Stalina

eyes and watched as she ran for the toilet in the back hallway. She did not look back at me. As she turned for the door, her dress opened at the back seam. I saw her cotton panties and a teardrop of blood traveling down her thigh. As my father carried me down the stairs, I memorized the pattern of crowns and stars on the blue and white wallpaper in the hallways.

On the street the carts were filled with children, most very young. Many parents were walking alongside the carts. It was chaotic, but somewhere someone was playing a small flute or ocarina. I could not tell where it was coming from, but the sound was a comfort. It went with the rhythm of the carts as they started to move toward the rail station. Everyone looked up, as if the music was coming from the sky. My father placed me in the middle of the cart and pinned one of his poems to my wool coat. I remember the crows flying overhead. CAW! CAW! They sound the same everywhere.

“Breathe, Stalina, breathe,” he whispered to me. “You’re a strong girl; take care of these little ones. When you come home, I will have all my poems waiting for you. You will be my ambassador of words.” He hummed a tune in his deep voice as he held my face in his hands, then kissed my forehead before turning to go. I kept the note, and when I was older, I memorized the poem.

My daughter watches the waves by the sea.
Do they remind her without knowing
Of the womb from where she came?
So safe and sound.
Now we are surrounded,
Cut off like the wheat we were meant to grow.
Our bread will never rise or bake.
Will my daughter remember me? When will she return?
Will she have waves of pleasure again,
Or only tears of anger and pain?
Will she remember her place at the table,
And the patterns on the walls?
I leave a thumbprint of a hug around her soft shoulder.
When she returns, will there be anything, anything?
There will be my poems for her.

So many questions in one poem. I would return and commit to memory every one of his poems. The factory whistles sounded for the lunch hour, and the cart moved toward the rail station.

They took us to a camp up north in the region called Karelia, a beautiful area, not far from where my family had its dacha. The children were brought to the town of Kem. We were forty, all from Leningrad. I was one of the oldest. In our camp there were mostly the young ones. The counselors, a mix of students and workers, stayed up all night playing cards in the basement. The smell of vodka and cigarettes came up through the floorboards. The amber light from their lantern streamed through the cracks. I would pass my fingers through the light and make it flicker like an old movie. Moths flying near the lamp would cast giant shadows that looked like hawks circling above our bunks. The buzz from the shuffling cards made the sound effects for the flapping wings of the giant moth hawks I conjured. The slap of a card hitting the table brought me back to reality and to the counselors’ daily gossip.

“Lela’s parents have not been heard from for a week.”

“Don’t say anything until you are sure.”

“I found a tooth in my soup tonight.”

“The children have been working in the kitchen.”

“Hazardous work.”

“Dangerous eating.”

“Balya the cook is missing a front tooth.”

“She lost that months ago.”

“Maybe I should have saved it for her.”

“Gin!”

“Damn!”

“Shut up and deal!”

“Go fuck your mother.”

Sounds of scuffling.

“Settle down, Vanya.”

“That tooth…I feel ill.”

“Buck up. Be glad you’re here.”

“What, here, at Camp Klorp?” Klorp means bedbug.

“Stop it!”

“How about Camp Siege?”

“The young ones will write their parents, ‘Dear Uttyets and Mart, Having a lovely time, hope all is well, don’t eat Uncle Vanya if you can help it. Your sweet Misha from Camp Siege.’”

“Vanya, please.”

“OK, Camp Flora, just for you, Tanya. But where’s your sense of irony? Not very Russian of you.”

Tanya had long blond hair and spent her days chopping wood. She was strong and hugged each one of us every day. It was a comfort. Vanya tended a herd of goats near the camp. He smelled like those goats and had the biggest, roughest hands I have ever seen. I listened while they played cards, keeping very still so that when I fell asleep I would not fall off the bed or disturb my sleep mates during the night. We were always four or more in a bed. When someone near me would start to cry, which happened often, I would try so hard to hold it back. I tried so hard to be strong.

No one escaped the siege. Bela and Leo were brothers who always shared a bunk. Neither one ever said a word. They ate their meals under the long table and refused to sleep with anyone else. For the rest of us, the bed assignments would change almost every night, so if someone had bony elbows and knees or foul breath, you only had to tolerate them once or twice a week.

“Flexibility, adaptability, and strength—these are the things you will learn at Camp Flora,” Tanya told us almost every night before she gave out the bunk assignments.

“Leave Bela and Leo alone,” she would say if someone was making fun of them.

One time Rakia, an angry student right out of Herzen University, tried to force them to separate. She was always mad about having to abandon her studies. “It will be good for them,” she said in her bossy style.

When they were separated, Leo would not stop hitting his head against the floorboards and Bela obsessively ate the torn threads of a blanket.

“I told you, leave them alone,” Tanya said. “I will take care of them.”

“But they’re not being good Communists,” Rakia said, storming out.

“That’s not my concern, Rakia. They are children; let them be.”

Tanya disappeared one day. Who knows why? In those days it could have been anything. Luckily, Rakia did not take over.

It was two and a half years before I saw my parents again, and at first I did not recognize them or Leningrad. The city was a charred skeleton. My parents were not much better, their faces gaunt and bodies thin as branches. It was my father’s smile that brought me back. Even though he had lost a front tooth, I recognized his crooked smile and plump lips. My mother managed a feeble smile through her tears. Neither could pick me up. I was healthy and put my arms around my mother’s legs and tried to lift her. She flinched when I touched her. There was great distance between us.

“Stalina, it’s not you. My body hurts from being so tired,” she said.

Hunger exposes the nerves. Mother bruised easily and was very sensitive to the slightest touch or any sound