To Sing Frogs Chapter 5a

Katya and Luba at the orphanage.

Chapter 5

 

The Ones

 

 

 

Pink and red splotches of flesh were melted together where the scar started at shoulder level on each side of the child’s neck. The inverted pyramid followed the line of a cardigan sweater, inward and downward to the bottom of her ribcage. A bleached, sickly whitewash pigment surrounded the third degree burn scar for another one to three inches outward in all directions. I shuddered at the picture. The burns covering my own stomach when I was eighteen had only been second degree. Shortly after the lid popped off the pressure cooker, I remember consciously thinking that pain so intense for any length of time could cause a person to lose their mind.

“Poor baby!” Amy gasped. Then she softly touched the scar in the snapshot as if it were the child, incarnate. Tears rolled down her face while she continued to coo. “You poor, poor baby.” The photo was only our first exposure to “mothering” tactics of Oksana Arsentyevna Koshkina. The picture laid an adequate foundation for what we would continue to learn bit-by-bit. Even so, at the time we couldn’t have dreamed of the extent of the malignant tumor lying underneath the tiny black spot of the burn photograph.

They had lived in an abandoned one-room concrete house with cracks in the walls large enough to let light through. The roof was caving in and the glass had long since fallen out of window openings. If there had ever been anything besides a dirt floor, it was now nonexistent. It wouldn’t have been the first time a wood floor disappeared up the chimney during a Russian winter.

Katya (the usual Russian nickname applied to a little girl named Ekaterina) was removed from the dilapidated dwelling first, right around the time of her fourth birthday. The child wouldn’t have known what a birthday was. The day an infant enters the world under such a mother’s care is hardly an occasion for celebration. It could be said it works out though. Parents like Katya’s rarely succumb to the irony of festivities if only because they are neglectful.

Some advocate the use of chemical sterilization to curb the problem of people like Katya’s birth parents continuing to procreate. I respectfully disagree. Sterilization the old fashioned way would be charitable enough for such demons.

Neighbors were the ones who informed Social Services of Katya’s situation. Since the injury over two weeks prior, she had received no medical attention. When the social worker arrived at the scene Katya was in a fevered, restless sleep. The child was dying from infection. It was covered by a massive scab that was darkened, cracked, and oozing, like the surface of drying mud.

The little girl was rushed to the local “Baby Hospital,” a combination hospital/orphanage where the youngest Russian orphans stay until they are moved to “Children’s Homes.” There, Katya immediately received medical attention for her injury. Little by little they brought her back to health. Several months later the system learned of Luba.

Katya missed the baby. She began to talk of her little sister incessantly, first to her friends and later to orphanage workers. It was then the system realized Katya’s mother had hid the baby when Social Services beat on the door. That wasn’t Oksana’s only experience with losing children to meddling government intruders, so she stuffed 18-month-old Luba under the bed on the dirt floor. The sleeping baby girl was obscured not only by the covering, but also by the shock workers experienced when they saw the older sister’s critical plight.

When Katya’s chattering informed the government of its mistake, social workers returned to the filthy rat’s nest and finished the job.

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, 2004 when we received the recommendation for these two little girls. Amy was more leery this time. We carefully reviewed the medical and social reports line by line. It appeared they fell into all of the requirements we set when we turned in our adoption application. We were cautiously optimistic. We cringed. We adjusted the sails and lifted the anchor together. Then we headed into the wind.