Notes from My Captivity(64)

Halfway through the meadow, Clara freezes and drops my hand. Her eyes grow wide, and my heart begins to pound. There’s an electricity in the air, like the kind you feel before a great clap of thunder.

Is he here? Has Clara led me to him at last?

“Daddy?” I murmur.

Clara looks at the sky and I watch, too. We wait.

Then I see it.

It’s not the spirit of my father descending from a cloud to give me comfort and astonished joy.

It’s a helicopter.

Instead of relief, I’m filled with panic. I have to get away. They can’t find me, not yet. Not before the full moon and the ritual. Clara and I rush toward a large bush near the edge of the meadow, diving into it, branches breaking and quivering around us. We lie on the ground, spooning, making ourselves small, very small, each of us holding our breaths as we hear the sound of the blades grow louder, lingering over our head.

Finally the sound of the helicopter fades, and we are left in silence. Clara and I crawl out from under the bush. She looks at me, wide-eyed, releasing a stream of quizzical coos. I’m guessing she has never seen a helicopter, or an airplane, for that matter. I try my best to explain in limited Russian. I clear a place on the ground and draw a stick figure of the helicopter and the people in it.

I try to tell her it’s okay. The helicopter is gone, and we are safe.

But are we? Maybe the smoke from the fire has alerted someone to our position. Maybe they are coming back. But they can’t. Not yet.

The full moon is two days away.

She takes my hand, and we keep walking. We find the medicinal flowers half an hour later, at the next meadow over. Clara seems subdued, troubled. She barely speaks as we walk home together. I think she will give the family the news of the strange sighting as soon as we are through the door, but instead she puts the flowers in her mother’s lap and accepts her smile of approval.

It is only later that I realize that Clara isn’t stupid. She knows that the helicopter full of people might be searching for me and to tell her family this would not be good news to them.

I wait until nightfall, crawl over to Clara, and whisper, “Thank you,” into her ear. Her eyes open. She pats my cheek. Her eyes close again, and I crawl back to my corner of the room.

Was the helicopter even real? Or just another apparition?

Day 6.

Tomorrow the full moon rises. Tomorrow is the ritual. The one I’ve been left out of. I beg and plead with Vanya in the woods, hidden safely in the middle of a group of red-berried bushes. Finally he bursts out, “I can’t help you! I do not decide! My mother decides!”

“What?” I gasp. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

He looks guilty. “I like the kisses,” he admits.

I snort in disgust and stand up. “You are a typical man, Vanya. And that’s not a compliment.”

He looks at me quizzically. “What is ‘typ-i-cal’?”

“Look it up.”

I storm away. The truth is, I haven’t regretted the time I’ve spent kissing Vanya. Far from it. In fact, other than the desire to see my father, I’ve found my other preoccupation is Vanya himself. His insatiable curiosity. The way he puts English words together. His accent as he says them. The way he makes toys out of sticks for his sister and cocks his head to listen to his mother. The way he and his brother fall into rhythm as they chop wood together.

The kindness in his eyes.

His laugh, so clean and pure, it would work in the streets of Boulder, or on a lifeboat, or in outer space. It would work anywhere.

His smile.

The touch of his lips.

Perhaps I’m losing my mind.

Or falling in love.

Or both.

In all my time here, I have not had a single private conversation with Gospozha. There’s still something unreachable about her, intimidating. And I know she knows about Vanya and me. She’s his mother. She knows everything.

Tonight, when she quietly leaves the cabin, I follow her. Find her in the middle of the meadow, her back to me, gazing out into the trees. Somewhere in the dark, in that direction, lie the graves of her husband and daughter. I wonder if she’s thinking of them.

I head out to her, wading through sunflowers, the moon almost full over my head. The air moves through my shirt, makes me shiver. She doesn’t acknowledge me when I reach her. Says nothing as I stand beside her, my arms crossed, my breath making mist. I almost lose my nerve and head back to the cabin. But I force myself to speak.

“Moy otets zdes’.”

My father is here.

I look sideways at her. For a long moment, she doesn’t react. Then, slowly, she nods.

“Ya khochu uvidet’ yego.”

I want to see him.

No reaction now. Complete stillness. I hope she is not silently calling her owl to come kick my ass. I try to keep talking, in Russian, but I stumble. So many words I don’t know. And so I talk in English, hoping that the magic that seems to hover all around us will enter my words, my voice, make it all understandable. “I know some things about your family. That you left Moscow years ago because you had special powers and no one understood you and people were afraid of you. And now people are still afraid of you. I’m not afraid of you. I understand you. I know that you have lost people and found a way to find them again.”

I say the names of her loved ones. Say them with reverence.