Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

When the director of the baby house comes to Zaya’s swan, he says, “That’s a shame. Grandfather Frost gave you three bright colors to choose from.”

Zaya invents an explanation, one the director would find very clever, and would surely repeat to his colleagues at the Ministry, who would find it very clever also—but of the sounds that slosh out of Zaya’s mouth, the director understands none.

So he asks, “Why not just paint the swan yellow?”

—

Every spring, the sanitarki trim the hedges along the building, pull weeds around the tulips. They bleach and starch the curtains, pour ammonia over the floors, shine the doorknobs, wipe the babies down.

And every spring, the Psychological-Medical-Pedagogical Commission of the Ministry of Education arrives in a procession of three cars. Zaya and the other four-year-olds press themselves against the windows of the baby house, watching the procession in a quiet panic. They are about to be redistributed.

The Threes shouldn’t worry. Unless they freeze up during the test, they’ll move on to the children’s house.

The Ones don’t yet know they should worry. They can’t even get out of their beds, and no one can do anything about that now, so they’ll be transferred to the psychoneurological internat.

“What’s at the internat?” asks a pudgy-cheeked boy, twice caught wearing a dress in the laundry room.

“It’s a delightful place where children run barefoot, pick berries,” says the director, who has popped in for the day. “Communicate with nature, and so on.”

A sanitarka starts to weep.

“Happy tears,” the director explains.

The Twos are the wild cards. Sometimes the Commission sends them to the children’s house, sometimes to the internat.

Zaya, our solid Three just a few months back, has regressed to a Two. She has abandoned speech in favor of writing, but few of the children know how to read yet, so most of the time she points and grunts.

When it’s Zaya’s turn with the Commission, the director escorts her to the back of the building, to a small room that smells like moldy onions. The Commission members sit at the head of a long table. They’ve arranged themselves in descending order of height, like nesting dolls. The largest man, who has a thick mustache cascading from his nostrils, asks Zaya to confirm her name.

Zaya hopes this isn’t part of the test, but knows she must answer every question, without exception. She fears that her bottom is about to give out like a trapdoor, jams her knees together, afraid of wetting herself. To deflect, Zaya does what she saw a sanitarka do once, with the director, to get an extra day off. She twists her finger in her curls, peeks at the men through her thick lashes. She leans in, coy, as if she wants to tell them a secret. The men lean in, too. First she raises three fingers, then seven. When no one says anything, Zaya forces out a giggle: Silly, can’t you understand?

The largest man looks down at the file in front of him and laughs. “Row three, bed seven. Her sleeping assignment.” This answer satisfies the Commission.

The man in the middle, with oily porous cheeks, pushes four puzzle pieces across the table. Zaya fits them together. It’s a picture of a cat, dog, and parrot.

“Can you tell us what you see?”

Zaya stares at the cat, dog, and parrot. She feels the shape of the first word inside her mouth, whispers it into her hand. It doesn’t come out right, so she moves on to the next word, then the next.

CAT

DOG

PARROT

BIRD

THING

WITH

FEATHERS

PETS

ZOO

ANIMALS

FLUFFY

FRIENDS

The Commission watches the clock above the girl’s head. The inside of Zaya’s palm is warm and wet from her breath. At last the smallest of the men says, “One more question and you’re free to go. What’s the weather like outside?”

Zaya swivels around, looks out the window. All she wants is to run out of the building, out to where the weather is. Instead, she turns back to the Commission, presses her hands to her ears to keep from hearing herself, starts pushing the first word out. Its mangled syllables resonate between her palms. She wishes the Commission wouldn’t look at her. She shuts her eyes, bangs her fist against the table, louder, louder to keep from hearing herself, until the pressure in her chest breaks and the words fire out. “How bright and beautiful the sun,” she cries, “not one cloud can cover it up!”

—

The psychoneurological internat stands at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the Dnieper River. Patches of white plaster flake off the walls to reveal pink brick underneath, as if the building suffers from a skin condition. Long ago, before its gold-plated cupolas were dismantled and its eighteen copper bells melted down to canteen pots, before its monks were shot, it was a monastery. An iron fence, a recent addition, surrounds the grounds, its spiked rods rising high enough to keep in the tallest of the children, the space between the rods narrow enough to keep in the smallest.