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The phone rings thrice and goes to voicemail. Standing on the cracked concrete outside of their motel in Taishet, Lera grinds the nub of her cigarette into the ground. A few sparks flicker and die as the thin sound of her brother’s voice comes through.
“You’ve reached Dr. Abram Volkov. If you’re hearing this, I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a bad time. Please leave a message and I’ll answer when I can.”
The texture of his voice almost startles her, a warmth she had forgotten even through cheap speakers. Abram’s voice is rough with a not-yet-quit smoking habit. She’d ended up with a carton of his Java Golds last Christmas- a fuller flavor than her Primas.
As children, they’d tried every brand Abram could get his hands on. The type would change routinely with their neighbor’s tastes. Abram’s errand running services were in high demand, earning spare change and spare cigs. The first from the box was always Abram’s, the second Lera’s.
She lets a sigh pass through her lips, barely visible in the air. He’s all the way in St. Petersburg, with his long surgery hours and beautiful fiance. For Lera’s life to even be comparable there would have to be something in it.
She was planning to be dead. She’d let the lease run out, driving from her apartment with all of her belongings in it. The books, furniture, and canned goods in the fridge have all been sold or thrown away. The only proof she ever existed at all is Nika, undeniable and breathing up in the hotel room, and-
“It’s Lera, I’m alive. I thought you might want to know.” She hangs up shortly after and pockets her phone before turning back inside.
–
“Lera, it’s Abram. I’m glad you called. Where are you right now? Your boss said you haven’t been in in a month. If you’re near St. Petersburg, please come by. Or call me and tell me what you’re doing. You could go visit Ivan too, he’d let you in if you just showed up at his door.”
–
“We should go to a carnival next,” Nika rambles between bites of dried fish. People throng around them, families with their own children and young couples clinging to each other. The street festival has all of the local artists and storefronts on display.
“That sounds good. I haven’t been to a carnival since I was young.” Lera replies, running her fingers along a 60 Ruble bookmark.
“Are ferris wheels really that tall?”
“They certainly looked that way.”
“You’ve never been on one?” There’s a tinge of despair in Nika’s tone to which Lera nods.
“I was too scared as a kid, I preferred the carousel.”
“I can hold your hand if you get scared.” Lera smiles, a huff of humor leaving her. The muscles ache slightly for the underused expression, still getting used to their new uses.
“Thank you Nika.”
“We should ride the biggest ferris wheel in the world.” The girl’s excitement grows with her volume, “we could touch the stars.”
“I don’t know where the biggest one is, maybe the U.S..”
“That’s far right,” Nika deflates, “there’s a whole ocean in between.”
“We can go anywhere you want, but maybe we should start small, then build up to it.” And, when this fails to instill her with the same excitement, “why don’t we go to the library after and look it up?”
She could, of course, simply pull out her phone to research. Except a Google result doesn’t bring joy to Nika’s eyes the same way the promise of the public library does. The smell of old paper, the whirr of a desktop computer humming to life, and a book to read together.
–
Abram:
I got a call from Lera
Ivan:
How’s she doing? I haven’t heard from her in a while.
Abram:
I don’t know
She seemed fine but some of what she said was concerning
Ivan:
What did she say?
Abram:
That she was alive, and she thought I’d want to know
Ivan:
Oh.
I mean, she was well enough to call.
That’s gotta mean something right?
Abram:
I called her back and told her to call one of us
Ivan:
Thank you.
It’s not going to happen again, I promise.
Abram:
You can’t promise that
What if she had called earlier and we missed it again
Jesus, what if she’s already dead
Ivan:
She called you this time. That’s good, we just need to find her and talk it out.
She wouldn’t have reached out if she didn’t want us to find her.
–
Nika turns the train map sideways again, squinting at it. Her cheeks, pink with frustration, scrunch up with her nose.
“What line do you think it is?” Lera tries to guide, cigarette dangling from between her lips.
“Maybe”, a long pause as she double checks something, “this one”. Her finger draws along the blue line, curling into the housing district.
“Close, we’ll follow the blue until here,” Lera places her finger on a node of the map, “then transfers to the green A.”
“It’s alright,” Lera follows up her explanation when Nika lets out a short “hmp”. “It took me a while to learn these, but since we don’t have a car we’ll have to use the train.”
“But this one only shows the city, how are we supposed to get to the carnival?”
“That’s a different train, but we’ll learn that one too.” Lera’s phone buzzes in her back pocket as she speaks. The sensation spurs on a new comment, “Actually, there’s somewhere else I’d like to stop first, before we go to the carnival, is that okay?”
“It’s okay,” Nika folds the map up neatly before slipping it into her backpack. “But you have to do the maps.”
–
[the sounds of a busy street. Cars honk in the background and snippets of conversations filter by but never enough to make sense of]
“Hey Lera, it’s Ivan. Abram told me you called him and left a message about being alive? I’m not sure why you wouldn’t be, you should call me back to talk about that. In Fact, you should call me back even if you only want to shout at me. Let me know what I’ve done to make you not even call me, to message Abram and only Abram. You didn’t even call mom? You know what this would do to her don’t you?
You said you wouldn’t try to do this again. And maybe you didn’t, maybe this is just some big misunderstanding. Please let me know, text or call or something. It doesn’t have to be me actually, call Ivan back or call mom.
I’m sorry for filling your bed with snow that time and pretending it was Abram. I’m sorry I still fuck up your name. I didn’t even know where you worked these days, jesus. But we can put that behind us. I’m still your brother and I still love you. My door’s always open, you can crash on my couch and watch shitty movies. I can help, I promise.”
