To Sing Frogs Chapter 24c

Kirrill’s crib is the one against the wall with the red blanket

Stass understood that sometimes people just needed to vent so he remained silent. I’m sure his English competence level didn’t provide for the word “asinine” but he’d look it up later. An absolute understanding wasn’t required for adequate comprehension.

Anya was hugging Amy now and doing a good job at consoling her. That was the easy task. I wasn’t finished with Stass yet.

“Will we get Kirrill on Monday?” Sunday was the end of the appeal period but I knew that was out of the question.

“Monday is a holiday.”

“Right. Great. Beautiful. Freaking, beautiful. Let’s not forget to weave the May pole.” How apt. Dancing around a symbolic phallus takes priority over kids getting families. "Will we get him on Tuesday?”

Stass put his arm loosely around my shoulder. “Look, John. I know this is difficult. You know I am your friend. Anya and I will do everything we can to help you. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. You need to understand, though; if we don’t proceed in the right way it will hurt your situation rather than help it. If you want this to go as well as it can, you need to listen. You have to wait.”

Wait. Weight. It hangs on you. You hold it. You carry it until you can go no further. When it finally falls from your grasp you try to ignore it. You try to regain your strength. Then you re-burden yourself. You return to your punishment and carry the wait. Just like Sisyphus; stuck for all eternity pushing his boulder up the hill only to perpetually repeat the act when it rolls back down again. Exhausted as Amy and I felt, it was time to pick up the wait. Again. I went silent, compelled to accept damnation to my own Sisyphean hell.

“We’re going shopping,” Anya said happily. She still had an arm around Amy who was now drying her eyes and wiping mascara from her face. “There’s nothing we can do and we have the day open. We’ll all take the girls shopping. There’s a toy store…”

Amy tried to smile and respond. She could only nod acquiescence.

“And an aquarium,” Anya added. “We’ll take the girls to the aquarium, after.”

Anya, bless her, was doing her best to make things better. Still, I couldn’t think of anything less desirable—on that particular day—than visiting a representation of the abyss.

I drove my shoulder into the insurmountable rock and nodded along with my wife.

 

The photograph could not have looked more Cold War Russian. In fact, within the confines of endless subterranean caverns that must be required to maintain hard copies of the surveillance of “the people,” there would not be a picture more closely resembling a future male comrade. Celeste’s hair was cut short and there was no need to coax her not to smile for the mandatory preferred pose in a formal black and white Russian document photo. The little girl didn’t want to be there and she scowled at the photographer. The black and white genre removed the pink from her shirt and turned it into an asexual gray.

Sarah had to be told that she shouldn’t smile for the camera but only once. Her hair wasn’t long either. At least it had sufficient length to indicate her gender.

I felt like we were betraying Kirrill. We were in a small photographer’s shop—wedged between buildings with shared walls—somewhere in downtown Vladivostok. The girls were having their photos taken for their passports. I wanted to wait until Kirrill could be with us so we could complete all of the finalization work together. Stass told me we needed to have it done for the girls first. We would be in a big rush to get Kirrill’s done when we finally got him. I really wanted to think he was telling me the truth. I tried to believe my Russian friend, even to the point of not prying for information or barraging him with logic. Still, in the back of my mind I knew the chance of getting Kirrill out of a quarantined orphanage was as narrow as a downtown Vladivostok alleyway. Worse, I knew—even though he played along—Stass was less than confident we would get Kirrill before visa expirations forced us to be out of the country.

I sat in the hallway watching a scraggly gray cat lap milk from a saucer while we waited for the next phase of required documentation for Sarah and Celeste. Amy played with the girls and Anya fiddled with her phone. It was just like waiting for doctors in the States. That was, with the exception of watching the old nurse. She wore street clothes, a babushka scarf and a lab coat (to ensure sterility). The only anomaly (aside from the cat, itself) was that the nurse kept frequenting the hallway to feed and pet the mangy hospital mascot.

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