When we hiked through Ananyiv that morning, it was like we’d wandered into a slum. The road lacked pavement in most spots, and the sidewalk was missing chunks. Small crowds of people wearing strips of cloth and ragged shawls huddled around crumbling concrete buildings, surrounded by trash and old piles of rubbish the Soviets left behind. But when Mom turned me to the right as we hiked out from Miss Vala’s house, and said “that’s where Aaron is,” it was like we’d flown straight back to America.
I saw a two meter tall gleaming white wall coated in cartoon paintings of flowers and smiling faces, with flowers and hedges arranged all about. Brown roofs and bright green oak trees peeked overtop, like budding flowers in spring. We walked beside it for a half-kilometre, and stopped just outside a great green gate. Dad pulled his hands out of his pockets, leaned up to the sign, and stroked his bald spot.
“It either says either Ananyiv Provincial Orphanage, or Ananyiv Country Turkey,” he said.
“I don’t see Luda’s car,” Mom said as she flicked her head left and right.
Dad frowned and turned to the right. Then to the left. “Yeah, she’s coming.”
I watched a dingy yellow car sputter down the street, weaving around the potholes and trash until it stopped just outside the gate. After a minute, our facilitator, Luda, stepped out holding a frazzled stack of papers and binders. She looked like all the other second-world government agents I’d seen, with the upturned nose, the caked-on makeup, and the stiff blonde hair coated in enough hairspray to burn another hole in the ozone layer. My mom started chatting with her, but I didn’t listen—I was twelve, I couldn’t care less about adoption paperwork. Instead, I crossed my arms, slouched my neck, and slid up to my dad.
“Did you know that Nikola Tesla invented a death ray?” I said.
My dad squinted down at me. “Then why don’t we have death rays?”
“’Cause he was so smart, nobody knows how he did it.”
“We should still have the one he made, right? Unless he didn’t actually make one.”
I looked down, pursed my lips, and took a deep breath. “Did you know Nikola Tesla invented a flying saucer?”
Luda and Mom started walking off towards the gate, so Dad drifted over towards them, ignoring my question. He did that a lot—but then, I always had questions. We passed through a crack in the gate, and watched as the wall revealed rows upon rows of red, gold, and blue flowers that surrounded a crowd of four long, brick buildings with tin roofs, surrounding a white gazebo. Out of the closest building walked three massive, broad shouldered women who looked like they could clobber an ox with their fists. They intercepted Luda and chattered in Ukrainian for a few minutes while my parents peered over their shoulders and muttered a few words to each other. Soon, they waved me over and ushered the four of us into the building they had come from.
When I passed through the door, I saw an office plastered with toys and cartoon wallpaper. It was inviting, but I made a point to look away from it, being so adult and grown-up as I was. But of course, as soon as everyone looked away, I had to see as much of it as I could. There were floppy rag-dolls in the corners, sitting beside a small Fisher-Price dollhouse and a line of Tonka trucks. Meanwhile the headmistress sat behind a desk at the back corner, wearing a poofy white cap and a dark grey pantsuit. As the other ladies scattered back into the facilities, my parents spoke with the headmistress using Luda as a translator. Again, I took no interest. Slinking back to the furthest corner of the room, I stared at the pictures on the wall—smiling childrens’ faces, pictures of balloons, and the lot. When I looked back, my parents waved me over, wringing their hands and sharing sheepish glances with each other.
“They’re bringing him in,” Mom said. Tightening her lips, she whispered in Dad’s ear, “what if he doesn’t like us?”
Dad just closed his eyes.
But then, he walked in. Six years old, covered in dirt, and wearing the dumbest hat I’d ever seen. When I saw his arms, I curled my nose up—he had no elbows, and his hands curled back like dolphin flippers. Mom cooed and took a furtive step forward. I’ll never forget the sweet look he gave her in that precious instant before he burst into tears and ran away. One of the big women dragged him back in by the arm, picked him up as he flopped about like a live fish. She squeezed him into my dad’s arms, and pointed us outside to walk around the facilities. Our facilitator waved us out, but didn’t follow. She said we could do whatever we wanted, but that we ought to stay away from the farthest corners of the wall, because the orphanage had a problem with feral dogs. That last bit ought to have rung the alarm bells in our heads, but none of us even blinked. We just walked out into the property. Butterflies flapped around the flowers, birds chirped in the breeze. It was magical, I swear.
Then we walked out back.
