for me at the carousel next to the shopping center. You had roses, and they were for me. You suggested a walk, and even though I wanted to go with you, I hesitated. My job was to monitor Daria’s injections personally, and I didn’t want to betray my boss’s confidence. It wasn’t enough for her that the nurse responsible for the injections lived in the dacha. So I decided to head back as soon as I’d finished my shopping. You followed me into the mall, and afterward we stopped at the carousel. I looked away from you, toward the Palace of Culture and the statue of Lenin. Marshrutkas whizzed by as yellow as traffic lights. You continued your coaxing. Just a little walk. Just one drink if not dinner. Just a moment if not the whole evening. I glanced at the clock on my phone. And even as I did, my feet began to move as if of their own accord, and I let you take me past the circus to the banks of the Dnieper. There were no fire artists or jugglers, and the weather was too much even for the fishermen. I turned my face into the stiff breeze, which carried the pleasant scent of halva from the sunflower oil factories, and snatched up a bouquet of roses abandoned on the iron rail of the promenade, making it dance before dragging it away. I had no thought for my responsibilities, only for the girl for whom those flowers had been meant and who had not come to her rendezvous, and how any bouquet I ever saw left anywhere always made me so sad.
I shoved the ankle boots I’d purchased at Passage back into the box, which lay atop a bottle of hair dye, some false eyelashes, and a pair of sunglasses that had cost an arm and a leg. Tickling the side of the shoebox was a fox-fur vest that did suit this northern weather. However, only Russians wore furs in Finland. I hadn’t given up the vest, though, unlike my wolf fur. I touched the soft garment. I would only get pennies for it, not enough for a new escape. My head began to hurt, and I suspected it was due to the perfume, which I hadn’t used in ages. After moving to Helsinki, I’d bought some imitation fragrances, but I’d had to give them up after receiving some complaints, which taught me a lesson about how we do things here in Finland. The personnel manager at the cleaning company where I worked had sized me up from head to toe as she lectured me. Looking at her, I felt like I was seeing my former self. I, too, had kept an eye on my little birds’ perfume usage whenever we had a client coming from the Nordic countries. Scandinavian noses were sensitive: they always complained about the cleaning products in the hotels and the smell of chlorine in the water.
Once I noticed a bottle of Tobacco Vanille on the shelf of a home I was mopping. There was a film of dust on top of the cork, so the freshness of the scent surprised me. I was alone, and after completing the cleaning, I sprayed some perfume on the pulsing veins of my wrists. That night I awoke to your breath on my neck, but when I reached out, the bed was empty.
I crammed the evening dress back into the suitcase. I didn’t want to know how ridiculous I would look in it or if the zipper would even close. I pulled out a silk blouse. Among my belongings were also items that stirred some optimism, like pencil skirts and a couple of jackets. If they fit me, I could spend my final days wearing clothing that felt like my own and gave me some semblance of dignity. I could try to be the woman with whom you had thought you would share your life. At the bottom of the suitcase I found an unopened package of pantyhose, shoe polish, and a clothes brush.
I looked around for anything else to bring and hesitated over the empty cardamom tube I’d bought for our son. I’d seen Finns storing their children’s baby teeth in them and thought that could be Olezhko’s first step toward becoming one of them. Now I would leave everything that reminded me of him. I had tried and failed, failed at everything.
I woke up to throbbing in my chest and raised my head. I didn’t understand how I could have fallen asleep at the kitchen table given my situation. Pressing my fist to my heart, I attempted to calm its racing. My laptop screen was dark. I’d been searching Daria’s pictures, which I’d transferred from the flash drive to my computer. When the throbbing threatened to spread to my temples, I stumbled off to search for my Analgin. As I filled a glass with water, I noticed the crows that had gathered in the tree outside the window. It was as if my distress had called them forth to watch for the moment when their prey would succumb. I tugged the curtains closed. The sound pounding inside of me was so loud that you had to be able to hear it. It couldn’t help but call you. It wouldn’t stop. It would expose me, leading you along my trail. It made me want to run. And I did run, to the entryway to grab the handle of the suitcase waiting there. It was ready, just as ready as it had been when I fled Dnipropetrovsk, and I began to drag it toward the door. Stopping to put on my coat, I pulled on the fingerless gloves my mother had made for me. My gaze paused at my hands, at my short nails, which six years earlier had been hard and sure. Then my escape had been successful. I had my furs, my styled hair, and my lash extensions. I looked like I flew constantly, like I could afford to do so, and still I’d been a bundle of nerves at the Kyiv airport. How on earth did I think I could get away now?
