FORTY
GWENNA
My eyes flyopen in the dark to a sound.
Crying. No—sobbing.
I lie there a moment, frozen. Outside, the window is still a dim violet, barely dawn if it’s even daytime at all.
I don't want to move. I shouldn’t move.
But I can hear it getting louder and more desperate. Sharp, and then immediately muffled. It’s the sound of someone trying not to be heard, and my stomach wrenches. The sense memory is too strong. I know that sound. I know that sound intimately. I made that sound at Renfrew, crying into my pillow, and I heard it night after night, the girls begging for someone to come who never would. I'd see them the next morning, try to do my best to give them a smile or something, but it was never enough. It was always too late.
Another sharp cry.Something iswrongwith this place, I think. The way those girls act…it isn't normal.
And if something's going on, if I'm here and I can hear them and I can do something…
I can't just lie here.
Not when I know what that feels like.
I get up—I’m still dressed under the covers—and I open the door. Quietly, I listen for the sound coming down the cold corridor. It doesn't take long to locate. A few steps down, and it's obvious which door it's coming from—it's cracked open a little, even, the lamplight flung out.
I hesitate just a moment.
"Hello?" I say softly, pushing the door open. "Are you all right?"
Inside, I see it's Katyenka, the little one, the one who speaks like two words of English. She's balled up on the bed in a nightgown, her hair out of its long braids, loose and golden around her. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her lip is quivering. When she sees me, she tenses, grabs the square scarf beside her and stuffs it into her mouth, her choking sobs filling the fabric.
"Katyenka.” I rush forward, against my better judgment.What the fuck are theydoingto you here?, I think. "What's wrong?” I say—fruitlessly, I guess, since she doesn't know what I'm saying. "It's all right.” Gently, I put my arm around her shoulders, and she removes the scarf, sniffling and hiccuping. She shakes her head a little, starts saying something in a quick, teary stream of Russian that I don't understand.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I wish I knew what you were saying. I just…it's going to be okay, whatever it is."
I feel like that's a lie. It probablyisa lie, but that's what I have to give her, so I do my best. I look around. There's the same water pitcher and basin by her bed that I have in my room.
“Here.” I hold up a finger to her. “Wait.” She quivers but nods. Her tears stop for a moment.
I get up to the basin and jug, but they're both empty. "Be right back," I say. I take the jug and slip out into the hall for the water closet, as they call it.
There’s a technique Jessie the Therapist taught me—the mammalian dive reflex. Plunge your face in cold water andit resets your nervous system, something evolutionary I don’t quite understand.
I’m just trying to think of how I can explain to Katyenka that she needs to put her face in the water and hold her breath for 30 seconds—maybe I can demonstrate first?—when a hand slaps across my mouth.
I yell—yell, cry,scream, but no sound. I try to wrench out of whoever's grip it is, but it's no use. Someone seizes me by both arms and takes the pitcher from me—no,twosomeones, holding me firmly by the biceps and the forearm, and when they step into the light I see who it is.
It’s just Dasha. Sveta.
"What are you doing?” I say. "What's going on? I was just…she's crying back there.”
I whip my head around, but Katyenka is out of her room now, properly dressed and rebraided somehow. Her eyes don't even look red anymore, but bright, shining.
"Thank you for coming," she says, in accented but clear English.
"What?" I look from Dasha to Sveta, and they're both beaming, too. "What's going on?” I say quickly, anxiously. "What's going on?"
"We are so lucky," Dasha says. "So lucky that you come here."
Sveta grins. “Now, walk.”.
