Chapter 3
664 Words
“Pay attention,” said the tall man.
He was so long that he seemed to be folded into the hallway. He was standing close to Blima’s mother, his big hands around her smaller ones, pressing papers into her palms. Blima had seen this man before, and she hadn’t liked him then either. She backed away, quietly so that they wouldn’t know she was there.
“Ayala, I need you to listen to me,” the man said again.
Ayala bowed into his chest. Blima shivered.
“I don’t want you to panic, or pretend that you’re bored. Here’s what I want you to do. When the officials ask to see your papers, I need you to pinch the little girl, pinch her hard. Don’t tell your husband that you’re going to do it. That way, she’ll be crying, you’ll both be concerned, everyone will want the scene to be over.”
Blima crouched down. She was the only little girl in the house.
“Also, make sure that your shirt is unbuttoned,” the man said, touching her mother’s blouse. “That will help.”
“I don’t want to do this,” said Ayala.
“As a plan, it’s perfectly safe. You’ll send these back by post. We’ll be together again before the end of the year.”
“And what about Misha? What about Max, Raisa, Efim?”
“I’ll bring them with me.”
“I can’t just leave.”
“I’ll find a way to get them out. If anyone can do it, I can. Things will carry on just as they have been. This is a momentary change.”
Blima crept away. Sometimes, the tall man kissed her mother. Sometimes the little boy with the ice blue eyes appeared out of nowhere. Blima didn’t want any part of it.
When Ayala came to find Blima some time later, she’d been hiding forever, was ready to be found.
“Pay attention,” said Ayala.
Blima sat up, and all the dust particles she’d been counting scattered. She crawled out from under the table and scrambled onto the chair across from her mother.
“I want you to practise your spelling,” said Ayala. “I want you to write our family name.”
Pride welled in Blima. She could do this. She’d known how to write her name for months, forever. She wrote it out in measured letters, careful not to smudge the ink. Then her mother crossed it out and wrote something new beside it.
“I want you to write our name like this.”
Blima puzzled over the letters, familiar somehow, but wrong. “That’s not our name.”
“Do what I ask.”
“But that spells something different.”
Blima wrote her name again. She turned the paper around, hopeful, but Ayala drew a stroke right through it.
“This isn’t fair.”
“Who told you that anything would be?” said Ayala.
Blima slid off the chair and inched toward the door, wiping hot tears off her cheek. Nobody had told her things should be fair. It was just something she knew.
“Life will never be fair. And we will never be safe. There are always people just outside the door. There will always be another threat.”
“I know that,” said Blima.
“This is how we write our name from now on,” said Ayala, writing the word again. “If I ever catch you writing our name in the old way, I’ll take out the strap.”
Blima rushed back to the table and pushed the paper off. It drifted. For a moment, she and her mother watched it together. Then it touched the floor with a shush.
Ayala stood. “Things in this world are not immutable,” she said. Then Blima watched as she disappeared right out of the room. A few seconds later, a door slammed shut somewhere in the inner house.
- Writer
