I was happy about the many demanding tasks that fell to me because it gave me less time to spend worrying. With her red cheeks, Aminat looked resilient, but even resilient children sometimes keeled over dead with no warning or developed full-blown tuberculosis. I couldn’t sleep at night. I chased images of a child-size coffin from my head and prayed ardently. I reminded God how good I had always been to Sulfia. Now I was even prepared to reconcile with her, to give her a chance to put all the ill will behind, but only if Aminat grew healthy again. I lay with my head on my pillow and whispered to myself.
Kalganow turned his back to me during those nights and clapped his hands over his ears. He didn’t like it when I talked to God. He didn’t believe in God and found it embarrassing that I did. Most of all he didn’t want anyone else to find out I believed in God and even talked to him. There was nobody here in our bed except the two of us, I assured him. Or rather, the two of us and God.
Kalganow was hypersensitive through this entire period. A phrase like “thank God” would make him cringe. Even worse was when Aminat would use the word “tykryk” instead of “alley” or call Kalganow “Babaj” instead of “Papa.” He would scold me for smuggling these words into the house and denying Aminat the opportunity to grow up like a normal Soviet child. But I was innocent, as these words certainly never came out of my mouth in Aminat’s presence. Maybe they were just there in her Tartar blood. Still, I didn’t make an issue of it. Whenever it was possible, I kept my view of things to myself. After all, Kalganow was just a man and had weak nerves.
Aminat’s pediatrician laid the results of all the tests and exams out on her desk. Aminat’s leukocytes, thrombocytes, erythrocytes, antibodies, some sort of suspicious proteins, pigments, and rods were all tallied and recorded, some multiple times because the initial tests had been contaminated or botched. Aminat’s EKG was lying next to her X-rays, to which the patient reacted enthusiastically: “Look, a skeleton!”
I didn’t smack Aminat even though she wrinkled my skirt. I just looked straight at her doctor. This overweight woman with a derelict bird’s nest where most people had hairdos was supposed to give us a verdict now — whether my little girl would live, and if so, under what conditions.
I looked at her. She shook her head. I could feel my hands begin to shake.
Aminat hopped out of my lap and stood next to me. She began to play with my gold earring but I didn’t have the strength left to give her a lesson in good behavior as the doctor finally began to speak.
I listened to her for while. She spoke at length and I stared at her face, which reminded me of a poorly cooked crepe. I understood that Aminat wasn’t going to die. At least not now. That she was even healthy. But possibly not. One never really knew precisely. The results could be interpreted in different ways. Perhaps the swelling of her arms had just been an allergic reaction. Perhaps she had indeed come in contact with the bacteria first identified by Robert Koch. In any event, a sanatorium for children with lung conditions would be just the thing.
I lifted my eyes to the cracks in the white clinic ceiling and thanked God.
Sanatorium for children with lung conditions
I didn’t tell Aminat that she’d be spending three months in a sanatorium for children with lung conditions. Saying too much often hurt as much as it helped. On the prearranged day, I packed Aminat’s underwear and clothes in a backpack and dressed her warmly. The sanatorium was in an old villa in a pine forest — the villa had at one time belonged to the enemy class. We had to take a train two hours north and climb out at a tiny, forgotten station.
It was very cold. Aminat held my hand. We walked for half an hour through the woods before we reached the gates of the sanatorium. I always managed to find the shortest route wherever I went, even when I didn’t know the area. I never got lost, not in the city, not in the forest. I also always knew when and where buses went, and could feel them coming toward a bus stop before they were in sight.
“Why is it so horribly quiet here?” asked Aminat.
“Because,” I said.
I knew these new surroundings must have seemed very unfamiliar to Aminat. She was a city kid born and bred. I’d never taken her to a forest before, just an occasional visit to the park. She’d never seen trees like this, packed so tightly together. For her entire life, the smoking chimneys of factories had decorated the horizon. When she lay in bed, traffic noise lulled her to sleep.
Aminat looked around. Her eyes had narrowed to slits, a sure sign that she did not approve. And she didn’t even know yet that she had to stay here for three months, all by herself, among strangers, without her grandmother.
I opened the gate, climbed a stone staircase to the door, and entered a dark vestibule where children’s jackets hung from a row of hooks. The walls were covered in a faded ladybug print. Something clanged in the distance.
“Let’s go home,” said Aminat adamantly.
I freed my hand from her grip, took her by her collar, and led her down the long hallway to a glass door, behind which children with blank looks on their faces sat around little tables eating from metal dishes — which explained the clanging. I handed over Aminat, her backpack, and a note from her doctor to the first member of the sanatorium staff we ran across.
The woman wore a gray smock that had faded from repeated washings. She had the face of a supervisor. She read the doctor’s note through and said, “Aminat Kalganova? Ah, yes.”
She took my Aminat by the hand and led her away. Aminat went with her obediently, like a good little girl, but kept turning around mid-stride to look back at me. It went much more smoothly than I’d feared. Though I suppose Aminat must have thought that when she returned, I’d be there to take her back home. Oh well.
I waited until the two of them were out of sight and then quickly left. I didn’t manage to get out of hearing range quickly enough, though. Out on the forest path Aminat’s desperate, angry screams reached me.
Three weeks later I got a call informing me that Aminat had contracted scarlet fever and had to be picked up. I took the train to the forest station and followed the path I now knew back to the sanatorium.
Aminat was sitting in a glass cell with a bed and nightstand in it. Here she could be kept away from the other children, explained the director of the sanatorium. She was ready to hold me personally responsible for the outbreak of scarlet fever that would have resulted if Aminat had managed to infect the other kids.
Aminat sat on the bed in a t-shirt and tights and peered through the glass wall at all the people going past her. At first she didn’t recognize me. Her black eyes passed over me and then the director of the sanatorium. Then her eyes returned to me and began to sparkle.
Aminat threw her entire body against the glass pane. I saw her white teeth as her mouth formed a hopeful smile, pressed flat against the wall. The blotches on her face I noticed only later.
We entered the glass cell and Aminat jumped on me, wrapped her arms and legs around me, and squeezed so hard I could barely breathe. I patted her on the back, saying, “There, there.”
I tried to put her down.
“So?” said the director triumphantly.
Without another word the director sat down on the bed, clamped Aminat between her legs, and lifted up her t-shirt.
Suddenly I was looking at countless tiny red bumps that formed constellations and whole galaxies on Aminat’s back. I put on my glasses and bent down. Among the many things I knew was that scarlet fever looked very different from this.
“She’s just had a reaction to something she ate,” I said. “That’s not scarlet fever.”
“Do you have medical training?” asked the director.