Pole, not a Ukrainian.
“It must be nice to have Darka to take the children off your hands,” Zirka goes on. “Especially Alix—though I guess you couldn’t ask for a better baby, so … quiet all the time. And thank heavens Annie Vesiuk is such a strong swimmer—it makes me nervous, all these children in the water, and no lifeguard around. My Yuri has his Junior badge, he can always pitch in if there’s an emergency. And Annie’s boys—it’s incredible, isn’t it—eight boys and all of them champion swimmers. Even the baby’s started and he’s only six months; she has him right in the water with the rest of them. Eight boys! You and Annie should trade recipes, Sonia.”
This time Zirka’s voice makes Sonia think of a sink full of cold, greasy water, the drain choked. “I’m going to check on the girls,” she says, not caring if Zirka thinks her rude for walking off. But instead of struggling to the girls’ encampment at the top of the dunes, Sonia stops halfway, turning her eyes in the direction of the lake, as if looking for a boat on the water, or some distant sign of land: a place where she will feel, at last, guiltless, requited,
home.
“Make sure she keeps her hat on, and don’t you dare let her out of your sight.”
Darka drops the baby into Laura’s lap and makes for the lake; Alix immediately scrambles to Katia. Nearly three, Alix is small for her age, small and thin and even darker than Katia, her eyes and hair black instead of brown. And she holds herself so rigid, it’s like a bundle of sticks falling into your lap when she plunksherself down, sucking her two front fingers, her black eyes watching everything, everyone. Bonnie hands Alix a plastic shovel to dig with and a small blue sieve. The baby holds the shovel in her hand as if she’s never seen anything like it before, and then, as if to reassure them, as if she were a grown-up joining in a child’s game she only half remembers, pats the shovel against the hot, loose sand. Baby Alix has never said even a single one of these words, though all her sisters were chattering away by the time they were two. Language stays locked in her throat like a safety pin she’s swallowed, but that’s bound to show up, sooner or later, like in an X-ray on the cartoons. Or so their father tells them. There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s perfectly capable of speaking, the doctor says so. If anyone asks about Alix, they are to say that she’s perfectly normal, bright as a button, though it’s never explained what buttons have to do with it. She’s just taking her time, that’s what they’re supposed to say: good things are worth waiting for.
But none of the girls assembled in the little hollow behind the dunes says anything nasty about Alix. If the boys were here it would be different—they would tease the legs off a spider. They are such babies, the girls agree. Any boy older than thirteen is off at the Ukrainian summer camp in Oakville, a camp run along military lines whose discipline, the fathers argue, is good for boys of that age—“that age” meaning old enough to argue with their fathers and be rude to their mothers. At camp they learn to carry messages across enemy lines, to dig trenches and communicate by semaphore—explained to their sisters as something involving flags and cunning. Any boy older than thirteen is at camp, except, of course, for Billy Baziuk, who spends every second of every day and night with his mother. As for the boys at the beach this year, they occupy themselves by hanging round the service stationacross the road from Venus Variety, inhaling the sharp smell of gasoline from the pumps, or else diving from a raft anchored at a part of the lake where the sandbars stop and the water’s cold and deep and dangerous.
Today the boys have decided to forgo the diving raft: overnight, a huge driftwood log has rolled up onto the beach. None of them has ever been in a canoe; some have never seen one, unlike their
“It must be nice to have Darka to take the children off your hands,” Zirka goes on. “Especially Alix—though I guess you couldn’t ask for a better baby, so … quiet all the time. And thank heavens Annie Vesiuk is such a strong swimmer—it makes me nervous, all these children in the water, and no lifeguard around. My Yuri has his Junior badge, he can always pitch in if there’s an emergency. And Annie’s boys—it’s incredible, isn’t it—eight boys and all of them champion swimmers. Even the baby’s started and he’s only six months; she has him right in the water with the rest of them. Eight boys! You and Annie should trade recipes, Sonia.”
This time Zirka’s voice makes Sonia think of a sink full of cold, greasy water, the drain choked. “I’m going to check on the girls,” she says, not caring if Zirka thinks her rude for walking off. But instead of struggling to the girls’ encampment at the top of the dunes, Sonia stops halfway, turning her eyes in the direction of the lake, as if looking for a boat on the water, or some distant sign of land: a place where she will feel, at last, guiltless, requited,
home.
“Make sure she keeps her hat on, and don’t you dare let her out of your sight.”
Darka drops the baby into Laura’s lap and makes for the lake; Alix immediately scrambles to Katia. Nearly three, Alix is small for her age, small and thin and even darker than Katia, her eyes and hair black instead of brown. And she holds herself so rigid, it’s like a bundle of sticks falling into your lap when she plunksherself down, sucking her two front fingers, her black eyes watching everything, everyone. Bonnie hands Alix a plastic shovel to dig with and a small blue sieve. The baby holds the shovel in her hand as if she’s never seen anything like it before, and then, as if to reassure them, as if she were a grown-up joining in a child’s game she only half remembers, pats the shovel against the hot, loose sand. Baby Alix has never said even a single one of these words, though all her sisters were chattering away by the time they were two. Language stays locked in her throat like a safety pin she’s swallowed, but that’s bound to show up, sooner or later, like in an X-ray on the cartoons. Or so their father tells them. There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s perfectly capable of speaking, the doctor says so. If anyone asks about Alix, they are to say that she’s perfectly normal, bright as a button, though it’s never explained what buttons have to do with it. She’s just taking her time, that’s what they’re supposed to say: good things are worth waiting for.
But none of the girls assembled in the little hollow behind the dunes says anything nasty about Alix. If the boys were here it would be different—they would tease the legs off a spider. They are such babies, the girls agree. Any boy older than thirteen is off at the Ukrainian summer camp in Oakville, a camp run along military lines whose discipline, the fathers argue, is good for boys of that age—“that age” meaning old enough to argue with their fathers and be rude to their mothers. At camp they learn to carry messages across enemy lines, to dig trenches and communicate by semaphore—explained to their sisters as something involving flags and cunning. Any boy older than thirteen is at camp, except, of course, for Billy Baziuk, who spends every second of every day and night with his mother. As for the boys at the beach this year, they occupy themselves by hanging round the service stationacross the road from Venus Variety, inhaling the sharp smell of gasoline from the pumps, or else diving from a raft anchored at a part of the lake where the sandbars stop and the water’s cold and deep and dangerous.
Today the boys have decided to forgo the diving raft: overnight, a huge driftwood log has rolled up onto the beach. None of them has ever been in a canoe; some have never seen one, unlike their
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