Читать книгу Mummy, Come Home: The True Story of a Mother Kidnapped and Torn from Her Children - Oxana Kalemi - Страница 7

‘Hello,’ said the young man as I approached his table to take his order. He was sitting on the terrace outside the café, reading a paper and smoking a cigarette. ‘Can I have an orange juice, please?’

It was the fourth time he’d been back to the café and I knew he was here to see me.

‘Hello again,’ the man said as I returned to the table with his drink. He was older than me, with green eyes, light brown hair and the same square jaw as my favourite actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I knew he wanted to talk but although I liked his looks, I didn’t feel up to speaking to him. Strange men made me very nervous and I kept my distance. I went back inside and started drying glasses. There were only a couple of hours to go before I finished work and went back to the room I shared with Mamma. She’d probably be out so I’d have it to myself.

After that day at the beach a year ago, I had changed completely. I never talked about it or saw the other girls when I got back because I didn’t want their parents to ask questions. But still I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened and soon I stopped speaking. I avoided my parents and stayed silent for many weeks. A couple of months later I met Alina who told me Natasha had not been found after that day. I didn’t know if it was true or not but believed her when she said she’d spent a month in hospital after being raped by thirteen men. I felt so guilty. She was younger than me and I should have protected her.

Apart from Alina, only Yula knew what had happened. When the case came to court, I wasn’t called because I was so young and Yula went on my behalf—once again my parents knew nothing about it. The fifteen-year-old boy who raped me first was jailed for three years. The blond man got twelve years and the tall one three. But I didn’t really care. All I could think about was the sin I had committed as I stared at myself in the mirror. I hated what I saw. I was marked, dead inside and couldn’t feel anything anymore. School, my family, my friends—nothing mattered because I was empty. I just carried on living as I had before, going to school and coming home, but feeling nothing.

Six months later, my parents finally split up. We left Papa in the apartment, and Mamma and I moved to a dirty room furnished with a single bed, table and chair. I’d hoped we would become closer but, free of my father, Mamma went out most nights. The most I usually saw was a shadow getting into bed beside me, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes.

A few months after that, I stopped going to school. Our new home was on the other side of Simferopol and anyway I wasn’t interested anymore. My dreams of doing well in my exams and getting a good job meant nothing after that day at the beach. Mamma had tried to persuade me to go back but I wouldn’t change my mind and after a few weeks at home she’d told me I had to start paying my way.

‘If you’re not going to study then you need to make some money,’ she said. ‘You can’t keep eating my food and not paying anything. Now you’ll realise how hard life is.’

That is how I’d ended up working in the café where I stood now as the man got up and stared through the window. I put my head down and carried on drying the glass.

Whenever my mysterious friend returned to the café, I was always quiet and never responded to his attempts to break the ice. Nevertheless, a few weeks later, I left work one evening to find him standing outside holding a big bunch of flowers.

‘Hi,’ he said, offering them to me. ‘My name is Sergey. Would you like to go for a walk?’

I couldn’t help smiling—the flowers were beautiful and my stomach fluttered nervously to be so close to this handsome man.

‘Come on,’ he said, seeing that I was wavering. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Oxana,’ I said hesitantly.

‘Well, Oxana—I’d be very honoured if you’d walk a little way with me. Do you live far from here?’

Without thinking, I answered him and we began to stroll off together. Soon we were talking away and then we sat down in the park to chatter on together. Sergey was twenty-two, funny, and so good-looking he made me tremble. When we said goodbye, I was full of excitement, but I was also afraid. I’d been dead inside so long that I felt safer that way—did I really want to come back to life again and risk more pain? And surely Sergey would soon notice that I was worth nothing, that there was a sin inside me and then it would all be over. But he didn’t. Day after day, he came back and waited for me so that we could walk together, holding hands in the park as night fell. I felt warm inside when he smiled and I blossomed under his attention. Then, one night, he kissed me under a tree in the park—a soft delicious kiss that was everything I dreamed it would be.

‘Now you’re my girl, Oxana,’ said Sergey softly.

‘Yes,’ I replied, happier than I’d ever thought I could be again.

