“Back then, we lived rough. Ourbabushka, God bless her, did what she could. After our mother passed away, she and Katya were the ones who raised us. Kostya was just a baby when she died. I was just a three-year-old toddler back then too, so I don’t remember much about our mother. I only remember Katya. How she changed Kostya’s dirty cloth diapers, while our grandmother washed them on a grey washboard and sang to us. I remember her teaching me the alphabet and how to say my prayers at night. I remember how Sasha and Misha were always out of the house during the day, trying to steal a loaf of bread or anything to fill our usually empty fridge. But every time they came home, they would slip on these old, ripped socks over their hands—ones Katya had fashioned into the strangest little puppets—and put on a show for us every night, just so Kostya and I had something to laugh about,” I reminisce, tracing a finger along a faded picture of us all together in our one-bedroom apartment in the slums of Moscow.
“Times were bad back then, but… truthfully, I didn’t really mind going to bed hungry. Or that we all had to sleep on the floor so our aging grandmother could have the only single bed in the house. Katya would lie beside Kostya and me, telling ghoststories to lull us to sleep, while Misha and Sasha kept us awake with all the ridiculous spooky noises they made.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” she interrupts, mistaking the softness in my voice for suffering, misreading it as pain instead of the warmth that comes with remembering the days when we had nothing to our name.
“I’m not.” I shake my head. “When you grow up like that, it breeds a hunger inside of you that doesn’t go away with food alone. You learn how to hustle. How to take disappointments and let them fall off your shoulders. And it teaches you to hold on to the good moments, too. How nothing should be taken for granted. How to appreciate those who love you,” I say, pointing at a picture of a swaddled Kostya in my arms while Katya tries to give me a haircut.
“Life was simple then, but it was good. It was really good.” I swallow hard, arriving at that fork in the road where destiny veered left, and nothing was ever the same again. “Like you, Katya was beautiful, with an inner light that could brighten any room. It was contagious. Everyone wanted to bask in it. How could they not? So when she got this really fancy job at a burlesque club waiting tables, we thought our luck had finally changed for the better. How wrong we were.”
“Is that… where she met my father?”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from cursing.
“That man wasnotyour father. Nothing of him runs through you. I can guarantee that.”
“Was he…” she begins to stammer. “What did he actually… I know he killed her, but…”
I know exactly what she’s trying to ask me. What nightmares Katya had to endure because of that fucker, Vasily. I refuse to tell her the truth. She doesn’t need to carry that nightmare of a life on her shoulders. So I decide to give her the soft version ofKatya’s hell, hoping it’s enough to quench her curiosity of that time in her mother’s life.
“At the time,” I begin slowly, “everyone in our neighborhood was jealous of us. There was Katya, thePakhan’s new mistress. But behind closed doors, my sister was anything but a willing participant.” Kira listens, wide-eyed, tense. “He hunted Katya,” I continue, weighing each word before speaking so as not to scar her. “Hunted her even after she told him, again and again, that she didn’t want him. That she had no intention of being anyone’s mistress, especially not to a man she didn’t love. But even as she refused him, Katya always measured her words carefully, because if she ever told him what she truly felt, he would not only have killed her but all of us too.”
Silence settles between us, and I turn the page of the album, my jaw tight.
What I don’t tell my darling niece is how Vasily’s unwanted touches made her mother sick to her stomach. He repulsed her. She hated everything about Vasily. Hated him with every breath she had. But when he threatened her job and our lives, Katya couldn’t deny him any longer. So he stole her innocence, robbed her of her youth, and paraded her around like a prize. This is what I learned from eavesdropping on those quiet, early-morning conversations she had with Misha at the kitchen table while the house was still asleep. That was the only time in the day that they thought it was safe to share their troubles with each other. I can only imagine the worst parts she kept to herself, afraid my brother would do something reckless, like go after the man who tormented her day and night, and fearing what would happen to Misha if he even dared come within an inch of thePakhan.
“Vasily is no more,” I say at last. “And we try not to say his name in this house. Neither Misha nor Elena can tolerate it.”
“I understand,” she nods softly. “I promise not to ask questions.”
“No, sweet girl. Ask your questions. Ask all of them. You’re entitled to the truth just as much as any of us. Ask anything, and if I can answer it, I will.”
“Just as long as I don’t say his name?”
“Yes. Is that okay?”
She nods, her tense shoulders relaxing a little.
We continue flipping through the small family album, as I retell stories of a time when death and blood didn’t color our days. Memories rise one after another, tiny fragments resurfacing as if I lived them just yesterday.
It’s amazing how the brain works. A sight, a smell, a place… sometimes all it takes is a flicker, and everything comes rushing back.
“Now it’s your turn,” I say, turning to her with a faint smile. “I want to learn all about my favoriteplemyannitsa.”
“Aren’t I your only niece?” she laughs, proud to at least have memorized that word. “Besides, I thought you knew everything about me already. After all, you were the one who found me, right?”
“True, but I only got the CliffsNotes version. I want to learn everything about the life you lived in full detail.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about the orphanage. Did the nuns treat you alright? Were they mean to you in any way?” I ask, fearing the worst and already wondering if killing a nun or two is frowned upon.
“They were wonderful. Especially Sister Agnes and Mother Superior. I’m not sure what I would have become if it weren’t for them. Especially Sister Margaretta. She was my saving grace.” Kira lights up, going on a tangent about all the qualities her Mother Superior has.
I listen to every word, taking in the love in her voice as she speaks about the nuns and her time at the orphanage. And I especially don’t miss how loving she sounds when she talks about her little brother, Darius. Relief hits me in waves that Kira was never left to roam the earth alone. She always had love around her. And now she has Luciano.
“Tell me about your boyfriend,” I interject, feeling oddly protective of my niece’s heart.
“Lucky? He is… well… everything,” she says, stars in her eyes.
