Page 3 of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

Then they left the walkway for a narrow dirt path winding through a green space, peppered with unfamiliar trees. She looked up at the man and asked a question, and he smiled down at her.

“The nice ladies at the orphanage said you’d had a turtle once, and you missed him very much after he went away. So I thought you might want to come and see some turtles here.”

None of that makes any sense, but Nadya nodded all the same. Better not to antagonize him as he led her deeper and deeper into the tall grass and the trees.

Then the path broadened out, and Nadya gasped.

The pond was small and almost perfectly spherical, with a low split-rail fence around it and several dead trees protruding from the dark water, their trunks mottled with rot and lichen. Turtles—unfamiliar turtles, but turtles all the same—lounged on the dead trees, heads extended to catch the sun.

“Cherepakha!” Nadya informed the man excitedly. “Cherepakha, cherepakha!”

That wasn’t one of the words he knew, but given the context and what he’d been told at the orphanage, it wasn’t hardfor him to understand. He let go of her hand, gesturing for her to go to the fence as he nodded and said, “Yes, Nadya. Turtles.”

“Cherepakha?” she said, more cautiously this time.

“I think that means ‘turtle,’ doesn’t it?” he asked, and folded one hand over the other like a shell before poking out his thumb and wiggling it back and forth like a little head peeking out at the world. He held his hand-turtle out toward Nadya, and she giggled, sounding refreshingly like what he expected a little girl to sound like for the first time since they’d brought her home from the orphanage.

All the counselors they’d spoken to, both at the adoption agency and at the church, had warned them that children from state-run orphanages were often solemn, slow to trust that adults would have their best interests at heart, slower still to adjust to new surroundings. Factoring in the language and cultural barriers, it wasn’t unreasonable to think it might be years, if ever, before Nadya trusted them. Hearing her laugh was a gift he hadn’t been expecting to receive. He smiled, thumb bobbing up and down in parody of a nodding turtle.

“Hello,” he said, making his voice deep and slow. “I am a turtle.”

“Cherepakha,” she said, obviously delighted.

“Cherepakha,” he echoed, only mangling the word slightly. He pointed to one of the turtles. “Cherepakha.”

Nadya beamed and bounced, clapping her hand against her thigh. It made sense, he supposed; she wanted to make a joyous noise, and she couldn’t clap her hands together when she only had one hand. It still dimmed his joy a bit to be reminded that his new daughter, lovely as she was, would always be limited; they could give her all the advantages in the world, but they couldn’t give her back her hand.

“Turtle,” he said, still pointing. Nadya stopped bouncing and looked at him quizzically. “Turtle,” he repeated.

“Turtle,” she said hesitantly.

This time, he bounced and clapped his hands against his legs, rather than hitting them together and reminding her of what she lacked (the idea that she might not think of herself as lackinganythinghad yet to form, and wouldn’t for years yet; the idea that a child who didn’t conform to his exact ideas of shape and function could be completely happy, and not consider herself lacking in the least, was even further away). This might not be the best means of language acquisition.

It was, however, a start.

NADYA’S NEW MOTHER WASwaiting when they returned from their walk, standing in the entryway with the note Nadya’s new father had left on the fridge clutched in one hand. Nadya smiled at her hopefully as she removed her coat and hung it on the peg which she had been told, mainly through pantomime, belonged to her. Then she spun and threw her arms around the man’s waist, giving him a brief but heartfelt hug, before running down the hall to her room.

The two adults were quiet until she was out of earshot. Then the woman asked, “Really, Carl? Taking her for outings without me? What happened to making sure she could accept us both? What happened to presenting a united front as a family?”

“She doesn’t understand anything that’s happened to her,” he replied, voice only a little defensive. “We took her away from the only home she’d ever known and pulled her halfway around the world without asking her if she even wanted to go. So yeah, I took her for a walk while you were at thegrocery store. That doesn’t mean she’s never going to accept you as her mother. She just wanted to see the turtles.”

“She wanted to see the turtles, or you wanted to be the big hero who showed them to her?”

Carl threw his hands up in the air. “Comeon,Pansy, we agreed we were going to do this together, and I’m still doing it with you! Can’t you try doing it with me? Please?”

His wife, the love of his life, the woman who had reacted to the idea of adoption with immediate and enthusiastic buy-in as soon as their pastor suggested it, who was more than happy to give a little girl a better life in America, land of the free and home of the brave, continued looking at him coldly for long enough that he began to fear her answer. Maybe this wasn’t going to work after all.

Finally, though, she sighed and said, “Our language classes are tonight. Don’t forget. We’re taking Nadya for pizza afterward.”

Language night meant basic Russian for them—only enough to let them make themselves understood; not enough to allow Nadya to cling to her native tongue and refuse to integrate with her new home—and English as a second language for her, to help her adjust better and faster to life with her family. They knew they weren’t equipped to teach a little girl who already spoke one language perfectly well how to speak English, and they needed her to be fluent if she was going to impress their church.

The Winslows had adopted a little boy from China, and he’d been speaking perfect English in less than a year. Nadya was smarter—she must have been, to survive that dreadful orphanage—and could be speaking English within six months, Pansy was absolutely sure ofthat.The idea of asking Nadya whatshewanted had never occurred to either one ofthem. Children were people, absolutely, but foreign orphans were sure to be so consumed with gratitude that all they could possibly want was to make their new parents as happy as possible.

Peace made, Carl embraced his wife and walked with her into the kitchen. There was time to make all three of them sandwiches before it was time for language class.

3LONG TIME PASSING

TIME PASSED, MORE HOURSslipping down the river, and Nadya adjusted, bit by bit, to her new reality. First the language classes, which were a punishment and a glory at the same time: the grammatical structure of English made no sense at all, and there was little poetry to the way words fit together. Still, being able to communicate her needs and desires to the people around her was worth any number of dull, leaden sentences sitting like ashes in her mouth; being able to understand and be understood was a gift so far beyond price that she didn’t realize how much she had desired it until it was given to her.

---