Ukraine: A Real Knockout (cont.)

“Okay, I understand,” I said, grinning, “But really I think you mean–“ Sherry shot me a look that said it was impolite to correct our translator’s English.

For dinner we had weiners, of different lengths, laying on a bed of naked spaghetti. For spaghetti sauce our hostess gave us a tub of something and gestured for us to spread it on the noodles. Whatever it was squeezed out red.

When the hostess left the room we sounded out the Cyrillic letters, recreating the brand name in Roman letters: ketsyn. Catsup.

The Ukrainian economy had collapsed three times in the past decade. The first time had been the most devastating. For years the people had lived in an economy where everyone worked, everyone got paid, but there were no goods to buy. So people socked their money away in the state-run bank. People accumulated thousands and thousands of rubles, enough to retire on, enough to finally travel, once travel restrictions were lifted.

And then the bank failed, taking with it everyone’s savings.

I hadn’t thought about what it was like to live in Ukraine. Friends who knew about Russia and Poland had told me that for the last ten years Ukrainians had been showing up at flea markets set up in stadiums in Warsaw and Krakow, selling everything you could imagine: family silver, china, children’s clothes, tools lifted from the job, copper tubing torn from walls of abandoned factories.

“If you want it, and have the money, you can buy it in Ukraine,” my friend who had been born in Warsaw and still went back every year or so had told me, distaste in her voice. It was clear she both pitied the Ukrainians and judged them. I wondered also if she was judging us. Did she think we were buying a baby? I never got up the nerve to ask her directly.

I couldn’t shake the idea that we were buying a child. True, we were going through official government channels, dealing with established orphanages, running into dozens of other Americans and Europeans who were also adopting. But again and again I caught sight of a grey market economy, office holders who would only see us if we gave them a gift (a crisp 100 dollar bill or two), official procedures, meant to slow down the process, circumvented, again with a well place gift (more dollars).

Sherry and I traveled everywhere with more than $12,000 U.S. currency hidden on our person. We were not as paranoid about this as we should have been. At the time I hadn’t realized just how poor the country was. Or why the people looked so svelte.

In Donetsk, the town we met Luba, the coal mine hadn’t paid real money to miners in about a year. Still people came in to work every week. Most of the men we saw were hanging out on street corners, dressed for work, but not working. Their wives worked at office jobs.

And every week they took home IOUs from the government run mine that promised them that when there was money they would be paid.

After dinner we napped. I dreamed about a tiny blonde blue-eyed girl. The door buzzer shunned us back to consciousness. Irina and the new driver were waiting there. They were a half hour early, but I didn’t care.

We had had a new driver every day on this trip. This new one was big and unshaven and had an infinite supply of stinky little cigarettes, three-quarters burned down.

Even though the drivers changed, the vehicle never did. We drove to the orphanage in the same rickety van we always took. I dug my fingers into the bare foam, feeling for places where the plastic was growing crusty, and stared out the window. I held Sherry’s hand.

I was always surprised at how mundane Ukraine looked. Not like an exotic foreign country at all. More like an alternative universe version of Chicago. A Chicago as it might have turned out, if we had been poorer, less lucky at war and business. A Chicago as it might have been if we had never emerged from the Great Depression.

A very old streetcar, faded pink and green like an old toy left in the sandbox, slide along the track next to the road. In the car people sat, reading the paper, coming from work, I guessed, or going to work, or maybe just killing time riding the cars.

We drove through a run down section of town. Lots of cottage like buildings, with tiles missing from the rooms, and stained, cracked stucco.

We parked in a circular drive in front of the orphanage, another shabby cottage, only large, walked across a lawn of long grass gone to seed and bare ground, and were about to head into the building when we saw Luba, sitting with a group of much tinier kids.

“One years olds,” Sherry said.

“How can you tell?”

“Look how small they are.”

It was true, they were small, smaller than Luba, who at almost two and a half feet towered over them. Luba was wrapped up tightly in a winter coat, her head bundled in a little wool hat, tightly tied under her chin. It was 70 degrees.

None of the kids moved. Most sat on the ground, pulling at grass or brushing away at the dirt. Luba was the quietest one of the bunch. She stood, facing us, staring across the playground. We waved but she didn’t wave back. We went inside.

The orphanage had the same odd smell it had yesterday, part disinfectant, part sour diaper, part boiled chicken and onions, potatoes and butter. We sat at a wooden pew like bench. A janitor pushed a cart past, in the cart several ragged mops, wet heads up, and two large stainless steel buckets, filled with sloshy grey-blue water. A moment later a huge woman, all in white, passed, pushing another cart. It too contained two large stainless steel buckets, lids on. We heard the broth sloth as it wheeled past.

“Is lunch.” Irina said, watching the cart pass.

A moment later a nurse lead Luba in by the hand. We had said we were likely to adopt her. As prospective parents we had the right to play with her twice a day, kind of a getting to know you period.

We went outside with Luba and sat at one edge of the playground. We sat on a bench with Luba. Luba toddled over to me. I put her on my lap. The first think I noticed was the padded feeling of a thick diaper. I worried for a moment that the diaper was full, or would be filled in a moment or two. My next thought was that this little girl had weight and substance, that she wasn’t an abstract child, that she could be my child, our child, my daughter. My daughter.

Sherry reached out her hands and I handed her over. I felt like we were playing at being parents. I took out the camera and filmed a little more of her.

Sherry sang the ABC song and Luba nodded her head a little to the music. “She likes it,” Sherry smiled, and then sang the song again. Again Luba seemed entertained. “What do I sing next?”

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