‘Is this what you want, Oxana?’ Sergey asked, his green eyes anxious.

I nodded. We were in the bedroom of a flat that belonged to a friend of his. It was early afternoon but the curtains were drawn against the daylight. I was wearing only my bra and pants.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s what I want too, but you have to be sure.’ He came over and sat beside me on the bed and stroked my arm.

‘I am.’ I was. I had decided that I wanted to give myself to Sergey and belong to him completely. I had found the man I wanted to marry and whose children I wanted to bear. Why wait? Besides, there was always the horrible possibility that if I did not, he might leave me for someone who would, even though he told me how much he loved me. My great fear was that he would realise that I was not a virgin when he first made love to me, and that he would turn away from me in disgust.

He lay me down on the bed. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered and then he kissed me. A few moments later, I felt him pushing against me and then he moved inside me. It was not at all like the experience I had had with those men on the beach—this was gentle and sweet and did not hurt me, though I made a small whimper as he entered me.

‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘It’s only painful the first time, I promise.’

It was over very quickly and then he lay beside me dozing.

‘Do you still love me?’ I asked. He hadn’t noticed that I was not a virgin but I feared that he might lose interest now that he had had me.

‘Of course I do. Don’t worry. Didn’t I say that you’re my girl?’ And he fell asleep.

‘I love you too,’ I whispered, gazing at his face. I knew that I never wanted to leave his side. Three months later, we moved in together, into a rented room in an apartment block.

I didn’t tell my mother where I was going—she would not have cared anyway.

Sergey and I were very happy in our little room together, although I was the only one bringing in a wage from my job at the café. Sergey was looking for work but he hadn’t yet found anything. In the meantime he spent time with his friends and going about the city while I was at work, and in the evening we were together.

Then, in late 1991, I found out that I was pregnant.

‘Well, we’d better make the best of it, I suppose,’ Sergey said uncertainly when I told him the news. ‘Weren’t you being careful?’

I just looked at him. I was only fifteen and didn’t really know anything about the facts of life. There was no sex on television, no half-dressed women in adverts and no sex education at school. I’d heard older girls talking of course but didn’t understand and had trusted Sergey to know what we had to do. He was so much older than me.

‘Do you think…’ I hardly knew how to say the words. It wasn’t what I had dreamed of at all. ‘…do you think we should get married?’

He knew as well as I did that unless I was married I would be branded a slut and our child would have a miserable life, bullied at school and looked down on forever. Only a ring on my finger could prevent it.

‘Yes, I suppose we’d better,’ said Sergey with a smile, although he didn’t look as happy as I’d hoped he might at the prospect. ‘And I really will have to find a job—otherwise how am I going to support my wife and child?’ He smiled and kissed me, and I tried to be positive. He must be pleased, mustn’t he? Wasn’t this what we had been planning all along?

While we arranged our wedding, which took time, my stomach began to swell and it was obvious I could no longer work at the café. I had to go somewhere safe where I could escape the looks and the whispers until I was married.

‘You’re not coming back here!’ shouted my mother. ‘I’m not taking you in because you’ve been a little tart! Get rid of it, that’s my advice. Children are only a thankless burden.’

There was only one person I could turn to—my father. I had not seen him for over a year and I was frightened of what he would say when I turned up on his doorstep, but I needn’t have worried.

‘Oxana!’ he cried, smiling and wrapping me in a huge hug. ‘Where have you been? Come in, come in. It’s wonderful to see you.’

Relieved, I went inside our old apartment. It was so nice to be back. It felt like home again. I explained to Papa what had happened: that I had met Sergey and was going to get married, but that I couldn’t live with Mama any longer. He looked down at my growing stomach.

‘I assume that this is the reason you need to get married,’ he said.

‘Well…I…’ I couldn’t meet his eye.

‘Let’s not worry about that now,’ he said kindly. ‘You are welcome to live here as long as you need to. And your fiancé can come too, if he likes. There’s room here and I’m tired of living on my own. Some company would make a nice change.’

‘Oh, thank you, Papa!’ I cried, throwing my arms round his neck. At last, things were beginning to go well for us.

