DJM-Miss Fortune V16
MISS FORTUNE
MISS FORTUNE
ALBINA HUME
1st Edition First Published 2015 Copyright © Albina Hume 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author. ISBN: To be provided Printed by Ingram Spark Cover Image by Trent Saunders Published by Ardua Publishing 5 Dame Lane Dublin 2 Ireland. ArduaPublishing.com
To my husband John, with all my love.
CONTENTS
To be generated.
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am so grateful to everyone who has helped me to bring ‘Miss Fortune’ from being a dream to a reality: My dearest parents – Elena Ptichkina, Gennadiy Ptichkin, My cupid – Nataliya Koval of Marriage By Natalie. Isaac Pintosevich – IPS Systems, Kyiv. From The Writer’s Ally: Ally E. Machate – Founder, Harrison Demchick – Developmental Editor, Amy J. Schneider – Line Editor. Ulrike Hill – Author Service; Elaine Dodge – Editor; Lana Nicole Niland – Copy Editor. Magriet Kruger, Zena Turvey, Sonya Schaffner, Arthur Eccles, Alex Shaw, Borislav Dekavju, Tanya Jacobsen, Michelle Otto, Laura Hume, Jennifer Wucherpfennig, Bradley Tribulato, and of course, my dear husband, John Hume. Thank you! Very special thanks, to my dear friend, Linda Margetts for all your time, energy and help in polishing and re-editing my final draft.
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PROLOGUE
I was checking my email when Nadya called – my wedding invitations were ready. She wanted to deliver them personally rather than send them by courier to our ranch in South Africa. I didn’t think it was necessary for her to make the hour trip from Nelspruit, but she insisted. I knew what to expect: a gold butterfly printed on the left corner of the front page and the text in golden writing on the second page. I chose the butterfly as the special symbol of my wedding, because it perfectly reflected the new beginning of my life. That’s how I felt since finding the love I’d been looking for – transformed. As soon as Nadya arrived, she showed me the invites. The butterfly was missing. “What happened to the butterfly?” I smiled nervously. Surely she wouldn’t mix my invitations with someone else’s? “It’s better than you think,” Nadya said quickly, opening the invitation and pointing to a butterfly floating on the inside. Its wings worked as a clasp – by pushing them through a little slit on the front, the butterfly could be on either page. I bubbled with smiles. Just as she was leaving, I thought of a way to show her my gratitude. I rushed to the cellar to fetch a bottle of Cap Classique 1999 J.C. Le Roux bought especially for the wedding. When I gave it to Nadya, the sparkle in her eyes showed it all; she was as pleased as I was. Back in the house, I had another look at the invitation. On the front were the gold initials J & A. I pushed butterfly wings through the small perforation to unclasp the invitation. v
The wedding date suddenly looked strangely familiar. Do I know someone who has a birthday or something special on the same date? The telephone rang. It was John. He was calling from his office, which is a hundred meters away from the main entrance, inside the massive free-flying aviary connected to our house. “Darling, we have visitors. Let’s take them for a game drive. Will you bring the bakkie please, and the cooler box with some drinks?” Because our ranch was the only place in the world where you might see more than a hundred white rhinos at once, we often had visitors. When John turned fifty he decided to leave Johannesburg, where he’d been a successful property and hotel industry entrepreneur. He planned to semi-retire, and breed rare wild animals while still running his time-share resort business. Putting city life behind him, he’d bought a run-down ranch as well as nine neighbouring overgrazed cattle farms, a total of 7000 hectares. Now, fourteen years later, the ranch was a healthy ecosystem. One that was perfect for John’s new passion – saving the African rhino from extinction. vi
I drove the pickup truck, known as a ‘bakkie’ in South Africa, to John’s office. The bakkie had been converted especially to take people on game drives. John, along with our three dogs, was already outside greeting our visitors. They were John’s old friends, Carl and his wife, Nadya from the Eastern Cape. We’d seen them a month ago, in April, when we had been there for a reunion with John’s family. Back then, I hadn’t even been engaged. Nadya and I quickly settled in the rear of the bakkie on one of the soft green benches, while Carl sat inside the cab next to John. As soon as we started moving, I shared with Nadya my excitement about receiving the wedding invitations from the woman who shared her name. “Is there some other exciting news on the way?” She gently patted my hand. “There is,” I laughed, watching her wide smile. “But not the news the whole of Malelane is talking about. I’m not pregnant. I proposed to John on our last night in the Cape. We decided to have the wedding in July, when my family from Ukraine come to visit us. Why wait for another year?” “You proposed to John?” Nadya exclaimed. “My girl, I need to hear that story.” She didn’t need to ask twice; I was ready to share it with the whole world. “We’d arrived in the little town of Greyton late that afternoon. It had been rainy and cold all day long, and as soon we checked into the guest house, John asked the owner if she could recommend the nicest restaurant in town where we could have an early dinner. The rain was bucketing down by the time we found the place she’d recommended. It looked like a mini castle. As soon as we’d parked, a man in a yellow raincoat, holding a black umbrella rushed over to help me out. He walked me inside the restaurant. A moment later, John joined us. The maître d’ greeted us at the entrance and asked a nearby waiter to show us to our table. The place was half empty and as
