Page 51 of Ruthless Sin
“My mother’s,” she says. Her hand goes to the chain. “My mother sent me this when I told her I was keeping the baby. She said, put it around your neck,dochka. Wear it until he is born and then put it on his ankle so he knows someone loved him before he had a name.”
Nobody speaks. Nobody moves.
Oksana looks at me.
“You want to know,” she says.
It’s not a question.
She leans back in the chair. Her hand rests on the belly. She looks at the window.
“I was nineteen,” she says. “I lived in Budapest. A friend sent me a photo from Vienna. She was working as a hostess at a club. Good money, nice apartment, she looked happy.”
Her jaw tightens once.
“She was not happy. The apartment was not hers. She had been there six months and she could not leave.”
A pause.
“I didn’t know any of this. I took the bus.”
I know what comes next. Not the details. The shape. I know that shape the way you know a scar without looking at it. My stomach closes around itself and my hands go still in my lap and I don’t move them.
“They picked me up at the station. Took my passport at the car. Drove me to a building with bars on the windows. The bars were painted white. They looked decorative if you didn’t try to open them.”
Her voice is flat. No waver. No crack. The voice of a woman who has told this story to herself so many times it no longer shakes coming out. I know that voice. I have used it. I used it so long I forgot what the shaking felt like.
“Two years. They moved me six times. I stopped counting borders. I stopped counting men after the first month.”
Sofia’s hand finds mine. Her fingers lock. She’s shaking and I’m not. I’m somewhere past shaking. Somewhere very still.
The Vietnamese woman’s hands are flat on her thighs. The Romanian girl has her eyes on the floor, her spine straight, doing exactly what I’m doing.
“The last house was on Bourbon Street. Above a bar. The windows had iron shutters that locked from the outside. You could hear the music through the floor at night. Jazz. Tourists. People laughing.”
She stops.
“One of the men at that house assaulted me. I got pregnant.”
My stomach goes hollow.
“I didn’t choose him. I chose to keep him. That’s the only choice I had and I took it with both hands.”
Her shoulders pull back.
“He’s mine. He came from the worst thing that ever happened to me and he’s the best thing I have.”
Sofia makes a sound, small and choked, her grip on my hand going tight. I hold on. I don’t know who I’m steadying.
The blonde woman hasn’t moved since Oksana started.
Oksana’s mouth curves.
“Cassia found me when the house was raided. She didn’t ask me what I wanted to do. She asked me where I wanted to go. I said I don’t know. She said, come here then, until you do.”
Her hand moves in that slow circle on her belly.
“I’ve been here six months. I still don’t know where I want to go. But I know his name. I’m going to call him András, after my grandfather, who was a stubborn man and died at ninety-four still arguing with his doctor.”