Silently the happiness grew inside me with my baby.

I was married just after my sixteenth birthday, wearing a white flower in my hair and a blue blouse and skirt. Sergey and I exchanged vows and cheap metal rings, and then we were man and wife. I knew some people believed it was bad luck to get married without a dress and gold but I told myself they were wrong.

Sergey and my father seemed to get on well and we all lived together happily enough, waiting for the arrival of the child. Sergey got a job in a metalwork factory and I was so happy that we could save up for our own house. But times were hard after Ukraine became independent following the fall of the Soviet Union and he often came home without wages. He wasn’t alone and anger filled the air as prices went up and electricity and food shortages got worse. I was still one of the lucky ones, though, who had butter, eggs and meat as often as my father could get them, and I began to grow fat with my pregnancy and plenty of good food.

I had no idea what was happening when my waters broke on 31 May 1992. Papa knew though, and he took me at once to the hospital. My labour was difficult and painful but it was also short, and my beautiful son Alexander—or Sasha for short—was born quickly. When they handed him into my arms, I was shaking.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ a nurse said to me when she saw tears on my face. ‘He’s fine.’

But I wasn’t crying because of fear. I was happy. I had been born again in the moment that my son came into the world. The day at the beach was far behind me now. I was a different person, a mother, and my life could begin again.

When we got home, I spent hours staring at Sasha as he slept. He looked so peaceful—his skin the colour of milk and his cheeks like peaches—and so perfect that I felt almost scared to touch him. What if I dropped him? But Papa showed me what to do when I needed help.

‘Here,’ he said when I first tried to give the baby a bath and he kept slipping in my arms. ‘Watch and learn.’

There were so many new things and sometimes I wondered if I’d ever be able to learn them all. But gradually I discovered how to massage Sasha’s belly when he cried or stroke his head to help him sleep. I loved being a mother in so many ways and it gave me a warm feeling to live for someone else. The past seemed so far away now. I had another life to live for, another person who would carry my blood when I was gone.

It was not easy though, and Sasha was a difficult baby. He hardly slept at night but only cried and cried until the noise filled my head and felt like the only sound in the world. I began to feel more and more exhausted, and locked into a world where there was only the baby and me, as I fed him, changed him and tried to stop him crying. Sergey had seemed pleased with his new son but he couldn’t care for him the way I did—he could not offer his breast—and sometimes got angry during the night when the baby’s cries woke him.

Soon he began to spend more and more time with his friends. Now I was alone all day when he and Papa were at work, and without my husband in the evening too. As the weeks turned into months, I grew terribly lonely.

‘Why can’t you come home to see us?’ I’d ask, when he finally got home. ‘Your son needs you—I need you.’

‘Because I want to relax away from a crying baby,’ he’d reply. ‘It’s your job to look after him not mine.’ There was a hardness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before and it scared me.

Soon I couldn’t sleep or eat and my weight had started dropping. Within six months I’d lost five stone—my cheeks were sunken, I had black circles under my eyes and felt tired all the time. I was almost scared to go to sleep in case I didn’t wake up when the baby needed me. It was like being sucked into a whirlpool and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

It was no good turning to my mother—she had no interest in me or her grandchild, and spent her time drinking greedily with her friends. Papa was the only person who did all he could to help—going out first thing to buy me milk and leaving work early to help me at the end of the day. I forgave him for all the events of the past and was grateful for his love and support now, when I truly needed it.

But however difficult it got, there were moments when Sasha made it all worthwhile—a smile or a laugh could lift my heart and I knew then that whatever happened I would love him forever.

Sasha was about three months old when my father suggested that we go to collect Sergey from work. It sounded like a good idea to me; I’d never seen him at his factory before and I was curious. When we got there, I left Papa and Sasha outside while I went to ask when Sergey would be leaving.

‘There’s no such person here,’ replied the receptionist bluntly.

‘Yes, there is. You must be mistaken,’ I said with a smile.

But then I was shown into an office where a supervisor sat surrounded by files and he said the same thing. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Kalemi, but I can’t find your husband’s name anywhere,’ he said after looking through his papers. ‘He isn’t listed as an employee.’