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we walked through the room, I felt as though all eyes were on us. We were seated at a table next to a fireplace. While telling my story to Nadya, we drove past one of our dams. Lying in the shadow of a tall mountain it was covered in blue and white water lilies, a favourite place for our pink flamingos. I pointed them out to Nadya. “It’s illegal to take flamingos from the wild. John bought the first few breeding pairs from the zoo. The rest we’ve bred here. “ “Not many people in South Africa have the pleasure of such a spectacular view at their home,” said Nadya. “You are a lucky girl.” “I know.” I laughed. “Flamingos are expensive. Most people would rather spend money on a holiday than on flamingos, while we feel like we are on holiday here every day.” “Darling,” John called from the cabin, “You’ve been talking non-stop as usual. Give Nadya a chance to watch the animals.” “Don’t worry, we’re multitasking.” My eyes met his in the rear-view mirror and I blew him a kiss. “The flamingo’s call is a lot like the honking noise geese make,” I said to Nadya. “With your eyes closed you wouldn’t know the difference.” “I should remember to test that,’ she smiled. As we approached a large open area where rhinos roamed amongst roan antelope, kudu, tsessebe and impala, I fell silent. Even though I’d seen this place hundreds of times before, I still found it fascinating every time I experienced its beauty. It was like being inside a National Geographic film. A family of warthogs, a species related to the wild pig, hurtled into the bush, their tails up like little antennas, while a group of zebras grazed nearby. Ostriches chased each other not far from a small herd of buffalo, who seemed completely oblivious to what was going on. Close by, under the green umbrella of an acacia tree, stood four white female rhinos and their babies. One of the youngsters, almost half its mother’s size, wanted to suckle and was making protracted, squeaking noises. Rhinos started arriving from all over the ranch – they knew it was
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time for the tractor to arrive with food. In the dry season, the white rhinos were given a supplementary feed of dried alfalfa and pellets, formulated by a wildlife nutritionist. When Nadya had finished taking photographs, we drove on and I continued my story. “At the restaurant, while enjoying a glass of red wine and the warmth of the fire, I started thinking about the future. John and I had dated for nearly two years and lived together for another two. Being a hopeless romantic, I’d hoped John was going to propose on Valentine’s Day – but he didn’t. I couldn’t help wondering whether he was ever planning on marrying me. So I decided to test the waters. I put my left hand next to John’s and asked, ‘Do you think a new ring would look nice on me?’ ‘Darling, forget it.’ John covered my hand. ‘You had your opportunity two years ago!’ ‘What opportunity?’ I moved my hand, confused. He’d never mentioned wanting to marry me. We’d talked about love but never about a wedding. ‘It was a leap year two years ago,’ he said. ‘It’s when a woman can propose to a man. But you were too busy chasing after your other boyfriends.’ My immediate reaction was to say that he’d been just as busy with his ex-girlfriends. But then I realised I had the perfect response. After counting – one, two, three – I stood up, walked around the table, and knelt down right in front of him. “Would you like to be my husband?” I said, looking into his face. My heart pulsed in my throat. I knew he’d never expect such a thing from me. John’s eyes grew wide. He jumped up from his chair. He lifted me so that I was standing next to him. “Of course.” He hugged me tightly, his hands trembling. Nadya shook her head with a smile. “You are a brave girl, Albina.” We stopped for evening drinks near the biggest dam on the ranch. I’d packed beers for the men and Lime Breezers for the
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ladies. Nadya got out of the bakkie and joined the men while I stayed to enjoy the last rays of the sunshine on my face. My thoughts returned to the freshly printed wedding invitations; why does the date of my wedding feel so familiar? A few seconds later, a powerful wave of realisation surged through my body and I opened my eyes. I’d remembered! It was the date on which, ten years earlier, I had lost my virginity. It was the day I had been raped.
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ONE
A
s a little girl I was brought up on fairy tales about a heroine meeting a handsome stranger, falling in love and getting married. The wedding was the happy ending. That’s how I imagined my future; when I grew up I was going to get married. I was born in Ukraine, in a small village called Volchanovka, which means ‘hill of wolves’. Officially it was renamed Novogrigorovka in 1886, but Volchanovka is still used by locals. I always disliked the official name, Novogrigorovka, because I struggled to pronounce the letter R. Every time I was asked where I was from, I felt intimidated. It all started one day in my village school when I was seven, in grade one. The school was in the building of an old private house, where all three grades often had to share the same classroom. There was a boy from grade three whom I liked. Although 1
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I’d never said anything to him before, I decided on this particular day to say Privet (‘Hello’). I waited until lunch break. He was the first to finish his meal. I followed him out of the dining room. “Privet. My name is Albina.” I offered my hand to shake. “Vorona is your name.” He crossed his arms, calling me a crow. “Karr, karr.” He started laughing, his eyes rolling as he mocked my pronunciation of the letter R. Humiliated, I ran to the classroom and hid there for the rest of the lunch break, relieved that no one else had witnessed the scene. I hadn’t known that I sounded abnormal. After school, I told my mother about the boy. “He probably likes you,” she smiled. “Boys do that. They tease girls they like.” I knew that wasn’t true – he’d called me a crow! At home we had an old tape recorder, and that evening, I asked my dad to record my voice. I wanted to compare my pronunciation of privet to that of my twin brother, Lyosha, and my younger sister, Toma, who was just five. My father recorded each of us, and when I listened to the recording, I could hear that my brother’s R, and even my baby sister’s sounded perfect in comparison to mine. I did sound like a crow! I cried bitterly that night. I just wanted to be normal like my brother and sister. My mum tried to calm me down by telling me how many other people in the world, were different in some way. “Even Lenin couldn’t pronounce his Rs and look how many people loved him,” she tried to convince me. But it didn’t work. I was on my own, and no one understood me. The other kids at school would soon also laugh at me. And when I grew up, nobody would want to marry me. Who would want to marry a crow?
