Hands shake me. I sleepwalk up the stairs and crawl into bed and drop into a dreamless void. It seems like no time has passed when my burning bladder wakes me. The clock on Pavlik’s desk shows five minutes after eight. Is it eight in the evening? No, it’s morning. The darkness behind the window is too thin and the glowing orbs of the streetlights are dimming. Snow falls softly. I have slept all day and all night. I step into slippers and rub my face. The teakettle whistles faintly, chokes, and peters out.

I go to the toilet, then head for the kitchen.

Anton and Yulia drink tea. They look at me with irritation, as if I’m late and they’ve been waiting for me for hours. 

I halt, puzzled. Where is Pavlik?

“Pavlik is with Margarita Petrovna, Irina. Please, sit down,” says Yulia. “We’re going to have a little talk.”

My spine turns to ice.

The notebook I’ve been writing in sits next to Anton’s teacup. He picks it up and smacks it down in front of me. Its fake leather cover meets the oilcloth with a gluey sticky noise. “Explain.” He holds out a pen. 

I take it, terrified, thinking that they have read my answers to Pavlik’s questions and know who the father of the baby is, but then I remember that to them it would’ve looked like nonsense.

“Go ahead.” Droplets of sweat prickle Anton’s forehead. He takes his glasses off, polishes them with the hem of his shirt, and props them back on. 

Did you understand what I meant?

“You’re a jokester, aren’t you?”

No, you didn’t. I exhale in relief.

He shakes his head in dismay. “Start from the very beginning, and none of this drivel about any fish or jackals or any animals at all. Is that clear?” He slaps the table with the flat of his palm. 

I flinch.

“I want you to explain to me why you stopped talking when you were two—” 

So you called them.

“—what was the exact cause, and if there are any genetic deviations in your family, any terminal diseases, health problems, that sort of thing. Write everything you know.” He measures me with a shrewd look.

I glare. Is this an interrogation? Did you send Pavlik off so that you two could harass me without him?

 “Here is what I think. I think you’re fooling us. I think you’re pulling our noses. Either that, or you are, indeed, a bit soft upstairs.” He knocks on his head. “That’s what I think. Wouldn’t you agree, Yulechka?”

“Absolutely.” Yulia stings me with an acid stare.

I seethe. This automatic assumption that if you’re mute, you’re an imbecile, is really getting on my nerves. I thought you were educated people.

Anton sips his tea. “Irina, if you are a smart girl, you will understand where we’re coming from. We’re simply trying to rule out any pathologies. You must agree that your behavior, the unexplainable things you have done in the two months that we’ve known you, have planted certain doubts in our minds as to the state of your mental health. Whatever it is, it doesn’t concern you alone anymore, it concerns Pavlusha’s child, our grandchild. Right, Yulechka?”

“Right.”

I grip the pen so hard I think it will break. You must be what, in your fifties? Well-read, I assume. Yet you believe that I’m crazy because I’m mute, I refer to people as animals, and I kicked a dead man. More, you believe my child will be predisposed to the same, as you call them, pathologies. Just because I did what I did doesn’t mean I’m nuts and it doesn’t mean that my child will be crazy, either. I see you know jack-shit about life, which at your age is, frankly, quite amusing.

“Well?” says Anton.

Yulia crosses her arms.

Words crowd behind my teeth, wanting to break out. Your logic points me to either stagnant thinking or complete ignorance. Have you noticed that your son is gay? No. You choose to be blind. And when you can’t ignore it anymore, you will cast him aside because he doesn’t fit your image of the perfect son. Because he has a pathology. 

I write one word. “No.”

Anton cradles his temples. “How am I to understand that?”

I smile. Guess.

He throws a worried look at Yulia. 

She has a smug look on her face.

“This is outrageous.” His round eyes round even more. “We’re wasting our time. Can’t you see she’s playing us?” He rises, catches on the edge of the table. Spoons clink and the tea slopes over.

Yulia picks a towel from the hook by the sink and mops it up. “If you’d only listen to me.”

“But, Yulechka, if it’s not genetic, how else can you explain it?”

