Page 2 of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

Nadya lay down on her bed, and pressed her face into her thin pillow, and cried.

Years slipped by, one after another, like leaves floating down the river, until Nadya was nine years old. She was quick and articulate, frequently bored in her classes, always willing to assist with chores, even beyond the ones she was assigned, and still she presented the other children and still she downplayed herself, until the day the missionary trip arrived in the office.

They were healthy and bright-eyed, these Americans, with sleek, shining hair and clear skin, dressed plainly in black and white, each with a name tag written in incomprehensible English lettering. Their paperwork was impeccable. They had managed, through bribery, careful applications, and understanding of the administrative systems they were dealing with, to circumvent the laws forbidding adoption of Russian children by foreign nationals. It was a mission of mercy, they said; they were there to help the most underprivileged children they could find, the ones with nowhere else to go.

The matrons bristled at this description of their charges, which dismissed all the work they’d done and all the care they’d given, but they wanted these children to have homes before they got too old and were pushed out the door to make room for the bodies who were always crowding behind them, hungry and in need of a place to call their own. They smiled stiffly and agreed to arrange for a viewing.

It began like any other. The matrons prepared the children according to the proper standards, while Nadya came through with standards of her own, tweaking and adjusting and preparing her brothers and sisters to put their best feet forward. When she moved to hang back as she always did, the matrons swept in and forced her into her own nicest dress, the one with the sleeve that hung down to what should have been wrist-length on her right side, making it harder to see her arm. She fussed and whined, but they pinned her in place and combed her hair.

“You can’t stay here forever, Nadya,” they scolded. “The years go by, and you remain. It’s not right! A girl like you should have a home of her own, a family to prepare you to become a woman! You will be presented to them like a proper child, not as if you were a mascot meant to make the other children look more pleasant to potential parents. You are not a wild thing. Be a credit to those who have raised you.”

At that, Nadya settled and allowed herself to be prepared. She wasnota wild thing, but there was no way these parents from a foreign land would look at her and see their heart’s desire. She had been marked by Mother Russia before she was born. It was there she would remain.

The children were ushered into the greeting room and pinned down by the bright eyes of the American missionaries, who seemed to home in on every tiny flaw. They dismissedperfect child after perfect child, spending their focus like precious coin on the ones who had been left there by parents afraid to love a baby with pieces missing, as if blindness or deafness or a foreshortened limb could somehow become contagious. Nadya almost managed to avoid their attention, thanks to the dress she had been given, until one of the matrons realized what was happening and called, in a trilling tone quite unlike her usual harsh orders:

“Oh, Nadezhda, darling, you forgot to pin up your sleeve!” She rushed in with a safety pin, folding up the tangling tube of fabric and pinning it securely in place while Nadya glared at her. She met the girl’s glare with a smile, which only grew as the missionaries swarmed around her, this polite, well-mannered little girl who they had previously dismissed as not what they were looking for.

Three children left the orphanage that day. Gregor, who could not hear; Maria, with her seizures and sloping spine; and Nadya, whom they had taken for polite, biddable, and tame. She looked back over her shoulder as she was led away, carried into a new life she had never asked for or expected.

Her third mother had arrived at last, and Nadya was finally gone.

2ALL-AMERICAN GIRL

NADYA’S ADOPTIVE PARENTSlived in a place called Denver, which was very tall and very dry. The air was thinner than she was accustomed to, and for the first week after they arrived, she was sick almost every day, with a pounding headache that refused to go away. They spoke loudly and quickly in English, which she had very few words of—and they had fewer of Russian—and she began to despair for ever being happy again. The matrons had given her to these people, who had bundled her onto an airplane and carried her halfway around the world, only to rush her into a doctor’s office for a series of painful injections! And now this headache, which would not go away…

If they hadn’t been feeding her, she would have thought they were trying to kill her. Since theywerefeeding her, and she was vomiting after almost every meal, it was still possible they were trying to kill her and were simply rich enough to be willing to waste food in the process. With no way to communicate and no strength to run away, it was impossible for her to tell.