Before I learned that I was a crow, I loved to sing. Once I’d watched a Russian version of the movie Little Red Riding Hood in 2
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which the girl sings a song about walking to Africa. The song appealed to me immensely and instantly became one of my favourites. The lyrics said that if you walked long enough and ran far enough, you might just make it to Africa, where crocodiles, hippos, monkeys, and green parrots lived among wide rivers and tall mountains. But if you were lazy and afraid to take the first step, you’d never get to Africa. I used to love imagining myself as the girl in the story, and I would often walk or run behind our vegetable garden singing the song, pretending that soon I’d find myself in Africa. I especially liked the idea of finding a green parrot I could teach to repeat my words. But once I found out about my R, I no longer wished to talk or sing in front of others. Instead, I began learning to hide my defect. Shortly afterwards, the summer holidays began. We travelled to Moldova to visit Mum’s parents. She wanted to introduce our eighteen-month-old baby brother, Vasya, to her family. This would be only the third time we children had met our grandparents. When we arrived there, I found that hardly anyone spoke Russian. In fact, only Grandpa could speak a little. I listened to Mum speaking to people in a strange language, which the rest of us, including Dad, couldn’t understand. Grandpa offered to teach us this language, his mother tongue – Moldavian – which I found exciting and interesting. I saw it as a perfect cover for my R. Every morning, Grandpa would make us repeat a few words, and I would start using them straight away to communicate with some new friends I made there. The language barrier helped me stop worrying about whether someone might laugh at me. My new friends didn’t speak Russian and couldn’t possibly know about my flaw. But, back at school, I became quiet again. I didn’t want the other kids to hear me speak. I was constantly worried that my teacher would ask me to come up to the blackboard to answer a question which could expose me as a crow. So when she did ask me questions, I always said that I didn’t know the answer, although 3
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I often knew. I needed to get away to where no one knew I was a crow. I started asking my parents to send me to boarding school, which was in the largest village, Myronivka, thirty kilometres from us. Lyosha’s and my best friends, our neighbours’ three kids, went there and listening to them, our village school seemed a boring place compared to theirs. Dad always agreed; growing up he’d enjoyed his time at boarding school in Uzbekistan. But our mother worried that the older kids there would bully us and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Her answer was always no. My marks soon dropped, and the teacher started pointing me out in front of the class, saying what a poor student I was. At home, I told my mother that I didn’t like to talk in front of other kids because they’d call me a crow. “I’ll talk to your teacher and ask her to let you write the answers down instead of saying them out loud,” Mum said. “That should stop the kids from calling you names.” But it didn’t help. The kids began calling me stupid, and my response was to fight with them. It got so bad I ended up breaking one girl’s little finger. That was when my parents were called to the school. My teacher, who was also the headmaster, had a tense meeting with my mother. I waited in the hall, hearing my mother’s voice rising behind closed doors. On the way home she was very quiet. That night at dinner, my mother announced, “From next year, when Toma starts school, all of you are going to boarding school.” Lyosha and Toma started smiling. I was over the moon! “In the meantime, Albina, you stay out of fights! Ignore those bullies.” It was two months till the end of the school year. I resolved to behave and not disappoint my mother.
From the moment I entered third grade at the boarding school, my life once again became joyful. I quickly learned that I wasn’t 4
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the only one in my class with a speech defect. There was also a boy who couldn’t pronounce the letter R and a girl, who couldn’t say the letter C, and no one laughed at them. But, as an added precaution, I decided it might be a good idea to avoid the boys from other classes. That way I could insure that no one would call me a crow again. Very soon I revelled in school. Toma and I had signed up for dance classes, while Lyosha and I were on the athletics and basketball teams. I also loved studying, especially those subjects where I could discover new things about the world. In geography, for example, when we learned about oceans, I liked the fact that the Indian Ocean was the warmest. I imagined it being the temperature of milk just taken from a cow, and I would often pretend I could hear the sound of its waves lapping the beach. I had gone from being one of the worst to one of the best students in my grade. As a result, I was awarded one of eight scholarships for a month long educational trip within the Soviet Union. My class teacher, Nina Alekseevna, our guardian for the trip, took us to visit the biology department at Kharkiv’s National University in Gaidary. There, we got to know university students from Africa and South America, who’d come to the Ukraine to get a degree in biology. Our days were filled with outings, reports and writing poetry based on our impressions and the plants, bugs and birds we’d learned about. But perhaps the most important thing we learned that summer was about international friendship. We were taught to respect people, no matter the colour of their skin or the language they spoke. I loved the trip so much that I promised myself I would win the scholarship again the next year.