“I told you, we need to talk to her mother.”

Good luck catching her sober. I marvel at my calm. My future is at stake, yet I don’t panic. 

Anton draws aside the curtain and watches the snow. 

I follow his gaze, searching for winged shapes. How much longer before you strike? How much longer?

Yulia spoons sugar into her cup and swills it. “Irina, I’ll be straightforward with you, all right? We’re taking you into our family but we hardly know you. It’s a big and scary step for us. We’re doing it for Pavlusha. He seems to be very much in love with you.”

My heart clenches. If you only knew.

“Personally, I have my reservations. You’ll understand”— she narrows her eyes to slits—“when you become a mother.”

Anton turns away from the window. “Look, the sooner you do it, the sooner we can move on to discussing pleasant things. The wedding, the restaurant, your dress, your jewelry.”

Something in my face causes them to exchange a satisfied glance.

I grit my teeth. You know who you are, Irina Myshko? You’re a bribable doormat. But I can’t help it. I imagine a white gown, a bridal veil, and kissing. My face burns. Kissing! He’d have to kiss me in front of everybody. Then I remember about the gynecologist. Never mind. As soon as they find out, it’s back to Lyosha Kabansky. Might as well play along for as long as I can.

I pick up the pen and write.

I write about my school, my home, and every visit to the doctor I can remember. About mama, grandma, Sonya, and Lenochka. Our cats, our dogs. The stories I liked to invent in my head since I was little, pretending that different people were different animals. And I write about Lyosha. I don’t mention anything bad, only good things. At the end, I tell them I had a fight with mama and that’s why I ran away. Then I add one more line. 

“When I was two, I fell out of my crib, bit my tongue, and stopped talking.”

“Is that really what happened?” Anton peers at me through his glasses. He seems relieved.

I nod.

“That’s all? You just fell out of the crib and bit your tongue?”

I shrug.

“Why did you have to climb, you silly girl?” He chuckles.

I squeeze the pen.

“We’ll ask her mother for more details, all right?” says Yulia sweetly. I sense controlled irritation. “I need your phone number, please.”

I write it down.

Yulia makes to take the notebook from me. 

Anton stops her. “Hold on, hold on. One more thing, if I may. Irina, tell us. What made you hit that unfortunate young man?”

“He hurt me,” I write.

“You knew him?”

“Hurt you how?” says Yulia.

Ever had horseflies bite your cunt? 

I slam the pen down and race out of the kitchen and into Pavlik’s room. I fall onto his bed and bury my head under the pillow, sobbing into the sheets until I’m barren.

. . .

Yulia’s voice comes through the door. “Irina?”

I sit up. I must have dozed off. 

“Get dressed, we’re leaving.”

Right now? 

I brush off my clothes, fix the bed, and walk out.

Yulia sits on the sofa, dialing the phone number from my notebook. She looks up at me with her green eyes. “Hello?”

“Who is this?”

The voice is so loud that I can hear it.

Yulia winces, looks at the receiver, puts it back to her ear at a distance. “Yes. This is Yulia Davydovna—”

“Who?” yells the voice. “Kesha, get off me, you dumb bitch. Say again?” There is muffled barking.

Hey, Grandma, it’s so nice to hear you.

“One more time, my name is Baboch, Yulia Davydovna. I have your Irina, Irina Myshko. She’s been living with us for a couple months now.”

“Who? Irkadura? Where?”

Yulia recoils at my nickname and gives me a questioning look. “Yes, she is sitting right here, in front of me.” 

“Marina, it’s your Irka! Quick!”

There is a short pause, then mama’s voice shouts. “Hello? Hello? Who is this? Hello?”

“Yes?”

“Where is my daughter?” 

Yulia holds the receiver away from her face, staring at it with aversion. The corners of her lips turn down. She gives me another questioning look.

I don’t move. 

“Where is my daughter? Give me back my daughter! Who are you? I’m asking, who are you, huh? What a nightmare! I went through such a nightmare! I thought she got shot by the White House! Can you hear me? Hello? Hello?”