On the morning of the sixth day, the man who wanted to be called “Daddy” came to sit on the edge of her bed and stroke her hair while she drank a glass of something sweet and fruity. “You need the electrolytes,” he said, words incomprehensible to her, and smiled encouragingly when she swallowed the last sip. Then he tapped his forehead and asked, in an exaggeratedly slow voice, “Feeling better? Okay?”

“Okay” was one of the words she knew. “Okay” meant agreement, meant going along with whatever she was being asked. It also meant “yes,” in a way she was still trying to understand.

Her headdidfeel somewhat better, and so she nodded, lowering the glass, and said, “Da. Okay.”

He smiled and took the glass away from her, setting it on the bedside table, before offering his own hand in exchange. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

It was so much mild gibberish, but the intent was clear, and Nadya knew enough about adults to understand that biddability was sometimes the only thing that made them relax around you. If she ever wanted to get out of here and back to the orphanage—and after the length of the flight to get here, she knew it must behoursaway on foot—she needed them to trust her, to think she was the kind of girl who would agree to things and not break any rules.

She nodded again, ignoring the way it sent pain shooting through her temples, and slipped her hand into his. “Da,” she said. “Okay.”

He beamed like he’d just won a prize as he led her out of the room they had prepared for her use, pink walls and pink furnishings and plush pink carpet—her new parents might have claimed not to have any preconceptions about the child they’d be bringing home from Russia, but they had clearly been expecting a girl—and into the browner, more neutral hallway. A fresh pair of shoes waited for her by the door, just her size, as pink as the curtains.

They felt like pillows on her feet. Nadya stared at them, wide-eyed, and tried a few experimental jumps, laughing a little when the pillowy texture remained intact. She turned up to “Daddy,” beaming, and informed him in a cheery voicethat the shoes were amazing, astonishing, the best she’d ever felt.

Her vocabulary went far beyond his limited Russian. Still, he could tell a happy child when he saw one, so he smiled indulgently back and said, “Yes, princess, they’re all yours. Nice new shoes. Now let’s just get your coat on and we can go.”

None of her things from the orphanage had come with her to America; the coat he helped her into was also new, a rough blue velvety fabric that made little swishing noises when she rubbed her fingers over it. It fit her well, and she liked the feeling of the fabric, although it made her oddly sad for her old coat, which had been left behind. It had still been perfectly good for another year or two of wear, and if it had stopped fitting her before it came apart, it would have been handed down to one of the younger children.

She stiffened as she realized that it probably had been, by now. They’d have redistributed all her meager things, to make sure nothing was wasted, and the other children would remember her for a time, but eventually she’d be forgotten, as all the orphans who came before her had been. Who would remember Maksim? Who would treasure the happy little wiggle he gave when slipped a rare slice of fruit, and the funny bump on the edge of his shell?

He had been an orphan too. He deserved to be remembered. But she wasn’t sure even the matrons would.

Her new father took her by the hand and led her out the door, into a bright new world where the sun was too bright and the air was sharp and dry, burning the back of her throat. She breathed in sharply and began to cough, causing him to look at her in momentary concern before he softened and nodded.

“The air here can take some getting used to, princess, butyou’ll adjust, I promise. Come on.” Still holding her hand, he began to walk.

Nadya buried her face against her sleeve to cover her coughing as she let herself be led, and bit by bit, it became easier for her to breathe. Bit by bit, the air stopped stinging quite so much, and she started to relax and look at her surroundings.

Everything here was so large and sobright.She had never seen anything like it in or around the orphanage. Cars zipped by on the street, but she paid them little mind; cars were, after all, familiar things, best avoided or ignored. As long as she didn’t get into their way, it wasn’t like they were going to leap up onto the walkway to get her.

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