I was eleven when I fell in love for the first time. Roma, a tall blond with blue eyes had just moved to our school and was a 5
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grade above me. Whenever I saw him, my heart beat faster. One day, during a break between classes, he ran past me and a pink ball of paper landed at my feet. Surprised, I picked it up – inside there was a message: Privet. Menya zovut Roma. Ya hochu s toboy druzhit. Ti soglasna? I was astonished; Roma wanted to be my boyfriend! My excitement was immediately clouded with anxiety. He didn’t know about my defect. What would happen when he found out? And he would, as soon as I said his name. In class, I couldn’t concentrate. My wish for love was just as strong as my fear of humiliation. I needed to make a decision. As I kept thinking of my answer, I remembered what we had recently learned in our literature class. Our teacher explained about synonyms, words that can be replaced by others with a similar meaning. I needed more words. The best way to expand my vocabulary was by reading. That day, I signed up with the school library and wrote a response to Roma. I agreed to be his girlfriend. From the beginning of my friendship with Roma, I made sure to learn lots of new words to replace those that contained the letter R. But in six months of friendship we’d never had a proper conversation. The thought of Roma laughing at my mispronunciation simply didn’t allow me to relax. I insisted that we continue with written messages as our main method of communication. During one of the weekend visits home, I watched a film that included a little story about a girl who couldn’t pronounce a letter R. Her mother took her to a speech doctor, a logoped. I held my breath. I never knew there were doctors especially for speech defects. Would this girl get her miracle? But the moment the girl met the doctor, it was clear that he himself couldn’t pronounce “R” and “D”. My brother and sister thought this was hilarious. The doctor kept asking the girl to repeat words after him, which he couldn’t pronounce himself. 6
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Just like me, she used synonyms. The word ryba, which meant “fish”, she’d replace with seledka, which meant “a herring”. At the end, the doctor’s verdict was that the girl was perfectly fine. Her mother told him he was the one who needed a cure. I left the room to find my mother, my siblings’ laughter ringing in my ears. “Mum, why haven’t you ever taken me to a logoped?” I asked as I watched her peeling potatoes for our dinner. “You only get specialist doctors in the cities”, she replied. “Why would you need one? To me you are perfectly fine, my little pride.” “I am not fine at all!” I protested. How could I be? I couldn’t even talk to a boy I liked. But then I couldn’t say this aloud. Mum often praised me for my good marks at school, calling me her pride and joy. I didn’t think she’d be happy about me having a crush on a boy. “Why do we live in the village where there isn’t a doctor who can help me?” I cried. “Cities are unhealthy places to live,” my mother said. “The air’s polluted, the food’s seldom fresh, never mind not being organic. Everyone lives in tiny, cramped apartments with no private yards or gardens for the kids to play in. They have to share their yard with fifty other families from the same building.” She scraped the potato peels into the bin. “Here in Volchanovka, we have a nice size garden all to ourselves, a luxury for people from cities. Life in the village is purer, not poorer, my dear.” “Why don’t logopeds live in the village then?” I objected. “You don’t need a doctor.” Mum laughed. “When I was your age I used to stutter. But as I grew up it just went away. You’ll also grow out of your R issue. No need to worry.” But I did worry. What if I never get better? It wasn’t long after this that my sister told me Roma had asked a girl from her class to be his girlfriend. Disappointed, I kept my pain to myself. What chance would I ever have had with 7
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Roma? I was a crow. I would be dumped anyway, straight after he heard my first word with R.
Soon after Roma broke up with me, I won the scholarship again. I was going to my favourite place, Gaidary, happy to mix with foreign students. That summer, I suddenly fell in love for the second time. I was twelve and he was a twenty-eight-year-old student from Nicaragua whose name was Saul. He’d just finished his biology studies and was going back to his country. Our teacher, Nina Alekseevna, had us make him farewell souvenirs by writing little poems and creating bookmarks from strips of postcards glued together. She also organised a little tea party for Saul, where he entertained us by singing songs. I wished he’d never stop, as I loved watching the muscles on his arms as he played the guitar. At the end of the party, I was asked by Nina Alekseevna to present Saul with all the gifts we’d made. When I did, Saul surprised me with a kiss on the cheek to say thank you. It felt so special. As far as I could remember, no one, not even my parents, had ever hugged or kissed me before. In my upbringing it was regarded as normal to not cuddle a child –the focus was to ensure the child was well behaved and disciplined. Saul gave our teacher his address in Nicaragua, and back at school, it became my responsibility to write him letters on behalf of our group. In one of his letters, he wrote me a personal message, which I skipped over when relaying his words to the class. The message to me read, “Let’s ensure that we never lose our connection.”
