"Well, Anyway..."

by Kateryna Babkina

Translated from the Ukrainian by Dominique Hoffman

On the very first day of school, Lily acquired knowledge that hindered her future joyful and conscientious school attendance. She confirmed what she had previously only suspected: some knowledge isn’t worth acquiring. For example, knowledge can be unpleasant, uncomfortable, and painful, and can even lead to the loss of personal property. In fact, some knowledge cost her a mouse: the beloved plastic mouse pin that she wore on her beret when it was cold out and on the collar of her dress when it was warm. And all of Lily’s hats were berets, all her dresses had collars, and she was expected to gain knowledge more joyfully, readily and diligently than anyone else.

And this was just the first day!

Lily was small for her age, so the teacher put her in the front row, which represented her mama and daddy’s first triumph: of course, Lily would be assigned the spot for the best students! Lily, always observant and precise, mentally noted that this belief was not entirely aligned with reality. The front row was not for the smartest, but the smallest – and the most nearsighted. But her seat assignment was a victory for her parents in another way too: they had dreamed that Lily would sit next to a boy who was “one of us” and maybe even marry him someday. Which didn’t really make any sense to Lily. As far as Lily was concerned, “us” meant her family: Lily herself, Mama, Daddy, Granny Raya, and Granny Marina. There was no little boy. In the spring, when Mama and Daddy began talking about Lily starting school, she would occasionally fantasize that maybe there actually was a little boy hidden somewhere in their family. Sometimes that struck her as a great thing and she would either secretly go looking for him in the nooks and crannies of the house or she would openly ask Mama and Daddy, Granny Raya, and Granny Marina about him. Mama and Daddy had no idea what she was talking about and insisted they’d never said a word about any little boy hidden in the house. Granny Raya would cluck and mutter, and then Granny Marina would appear and slowly declare, “Lily, do you know why people have two ears and one mouth? So that they can listen more and talk less.” Lily wanted to protest and point out that actually, she was hardly talking at all. In fact, she just wanted to listen and find out about the little boy. In reality, no one could contradict Granny Marina: maybe she did have just one mouth (definitely one), but it worked like ten, while her ears, though she clearly had two, didn’t seem to do anything at all.

Then, on the first day of school, Misha turned up next to Lily at the front desk, and she immediately felt that they did have something in common and that he was almost definitely “one of us,” though she couldn’t have explained the feeling at all.

Lily was the smallest in the class, and Misha, correspondingly, was the most nearsighted. Lily looked back at her parents, but they clearly weren’t so observant and were just reveling in the day like children.

As she was looking for her parents, Lily’s eyes met those of a girl seated two rows back, who looked pointedly at Misha’s hair, which stuck out from his head in dark curly springs, and quietly said, “Afro.” Lily didn’t know what “afro” meant, but she looked at Misha’s hair, thought about Africa and the pictures of African children in Daddy’s magazines, and drew her own conclusions. Another girl sitting behind Misha caught Lily’s eye and mouthed, “Michael Jackson.” Lately, Michael Jackson had been looking a lot like a mummy with long, wavy, black strands, and once Lily had even confused him with Morticia Addams from the television cartoon, but most of the video clips still showed Michael with hair just like Misha’s.

The teacher spent a lot of time explaining “First Grade Honor.” Of course, up until last year, it was still Octobrist or Young Pioneer’s Honor, but now that Ukraine was independent, the Octobrists had lost their relevance. Honor, however, turned out to be important even without Communism. Then, after the official First Lesson, it was time for the official First Party – with a dessert table. Lily thought that the lesson on First Grade Honor concluded the day’s knowledge, and she was even a bit disappointed that she hadn’t learned anything useful (if you didn’t count the word “afro”). Instead, it turned out that the most interesting part was only just beginning -- both in general and in regards to knowledge.

When the teacher told them to stand up in pairs, Misha with the afro suddenly sprang up from their shared desk and ran to the back somewhere, to his parents, his frightened blue eyes sparkling behind his unbelievably thick glasses. While the teacher and some of the parents were quickly pushing the desks to the edges of the classroom, the children lined up in pairs at the center of the room, with tiny Lily entirely alone and embarrassed at the very front of the line.  This went on for so long that she felt completely mortified, entirely forgetting why she was there and why she had to endure this unanticipated anguish, but not long enough for Mama and Daddy to notice the disaster and fix it.

