Sekret Read Free

closet. A cup of tea steams, abandoned, on the table. An issue of Pravda lies open beside it: “Khruschev Promises Moon Landing by 1965.” Vladimir Vysotsky croons one of his safe, tepid folk ballads through the AM radio, Aunt Nadia’s prized possession that cost her more rations than she’ll ever admit. She can’t be so impulsive with us around. Each ration must stretch until it snaps to feed Mama and Zhenya and me.
    Maybe, I think desperately, Mama went to lie down with another of her headaches. Perhaps a patient showed up, and they’re all crammed into Nadia’s old bedroom that we share. Perhaps she stepped across the hall to chat with neighbors, safe neighbors, neighbors who would never surrender us to the KGB—
    I stop with my hand resting on the bedroom doorknob, my extra sense wiping memories from it like a layer of dust. The scream that I cannot unleash burns back into my lungs, ripping through me in search of escape.
    In my mind, I see the other side of the door. Two men hold Mama and Zhenya as if they are dolls. Hands clamped over their mouths, they are motionless, waiting. A third man flattens against the wall beside the door, wedged in that narrow pass between our fold-out bed and the cabinet full of molding Tolstoy and medical journals. He will grab me as soon as I walk in.
    I nudge the door with my shoe and jump back.
    Silence, dusty and dense. I barge into the room, but it’s empty and still. I’m too late. The memory is just that—come and gone, and with it, my family. Tears burn in the corners of my eyes. I trusted my sense, and it failed them. I’ve failed.
    Something flutters against the smoke-stained curtains.
    A woman—she wears the same mud-green uniform as the KGB officer on Lubyanka Square—steps down from the balcony. Her hair is dyed the riot-red that every Russian woman over forty sports these days; it’s styled in an overgrown bob that does no favors to her sagging shape.
    “Yulia Andreevna Chernina.”
    My name hangs between us as we study each other. She might have been beautiful ten years ago, she might have had the endless lashes and silver screen lips of Tatiana Samoilova for all I know, but the weight of her deep frown appears to have recast her face. She folds her hands behind her back. She’s physically unimposing, but the spark in her eye betrays a mind that never stops churning. I’ve seen that spark before. The superior spark of informers, spies, politicians—anyone smart enough to use you for all you’re worth.
    “Daughter of Andrei and Antonina Chernin.” Her eyes narrow. “Sister to Yevgenni—”
    Yevgenni—Zhenya. My brother, whose own thoughts turn against him if his supper’s five minutes late. “Where is he?” I ask. “And Mama? What have you done with them?”
    She smiles, though her face fights to hold the frown in place. An old gypsy song floats through the room like a breeze. Something about lost love, crying-in-your-vodka folk music; it must be Nadia’s radio still, but the music sounds watery, like it’s soaking into my skin.
    “Your mother and brother will be safe, but I require your cooperation, Yulia.” She smiles—the confident smile the twins in the market wore. The smile of someone who holds all the cards, when their opponent doesn’t even know the game’s rules. She takes a step toward me, lamplight slithering off the edges of her brass military emblem. “It’s time to show you what you really are.”
    I step back, but two men have appeared behind me. Their leather gloves are cold on my skin. I buck against them as they wrangle my arms behind my back. “Mama!” I scream. “What have you done with them?”
    They yank me from the doorway. If I were stronger, perhaps I could break free, but I’m weak from too few rations and too many years of unfocused fear. They press a rag against my mouth, and the last thing I see is our old family photo with Mama and Papa smiling right at me before I’m lost in endless black.

 
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