“You still there, Holly?”
“Yes,” Holly said. She turned her palms down so that she couldn’t see if they were bleeding.
“Well, before we get cut off, Patty wants to say hi to you, and I’d like to say Merry Christmas to my Tatty, okay?”
“Okay,” Holly said.
“Okay, hold on then, Holly. Come here, Patsy Baby. Auntie Holly wants to say hi.”
From the other side of town, but so close (so close it seemed!) to Holly’s ear, the little girl’s voice was high and light and sweet, sounding like the rim of a glass ringing at the flick of a fingernail.
“Hi?”
“Patty, sweetie,” Holly said. “Did Santa bring you any presents.”
“What?”
“I asked if Santa brought you any presents.”
“What?”
“Can you hear me, Patty?”
“What?”
After that there was no sound at all for a few seconds except for the little girl’s breathing. She still sounded so close that Holly could even hear her swallow. Then Patty whispered something, and then perhaps she held the telephone to her chest because Holly could hear her healthy little-girl heart beating loudly in her ear. It was as if Holly herself had put her ear to Patty’s tiny chest.
How small her heart must be!
You could probably fit it in the palm of your hand—and still the sound of it managed to fly through the air for twenty miles between their houses. Please, Holly thought, please let it be that Santa brought her gifts, and that Thuy and Pearl can keep Patty believing in Santa for many years to come. What a holy, simple pleasure.
“Holly?”
It was Thuy again.
“Is everything okay there? Patty said she can’t understand you. She said you’re not speaking English. Uh, you are speaking English aren’t you, hon?”
“I have to speak English,” Holly said. “I only know a few words of Russian. I tried to learn more. I’m no good with languages.”
Thuy laughed. She said, “Well, something’s wrong with the phone then. Let me talk to my Tatty before it goes completely dead, okay? We’ll try later, and we’ll get over there tomorrow if we can shovel ourselves out of here.”
“Hang on,” Holly said.
She held the iPhone to her own chest as she tiptoed across the glass-strewn living room to her daughter’s bedroom door. She touched the doorknob, carefully at first, thinking it might somehow burn her hand the way the iPhone had blistered Tatiana’s fingertips. But the doorknob was cold. She turned it and pushed against the door, thinking that she would hit the obstruction of the hook and eye. But she didn’t. The door was unlocked. It’s unlocked, Mom. I never lock the door!
“Tatty?” Holly said to her daughter’s naked back. Both of Tatiana’s arms were inside the sleeves of Gin’s red velvet dress, as if she’d tried to slip it over her head but it had been too difficult, as if her arms were too stiff. As if she were as unbendable as a Barbie doll. Her nightgown lay on the floor, and her black ballet slippers were tucked under her nightstand.
“Tatty?”
Holly knelt down beside Tatiana’s bed, but she was careful not to touch her daughter, who looked so naked, so vulnerable, so like a child, abandoned. Holly would never want to scare her, or to wake her, or to hurt her. There had been so many times since she and Eric had brought Tatiana home from the Pokrovka Orphanage #2 that Holly had thought to herself, Thank God I didn’t bring her into this world myself. She’d thought, really, that it would have been a kind of sin to snatch a soul out of whatever other world there might be out there, to bring her into this one. Surely, she thought, wherever babies resided before they were born, it was more peaceful, less dangerous, than here. Surely the souls of the unborn and the dead were never again tucked into these bodies—so soft! so exposed! so defenseless!—and left to fend for themselves. What could possibly be worse than this? Than to place a soul as exquisite as Tatiana’s into the body of a dying animal?
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.