I sat down on the floor next to my mother’s shoes. I still wondered how I’d played the part so effectively then, how I’d managed to look the part of a determined businesswoman at the border. The security guards had been busy going through all the glass jars clinking down the X-ray belt, and I mentally thanked those grandmothers and the constant problems they caused. The babushkas didn’t understand why they couldn’t carry breakable jars of pickles in their hand luggage, and usually they were allowed through with their gifts. No one had the time to notice the tremor in my hands, the pools of sweat under my arms, or the socks sliding down in my boots, and my Finnish passport barely rated a glance. Nonetheless, I expected to feel your hand on my arm at any moment, to hear your whisper in my ear asking me where I thought I was going. Sometimes I think that maybe you let me go, that you gave me time to escape. Would you do that now, too? How could I get you to believe that I had already suffered enough? The airport staff didn’t allow bottles of pickles in hand luggage anymore—my mom hadn’t been able to bring to Finland a single jar from her full cellar at home, and she bemoaned nothing more. Maybe you wouldn’t let me go again. If you even did then. Maybe I was just trying to convince myself.
Often, I wonder what the people I left in my past imagine happened to me. Some probably thought I was dead, that my body had been wrapped in a rug and dumped in a landfill. Others maybe thought I was living on a paradise island sipping champagne. No one would suspect that any middle-class lady in Helsinki could afford my services now. Wasn’t that a heavy enough punishment for me? That my life was like this, an exile of sorting strangers’ laundry and tidying up after other people’s kids? Would you let me keep this insignificant life of mine if I explained why I had done what I did?
The sun rose, and the street sweeping machines began their work, but I hadn’t found a solution during the night, as I had hoped. I twiddled with the key card I’d taken from Daria’s hotel room as if it were a crystal ball, even though it didn’t offer me a window into her head. I was still browsing through the photos on my laptop. Hours of searching hadn’t given me any more answers. I was still amazed at the number of families in the pictures and all the children with Daria’s dimples—most of them were new to me. I’d tried to save Daria, but the coordinators who stepped into my shoes had not. I didn’t understand why Daria had agreed to this and why the office hadn’t looked after its investment. Had a flood of customers into the country taken them by surprise? Was it because Thailand had finally grown tired of its reputation as a baby factory and banned surrogacy for foreigners? That had definitely made the country seem unreliable in the eyes of the client base. If India followed suit, Ukraine would be the new king of the industry. International developments in the business were constantly guiding couples toward Ukraine. I calculated how much Daria must have earned. If she had developed a taste for the good life, perhaps she got greedy. Maybe a car or a fur coat hadn’t been enough. She had decided to want everything and to keep donating as long as they kept paying her properly.
But Daria hadn’t earned anything lately. I was sure of that. I wouldn’t have dared ask the girl whom I’d left sleeping on that hotel bed to spot me any more than ten dollars, if that. I would have been embarrassed to introduce her to anyone.
To help me think, I went to the refrigerator for some of the salo Mom had brought and poured myself a glass of the birch sap horilka Boris had made. I had to concentrate. I had to review our past cases of girls who had turned problematic. Daria was just one of them, nothing more. Usually the issues arose when a donor became useless to us after the process was over—that was a hard blow for most, as was the loss of perks like an apartment. Some girls looked for new ways of making money to maintain their standard of living. Sometimes they tried blackmail. But Daria could get more money from you than from any of her former clients, and all at once. Still, she hadn’t sold me out, not yet. I repeatedly came back to the same conclusion: it couldn’t be the money. There had to be something else behind this. Maybe Daria couldn’t stand that no one from her old life understood her calling as a giver of life. Income, gifts, and travel were not the only attractions of the job; the feeling of purpose could also be addictive. Almost no one donated only once, and Daria was no exception. Could she be one of those girls who didn’t know how to live without being worshiped as a saint anymore? Or one of those who, because of the hormone fluctuations, ended up in such deep waters that life lost all meaning? Or one of those who couldn’t find relief for her agony even from God? Sometimes girls simply fell apart. Any of these explanations could apply to Daria. Or could she be one of the girls whose perceptions of their work changed once they became mothers themselves: someone else had given birth to real children from their eggs. But Daria didn’t seem like a mother. Her lifestyle and the pace of work these pictures revealed wouldn’t have allowed it. However, this group of girls could develop an obsessive desire to contact their previous clients. Usually they claimed they had vital information about a child’s health and that they would provide more details as soon as the family called.
