Notes from My Captivity(68)

I have spent the past few hours picturing Vanya riding on a plane, experiencing television, navigating a subway, fondling a perfect orange at the supermarket, catching a foul ball in a catcher’s mitt he has just tried to eat. It’s all entertaining and ridiculous and heartbreaking and I don’t care. And what will I say? Oh, everyone’s dead, and meet this Russian boy I stumbled upon in the woods? It’s impossible to think too far ahead and not realize our plan’s a bit irrational. And yet, I’ve embraced stupidity, and hope, and things I can’t see. And if a reporter is just about the facts, I make a pretty bad reporter. Sydney Declay would be ashamed of me, but to be honest, her name sounds as foreign and strange now as that perfect orange.

I’m going to miss this world. I’m going to miss this family. The rye grass waving. The new fall flowers blooming. Sunlight and birds and the simple tools: hoes, rakes, axes, even a crude hammer. This family is so resourceful. And I’ve led a really, really easy life.

I want an easier life for all of them. When I see Gospozha patiently sharpening a needle against a whetstone, I think, Never mind that. I can get you a hundred bright, shiny needles. Or hell, a Nordstrom gift card. The candles they patiently make from deer hide and animal tallow when they could have light with a flick of a switch. They could sleep on Sleep Number beds. They could go to movies. They could get their teeth fixed. They could have heat in the winter. They could meet people. They could love people. They could slide across the floor in their socks. They could sleep late and marry and rest and play Uno and have access to medicine and stand in front of the freezer door and eat ice cream out of a carton. They could have neighbors to look down on.

And yet, I understand why they stay. The magic of their solitude. The comfort of their rituals. The strength of their loyalty and love. For better or worse, this is their home now. It will always be their home.

And what if they did return to society? Would they run into a bunch of people who judged them, misunderstood them, were afraid of them as I once was? Why would I think the rest of the world would treat them any better than I once had?

Clara stops singing. Her voice trails off and she looks at me, worried. I close my eyes to hear her speaking to me. I don’t understand a word—I probably never will—but the message is clear. She is worried that I don’t look happy. I take her hand and smile at her, then let go, and we go back to our song.

It’s dark in the hut. Around me the family breathes. It’s begun to feel like music. And after tonight, I’ll never hear that music again. They are just another variation of a family, like every family I know. They just have less food and more magic.

I want to crawl over to Vanya, put my arms around him, hold him. Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe he’ll be miserable. But I can’t stand the thought of him living out the rest of his life here, craving language, craving company, scribbling out his thoughts on a notebook that is already almost full. Thoughts that no one will get to read. I think about the notebook, all those neatly written words on a page. Wondering what they say. The letters blur and I drift off to sleep.

I wake up with a start. It’s Zoya. She’s not smiling. Her arms are crossed. She’s even more real to me now since the ritual. It’s less like a dream and more like a family member just walked through the door.

But it’s a different Zoya. She doesn’t smile at me. And when she speaks, she doesn’t whisper the words. She screams them, so loud I think her family will wake up.

GO NOW!





Twenty-Six


This is my last day, and I am going to spend it looking for the final gift. One of the few real gifts I can give them, with my beady eyes and 20/20 vision. I carry the old pickax in my hand. A sack is tied around my waist.

I didn’t tell anyone. I just left.

The brothers are out hunting, and Gospozha and Clara are working on a new dress with the dull needles I threaded for them. After I’m gone, who will thread their needles?

The woods are crisp and cool. This is the season when the hardier flowers grow. One of them has a bloom so enormous I can barely cover it with my hand. The petals tickle my palm.

I keep thinking of Zoya’s words last night. GO NOW! She must know I’m going to leave and possibly take her brother. She must be angry with me. I didn’t tell Vanya about seeing her last night. I’m afraid her words might mean something to him, tickle some superstition in him that would make him change his mind. And I can’t change my own mind. I have no choice, unless I want to stay here and wither and freeze and later, flowers on my grave, visit Vanya in his dreams.

Up ahead I see a glimmer among the rocks. Flint. Looks like a good chunk of it. I walk over, kneel, start chipping at it with the pickax. It’s even harder than it looked when Vanya did it. He got chunks but I’m just getting chips. This is hard work. Even though the air is cool, sweat forms on my face. I swing the ax over my head.

Go now.

I freeze, look up. The little girl is nowhere in sight, but her voice is loud and clear. I’m getting scared. I claw at the fragments of flint, and I’m hurriedly stuffing them in the sack when she shouts it.

GO NOW!

I look around wildly, heart pounding. Then I hear the words again, but now it’s my father’s voice shouting, GO NOW! He bursts from the woods from the clearing, no longer the calm, peaceful father I saw the night of the ritual, but urgent, wild-eyed, screaming, GO NOW! GO NOW! GO NOW!