Lily was mainly perplexed because she was accustomed to doing the right thing and having things turn out right. This cause-and-effect relationship had been respected and promoted at home for many years, for all the years that Lily had lived there. And now it suddenly turned out that this relationship could no longer be relied upon. Because it’s completely impossible to stand in a pair when you’re alone. Even if someone tells you to stand in a pair and you want to do the right thing. And it wasn’t at all clear what to do after you did everything right, but things didn’t turn out right, but instead, they just happened however they happened, and what did happen wasn’t right at all. While Lily was standing there thinking about all this and hesitating, someone grasped her hand and pulled her back a bit. The tall, thin girl who’d said “Michael Jackson” added Lily to her pair and checked that the three of them were standing in a straight line.

“This isn’t a pair,” said the boy who was already standing with the tall girl. “I know what a pair is: it’s two.”

“Well, anyway,” said the girl carelessly, “we have this kind of pair. Here, you stand in the middle.” 

And she deftly rearranged their hands.

They waited there while the moms laid out the pies and cakes from home, bowls of candy, and colored soda—the three of them hand-in-hand with the doubt-filled boy in the middle. Frightened, confused and agitated, Lily couldn’t prevent the tears that suddenly welled up and streamed quietly down her face, even though it seemed like there was no longer any reason.

The tall girl leaned across the boy and said, “Anyway, stop crying.” And she added encouragingly, “I don’t have a father.” 

Lily looked at her in dismay, and the boy looked even more doubtful. Both Lily and, apparently, the boy had some knowledge  and reasoning that in order for this girl to appear, both a mother and father were required, which led to Lily’s dismay. After a moment, Lily attempted to clarify, “Did he die?”

“Well, anyway,” said the tall girl. “He didn’t die. I never had one.”

Lily forgot to cry. The boy said, “It’s impossible not to have a father.”

But two voices answered him in unison from both sides, “Well, anyway.” Lily was surprised to recognize her own voice as one of them. She was weighing her new knowledge – “some people don’t have fathers” – and imagining how much less cozy, warm, and happy life would be for her, and for her mama, and even for both of her grandmothers without her own daddy and pondering how much less cozy the tall girl’s life must be. Then a voice from behind confused everyone even more. 

“I don’t have a mama,” said the girl who knew the word ‘afro.’

“No mama?” asked the tall girl. It appeared that even she was thrown off by this.

“No mama,” the girl quietly confirmed.

At that, the little boy holding the girl’s hand, who was nearly as small as Lily and much more upset, suddenly burst out sobbing as if he himself had no mother and had just this moment found out. They stood around him while he cried and cried until Lily was no longer feeling sorry for the little girl with no mother – although the horror of the very words “no mama” gathered just behind her and would cast a frightening shadow of possibility over the coming days. It hadn’t frightened her yet only because she hadn’t noticed it.  Instead, she was feeling sorry for the boy, who was crying so intensely – either for this other mama or for the totally unknown little girl next to him who didn’t have a mama.

Then the tall girl blinked decisively, released the hand of the boy who had by now forgotten even his own doubt in the face of so much that was new and unfamiliar, and her slim fingers reached over to Lily’s collar. She plucked the shiny, grey and pink plastic mouse from the collar and held it out to the weeping boy. “Here,” she said. “This is for you. It’s a present. Please don’t cry – stop crying right now.”

And, it seems, he did stop. Maybe not right away, but he definitely stopped.

 When Dima’s mother called to ask Lesya and the girls to sort through his things, they went over right away. Of course, that was after the funeral was over and she was able to call anyone to say anything at all.

Dima’s mother didn’t say much and, for some reason, referred to him exclusively as Staff Sergeant of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade. She made coffee for the girls and told them to stay for as long as needed and to take whatever they wanted. Then she went off to her bedroom, from which the quiet murmur of the television could be heard. Lily hadn’t even known that Dima was fighting in the war in Donbas. Now he was gone, and even his mother seemed to have pulled herself together, well, as much as it’s possible to pull yourself together from what you’ll never get over, but Lily still just couldn’t wrap her mind around that “93rd Mechanized Brigade.”

Dima’s room was just like they remembered it from high school or maybe the start of college. They hadn’t been here since then. Lesya started with the clothes first, sorting through what could be donated for displaced persons and what couldn’t. It turned out that almost everything could be donated: Dima had always been meticulous and neat. Nina absentmindedly pulled books off the shelf and uncovered a cache of things that had fallen behind the books through the years and lain forgotten in the dust: guitar picks, cigarettes, Polaroids, bus passes, and bank cards. And then on the lowest shelf – amongst the children’s books, pieces of various building sets, two little rubber Ninja Turtles, and a marble – a small plastic mouse pin appeared. 

When Lily saw the pin, she just said, “I feel like I had one just like that when I was little.”

And Lesya answered pensively, or maybe she just said to herself, “Well, anyway…”

And, of course, they all immediately pretended not to remember anything more about it. 

Because that was the only way they could possibly endure it.