To Sing Frogs Chapter 16a

Amy and me in front of shrine. Camp Volna building behind

Chapter 16

Trust Us

 

For Amy it was Kirrill. For me, leaving Katya would tear out my heart. Of course Kirrill had a cold. He was in a hospital with a doctor who now had medicine. Kirrill would be fine. Katya was old enough to know more about life. Sure, people had told her she would have a new mom and dad who would be coming back for her. We had also said as much. We weren’t the first parents that were supposed to take care of Katya.

This wasn’t the first time either, for people in government service to tell the little girl that everything would be alright. Russian orphans were accustomed to lies. It wasn’t okay when they took Katya from a screaming mother in a filthy collapsing one-room concrete house. It wasn’t okay when they pulled her away from Luba—to take her to another orphanage—simply because she had turned four and a half. The Russian word “Kharashoh” didn’t really mean “good, okay, or alright,” as the translation dictionaries indicated. The meaning was more along the lines of, “don’t cry, eventually you will forget the pain, or at least you’ll cover it up inside.”

No matter what anyone told Katya, odds were she would be skeptical. I’m a cynic and I don’t have near the justification Russian orphans do. What could I tell her that would help? If words are cheap then promises to Russian orphans are pig-slop.

I was the first one out of the car at Camp Volna Saturday morning. We only had a few hours before we needed to head to the airport for our departure flight.

Stepping away from the parking area, I crunched through an upper crust of white and walked on the grounds in snow halfway up to my knees. Remnants from heavy fog the night before were displayed in an infinite number of stalactites and stalagmites. They covered each limb and twig from every tree in a cloak of white. It looked like a crystal forest. The blue sky above was clear enough to make the cold seem even more frigid. I don’t know why I walked away from the others. I didn’t know where I was going. I wasn’t going far, or for long. I just wasn’t ready to face my future daughter yet. I took out the camera and shot a few pictures, acting like I was preserving the memory for posterity rather than buying time. That only worked for a couple of minutes. I don’t know when I stopped clicking the button on the camera. I don’t know how long I had been staring at the white stucco building and icy metal doors when I heard snow crunching behind me.

“You okay?” Amy asked as she slipped her arms around me.

“Kharashoh,” I replied.

She recognized the Russian word. It had been relentlessly shoveled onto orphans since we first arrived. No. Not since we arrived but from time immemorial. Amy missed what the word didn’t mean. “Good. I’m glad. Are you ready to go see Katya?”

“Sure. Let’s go have a nice visit before we abandon her.” I pulled away and headed for the frozen doors.

 

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