–
The train rumbles and jolts underneath them as it rushes through empty fields. Nika’s head leans softly against Lera’s shoulder, moving slightly with every motion of the train. The girl’s attempts to lay her head against the window had been fruitless, no matter how perfect the motion had seemed in beginner’s chapter books. An egg shaped bruise peaks over the crown of her head, barely visible through her hair.
She’s asleep at the moment, though her chest doesn’t rise or fall. Nika’s biology is still a mystery to her, but the girl is always slightly colder than a kid should be. Children, though they are slightly foreign to her, tend to run hot, miniature space heaters in-and-of themselves.
She remembers the advice of the old women of her youth, a thousand overlapping axioms, muttered in washrooms and over chess games; “It takes a village”, “no two children are the same”, “God speaks through a child’s mouth.”
Her childhood had been as such, a thousand borrowed hours from elderly neighbors, playdates with the only other kids in the building. She’d always preferred the grandmothers to girls her own age, it never hurt quite as much. But it was the scraps of time with her mother that she valued most, having her hair brushed or a bedtime story read aloud. She survives on those little beads of kindness still.
But Nika is nowhere near the child Lera was. She’s busting with an energy Lera had to keep sharply contained. She had been at healthy levels of energy for a child, but never running and shrieking with her brothers. She could never quite keep up. Surely Nika deserves that love and attention, deserves to create a secret language with other young girls, to giggle and dress up in their mother’s clothes.
At least, that’s probably what young girls do with their friends. It’s not like Lera would know.
She aches suddenly and sharply, reaching out a hand to brush a few stray hairs out of the girl’s face. It’s soft and thin, tucked behind her ear easily. Lera’s thumb hovers over the bruise, chilly fingers flexing but ultimately withdrawing; best not to risk the pain.
“You can touch it if you want?” Lera’s shocked back further by the girl’s voice, fully pulling away. Humiliation sours in her throat at the over-familiarity.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she’s quick to explain.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Nika blinks open her eyes, completely skipping over the hazy-half awakeness that Lera's always struggled to shake. “At least not too bad.”
“I don’t want to hurt you at all,” Lera lays her hands flat against her thighs.
“You don’t mean that,” Nika has a small frown, rubbing her own hand across the bruise.
“I would never hurt you,” panic flashes through Lera, her throat goes dry. How could anyone dare to hurt this girl, “When did I hurt you? Because I’m sorry.”
“It’s good hurt though,” Nika doesn’t smile at that though, just tilts her head in consideration. She tucks one hand over her chin in an exact replica of a children’s book page.
“I still don’t understand,” the clack of the train seems to speed up exponentially in Lera’s ears. Her mind flashes through every bump and push in the apartment, coming up blank.
“Being away from my family,” the girl sniffs with a brave face, “it hurts.”
“Oh,” she digs her fingers into the meat of her thigh, there’s not much there. “I’m sorry.”
“I never thought-” her voice hiccups and Nika has to take a few deep breaths. Lera lends a hand to lay it on her shoulder, rising and falling in time. Eventually, “and that hurt too.”
Lera opens her mouth to speak only-
You’re my brother, I’ll always love you
Instead, she rubs a hand across the girl’s back and leans in slowly to kiss the uninjured crown of Nika’s head. A thousand possibly helpful, selfish comments on her tongue. She couldn’t bear it to even be a pinprick of a thorn on her finger.
Still, she thinks with all her might, against her better knowledge, “I know” and only hopes it’s understood.
-
"Hey, Abram, I thought over what you said and- yeah, I'll take you up on that offer. Might as well make the most of the guest room before it turns into that nursery huh? Ha! Well I'm only half kidding. Besides, I'm sure you two could use a little less empty space. Lords knows even my apartment is starting to feel empty. [pause]. And, uh, I still haven't heard from Lera, have you?"
-
"Are we there yet?" Nika's voice lacks the typical exhaustion one would expect from the phrase. She's fiddling with excitement, free hand twisting in the fabric of her skirt. The city streets wind and dance, something new and flimsy going up on the corners where buildings thought stable collapse. Nothing is familiar, just as strange an atmosphere as when she had visited her brother for the first time. Could be any city, any goal, but with Nika's hand in hers at least the time is certain.
They are alive, warmth spreads from Nika's hand to Lera. It only heats up part of one hand, and if she had said yes to peace the cold would never be more than a threat. The rest of her life could have been soft blankets and the whistle of heating through the pipes. The sort of fever state where all you can sense is the presence of your mother, as safe as it is sickly.
It still feels like a mistake not to go. But Lera is as much an animal as she is an idealist, her body knew the difference, knew how to smell a predator even if her brain didn't. It's not like her mind has lead her anywhere good, since she drove out into the snow, or before that- at her first big job, at university, at 14 and knowing with the certainty that comes with the age she was doomed.
So, fuck it. Crawl back with her tail between her legs, pick herself up from the bloody bathroom floor for the 5th time and crawl for help.
She finds Abram's door with ease, a deep blue, and a very off-white buzzer. She looks to Nika, giving the girl a final once-over. She seems normal, but Lera knows better. She knows she travels with a strange and wonderful creature, a soviet time capsule to a future that never came, the most wonderful girl in the world. A deep breath in and a squeeze.
"Do you want to press it?"
-
"Shit, Ivan can you get the door?"