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MISS FORTUNE
ALBINA HUME
1st Edition First Published 2015 Copyright © Albina Hume 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author. ISBN: To be provided Printed by Ingram Spark Cover Image by Trent Saunders Published by Ardua Publishing 5 Dame Lane Dublin 2 Ireland. ArduaPublishing.com
To my husband John, with all my love.
CONTENTS
To be generated.
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am so grateful to everyone who has helped me to bring ‘Miss Fortune’ from being a dream to a reality: My dearest parents – Elena Ptichkina, Gennadiy Ptichkin, My cupid – Nataliya Koval of Marriage By Natalie. Isaac Pintosevich – IPS Systems, Kyiv. From The Writer’s Ally: Ally E. Machate – Founder, Harrison Demchick – Developmental Editor, Amy J. Schneider – Line Editor. Ulrike Hill – Author Service; Elaine Dodge – Editor; Lana Nicole Niland – Copy Editor. Magriet Kruger, Zena Turvey, Sonya Schaffner, Arthur Eccles, Alex Shaw, Borislav Dekavju, Tanya Jacobsen, Michelle Otto, Laura Hume, Jennifer Wucherpfennig, Bradley Tribulato, and of course, my dear husband, John Hume. Thank you! Very special thanks, to my dear friend, Linda Margetts for all your time, energy and help in polishing and re-editing my final draft.
iii
PROLOGUE
I was checking my email when Nadya called – my wedding invitations were ready. She wanted to deliver them personally rather than send them by courier to our ranch in South Africa. I didn’t think it was necessary for her to make the hour trip from Nelspruit, but she insisted. I knew what to expect: a gold butterfly printed on the left corner of the front page and the text in golden writing on the second page. I chose the butterfly as the special symbol of my wedding, because it perfectly reflected the new beginning of my life. That’s how I felt since finding the love I’d been looking for – transformed. As soon as Nadya arrived, she showed me the invites. The butterfly was missing. “What happened to the butterfly?” I smiled nervously. Surely she wouldn’t mix my invitations with someone else’s? “It’s better than you think,” Nadya said quickly, opening the invitation and pointing to a butterfly floating on the inside. Its wings worked as a clasp – by pushing them through a little slit on the front, the butterfly could be on either page. I bubbled with smiles. Just as she was leaving, I thought of a way to show her my gratitude. I rushed to the cellar to fetch a bottle of Cap Classique 1999 J.C. Le Roux bought especially for the wedding. When I gave it to Nadya, the sparkle in her eyes showed it all; she was as pleased as I was. Back in the house, I had another look at the invitation. On the front were the gold initials J & A. I pushed butterfly wings through the small perforation to unclasp the invitation. v
The wedding date suddenly looked strangely familiar. Do I know someone who has a birthday or something special on the same date? The telephone rang. It was John. He was calling from his office, which is a hundred meters away from the main entrance, inside the massive free-flying aviary connected to our house. “Darling, we have visitors. Let’s take them for a game drive. Will you bring the bakkie please, and the cooler box with some drinks?” Because our ranch was the only place in the world where you might see more than a hundred white rhinos at once, we often had visitors. When John turned fifty he decided to leave Johannesburg, where he’d been a successful property and hotel industry entrepreneur. He planned to semi-retire, and breed rare wild animals while still running his time-share resort business. Putting city life behind him, he’d bought a run-down ranch as well as nine neighbouring overgrazed cattle farms, a total of 7000 hectares. Now, fourteen years later, the ranch was a healthy ecosystem. One that was perfect for John’s new passion – saving the African rhino from extinction. vi
I drove the pickup truck, known as a ‘bakkie’ in South Africa, to John’s office. The bakkie had been converted especially to take people on game drives. John, along with our three dogs, was already outside greeting our visitors. They were John’s old friends, Carl and his wife, Nadya from the Eastern Cape. We’d seen them a month ago, in April, when we had been there for a reunion with John’s family. Back then, I hadn’t even been engaged. Nadya and I quickly settled in the rear of the bakkie on one of the soft green benches, while Carl sat inside the cab next to John. As soon as we started moving, I shared with Nadya my excitement about receiving the wedding invitations from the woman who shared her name. “Is there some other exciting news on the way?” She gently patted my hand. “There is,” I laughed, watching her wide smile. “But not the news the whole of Malelane is talking about. I’m not pregnant. I proposed to John on our last night in the Cape. We decided to have the wedding in July, when my family from Ukraine come to visit us. Why wait for another year?” “You proposed to John?” Nadya exclaimed. “My girl, I need to hear that story.” She didn’t need to ask twice; I was ready to share it with the whole world. “We’d arrived in the little town of Greyton late that afternoon. It had been rainy and cold all day long, and as soon we checked into the guest house, John asked the owner if she could recommend the nicest restaurant in town where we could have an early dinner. The rain was bucketing down by the time we found the place she’d recommended. It looked like a mini castle. As soon as we’d parked, a man in a yellow raincoat, holding a black umbrella rushed over to help me out. He walked me inside the restaurant. A moment later, John joined us. The maître d’ greeted us at the entrance and asked a nearby waiter to show us to our table. The place was half empty and as
