I crawled toward it, dragging myself across the cold tiles.
The scarf. The burgundy cotton scarf she loved to play with while drinking her milk. The one that helped her sleep as she suckled at my breast. I gripped the soft cloth and pressed it into my face, trying to find her in the fabric.
I howled into it.
Uncontrollable sobs for an inconsolable moment. The sound of a woman who had survived everything and had not been able to survive this.
My worst fear.
Him.
His cruelty.
His hatred.
They would be on their way to Russia if not already there. I thought of her on a plane without me. Without my smell. Without the rhythm of my heartbeat that she had fallen asleep to every night of her life.
You can go. She is mine.
The memory of his words landed like a fist.
I couldn’t lose another child. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t.
But I held her scarf and curled up on the floor and I sobbed until there was nothing left.
He took my baby.
The ray of sparkling light in my life. The small warm weight of her against my chest. The fist that gripped my finger in the dark. The gurgles and the hiccups and the milk-drunk eyes drooping like a drunken old man’s.
Gone.
In the evening light the apartment held every memory of her—the floor seat, the toys, the blanket folded at the end of the bed, the freezer still holding the remaining milk she would never drink here. I shut my eyes and her smiling face appeared, clear and immediate, the way she looked at me when I walked into the room as though I was the only fixed point in her entire world.
No.
The tears began again.
My baby.
My Runa.
Gone.
??????
When I boarded the plane I didn’t make eye contact. I shuffled along with people. Stopped, waited and shuffled again until I reached my seat. My pockets were stuffed with tissues—some dry, most wet. I could feel people staring. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
These people meant nothing to me.
Only Runa—
I reached for a tissue and turned to the window. Someone settled into the seat beside me. I rested my head against the thick plastic and stared at nothing.
Every second of this journey would be wrought with dread.
You can go. She is mine.
He was releasing me. As though I were something that could be released from loving my child. As though a mother could simply be dismissed from the baby she had carried for nine months. Birthed alone in a foreign city. Lived for. Built an entire life around.