When walking down that path, I looked down and watched the flowers turn from blue to brown, watched the grass shrink and crinkle until it transformed into dry, cracked dirt. Brown puddles crept through the seams between buildings. Without the flowers to hide the stench, the air soured. It’s a special smell, one that’s hard to forget. Like oranges in a sewer. It was as if someone had tried to spray Lysol everywhere, but gave up halfway through. And when we reached the backyard, we saw the children. They huddled in small groups, practically naked, crowded into tiny tin sheds no bigger than closets, and if they moved, the staff beat them with sticks—not switches, sticks. As thick as my arm. The few children the groundskeepers kept loose just wandered aimlessly. Some of them glanced at us and smiled. Some of them looked like they didn’t know anyone else was there. Others dropped their trousers and jerked themselves off in the middle of the yard. I tried not to look at those ones. Still, most just walked around like cattle around broken, rusted playground equipment, covered in dirt and human shit.
For once, I didn’t know what to say. My parents’ eyes flicked frantically about the property. Dad cradled Aaron tighter, while Mom put her hands on my shoulders.
“What is this?” she asked. “What—Luda didn’t mention anything like this.”
Dad shook his head. He handed Aaron off to Mom and sat down on a short set of stairs outside one of the offices overlooking the play-area. Aaron had long since stopped squirming, and when Mom sat him down on her lap and started to scratch his back up and down, he let the muscles in his neck loosen.
Suddenly, my Dad stood up and cleared his throat. After reaching into a striped red bag on his shoulder, he brought out a small plastic truck and set it in front of Aaron. They shared a look for a few moments. Dad said something in Ukrainian, but no one, not even Aaron, understood him. And after a long while staring at that plastic truck, Aaron finally stuck his foot out and pushed it forward.
Over the next week, we explored the facilities. All the government’s money had flooded straight into the flowers and the wall. That, of course, was the most important part of the facility to them. At first, we had hung around a sand pit in the center of the play-area. We brought him dump trucks and shovels, and we all dug around together, making little engine noises as we went along. He loved things that moved. Whenever we gave him a new one, he always said the same word: machina. That dull expression he wore would turn into a warm half-smile. It was fun—until we found enough shit to realize that the pit was a litter box. We didn’t play there after that.
With nothing else to do, we wandered. The further into the facilities we went, the more desolate the whole place seemed. Nails poked out of crumbling plaster buildings; we stumbled upon a yard full of corroded farm equipment; some of the abandoned buildings were filled with rows upon rows of abandoned steel crib-frames. The whole property kept going on for almost a quarter mile, until it ended in a patio of broken concrete tiles lined with rows of strange rusted machines. They lined up to guard the scrappy fields where packs of feral dogs lived. God, I hated those dogs. The starving things slinked all around the facilities, stalking us from behind, as if they would jump as soon as we turned away. They only ever disappeared when the groundskeepers gave them a kick. Once, Luda told us that the facility had lost a few children over the years—they had disappeared into thin air. But we all knew what had really taken them—Aaron always hid behind us whenever the dogs got close.
One the eighth day, one of the last days we spent in Ukraine before we would have to return home to await the adoption court’s decision, we got a glimpse inside one of the bedrooms. There were four main ones, and two smaller ones—this was one of the main buildings, placed in between the play-area, the front office, the sheds, and the ruins. My dad had hefted Aaron over his shoulders and had peered into the door. I didn’t know why they wanted to go in, but they weren’t talking to me, and I wasn’t offering much to them, either. I had just followed them around for the past week, for lack of anything better to do. But when I stepped inside, I immediately regretted it. Inside was a concrete room with no lights or central air, lined with crib-frames, much like the abandoned buildings. Except these frames were occupied. In an instant, we realized that the number of kids was double, probably triple what we thought. We never saw any of them, because the staff had kept them inside. They were strapped by the arms, legs, and waists into those steel cribs—there they were kept, and there they would stay, forever. I later learned that some of those kids were fifteen-eighteen years old—but you’d swear they looked no older than two.
My Mom has since made this fact clear to me; these children were not mentally ill, at first. At lease, most weren’t. This was not a mental institution. This was where the Ukrainian orphanages filtered their unadopted children with physical disabilities. Any given child might have had only one arm, or a few fingers missing, or even just have epilepsy or HIV. It didn’t matter. The courts would send them all to the institute. And after years and years lying strapped in a crib, or sitting crowded in a shed, their minds would rot. These children who walked around with their heads in their hands, who didn’t seem to notice when they bumped into walls, who hid from feral animals—most of them started out as cognizant as any other child. This institute was the burial ground for their thoughts.
Standing on the edge of the concrete, I turned to my mom and looked down. Taking a deep breath, I steadied my arms. “Are you gonna take me when you come back?” I said.
“No.”