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we walked through the room, I felt as though all eyes were on us. We were seated at a table next to a fireplace. While telling my story to Nadya, we drove past one of our dams. Lying in the shadow of a tall mountain it was covered in blue and white water lilies, a favourite place for our pink flamingos. I pointed them out to Nadya. “It’s illegal to take flamingos from the wild. John bought the first few breeding pairs from the zoo. The rest we’ve bred here. “ “Not many people in South Africa have the pleasure of such a spectacular view at their home,” said Nadya. “You are a lucky girl.” “I know.” I laughed. “Flamingos are expensive. Most people would rather spend money on a holiday than on flamingos, while we feel like we are on holiday here every day.” “Darling,” John called from the cabin, “You’ve been talking non-stop as usual. Give Nadya a chance to watch the animals.” “Don’t worry, we’re multitasking.” My eyes met his in the rear-view mirror and I blew him a kiss. “The flamingo’s call is a lot like the honking noise geese make,” I said to Nadya. “With your eyes closed you wouldn’t know the difference.” “I should remember to test that,’ she smiled. As we approached a large open area where rhinos roamed amongst roan antelope, kudu, tsessebe and impala, I fell silent. Even though I’d seen this place hundreds of times before, I still found it fascinating every time I experienced its beauty. It was like being inside a National Geographic film. A family of warthogs, a species related to the wild pig, hurtled into the bush, their tails up like little antennas, while a group of zebras grazed nearby. Ostriches chased each other not far from a small herd of buffalo, who seemed completely oblivious to what was going on. Close by, under the green umbrella of an acacia tree, stood four white female rhinos and their babies. One of the youngsters, almost half its mother’s size, wanted to suckle and was making protracted, squeaking noises. Rhinos started arriving from all over the ranch – they knew it was
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time for the tractor to arrive with food. In the dry season, the white rhinos were given a supplementary feed of dried alfalfa and pellets, formulated by a wildlife nutritionist. When Nadya had finished taking photographs, we drove on and I continued my story. “At the restaurant, while enjoying a glass of red wine and the warmth of the fire, I started thinking about the future. John and I had dated for nearly two years and lived together for another two. Being a hopeless romantic, I’d hoped John was going to propose on Valentine’s Day – but he didn’t. I couldn’t help wondering whether he was ever planning on marrying me. So I decided to test the waters. I put my left hand next to John’s and asked, ‘Do you think a new ring would look nice on me?’ ‘Darling, forget it.’ John covered my hand. ‘You had your opportunity two years ago!’ ‘What opportunity?’ I moved my hand, confused. He’d never mentioned wanting to marry me. We’d talked about love but never about a wedding. ‘It was a leap year two years ago,’ he said. ‘It’s when a woman can propose to a man. But you were too busy chasing after your other boyfriends.’ My immediate reaction was to say that he’d been just as busy with his ex-girlfriends. But then I realised I had the perfect response. After counting – one, two, three – I stood up, walked around the table, and knelt down right in front of him. “Would you like to be my husband?” I said, looking into his face. My heart pulsed in my throat. I knew he’d never expect such a thing from me. John’s eyes grew wide. He jumped up from his chair. He lifted me so that I was standing next to him. “Of course.” He hugged me tightly, his hands trembling. Nadya shook her head with a smile. “You are a brave girl, Albina.” We stopped for evening drinks near the biggest dam on the ranch. I’d packed beers for the men and Lime Breezers for the
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ladies. Nadya got out of the bakkie and joined the men while I stayed to enjoy the last rays of the sunshine on my face. My thoughts returned to the freshly printed wedding invitations; why does the date of my wedding feel so familiar? A few seconds later, a powerful wave of realisation surged through my body and I opened my eyes. I’d remembered! It was the date on which, ten years earlier, I had lost my virginity. It was the day I had been raped.
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s a little girl I was brought up on fairy tales about a heroine meeting a handsome stranger, falling in love and getting married. The wedding was the happy ending. That’s how I imagined my future; when I grew up I was going to get married. I was born in Ukraine, in a small village called Volchanovka, which means ‘hill of wolves’. Officially it was renamed Novogrigorovka in 1886, but Volchanovka is still used by locals. I always disliked the official name, Novogrigorovka, because I struggled to pronounce the letter R. Every time I was asked where I was from, I felt intimidated. It all started one day in my village school when I was seven, in grade one. The school was in the building of an old private house, where all three grades often had to share the same classroom. There was a boy from grade three whom I liked. Although 1
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I’d never said anything to him before, I decided on this particular day to say Privet (‘Hello’). I waited until lunch break. He was the first to finish his meal. I followed him out of the dining room. “Privet. My name is Albina.” I offered my hand to shake. “Vorona is your name.” He crossed his arms, calling me a crow. “Karr, karr.” He started laughing, his eyes rolling as he mocked my pronunciation of the letter R. Humiliated, I ran to the classroom and hid there for the rest of the lunch break, relieved that no one else had witnessed the scene. I hadn’t known that I sounded abnormal. After school, I told my mother about the boy. “He probably likes you,” she smiled. “Boys do that. They tease girls they like.” I knew that wasn’t true – he’d called me a crow! At home we had an old tape recorder, and that evening, I asked my dad to record my voice. I wanted to compare my pronunciation of privet to that of my twin brother, Lyosha, and my younger sister, Toma, who was just five. My father recorded each of us, and when I listened to the recording, I could hear that my brother’s R, and even my baby sister’s sounded perfect in comparison to mine. I did sound like a crow! I cried bitterly that night. I just wanted to be normal like my brother and sister. My mum tried to calm me down by telling me how many other people in the world, were different in some way. “Even Lenin couldn’t pronounce his Rs and look how many people loved him,” she tried to convince me. But it didn’t work. I was on my own, and no one understood me. The other kids at school would soon also laugh at me. And when I grew up, nobody would want to marry me. Who would want to marry a crow?
