The Day Everything Changed Forever
My adopted son tells me about the worst moment from his life before we adopted him.
I don’t recall Maria, my biological mother, ever getting mad or being strict with me. She never punished me. When I told her I stole something while I was at the orphanage she didn’t care. I would tell her to show off that I had something cool like a new backpack. Something in a store had to impress me for me to steal it.
There is a saying in Ukraine. You can tell if a good man lives in a house because the house has a good gate. The house we lived in didn’t have a gate at all.
Once Nikolai stole a bag of wheat. There was a hole in the bag and his trail of wheat made a straight line down the road and ended at our house. Didn’t he realize that the bag was getting lighter! That story made Maria laugh. He was the only one who could do that.
Even though Maria and Hannah, her mother, got along they still argued a lot, usually about Nikolai. Hannah wouldn’t like what he was doing and Maria would defend Nikolai and that would start an argument. Hannah didn’t like him. It was her house and we all lived with her. Nikolai lived there without her approval.
Sometimes Nikolai was nice to Hannah. When I was really little they got along better. If Nikolai had a bottle the two would get excited. They would start taking shots and be friendly with each other for the first 20 minutes. Then the friction started and things rolled down hill as they started arguing, “Give me two more.” “No.” “What else are you going to do with it? Let’s finish it.”
That’s how it was between them all the time until the day everything changed forever.
There were only a couple of days of the school holiday left before Maria would take me back to the orphanage. Hannah and Maria started arguing over something about the house. Hannah said, “I’m leaving the house to Andry not you!” Then Nikolai said something and Maria got mad at him too. The three were arguing all around me while I sat at the table eating.
Maria said to Nikolai, “Why don’t you tell your son how great you are.” I quietly continued eating my lunch and wondered, “What is that about?” Nikolai didn’t respond so she continued. She was talking to me but what she said was meant for him. “Andry, after your last visit there wasn’t enough money for Nikolai and me to take you back to the orphanage so I went and Nikolai stayed home. He and Hannah got drunk and he raped her.”
Hannah started crying and said to her, “Andry didn’t need to know that.”
For the first few days I was really bothered. I couldn’t talk to Nikolai. After that I tried not to think about it.
Any type of rape is wrong no matter the reason. I can watch a scary movie but if a movie has a rape scene my blood goes up. Even though I know the scene is fake it feels so real I can’t watch. It really bothers me. I don’t like to be bothered for a long time so the only thing I could do was forget about what Nikolai had done to Hannah. Plus I couldn’t do anything about it. Though, you never really forget no matter how hard you try.
There is a saying in Ukraine. You can tell if a good man lives in a house because the house has a good gate. The house we lived in didn’t have a gate at all.
My adopted son, Andry, and I wrote most of these stories at a coffee shop on Saturday mornings. He titled the collection MY LIFE BEFORE: a Memoir of a Family Created Through Adoption.
The story of how our family was created through adoption:
Forward: I Felt the Infant’s Sharp Teeth Dig Into My Shoulder
Chapter 1: What’s the First Thing You Remember?
Chapter 2: I Stole His Scooter One Winter Night
Chapter 3: My Last Walk to School
Chapter 4: Giving Birth to a Child Would Have Taken the Same Amount of Time
Chapter 5: How Were We Going to Pick a Daughter to Adopt Based on a Little Photo and a Few Facts?
Chapter 6: What Do You Do When You’re Six and Find a Dead Body?