Moth flutters against the billowing curtains—white on white— and Helen knows it’s there only because of the sound its wings make, quick little beats, dry and rustling. Helen imagines the moth scream in a silent high pitch.
Helen wants to get up and untangle the little wings carefully, avoiding the powdery scales, but she cannot let her feet touch the floor. She imagines the cool wide boards, polished to a smooth shine, so good to slide across in her white socks she has to change every day now—but that’s for daytime, when monsters are asleep and sated, and retreat under the floorboards and behind the wallpaper covered in deceitfully bright flowers. Monsters sleep behind the flowers, in the narrow interstices between the wallpaper and the drywall, under the nodding shadows of printed daisies and poppies.
But at night they wait for Helen, and she does not dare to set foot on the smooth floor. The moth flutters, and Helen digs herself deeper under the covers.
Helen has to go to the bathroom. The monster senses her restless shifting and breathes heavily, moving closer to the edge, its claws scrabbling on the wood of the floorboards. Helen can hear the wet gurgling of its saliva and phlegm, and shivers. She will wet her bed again tonight.
Helen’s new mom, Janis, listens to the sounds upstairs. The circle of yellow light from the lamp clings to the shaggy rug Janis wants removed but never gets around to.
Her husband Tom follows her gaze with his own and smiles sheepishly.
“How long do you think until she learns English?”
Tom shrugs. “Children pick up languages pretty fast.”
“But she’s… older,” Janis says. There is carefully hidden disappointment in her voice. She tries to love Helen; most of all, she tries not to regret her decision to adopt her. She did not want to wait for a younger child to become available, not in that horrid hotel with frozen pipes and non-flushing toilet, not in Siberia, where snow covered the ground in October. She grabbed Helen and ran back to the semblance of civilization in Moscow and then back to New Jersey—much like one would grab a sweater one did not particularly like, just to not spend another hour in a mall. She now regretted her panic, she regretted—even though she would never admit it to herself—bringing back Helen and not someone else. She is older, and like so many orphanage kids, she has developed an attachment disorder, or so her psychiatrist said.
She is a pretty child though, Janis consoles herself. Thin and blond, with dark blue eyes that have a habit of staring at any adult with thoughtful intensity, as if sizing them up for parental role. But everyone said how pretty she was. Janis sighs and returns to her reading. It’s a parenting book, something she never thought she would be reading.
There’s rustling upstairs, and both Janis and Tom look up, as if expecting to be able to see through the vaulted ceiling.
“Should we check on her?” Janis says.
Tom shakes his head. “She’s old enough to sleep by herself.”
Janis remembers the orphanage—ten beds to a room. Helen is not used to being by herself.
“She better not wet her bed again,” Tom says.
Janis nods. The book is not helping.
Helen thinks back to the day when the monsters first appeared. She had to go to the bathroom, and she felt (or imagined) a quick touch of hot breath when her feet touched the cold linoleum tiles of the orphanage floor. She listened to the even breathing of eight other girls—one had been recently adopted, the youngest, who went home with her new mom and dad. There were no monsters and no hidden breathing, just a general unfairness of the situation: the longer one waited for the parents to show up, the smaller one’s chances grew.
Helen went to the door, into the long hallway lit by dead fluorescent lights, and all the way to the bathroom where the toilet gurgled habitually.
On her way back, Helen heard voices—husky voices of the older boys, too old to be adopted, too young for the vocational training school where they would be sent once they turned fourteen. The boys everyone knew would grow up to be bad, and already well on their way to fulfilling the expectations. Helen pressed against the wall and listened to their whispers and laughter.
She passed the door of her dormitory and peeked around the corner. They were by the lockers, five or six of them, and there were no adults in sight.
Helen can see it now: there is a girl with them—Tanya, who is older than Helen. She is ten, and she hangs out with the boys; she smokes and drinks with them after the lights-out. But they do not act as her friends. Tanya is crying.
The boys push her against the solid wall of the lockers, and Helen imagines how the cold metal feels against a cheek wet with tears, the faint smell of green paint lingering since last summer.
The boys tell Tanya to shut up, and press harder, her face and chest flat against metal; they lift her dress and pull down her underwear, they force her legs open.
One of the boys, red-headed, cold-eyed, puts his hand between Tanya’s legs; his shoulder is moving as if his hand is searching for something, and his breath is loud in the silence broken only by the occasional sob. He then pulls down his pants and presses against Tanya who cries more as he thrusts with his hips. He steps back and another boy takes his place. Helen thinks she smells the sea, of which she retains a faint memory—she was only two when her real parents took her on vacation.
She stepped away from the corner and ran to her room on light feet, barely touching the linoleum. She ran to her bed and then the monster lunged. She felt its fetid breath on her knees, its clawed hands grabbing her ankles.
She cried and wrestled free, and dove under the covers; until morning she dreamt about cold eyes and sharp claws sliding up her legs and forcing them apart.
Janis tries to be a good mother; even as she finds Helen awake and curled up among the bunched and wet sheets, she does not scold. She only sighs and tosses the soiled sheets into the hamper. She then tells Helen to go eat breakfast.
At the table, Helen is still subdued but wrinkles her nose at slices of toast—she does not like Wonderbread, she misses the chewy thick slices with a golden crust. Janis makes a mental note to pick up some loaves of Italian bread, and butters the toast for her impossible girl.
“Eat,” she says, even as Helen stares at her with uncomprehending eyes. “We’re going to see the doctor.”
Helen smiles at that word. “Papa,” she says.
Janis shakes her head. “No. Nyet. Tom is your papa,” she says. “Not the doctor, not any anyone else. You can’t choose your family, you know.”
Helen does not understand, but Janis does, and she mentally admonishes herself to practice what she preaches, to remember this little adage. Like it or not, she is stuck with Helen; she’s not going to return her like an unloved puppy to the pound. If only she were easier to love.
Janis shakes her head and cleans the table. She nudges Helen up the stairs, and she goes, obedient, to brush her teeth and put on her clothes. Helen does everything quickly, the motions precise and fluid, trained by half a decade of synchronized grooming, dressing, and eating. She makes her bed neatly with hospital corners—even though she still seems baffled by the second sheet instead of the white cloth envelope enclosing the blanket that so vexed Janis during her hotel stay in Siberia.
Janis drives to the doctor. In this part of Edison, there are many Russians and other Slavic nationals—she can hear their rough, guttural speech reaching for her through the open car window, trying to drag Janis back to the snow-covered town in Siberia, run-down buildings parasitically attached to some industrial monstrosity of secretive purpose.
Helen, on the other hand, perks up and sticks her head out of the window, smiling and waving. Janis purses her lips and pulls her inside, and rolls up the windows. Helen has to learn English, not to cling to a misplaced remnant of the life she had left.
The doctor is Russian too—he laughs with an avuncular roll, and reassures Janis in his heavily accented English. He takes Helen to his office on the third floor of the office building, where the windows offer up a view of the adjacent strip mall. Janis follows even though she cannot understand them. They seem to conspire against her—the doctor at his ostentatious mahogany desk (he sits next to it, not behind it) and Helen, sunken into a plush red chair, a box of tissues thoughtfully placed on the small stand by her elbow. Janis sits awkwardly on an