Before I learned that I was a crow, I loved to sing. Once I’d watched a Russian version of the movie Little Red Riding Hood in 2
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which the girl sings a song about walking to Africa. The song appealed to me immensely and instantly became one of my favourites. The lyrics said that if you walked long enough and ran far enough, you might just make it to Africa, where crocodiles, hippos, monkeys, and green parrots lived among wide rivers and tall mountains. But if you were lazy and afraid to take the first step, you’d never get to Africa. I used to love imagining myself as the girl in the story, and I would often walk or run behind our vegetable garden singing the song, pretending that soon I’d find myself in Africa. I especially liked the idea of finding a green parrot I could teach to repeat my words. But once I found out about my R, I no longer wished to talk or sing in front of others. Instead, I began learning to hide my defect. Shortly afterwards, the summer holidays began. We travelled to Moldova to visit Mum’s parents. She wanted to introduce our eighteen-month-old baby brother, Vasya, to her family. This would be only the third time we children had met our grandparents. When we arrived there, I found that hardly anyone spoke Russian. In fact, only Grandpa could speak a little. I listened to Mum speaking to people in a strange language, which the rest of us, including Dad, couldn’t understand. Grandpa offered to teach us this language, his mother tongue – Moldavian – which I found exciting and interesting. I saw it as a perfect cover for my R. Every morning, Grandpa would make us repeat a few words, and I would start using them straight away to communicate with some new friends I made there. The language barrier helped me stop worrying about whether someone might laugh at me. My new friends didn’t speak Russian and couldn’t possibly know about my flaw. But, back at school, I became quiet again. I didn’t want the other kids to hear me speak. I was constantly worried that my teacher would ask me to come up to the blackboard to answer a question which could expose me as a crow. So when she did ask me questions, I always said that I didn’t know the answer, although 3
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I often knew. I needed to get away to where no one knew I was a crow. I started asking my parents to send me to boarding school, which was in the largest village, Myronivka, thirty kilometres from us. Lyosha’s and my best friends, our neighbours’ three kids, went there and listening to them, our village school seemed a boring place compared to theirs. Dad always agreed; growing up he’d enjoyed his time at boarding school in Uzbekistan. But our mother worried that the older kids there would bully us and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Her answer was always no. My marks soon dropped, and the teacher started pointing me out in front of the class, saying what a poor student I was. At home, I told my mother that I didn’t like to talk in front of other kids because they’d call me a crow. “I’ll talk to your teacher and ask her to let you write the answers down instead of saying them out loud,” Mum said. “That should stop the kids from calling you names.” But it didn’t help. The kids began calling me stupid, and my response was to fight with them. It got so bad I ended up breaking one girl’s little finger. That was when my parents were called to the school. My teacher, who was also the headmaster, had a tense meeting with my mother. I waited in the hall, hearing my mother’s voice rising behind closed doors. On the way home she was very quiet. That night at dinner, my mother announced, “From next year, when Toma starts school, all of you are going to boarding school.” Lyosha and Toma started smiling. I was over the moon! “In the meantime, Albina, you stay out of fights! Ignore those bullies.” It was two months till the end of the school year. I resolved to behave and not disappoint my mother.
From the moment I entered third grade at the boarding school, my life once again became joyful. I quickly learned that I wasn’t 4
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the only one in my class with a speech defect. There was also a boy who couldn’t pronounce the letter R and a girl, who couldn’t say the letter C, and no one laughed at them. But, as an added precaution, I decided it might be a good idea to avoid the boys from other classes. That way I could insure that no one would call me a crow again. Very soon I revelled in school. Toma and I had signed up for dance classes, while Lyosha and I were on the athletics and basketball teams. I also loved studying, especially those subjects where I could discover new things about the world. In geography, for example, when we learned about oceans, I liked the fact that the Indian Ocean was the warmest. I imagined it being the temperature of milk just taken from a cow, and I would often pretend I could hear the sound of its waves lapping the beach. I had gone from being one of the worst to one of the best students in my grade. As a result, I was awarded one of eight scholarships for a month long educational trip within the Soviet Union. My class teacher, Nina Alekseevna, our guardian for the trip, took us to visit the biology department at Kharkiv’s National University in Gaidary. There, we got to know university students from Africa and South America, who’d come to the Ukraine to get a degree in biology. Our days were filled with outings, reports and writing poetry based on our impressions and the plants, bugs and birds we’d learned about. But perhaps the most important thing we learned that summer was about international friendship. We were taught to respect people, no matter the colour of their skin or the language they spoke. I loved the trip so much that I promised myself I would win the scholarship again the next year.
