To Sing Frogs Chapter 22c

Katya with one of the orphanage workers, just before she left, forever.

“Please let them come in,” Amy replied to the director’s comments about the teenaged girls outside the office door. My wife knew that everyone needed a chance to say goodbye.

The three best friends were all in their early teens. As they entered the office it was evident they could not have been more different from each other.

Marina was blonde with shoulder-length hair. It was dyed bright orange—up to her ears—in a minor display of rebellion against the system keeping her bound. The girl seemed to be making a statement that she was perfectly capable of running her own life. She would take on the world. It was such a typical teenaged attitude and I shuddered as I viewed the future. Marina would crash. Most teenagers do. When the day came that she did hit the wall, no airbag of family would deploy.

Svieta was a beauty queen. Her medium blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and dark eyebrows on a perfectly proportioned oval face crowned her blue eyes. She looked like a girl one of my sons should be proudly taking to a dance. Instead, organizations that immediately put sixteen-year-old orphan girls to work—on the streets—would pay a provider well to secure her.

The other girl was tough. Her dark, short hair was covered with a tightly tied navy-blue and white bandana. Her refusal to smile for a photograph testified to the fact she had learned to trust no one. That “detriment” may have made her a survivor. Of course there is no way to know. Later, when I asked Katya, she couldn’t remember the name of the third girl. Good for Katya. I only wish I couldn’t remember them. It’s bearable when those who have been betrayed are merely statistics. Names and faces haunt. I fear that the terrors troubling my thoughts and dreams will never release me. Justice.

Still, these young women who had taken little Katya under their protective though tattered wings, found happiness in the fulfillment of her hope. Tragically, they could only view it through the shards of their own shattered dreams.

The tough girl without a name picked up Katya, hugged her quickly, and handed her off to Marina-with-blonde-and-orange-hair. Marina-with-blonde-and-orange-hair wished my daughter well, hugged her a little longer than the first girl had, and then passed her off to beautiful Svieta. Katya threw her arms around the older girl’s neck and squeezed her. Then she sat up on her arm as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Svieta held her as a teenaged girl holds a little sister who refuses to walk, insisting on being carried.

I wanted those girls to go. I wanted us to be gone. I needed to leave before I hated this world we live in any more than I already did.

Finally Svieta placed our daughter back on the ground and the three girls walked out of her life. They knew they would never see her again.

Прощайте. Prashaityea. Farewell.

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