Get a grip, Mama. Yet I like it. I revel in her reaction. It seems as though she actually cares.

Yulia consults the notebook. “Marina Viktorovna—”

“What?”

“I said, Marina Viktorovna!”

“Yes, I’m listening.” 

“Please, calm down. Your daughter is fine.” Yulia waves me off. 

My legs are suddenly full of water. I tread to the hallway and slowly pull on my boots, put on my coat, button it up with unbending fingers, sit down on the little stool by the door, and wait. 

What if I do have a pathology? What if my mother is mentally ill and it’s genetic and I have it too? Are there tests for this? Can they tell?

In a few minutes, Yulia is done with the call. She zips up her leather boots, puts on her fur coat and hat, and slings her snakeskin purse over the shoulder. “Ready?”

I don’t have the strength to nod.

. . .

An hour later we exit from the Nogin’s Square station into the old Moscow center. The wind nips my nose and the gray sky sits low on the roofs of the low buildings with scuffed stuccoed facades. Trucks rumble through the street. Hunched, bundled from head to toe, figures scurry by.

I stuff my mittened hands into my pockets and hurry after Yulia along the pathway stomped in the snow by hundreds of feet. I watch for signs of anything living on the sloped roofs and poles and wires. I see nothing and soon give up.

This is your walk to your execution, Irina Myshko. 

We pass an old church, a bakery with its bread smell, a bank, and a couple of shoe stores, then cross the street and enter a low-arched passageway that leads into a web of inner courtyards.

I walk behind Yulia, my head down, my eyes on the road. 

She talks non-stop, about how she took precious time out of her day to take me to her gynecologist, how Karina Semyonovna is very hard to get an appointment with, how it’s a privilege that she agreed to see me at all, how it was only because she’s an old friend of Yulia’s and how Yulia is doing me a favor, how I should be thankful to her and how—

I sense movement behind us, and look back. 

A black Boomer crawls through the narrow alleyway framed by waist-high walls of dirty snow on either side.

“Watch out!” Yulia yanks me out of the way.

I press flat against the snowbank. 

The car whispers by. The tinted passenger window rolls down and a man measures me with disinterested eyes. A black cap sits tightly around his shaved head. 

I grope behind me for purchase. 

I know what you want. You want to free Mother Russia from a homo Jew, his whore, and their bastard.

A raven croaks in the distance.

My heart does a summersault.

Yulia motions after the car. “What polite young men.”

I stare at her.

“Didn’t honk, didn’t berate us. They slowed down and waited for us to notice them. Now that is a sign of education and wealth.” She lowers her voice. “You need to learn how to stand on your own two feet, Irina.”

Is this a ploy to make me bring money home so that I won’t sit on your son’s neck, or do you miraculously care all of a sudden?

“You need to learn how to be independent.” Warm breath escapes Yulia’s painted lips. “You can’t rely on your husband, no matter how much you love him and no matter how much he loves you. Love has nothing to do with it. If something happened to Anton, I’d be able to survive on my own. Would you?”

I have my fat ass to fall on.

“No, you wouldn’t. You have nothing, Irina, not even a college degree. And you’re mute. How do you plan to live? On what money? You either have to go to college and get a degree or get Simeon Ignatievich to hire you. He seems to have a thing for you. Use it. To survive in this life, a woman has to use everything she has. You have a good face and a good figure. You just need to lose weight once the baby is born, that’s all.”

I stop breathing. Use Sim? I’ll need to grow a dick for that.

A car honks and, once again, we press into the snowbank to let it through.

“I know what you think. You think that I don’t like you.”

I stand still.

“You’re wrong. I’m simply cautious, like any mother should be. I’m sure you’d do the same for your child.” Wind moves the fur on her hat. She steps closer. “Tell me the truth. Is it Pavlusha’s?”

For a split second I’m caught off-guard, then I nod.

“Are you sure?”

I nod vigorously several times.

“Good. I wanted to see it in your eyes. Come on, we’re late.” She grabs my hand. 

It’s the first time she touched me.

I trot behind her, feeling guilty.