Stalina by Emily Rubin

above our bunks. The buzz from the shuffling cards made the sound effects for the flapping wings of the giant moth hawks I conjured. The slap of a card hitting the table brought me back to reality and to the counselors’ daily gossip.
    “Lela’s parents have not been heard from for a week.”
    “Don’t say anything until you are sure.”
    “I found a tooth in my soup tonight.”
    “The children have been working in the kitchen.”
    “Hazardous work.”
    “Dangerous eating.”
    “Balya the cook is missing a front tooth.”
    “She lost that months ago.”
    “Maybe I should have saved it for her.”
    “Gin!”
    “Damn!”
    “Shut up and deal!”
    “Go fuck your mother.”
    Sounds of scuffling.
    “Settle down, Vanya.”
    “That tooth…I feel ill.”
    “Buck up. Be glad you’re here.”
    “What, here, at Camp Klorp?” Klorp means bedbug.
    “Stop it!”
    “How about Camp Siege?”
    “The young ones will write their parents, ‘Dear Uttyets and Mart, Having a lovely time, hope all is well, don’t eat Uncle Vanya if you can help it. Your sweet Misha from Camp Siege.’”
    “Vanya, please.”
    “OK, Camp Flora , just for you, Tanya. But where’s your sense of irony? Not very Russian of you.”
    Tanya had long blond hair and spent her days chopping wood. She was strong and hugged each one of us every day. It was a comfort. Vanya tended a herd of goats near the camp. He smelled like those goats and had the biggest, roughest hands I have ever seen. I listened while they played cards, keeping very still so that when I fell asleep I would not fall off the bed or disturb my sleep mates during the night. We were always four or more in a bed. When someone near me would start to cry, which happened often, I would try so hard to hold it back. I tried so hard to be strong.
    No one escaped the siege. Bela and Leo were brothers who always shared a bunk. Neither one ever said a word. They ate their meals under the long table and refused to sleep with anyone else. For the rest of us, the bed assignments would change almost every night, so if someone had bony elbows and knees or foul breath, you only had to tolerate them once or twice a week.
    “Flexibility, adaptability, and strength—these are the things you will learn at Camp Flora,” Tanya told us almost every night before she gave out the bunk assignments.
    “Leave Bela and Leo alone,” she would say if someone was making fun of them.
    One time Rakia, an angry student right out of Herzen University, tried to force them to separate. She was always mad about having to abandon her studies. “It will be good for them,” she said in her bossy style.
    When they were separated, Leo would not stop hitting his head against the floorboards and Bela obsessively ate the torn threads of a blanket.
    “I told you, leave them alone,” Tanya said. “I will take care of them.”
    “But they’re not being good Communists,” Rakia said, storming out.
    “That’s not my concern, Rakia. They are children; let them be.”
    Tanya disappeared one day. Who knows why? In those days it could have been anything. Luckily, Rakia did not take over.
    It was two and a half years before I saw my parents again, and at first I did not recognize them or Leningrad. The city was a charred skeleton. My parents were not much better, their faces gaunt and bodies thin as branches. It was my father’s smile that brought me back. Even though he had lost a front tooth, I recognized his crooked smile and plump lips. My mother managed a feeble smile through her tears. Neither could pick me up. I was healthy and put my arms around my mother’s legs and tried to lift her. She flinched when I touched her. There was great distance between us.
    “Stalina, it’s not you. My body hurts from being so tired,” she said.
    Hunger exposes the nerves. Mother bruised easily and was very sensitive to the slightest touch or any sound louder than a light switch. It wasn’t until I was older that she told me how