‘But he must be here,’ I replied. ‘My husband has worked here six days a week for eight months.’

The man pulled another a pile of papers off a shelf. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said eventually. ‘A Sergey Kalemi did apply to work here last October.’

‘Yes, that’s him.’ I was relieved.

‘But I’m afraid he never showed up.’

I stared at the man. I didn’t understand what he was saying. ‘You must be wrong. He’s been working here for months.’

‘I’m sorry but I’m not. Your husband applied for a job last October and got it but never turned up to start work.’

My heart thumped. How could Sergey not be working here? He’d been out twelve hours a day since before Sasha was born. Maybe he’d got a job at a different factory and hadn’t told me. There must be an explanation.

I walked out to meet my father.

‘So where is he?’ Papa asked as I lifted Sasha into my arms. ‘Not finished yet?’

‘No.’

‘What time will he be out?’

I held the baby tightly as I stared straight ahead. ‘He won’t,’ I said slowly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They say he’s never worked there.’

There was a second of silence as colour flooded into Papa’s face. ‘What?’ he said quietly.

Fear suddenly filled me as my father’s face twisted with fury. I knew that look well.

‘Papa, please be calm,’ I pleaded. ‘We just need to find Sergey and he’ll explain.’

‘I hope so,’ my father said softly, and we turned for home.

When Sergey got back to the apartment, I took him into our bedroom while Papa waited outside. I told him everything that had happened.

He saw at once that there was no way to deny it, so he said defiantly, ‘I didn’t take the job because I couldn’t get a reference.’

‘But why not?’ I cried.

‘Because I’ve never worked anywhere.’

I looked at him as the breath left my body.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t want you to know the truth so I lied. I’m sorry. I have a criminal record because I stole something when I was young and now I can’t get a job.’ He shrugged.

‘But where did you get the money you’ve been giving me all these months?’

‘I’ve got a deal with a family who rent my parents’ house from me. It’s been empty ever since they died and these people pay me each month in cash.’

I knew it was true that Sergey had a house but I’d never wanted to live there. It was in a different part of Simferopol and it was more like a village place with no running water or electricity, and I had much preferred it at Papa’s. But now I stared at Sergey. ‘Why are you saying these things? Why are you telling me fresh lies? If someone was paying rent then you’d have brought more money home each month.’

‘Oxana, believe me,’ Sergey pleaded. ‘I gave you everything I had.’

I knew he was lying. What about all those nights he’d come home late and drunk? He’d spent whatever money he’d got on alcohol and his friends rather than his wife and baby.

There was no remorse in Sergey, only cold defiance. Was my whole life based on lies? Why didn’t my husband want to work and support us? I hoped that now I had learned the truth, he would change and take responsibility for us. I had to be a good wife to him—give my husband another chance and show him that I still loved him. But soon it was clear that things were not going to be so simple.

‘Well?’ demanded Papa when I finally went to see him. ‘What was his excuse? It had better be a good one.’

When I told him what Sergey had said, he was furious. ‘How can a man live like that? How he can sponge off me and not look after his own wife and child? It’s incredible!’

‘Please don’t hurt him!’ I begged. I could see that Papa wanted to beat him up.

‘I won’t—for your sake,’ he answered. ‘But it’s quite simple, Oxana. Sergey has to go.’

‘No, no! Please don’t separate us! Give him another chance.’

‘No. I’ve had enough. I want him out, at once.’

I felt sick as I heard those words. What would we do? My place was with my husband whatever trouble we were in. My fear turned to anger and hysteria, and I started screaming until my father slapped me. Sadness wrestled with anger in his eyes but all I felt was fury. Once again he’d shown what he was really like.

‘That’s it,’ I cried. ‘I’m going now and you’ll never see me again.’

‘But you can’t take Sasha. You can’t just leave.’

‘Yes I can. Sergey is my husband, the father of my child.’

This time I was the one who lost control and behaved like the sixteen-year-old I was. Papa said nothing as I packed our bags, walked into the living room and threw my keys at him.

‘I hope you’re happy,’ I shouted as I slammed the door behind