We never forwarded those messages. All they caused was trouble, trouble like Daria passed out in her hotel room.
I found myself counting the numbers of girls and boys in the pictures as if they were a bouquet of flowers. If I saw an odd number of children, they would be like a funeral arrangement, maybe for me. If it was even, I still had hope of survival. But what if there was an odd number of girls and an even number of boys? I rubbed my forehead. The horilka hadn’t cleared my mind. None of my past problem cases were comparable to Daria. This wasn’t a nut I knew how to crack. And I didn’t want to repeat the mistake I’d already made once, dismissing Daria as one more ordinary girl in the crowd of donors.
“What are you doing sitting in the dark?”
My mother, who had appeared in the bedroom doorway, went to pull the curtains open and then began to change the sheets. The light hurt my eyes, and I turned my back to the window. Mom had been with me for only a week and had already ironed all the linens, even though here all anyone usually did was pull tight, fold, and stack vertically. No one expected any more from me at work. However, Finnish customs did not change my mother’s ways.
My eyes scanned the room, saying farewell as I paused in turn at each object my mother had put so much effort into bringing here. I would have to leave everything from the tablecloths embroidered with poppies to the vyshyvanka shirts. I would finally be able to get rid of the pillowcase my mother was shaking in her hand. It was made from the same fabric that we had hoarded during the final days of the ruble in Tallinn and that had traveled with us to Snizhne. After discovering how deficient my store of bedding was, Mom had dragged to Finland sheets made out of it. My financial situation hadn’t allowed me to object. Mom dropped the dirty laundry into the basket and stopped next to me, smelling of marigold cream.
“Do you plan to tell me what’s going on? Something’s bothering you.”
Silently I stared at our feet. At my mother’s slippers, her perpetual slippers. Her varicose veins. My bare toes and their chipped nails. I thought of the guest slippers Mom had brought from Ukraine that no one ever used. She still placed them next to my bed regardless of the fact that slippers weren’t a part of Finnish life any more than energy crises or clicking electric heaters were, and I’d told her that I intended to live like the locals. I no longer needed to worry about whether the war in Ukraine would affect the price of heating gas—changes like these were mentioned on my Good Things List, my now utterly useless list. This spring would not be the spring of my life. This spring would not be anything. I could just as well roll up in my blanket in bed and lie there until you came and put a bullet in my forehead.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Mom said.
Shaking her hand off, I went to lean on the headboard with both hands and squeezed it to keep myself from closing the curtains. It was a normal Tuesday morning, and I was supposed to let the light in, but it made me feel like a target even if no one could peek through a sixth-story window. I didn’t understand why I was still home. One of the families I cleaned for was on vacation. I could get the keys from the cleaning company without anyone noticing. Why hadn’t I sent Mom there or back to my aunt’s house? How could I get her out of here? What could I invent so she wouldn’t be afraid for me?
“Isn’t Auntie missing you yet?”
“In the country?” Mom asked in confusion.
I watched as her gaze swept over my pathetic wardrobe and rejected the possibility of a lover who might want a Ukrainian bride but not her relatives. She remembered what I looked like when I had someone: being with you had made me change my sheets all the time. I never had overnight guests anymore, and I slept in the same linens for weeks. I looked like a woman who would never have a man again. No man would pay for my company, and my bed stood in empty mockery. I would never have a real home. I would always be on the run.
“Auntie is getting old,” I said. “How is she getting along out in the country on her own?”
“Boris helps.”
“Boris? He’s a grown man who doesn’t know how to read!”
“Boris is reading fine now,” my mother said. “And he’s getting better all the time. What’s going on with you?”
