Almost as soon as I saved Aminat from the dorm, I took up the fight against her chickenpox. She had big pustules on her face and body where she had scratched the chickenpox sores and caused secondary infections in them. She was basically one single pus-dripping pustule, and she had been such an attractive child.
I treated her sores with a concoction of boiled oak bark, taking it in stride when the compress ruined two entire sets of sheets — the bark left behind brown stains that couldn’t be washed out.
Her sores quickly healed thanks to my treatments, and the bark poultice fell away in flakes and revealed the extent of the damage. I could see some deep pits in her skin left behind by the pustules. It filled me with great sorrow. And it took awhile before I was once again sure she was the best-looking child in the world.
It was important to me that Sulfia not sneak off with her again. So I told the kindergarten principal that Aminat’s mother had sustained brain damage and was no longer allowed to look after Aminat on her own. The principal wanted to see some sort of certification from a doctor. I went to our live-in neighbor Klavdia. She got me papers certifying that as a result of an insect bite, Sulfia had difficulties with routine tasks, adding that anyone who came into contact with her was obligated to offer help. This doctor’s certificate was pure gold: from then on, everyone avoided coming anywhere near her.
She turned up one day and stood with her face pressed against the chain-link fence that surrounded the schoolyard. She watched the children swinging and playing in the sandbox. She never said a word and remained on the outside of the fence, but one of the teachers grabbed Aminat and took her inside. I had guaranteed that response with careful planning — and gladiolas.
When Sulfia called shortly afterward, I told her that if she ever got near Aminat again, she’d better have her things packed and ready because I would make sure she landed in the loony bin. And coming from me, it sounded extremely convincing.
At first Aminat lagged far behind in verbal skills. I had even begun to worry whether she might be slightly retarded. I kept repeating words to her, but she just ignored everything until one day her little mouth opened and out came an entire sentence: “When is stupid grandpa coming home from work?” From then on, she never stopped talking. At all. She talked day and night. And said peculiar things.
I was a good role model for her. She paid attention to the way I spoke, and to the fact that no Tartar words ever slipped out of me. Aminat needed to speak perfectly. She looked Tartar. She didn’t need to sound Tartar as well. I didn’t have any family left, but with Kalganow’s country relatives I’d seen what could happen. First you start saying a few Tartar words, then you forget the Russian equivalents, and the next thing you know you’re illiterate. That wasn’t going to happen to Aminat. She was going to be the best, the prettiest, and the smartest. A Soviet child without any ethnic or regional identity, said Kalganow proudly. In a rare instance of accord, we both wanted the same basic thing for our granddaughter — even if our reasons were different.
Each day after kindergarten I talked to her about how her day had been, correcting her grammar as we spoke and trying to expand her vocabulary.
“Electricity, my dear,” I told her when she tried to stick a nail file in an outlet.
“Communism, my dear,” I said when I managed to get hold of a bunch of bananas for her and let them ripen on the windowsill, giving her just one each day so they’d last for a while.
“Gravity, my dear,” I told her when she fell down yet again. It happened often; Aminat was incredibly clumsy during her first few years. For a long time, she couldn’t distinguish between left and right or stand on one leg. Spinning gracefully in a circle, like other little girls, was beyond her capabilities.
I took her to ballet lessons at the Center for Youth and Culture. They didn’t want to admit her at first. Until I let slip where my husband worked. Aminat got a spot.
We got a lot from ballet. Aminat slowly learned to straighten out her pigeon-toed walk. She fell down less frequently. When she sat down, she no longer automatically hunched her shoulders. Less and less often did I have to drill my finger into her back between her shoulder blades to make her sit upright.
A year went by, followed by another.
Aminat was going to be five and we decided to celebrate her birthday.
I spared no time or effort, and the resultant Napoleon cake would have been suitable for a state dinner. I had a way with puff pastry, as with so many other things. After four hours I had ten crispy cake layers that I slathered with custard and stacked into a marvelous structure every bit as light and sweet as I imagined Aminat’s future life would be.
My husband got hold of some balloons and blew them up with puffed cheeks and eyes reddened from the exertion.
We didn’t invite any children. We had just bought new furniture imported from Yugoslavia. We invited two of my husband’s colleagues, Klavdia, and my cousin Rafaella. I unplugged the phone so the constant ringing wouldn’t disturb us. I put Aminat in a frilly pink dress I had made myself, and combed her black curls.
She played with the balloons, hummed, and laughed like the happiest child on earth. She was given coloring books and felt-tip pens, tights, oranges, and a toy doctor’s kit. She opened the kit up immediately and began to sort through the instruments. Watching her warmed my heart. And I could tell as soon as I saw her playing that my granddaughter was going to be a doctor one day, and quite a doctor at that.
I laughed joyfully at this thought. A doctor was something missing in the family. Since Kalganow had become chairman of the union he’d finally become useful. In a pinch, Sulfia, when she still lived with us at least, could administer shots. But having a real doctor in the house was important, especially as you got older. It was a respectable profession, and it would win me the appreciation of all my neighbors and colleagues, since, like me, they would all get sick and need shots, doctor’s notes, and medicines.
“Stethoscope, my dear,” I said, immediately expanding Aminat’s vocabulary. “Intravenous drip, my dear. Tu-ber-cu-lo-sis.”
I shouldn’t have mentioned tuberculosis.
Mantoux tests were administered at Aminat’s kindergarten. The children received shots on their forearms, and green dye was used to highlight the skin around the injection site. If the child had been exposed to TB, the injection site would get infected and swell. If, on the other hand, there was no reaction, everything was fine.
In Aminat’s case, the swelling didn’t just exceed the green line drawn around the injection site. Her entire forearm swelled up and looked like a big red pillow. Right in the middle was the now misshapen spot of green dye. When I saw this, I grabbed Aminat, wiped her nose, quickly ironed her striped pants so she looked presentable, and ran with her to the local clinic.
The doctor in charge of our district looked at Aminat’s arm as I shoved it in front of her face and shook her head. She’d never seen anything like it, she said, not in her whole life. It could be helpful to repeat the test on the other arm. Aminat received a second shot.
By the next morning the swelling had reached her shoulders. The pediatrician shook her head disapprovingly and pulled out a stack of forms. Aminat would have to provide urine and feces samples, as well as have blood drawn and X-rays taken.
I was busy for the next few weeks. I collected Aminat’s excretions at the prescribed times, took the full glass jars to the lab and passed them through an oval window, washed Aminat’s neck, and took her in for her examinations. The doctors did their honorable work, and I did mine. I became a master urine sample collector. It sounds easier than it actually was.