To Sing Frogs Chapter 23a

Chapter 23

Reborn

 

It sounded like a rubber boot being pulled from a mud-bog with a bullfrog croaking in the background.

“Hand me something!” Amy shouted. The chunky splash immediately following proved it was too late.

            “Oh yuck!”

“The smell!”

There were assorted words in Russian I didn’t know and don’t remember.

“Pull over. I’m gonna be sick!”

The bullfrog croaked forth again, before the car could stop. Luba, the offender, was drenched. Amy’s coat was soiled. The seats to Stass’s mechanical pride and joy were irreparably saturated, or so it seemed.

My wife was the first out of the bursting car, holding Luba at arms-length. Amy pointed her in the opposite direction and rushed away from the vehicle. Her own head was turned to the side and she was cringing like a bomb squad expert rapidly exiting a building with a deadly device, anticipating the lethal explosion before reaching safety. Good call. The next eruption cleared the rusty guardrail that ran alongside the mountain road.

End of round one except for chunky burps.

Thank goodness Olga had not been able to deny poor Luba anything that morning. Now we had everything everywhere.

Amy stripped Luba down to her new princess panties and began to clean her off with baby wipes from a large plastic container. Stass mucked out the toxic deluge. Then he borrowed more wipes in a hopeless attempt to clear the offending smell from floors and seats.

Luba’s screams for Mama Olga had not diminished for fifteen minutes after driving away from the orphanage. She was distraught. Her stomach was packed. It was her first ride in a car and we were on a winding mountain road. It was a recipe for putrescence.

It wasn’t like we had extra clothes. The girls were both potty trained. Neither Amy nor I had soiled ourselves for a reasonably long period of time. What was the point of extra clothes? Playing dress-up could wait until we got back to the hotel. There did happen to be three plastic shopping bags stuffed in a pocket of the daypack. We tied up Amy’s coat in one of them. Luba’s coat, scarf, hat, jeans, sweater, undershirt, shoes, and socks were sealed up in another.

Katya conceded when Stass explained that Luba would need to wear the zip-out lining from her coat. There were no other clothes. The five-year-old was insistent though; Luba would need to promise not to throw up on her new coat. Yeah. Sure. Of course. You betcha. She promises.

We had one last bag to use as a receptacle until we would reach the tiny country store. It was situated at the very top of the pass just before we would leave Nakhodka’s coastal regions behind and descend to Vladivostok’s. There the mountains would become the first geographic divide between where our daughters had come from and where they would eventually go.

The sack was sloshing and uncomfortably loaded after multiple uses by the time we reached the summit. Fortunately, Katya’s new coat lining was still relatively dry.

We had pulled over four more times since our first emergency. Consequently, what should have been the first hour of the trip had turned into two. The time wandering around the dirt parking lot and sucking in fresh air was well deserved and appreciated by Bill, Amy, and the girls. Stass and I entered the inadequate wooden building to beg a dozen plastic shopping bags.

He wants to know; “what the hell is Ziploc,” Stass said after translating my request, against his will and better judgment. “Never mind. Plastic shopping bags will be fine. Thank you.”

At least the motion sickness had given Luba something else to think about. She hadn’t cried for over an hour. We were fifteen minutes past the country store without another eruption when she finally talked.

“Peesh peesh,” she said. Stass ignored her so Amy and I did the same. Katya sat forward on her seat in the back, next to Dyehdushka Bill. She chattered in Russian and I recognized a repeat of Luba’s words a couple of times in the sentence.

There were more words in Russian from the front seat that I don’t remember and didn’t understand.

            It was evident Stass was frustrated and Katya’s persistence was not making him happier. He did pull over, though.

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