Chapter 19Ana
Ana
It’s hard to tell the difference between dreams, nightmares, and memories.
I have no idea where I am and there’s no one to guide me, but they could be replays of actual moments in my life and I just don’t realize it.
I’ve woken up in a panic several times since my rescue, and I’ve had to just accept it as my current reality and hope that one day, it’ll resolve itself.
When I wake up gasping for breath, I’m reminded of the times it happened when I was sharing a bed with Vasily and he would sling an arm out, drag me to him, and either mumble a sleepy, soothing hush or make his way inside me to silence my brain with orgasms. It felt so natural that I wondered if I’d always had nightmares .
And it makes me sad that he’s not here with me now. I go so far as to grab the other pillow in my bed to pretend it’s him comforting me, but then everything comes back.
He wasn’t used to handling my night terrors. He barely knew me. He didn’t love me. He was my actual nightmare.
I dash the tears from my eyes even as I struggle to name the emotions causing them.
Grief, anger, repulsion, fear. And heartache.
And frustration. This dream was stolen from the video Tony showed me, concocting an idea of what happened after I stopped watching, and I’m as repulsed with Vasily as I’m repulsed at my own horrific fantasies of what happened next.
And even more repulsed at the dampness in my panties.
I have to resist the urge to touch myself, to satisfy the sexual frustration that shouldn’t exist. I have to chastise myself for secretly wishing, deep down inside, that Vasily was here to do it for me because he’s so damn good at it.
I know my thoughts are going to run for a while, so I get out of bed and take a long shower to reset myself.
Start my day or tire myself out, I’m not sure.
I dig through my closet for something to wear before, in a moment of weakness I’m absolutely disgusted with myself over, I dress in the clothes I came here in, already back from the laundry.
I throw Vasily’s hoodie on.
Artom’s room is just down the hall. I tell myself I just want to check on him since that’s the only thing I can do right now to feel less like a terrible mother, but I stand in the doorway for all of ninety seconds before I creep around to the other side of the bed, cringing as the floorboards of the aging house creak beneath my feet, and slip under the covers. And then I watch him .
Nothing else feels right. My clothes feel wrong.
This house feels wrong. Phoenix feels wrong.
Even Camilla, who is obviously still my friend if my kid is friends with hers despite being across the country from each other, doesn’t feel quite right to me.
But lying next to Artom, listening to his deep breathing and smelling his freshly washed scent, watching him as he throws an arm over his head and flopping his opposite leg over, all but pretzeling himself, this feels right.
This is joy in its purest, most concentrated sense.
I’m not a bad mom. A terrible thing happened to me, and we’re both doing the best we can in the aftermath. If we have to go at our own pace while we figure out what life is going to be, that’s okay. We’ll love each other enough to get through it together.
His head drops to the side, and by the time he’s fully facing me, his eyes are wide open, staring at me. I should apologize for waking him, but the smile he gives me dashes any apology away. “Good morning, Mommy!” he sings way too loudly for someone who woke up half a second ago.
“It’s still night, baby,” I whisper.
“I know that,” he says, but he doesn’t even look miffed about it. He shuffles over to my side of the bed and throws his arms around me as best as he can. “But I just woke up, and that’s what you say when you first wake up.”
I laugh softly as I hug him too. “Yeah, that’s true. Good morning, baby.” After a beat, I add, “Is it weird that I call you ‘baby’? Did I used to call you something else?”
I feel him shrug in my arms, a quick up and down like he’s not thinking too hard about it. Like the answers all just come immediately for him. “Sometimes you call me ‘baby,’ but I’m not a baby. And sometimes you call me ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart,’ but I’m not either of those either.”
“Do you like when I call you those things? Would you rather I just call you Artom? Or something else?”
He lifts his head up to look me in the eye in that way-too-close way of his. In the darkness, I can still see the mop of pale hair and the bright blue eyes he got from his father.
“You can call me anything, Mommy! I’m just happy you’re back.”
It must have been such a jolt for Vasily to see him.
That whole late-night conversation makes so much sense now.
What a way to learn you have a son. And for him to figure out how to calm me down?
To come up with a way to soothe me after accidentally telling me Artom had died because he thought I was talking about his brother? He must have been so overwhelmed—
No. He’s the enemy. In fact, Tony said he knew about Artom. God, it’s so crazy to think about that. It’s impossible to imagine Vasily’s that much of a monster.
I must be wearing my thoughts on my face because Artom frowns and says, “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
I consider making something up. Telling him everything’s fine.
Cracking a joke. Deflecting to something else entirely.
Dragging him out of bed to make him hot chocolate in the middle of the night just to pretend like everything isn’t such a mess and I’m not falling apart and expecting a five-year-old, my child, the one person in this world who’s supposed to be relying on me for everything and not the other way around, to be my anchor.
But it’s been him and me his entire life.
No one needs to tell me that to know it’s true.
Tony may have helped me start a new life, but he wasn’t there.
Camilla may still be my friend, but her world is here.
Artom was staying with a neighbor when I was nabbed, and it was an uncle he’s never met before who was his next of kin.
Artom has always been my anchor, and he knows it.
“I’m sad, baby.”
“Was it something I did?”
“No, of course not! I’m so happy I have you back. I just... I’m really confused, that’s all, and I’m not sure what to do with all these thoughts I’ve got.”
He nods sagely, like that makes any sense to him at all.
After thinking about it, he says, “Well, when I have thoughts I don’t know what to do with, I tell you, and you always know what I should do because you know so much.
But now, I know more than you, so if you tell me, I can tell you what to do. ”
I’m not sure if that’s how things are going to work, but Artom’s already mentioned Vasily to me, so I suppose he might know more about him than I do.
Camilla hates Vasily. She didn’t give me any doubt about that.
So does Tony. As they should. He’s a horrible person.
But I wouldn’t have told Artom about all of the terrible things about Vasily.
I would have painted him in the best possible light.
I am weak. I am indulgent. I want that right now.
“Do I talk about your father a lot?”
“Mmm, not a lot. You get sad. But sometimes I ask anyway, and you tell me some stuff.”
“What stuff have I told you?”
He flops down next to me, but he holds my hand as he does it so he lands on my arm, making sure I don’t let go of him. “That he saved you.”
“From what?”
“From bad men. And he liked it when you sang. And you learned to cook because he told you to— but in a good way. I’m not allowed to tell my girlfriends to learn how to cook.
And he saved grandpa’s cross for you. And we can’t be with him because his life is real dangerous, and he just wants us to be safe and happy.
So we need to be extra happy to make up for how sad he is that we’re not with him. But you’re sad anyway.”
My life is connecting dots, and there are a lot of dots that connected there with things Vasily has said to me.
I want to believe that the reason they connect is I’m wrong about the situation.
The feeling in my gut tells me I’m wrong.
But I know better than to trust myself when the actual evidence is right there.
“I’m sad too, sometimes,” Artom confesses. “I’m sad because you’re sad and because Daddy’s sad too. And you found the happy church because of him.”
“What’s the happy church?”
“The Russian church.”
“We go to a Russian Orthodox church in Florida?” I ask, but it makes sense. It felt right when Vasily took me there.
“Yep. You don’t understand any of it, and it makes me laugh when you mess up, but Uncle D comes with us sometimes to help you.”
“Who’s Uncle D?” I ask. I guess another churchgoer who took us under his wing?
Artom shrugs. “I don’t know. If Uncle Tony’s your brother, wouldn’t Uncle D be Daddy’s brother?”
Vasily only ever had the one brother, Artyom, Artom’s namesake, but I’ve gotten enough information for now.
Enough information to keep me as confused as ever.