Walking Home

Walking Home

Dodging shallow, muddy pools of water, we walked the ruddy dirt streets from the orphanage back to the temporary apartment that was our home for just under a month. My newly adopted children Dima and Vika walked with me and as we traversed the two mile stretch of road in the tiny Russian village, my mind drifted between the reality of the moment and what the future would look like for my current family of four with three new additions. Dima was walking slowly…pausing occasionally to play with my digital camera. Vika followed closely and maintained her usual posture of casual indifference. Once we reached sight of the sagging apartment building I turned to herd them into the dark acrid hallway. Dima, the strong thin one who had seen way too much ugliness in his eleven years, was no longer behind me. I turned to Vika, his friend and soon to be sister, and without the benefit of speaking Russian, made ridiculous gestures attempting to communicate “Where is Dima”? Vika smiled slightly and shrugged her shoulders. I hurriedly sent Vika into the apartment and ran back outside. The courtyard was empty of children yet littered with rusty ancient playground equipment and a scary colony of feral cats. My initial feelings of bewilderment transitioned to concern. Everyone in town knew that Americans were here, as they often are, to adopt one or more of the two-hundred orphaned children that reside just outside of town in the old dilapidated school house. Americans, in the eyes of rural Russia, are money. The village was immersed in poverty. Villagers who had been conditioned to depend on the red blanket of socialism were now finding it difficult to adapt to the labor requirements of capitalism. Many scratched out gardens in their front yards and traveled out of town by train to work, while others spent their entire day in a vodka induced haze. My awareness of the potential for extortion became more acute and my thoughts raced with images of Dima being hustled away to some dank, sour place and held for money. My pace quickened as I explored the busy primitive streets, a spectacle of worry among the sullen faces that had surrendered to the environment of hardship. I considered finding some sort of law enforcement to assist me, but given the language limitations, decided to exhaust my local search first. For over, two hours I scoured trash strewn alleys, evading snarling yard dogs stretching the limits of their chains. Finally, I stopped to reconsider my approach to this gut wrenching situation. I sat on a concrete wall, tired and feeling incredibly vulnerable, I considered what to do next. Here I was in a place so foreign to me that I couldn’t read a stop sign. I felt helpless and exposed knowing that corruption and lawlessness were things I had never had to deal with before. I carefully weighed my options. I would have to find the local social worker that was assigned to us and get her help. Standing to leave I looked down the street and spotted Dima, casually strolling down the side of the street, still looking at the digital camera looped over his neck. The emotions…concern, fear, panic, dread, from the last two hours, morphed into anger and I ran toward him. Hearing his name he looked up and upon seeing my face, quickly dropped his head like a dog scorned. I made wild gestures of anger and disbelief, grabbing his arm and shuffling him to the apartment. Once inside I grabbed the English to Russian translation book and quickly flipped pages to find the exact word that would capture how I was feeling. How do you say “really really pissed” in Russian? I looked down at him, his big brown eyes, the scar on his face a permanent record of some cruel past experience. At that moment I realized that he did not understand. No one had ever cared if he was missing. For his entire life he had been able to wander and explore on his own schedule without being accountable to anyone. The idea that I was worried was as completely foreign to him as this place was to me. Looking back at the book I changed my search and found the word “love”. That was what I wanted Dima to know. I wanted him to know that the veins ominously protruding from my forehead meant love. I kissed him and wanted to cry. Later that day we both looked back through the chronology of photographs captured during his two hour journey. There was a photo of a little dog with muddy legs, one of a sleeping cat. There were several of Dima posing with a group of nurses at the local infirmary. Dima had been recording his world… preparing to say goodbye.