I was eleven when I fell in love for the first time. Roma, a tall blond with blue eyes had just moved to our school and was a 5
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grade above me. Whenever I saw him, my heart beat faster. One day, during a break between classes, he ran past me and a pink ball of paper landed at my feet. Surprised, I picked it up – inside there was a message: Privet. Menya zovut Roma. Ya hochu s toboy druzhit. Ti soglasna? I was astonished; Roma wanted to be my boyfriend! My excitement was immediately clouded with anxiety. He didn’t know about my defect. What would happen when he found out? And he would, as soon as I said his name. In class, I couldn’t concentrate. My wish for love was just as strong as my fear of humiliation. I needed to make a decision. As I kept thinking of my answer, I remembered what we had recently learned in our literature class. Our teacher explained about synonyms, words that can be replaced by others with a similar meaning. I needed more words. The best way to expand my vocabulary was by reading. That day, I signed up with the school library and wrote a response to Roma. I agreed to be his girlfriend. From the beginning of my friendship with Roma, I made sure to learn lots of new words to replace those that contained the letter R. But in six months of friendship we’d never had a proper conversation. The thought of Roma laughing at my mispronunciation simply didn’t allow me to relax. I insisted that we continue with written messages as our main method of communication. During one of the weekend visits home, I watched a film that included a little story about a girl who couldn’t pronounce a letter R. Her mother took her to a speech doctor, a logoped. I held my breath. I never knew there were doctors especially for speech defects. Would this girl get her miracle? But the moment the girl met the doctor, it was clear that he himself couldn’t pronounce “R” and “D”. My brother and sister thought this was hilarious. The doctor kept asking the girl to repeat words after him, which he couldn’t pronounce himself. 6
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Just like me, she used synonyms. The word ryba, which meant “fish”, she’d replace with seledka, which meant “a herring”. At the end, the doctor’s verdict was that the girl was perfectly fine. Her mother told him he was the one who needed a cure. I left the room to find my mother, my siblings’ laughter ringing in my ears. “Mum, why haven’t you ever taken me to a logoped?” I asked as I watched her peeling potatoes for our dinner. “You only get specialist doctors in the cities”, she replied. “Why would you need one? To me you are perfectly fine, my little pride.” “I am not fine at all!” I protested. How could I be? I couldn’t even talk to a boy I liked. But then I couldn’t say this aloud. Mum often praised me for my good marks at school, calling me her pride and joy. I didn’t think she’d be happy about me having a crush on a boy. “Why do we live in the village where there isn’t a doctor who can help me?” I cried. “Cities are unhealthy places to live,” my mother said. “The air’s polluted, the food’s seldom fresh, never mind not being organic. Everyone lives in tiny, cramped apartments with no private yards or gardens for the kids to play in. They have to share their yard with fifty other families from the same building.” She scraped the potato peels into the bin. “Here in Volchanovka, we have a nice size garden all to ourselves, a luxury for people from cities. Life in the village is purer, not poorer, my dear.” “Why don’t logopeds live in the village then?” I objected. “You don’t need a doctor.” Mum laughed. “When I was your age I used to stutter. But as I grew up it just went away. You’ll also grow out of your R issue. No need to worry.” But I did worry. What if I never get better? It wasn’t long after this that my sister told me Roma had asked a girl from her class to be his girlfriend. Disappointed, I kept my pain to myself. What chance would I ever have had with 7
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Roma? I was a crow. I would be dumped anyway, straight after he heard my first word with R.
Soon after Roma broke up with me, I won the scholarship again. I was going to my favourite place, Gaidary, happy to mix with foreign students. That summer, I suddenly fell in love for the second time. I was twelve and he was a twenty-eight-year-old student from Nicaragua whose name was Saul. He’d just finished his biology studies and was going back to his country. Our teacher, Nina Alekseevna, had us make him farewell souvenirs by writing little poems and creating bookmarks from strips of postcards glued together. She also organised a little tea party for Saul, where he entertained us by singing songs. I wished he’d never stop, as I loved watching the muscles on his arms as he played the guitar. At the end of the party, I was asked by Nina Alekseevna to present Saul with all the gifts we’d made. When I did, Saul surprised me with a kiss on the cheek to say thank you. It felt so special. As far as I could remember, no one, not even my parents, had ever hugged or kissed me before. In my upbringing it was regarded as normal to not cuddle a child –the focus was to ensure the child was well behaved and disciplined. Saul gave our teacher his address in Nicaragua, and back at school, it became my responsibility to write him letters on behalf of our group. In one of his letters, he wrote me a personal message, which I skipped over when relaying his words to the class. The message to me read, “Let’s ensure that we never lose our connection.”
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