My mother looked hurt. If she got angry, I was ready to leave and slam the door behind me. I glanced at the clock. Soon Daria would wake up and start to wonder what to do with her information about my whereabouts. Or maybe she already knew what she would do and was savoring the idea like breakfast in bed. I had to get Mom and Olezhko to safety. I would push them away by force if necessary.
“How do you think Auntie will handle everything? The spring planting, the aster beds, the tomato seedlings? Is the outhouse roof still leaking? And what about the greenhouse?”
“Boris will help, and so will Ivan if need be.”
“Ivan keeps his brother busy with his own businesses. What on earth were you thinking coming here at this time of year? Auntie isn’t getting any younger.”
I found myself shouting these last words. My mother crossed herself. She waited for me to continue, but I didn’t.
“Olenka, my plane tickets were the cheapest I could get,” she said in a conciliatory tone and reminded me how expensive it would be to change them.
“I’ll arrange everything,” I said.
“Isn’t it another week until your payday? Are you in trouble?” she asked. “If you need money, I can ask Ivan for an advance. He pays us well for the poppies.”
“Didn’t we already talk about this? Weren’t you just worrying that Ivan isn’t content with compote anymore? Weren’t you complaining that Boris has been practicing milking poppy pods? That the compote cook is becoming a heroin chemist? Why do you think Ivan was so enthusiastic about getting Boris his own bank account? Don’t you understand anything?”
Mom stared at her hands in her lap. I had already guessed that Ivan was moving up in his career. Mom just hadn’t wanted to worry me, limiting herself to vague mutterings about Ivan considering development opportunities for his business. Compote was the cheapest opiate product available, only good enough for the poorest and most desperate. If compote was sugar wine, real heroin was cognac, and that scene would bring with it completely new dangers.
“Why the hell are you still here?” I shouted. “Didn’t you say yourself that drug raids had increased since the revolution? Didn’t you say you knew about an eighty-year-old babushka who was just arrested? What will Boris do without you? He needs more support than I do. I’ll get you the money for your ticket!”
My own voice startled me. I had just promised something I wasn’t sure I could follow through on. Numerous ways of making money raced through my mind, but I wasn’t capable of any of them anymore. Why hadn’t I taken other opportunities? Why hadn’t I saved more diligently? Why had I quarreled with my coworker who had been bringing me medications from Russia practically for free? Before our falling-out, she had suggested that I join her in receiving packages for Russians from abroad and taking them to St. Petersburg. The unreliability of the Russian postal system would have provided a way for me to make extra money, but I’d rejected it because I couldn’t contemplate getting a visa from the Russian embassy. She probably had other ideas, though. I was weak, stupid, and frightened, and that’s why I was broke.
“For God’s sake, tell me what’s going on,” my mother said.
Invoking Boris clearly wasn’t enough. Neither was pointing out that my aunt would have to do all the spring jobs on her own. I had to raise the stakes. My chest pounded. I couldn’t think of anything else. Or, I could. Still, I didn’t want to say it aloud. But I had to. I pressed my fingernails into my palms.
“You could take Olezhko home.”
My mother’s sigh sounded like a balloon emptying. The pet name had slipped out by accident. My mother didn’t like that I called Oleh Olezhko. It made her doubt my sanity, and I felt that instantly.
“So, this strange behavior is just because of Oleh, not something else?”
“Haven’t you been waiting for when I’d be ready for you to take Oleh with you?” I’d refused the first time she’d suggested it.
“I can’t leave you alone in this state.”
“You have to leave before I change my mind.”
My mother rose from the bed and walked toward me, but I retreated. Her compassion was disturbing my concentration. I went to the wardrobe and pulled her empty roller bag off the top shelf. I had to get Mom and Oleh on a plane. I was on the verge of telling her I was sorry, but I didn’t want her hand stroking my cheek, so I kept quiet. I had to stay functional. Having my mother in my home was a mistake, and Olezhko was a mistake. Mistakes were wounds. Wounds bleed and leave a trail, and trails can be tracked. If you can be tracked, you will be caught, always.
“Oleh is dead,” Mom said. “Nothing will bring him back.”
The urn was on the bedside table. Mom picked it up and brought it to me. She ordered me to look at it. I couldn’t, not today, not now.
“I’m not leaving until I’m sure that you won’t deteriorate again. Then I will. Then I’ll take Oleh home and hold a proper funeral. Do you still hear him crying?”