“Bad luck for you; this is not just a lousy foster-home; it’s the worst I’ve ever lived in. Everyone here is a poor cripple with a scary diagnosis,” stated one of the guys, a sturdy fellow nicknamed Seamstress, with a long, ugly, sewn-up scar under his right eye. I couldn’t get rid of one thought which occupied my mind even under the influence: what piggish nicknames everybody had in that place. They put more dishonor on to the already burdened than on to anyone else. Good-looking but furious principal, stupid caregivers, repulsive chow — all we are given and all we have. I must say that the teachers are quite OK, but they don’t give a damn about anything. They come, chatter their lessons and buzz off. It is not so bad in our building, almost everybody can walk, but the neighboring building is a total nightmare; there the bed-ridden fellows lie; the stench of death is there.”
“And God be with them,” Godly Girl put in a word.
“But it doesn’t mean that people began to talk more,” Sprinter interrupted her public confession and asked us: “Have you got parents or are you from a children’s home?”
“Have got parents,” I answered through a drunken haze.
“So why did they put you in here?”
“Whoever would want to have them by their side?” the poet grinned.
“So, you’re from a children’s home,” Sprinter cheered up, solving the puzzle and then tried to create the suitable scenario for herself. “The right girls in the right place. Seamstress, pour another round.”
It sometimes feels like you and I are at the movie theater, sitting next to each other and watching the same movie. People say something, argue incessantly, even fight, but it is all somewhere else, somewhere far away, on the other side of the screen, and we are just passive onlookers unable to affect the course of events.
At ten we heard a loud announcement – bedtime, and the lights in the rooms were turned off. The boys unwillingly got up, promptly said goodnight and left the room, taking the remains of the alcohol with them.
I cried the entire first night, stuffing a corner of the pillow into my mouth so that nobody could hear me. I was miserable, to say the least. That was the day I really felt like a creep for the first time.
“It is not worth worrying about something you can’t change,” you said after I had calmed down. “Even the worst things go away sooner or later.”
I recalled your advice whenever I felt down and began to believe that one day our suffering would come to an end.
3. INJUSTICE AS A STANDARD OF LIVING_
The reveille announcement was accompanied by the same lively buzzer as bedtime. A sharp arrow of the round clock hit seven. Someone from personnel turned on the radio. The vigorous voice of an announcer confirmed the precise time and started speaking cheerfully, awakening our vast country, and meanwhile emphasizing how many happy moments there had been in the past and how many there still were ahead of us. Then he reluctantly finished broadcasting and gave way to a program of morning exercises. I felt ashamed, awkward, offended because I suddenly realized that waking up at eight in the boarding school, we were left behind by the whole country. While I was reflecting on this, nurses pushed a wheelchair to the neighboring bed where Half-Jane was lying. She humbly smiled at them and drove away as if in time with the music. Meanwhile, Marfa Ilyinichna flitted into the room and squalled noisily but with a bit of insecurity:
“All rise! To the bathroom, hurry up, then morning-exercises. And don’t make me say it twice!”
Because I was only half awake, we clumsily dragged ourselves to the washbasins where in no time at all we had been turned into an object for everyone’s curiosity. Well, indeed we are champions at that.
“Oh, my sin, I thought that you were a delusion yesterday,” Godly Girl’s flat face with its snub nose and hollow cheeks shined in a smile. “Got any tooth powder?”
“Yes,” we nodded and shared the powder with her.
“I hate mornings! These habitual, standard, useless exercises Nag forces us to do,” she said through the bubbling tooth powder in her mouth. “And the procedures… anyway, God be with them, we cannot avoid them since they are compulsory.”
“I hate the procedures, too. Why the devil do they have these procedures if they are of no damn use?” the second neighbor said, meanwhile popping pimples on her face with trembling hands. “I was born crooked and I am gonna die that way. Why are they giving me these damn shots and making me undergo these sessions like a convict sentenced to hard labor? God Damn it!”
“Stop saying “damn it.” Godly Girl uttered, spitting out tooth powder into the shabby sink. Further conversation made no sense, and everyone went about his or her own business.
The most trivial visit to the lavatory turned into an unbearable torture; it was unreal to get used to the stench eating into our nostrils like ammonia spirit. Since we were given the status of “newcomers”, we were the last in the line, and for nearly a quarter of an hour were inhaling the aromas of earlier excrement. Of course, as a result, we were late for the morning exercises. At first we cautiously covered several flights of stairs, and then trudged through the long corridor like a mad turtle – two mad turtles – in an effort to join the rest as soon as possible. Approaching the gym, we heard incessant whistling sounds – furious, commanding, hysterical – constantly interrupted by sharp bawls of Nag’s voice.
“Here, listen to my command. Start marching in line. Move it, move it, loonies! Keep the distance. No leaning on each other, no flocking, lengthen your stride. Hey, I said, lengthen your stride, whimpers! Stand still… One… Two! Hands up, breathe in, hands down, breathe out. Breathe! Breathe with your chest. Your chest, slackers! And now let’s proceed to squats. And down, and up, and down, and up. Come on, get down, quick! I said get down, not bend.”
A strange atmosphere reigned in the gym. An ordinary, average-looking woman sat solemnly on a high chair in the center of the premise. She had a magic whistle hanging on her neck that seemed to live a life of its own. A bunch of kids gathered around her. Among them we saw our drinking companions from yesterday now turned into obedient puppets by the worn-out whistle. Some of them did exercises rather easily: some guys sluggishly bent their bodies, trying to squat, others inclined their heads intensely and awkwardly bent their knees, but the majority made movements I won’t even begin to describe. It resembled hysterics rather than morning exercises: children squirmed, coiled, kinked and jittered as if they were mocking each other in a grotesque play. The sight could really get on your nerves. Those exercises introduced us to the entire range of musculoskeletal disorders.
“Double march! Go, go!” Nag and her whistle ordered. “Step forward, don’t hobble. I wish you were out of my sight, Quasimodos.”
She could have been the perfect radio announcer. I thought she could have woken the dead. Finally, Agafia Petrovna (that was this lovely woman’s name) noticed us.
“Are you waiting for a special invitation?”
She didn’t even turn an eyelash when she saw us; she was so deeply involved in the exercises.
“Fall in, quickly! I’m counting up to two: One… Two.”
Girls from our room laughed in unison. Without further delay, we joined the rank and file.
“Quicken your pace. Hurry up, move it!” she encouraged the trainees with a fighting spirit until her sight fell on one poor guy: “Hey, you, cack-handed skinny-minnie, why are you poking your claws in everybody’s snout? Hey, I’m talking to you. Be sure, I’m gonna remember your ugly face and teach you a lesson. Ok, turn around and march in the opposite direction. Quicker, raise your knees and no shirking, badger-legged, I said, no simulating. Stand still. One…Two!” What a brisk lady, real sportswoman and member of the ‘Komsomol’ (Young Communist League).