She had medical training but couldn’t distinguish scarlet fever from hives. Or she didn’t wish to distinguish them. I suspected that already. Aminat was not an easy child to deal with at home, and probably not here either.
“Take her to your district clinic,” she said.
“You’re going to hear from us,” I said as we left.
I carried Aminat’s backpack. The paperwork with the doctor’s assessment that the Kalganova child was suffering from a highly infectious disease that threatened her life, and that she must be quarantined, I ripped into pieces and let flutter off between the pines.
Aminat held my hand and skipped through the snow. Her smile spread across her entire face and she recounted her three weeks in the sanatorium.
It was grim. She had to sleep in a room with fifty other children. For the first few days she had been unable to eat from the metal dishes because they made such a shrill noise when the spoon scraped across them. Before bed, all the children had to wash their feet together. The towels were always folded a certain way: longwise, longwise again, longwise one more time and then crossways. One of the staff members constantly told horror stories. Almost every morning Aminat woke up in a strange bed next to another child and didn’t know how she’d gotten there. She never, ever wanted to hear stories again. They got shots every day with needles so long they could have gone all the way through their arms and out the other side. Any children who wanted to go to the bathroom at night had to use a chamber pot that was emptied only the next morning. Aminat had just yesterday made her first friend, a girl who had received a package of candies from her parents and shared them all with Aminat. In the middle of the night she had begun to feel itchy, and in the morning Aminat had been asked whether she had ever had scarlet fever. That was the happiest moment of the entire three weeks for her because I soon came and picked her up.
We reached the forgotten little train station and sat down on a bench. The train that would take me and my little girl out of the forest and back home wouldn’t arrive for an hour. The sun peeked over the tops of the trees and a few anemic rays brushed our cheeks. We held our faces up to the sky.
“Aminat, be quiet,” I begged. I was getting a headache from all her jabber. I’d forgotten over these weeks just how much she talked.
“We had buckwheat porridge almost every night,” Aminat continued.
“Should I tell you a story instead?” I interrupted.
“No,” she cried.
I have rarely seen her as happy as she was on that day. But as far as stories went, it was clear: she wanted nothing more to do with them.
Traitors everywhere
Two days later the bumps were gone. But I didn’t take her back to the sanatorium. She looked healthy. At every meal I gave her a piece of bread and a clove of garlic and showed her how she should rub the garlic on the bread crust. Aminat set the bread aside and ate the garlic clove whole. I was sure she would not get sick anymore: there were lots of vitamins in garlic. I sent her back to kindergarten. One evening three days later I arrived to pick her up only to learn Aminat had already been picked up.
I was barely able to keep myself from punching the teacher who told me. I wanted to punch her right in the chest — right on the nametag pinned to her white smock. The smock was new and so was the teacher. I’d never seen her stupid face there before. She was very young and must have just finished her training and certification. You could see she hadn’t learned much from the pedagogical training. I had worked at a teacher’s college myself and knew how they worked. I knew the type of girls who came through those schools. They all thought of themselves as fond of children but were for the most part just lazy, interested only in boys. And they had stupid faces.
“Her mommy already came,” lisped the new kindergarten teacher chirpily.
I sat down on a low bench where the children sat to tie their shoes.
“What?” I hissed.
“Her mommy picked Anja up. Anja was so happy that today she wasn’t the last one picked up.”
I closed my eyes to collect myself.
“Her mommy is mentally handicapped,” I said calmly. “Her mother is an evil psychopath. Are you not aware that you’re not even to let her mother set foot on the premises?”
The idiot straightened a garland hung from the doorframe, a decoration for the national holidays celebrating the Soviet Army.
“No, I don’t know anything about that,” she said placidly. “I wasn’t given any instructions like that.”
I left without another word. Bitterly I realized that she was right. The protective wall I had erected around Aminat was built of paper, and it was just a matter of time before it collapsed. I had to admit to myself that I’d been too naïve, too goodhearted. At the end of the day this was fair punishment.
Except that Aminat didn’t deserve it.
I went home. Kalganow was already there. He was eating some of the meatballs I’d made the night before and left in a dish in the refrigerator. They were stone cold but heating them up would obviously have been too much for his meager abilities.
“SULFIA!” I shrieked, running to the phone.
I dialed the number of her dormitory.
“Sulfia Kalganova,” I shouted into the phone. “She kidnapped a small child.”
I could hear jovial voices in the background. They were celebrating.
“Lady,” said a voice, “Sulfia Kalganova hasn’t lived here for ages.”
I hung up the phone and staggered back into the kitchen. My husband had folded his hands across his stomach and sat staring out the window.
“When was the last time you saw Sulfia?” I cried.
He gasped with surprise.
“Two weeks ago, I think,” he mumbled. “When she, um, how should I put it — when she got married.”
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t count on anyone: traitors were coming out of the woodwork. Now even Kalganow, that amoeba, that spineless creature, that venom-less jellyfish, had dared to deceive me. And once again I’d been so unsuspecting.
Now it came out: he had secrets. He had gone to see our daughter Sulfia and told me only now when there was no other choice. You simply couldn’t count on anyone in this world.
“Why didn’t you tell me, you animal?”
“Because she asked me not to,” he mumbled. “Because she’s afraid of you.”
“Afraid? Of me? Who could possibly be afraid of me? Nobody should ever be afraid of me. I only want what’s best. Put those plates in the sink, you tyrant.”
An hour later we left our apartment together. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to see everything. I wanted Aminat back. I wanted to make sure nothing bad had happened to her.
Even my husband could understand that. After I explained everything to him, he agreed and took me to see the restaurant where Sulfia had held her wedding reception. Astonishingly, it wasn’t a bad restaurant. Then we took the bus eleven more stops so he could show me the street where she lived now.
He knew everything! The only thing he didn’t have was a telephone number, he said. They didn’t have a phone line yet; it was a new building.
Sulfia’s husband, Kalganow explained, was a former patient of hers. He had been hit by a car and was patched back together in her ward. She had nursed him back to health. On the day he was released, he asked her to marry him. His name was Sergej.
“Sergej,” I snorted disdainfully, and, dragging my Kalganow behind me, started down the street between the endless rows of newly constructed nine-story apartment buildings.
“Not so fast, Rosie,” he begged.
“Aren’t you at least sure which street she lives on, you tarantula?”
He squinted. It was snowing, and snowflakes clung to the black eyelashes I had so loved twenty-five years ago.