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Mischa knew his mama was going to die.
She never sat him down and told him so, he never had a sudden moment of realization. He just always knew. They never talked about it, but they both knew.
They were happy. They didn’t have much, but they had a nice little apartment with big windows that let in the sunshine in the summer and stayed warm and cozy in the winter, and every morning she walked him to school and kissed him goodbye, and and every night she made him dinner and sat with him afterwards at the kitchen table while he did his homework. When they had a little extra money she took him to the movies and museums; when money was tight she took him to the park and the library. She was kind and gentle and he adored her as much as she loved him. They were all that they had in the world.
But she was pale and tired so often, and sometimes he caught her coughing blood into tissues, and when she went to her rare specialist appointments in Kyiv he would catch her crying afterwards.
He knew his mama was dying, but he didn’t know she was going to send him away.
He was fourteen, about to turn fifteen and start his grade ten year at school, except he had started asking her if he should quit school and start working at the factory. She had been the same age when she did the same, it seemed only logical. And he would need to be ready to take care of himself. She had had two specialist appointments in a month, and she had been ill enough to miss work- those were bad signs. It was only a matter of time, even if they didn’t discuss it. But the look of horror and crushing sadness on her face was enough for him to drop it. He could bring it up later.
Instead, she planned a whole day together. She took him to an indoor theme park in Kyiv, the one he had been begging to go to for ages, and she went on as many rides with him as she could and laughed while she watched him play on the trampolines and the slides, and she took dozens of pictures with him and kissed him back when he hugged her and kissed her and thanked her repeatedly for taking him there. He rode the roller coaster a dozen times, shrieking with adrenaline and waving enthusiastically to his mother, who waved back and blew him kisses. He was so worn out afterwards that he fell asleep with his head on her shoulder on the way home, and she stopped to get a takeaway that they ate on the couch while they watched a movie.
It was the best day of his life, until she came to kiss him goodnight.
Mischa nestled under the covers, thinking through all the things he’d done that day while he hovered on the edge of sleep. His mother slipped into his room and he rolled over to look at her, beaming.
“Thank you, Mama,” he said. “Today was great. I think that’s the most fun I’ve ever had.”
Tamara sat down on the edge of his bed and smiled. “I’m glad, baby,” she said. “I’m so glad.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
She rested her hand lightly on his chest and looked away. “Mischa,” she said, and then stopped. She took a deep breath. “Mischa, my love, you have to understand…I just need you to be safe.”
He was wide awake now. “Safe from what?” he said. She said nothing and he struggled to sit up. “Safe from what, Mama?”
“There’s no one here to take care of you when I die,” she said, and his stomach dropped. It was the first time either one of them had ever acknowledged it. “My parents are dead, and your papa…” Her voice trailed off again. His father had died when he was a baby, an accident at the factory. He didn’t remember him at all. “Someone needs to take care of you. And you’re so smart, you deserve to be in a better school, to stay in school.”
“Mama, you’re scaring me,” he said, his heart thudded too fast in his chest.
Tamara took his hands in both of hers; her fingers felt light and airy in his like bird bones. “There’s a very nice family in Canada that wants a boy,” she said quietly.
He couldn’t breathe. “No,” he whimpered. “Mama, no, please, I don’t want to go, don’t send me away.”
“You’ll have a mother and a father to take care of you,” Tamara said. “You’ll go to a good private school, you can go to college too. You’ll be safe.”
“No!” he screamed. He wanted to pull his hands free from hers, but he never wanted to let go. “No! I’m not going! I’m not going!”
“Mischa, Mischa,” Tamara soothed, her dark eyes soft and sad. “You have to. Someone needs to take care of you when I’m gone.”
He wanted to be angry. He wanted so badly to be angry. Hot rage bubbled in his chest, but he burst into tears instead, and when Tamara pulled him into her arms he buried his face in her shoulder and sobbed.
He was tall for his age already, but she gathered him onto her lap like she used to when he was a little boy and cradled him close, rocking him gently as he cried.
“My baby,” she kept whispering as she stroked his soft hair. “My baby, my Mischka.”
He sobbed himself sick, until he was too exhausted to do anything but fall asleep, and Tamara slept in his bed with him like she used to when he was young and woke up crying from nightmares. She slept with him every night that week, and during the day they packed his things and got his paperwork in order. The last night he could barely sleep, he kept waking up with night terrors, and every time he woke up crying she held him a little tighter and soothed him back to sleep.
They said little on the way to the airport, but he clutched her hand so tight his knuckles turned white. She helped him with his suitcase and his backpack, and got him checked in, and then it was time. They couldn’t put it off any longer.
He was crying again. He’d been crying for a week straight. “Mama, I don’t want to go,” he whimpered. “Please let me stay. I’ll take care of you.”
Tamara shook her head. “You deserve better,” she said. “You have always deserved better, my love.” She cupped his cheek in her hand. “You will do such great things in your new home, I know it.”
He closed his eyes and nestled his cheek against her palm. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll come back. When I’m older.”
She said nothing, just stroked her thumb lightly against the curve of his cheek, still babyishly round. “My boy,” she sighed. “My sweet boy. I love you so much.”
His lower lip trembled. Tamara brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Be safe,” she said, and she kissed his cheek. “Be good.”
He nodded. He kissed his mother goodbye, curling himself into her embrace as tightly as he could, but eventually, reluctantly she let go of him. She pressed a last kiss on his forehead, like a little protection spell, and when they couldn’t put it off any longer he picked up his backpack and walked through security, tears rolling down his cheeks. When he paused one last time to look back at her she was crying too, her hand over her heart as if she was trying to keep the shattered pieces together.
He had never been on a plane before, and he pressed his forehead during the window during takeoff and stared at his homeland growing smaller and smaller until he was above the clouds and his ears needed to pop so badly that he had to curl up as small as possible and groan into his arm from the pain.
It was nearly four hours in the air from Ukraine to the UK, and he got lost in the Heathrow airport looking for his next terminal. Luckily there were eight hours in between, and he wandered around the shops and took a nap in an uncomfortable chair while he waited. He’d learned English in school, but studying it in the safety of his classroom was very different from being surrounded by it, swallowed up in the unfamiliarity, and he felt so lost and so unsteady.
The flight to Canada was worse- twelve, nearly thirteen hours long. He watched every movie he could, trying to practice his English as he attempted to read the subtitles along with the audio. The food on the flight was disappointing at best, not that he was particularly hungry. He tried to sleep, but sleep evaded him, especially when the plane hit turbulence and he had to grip the armrests and close his eyes and try to imagine that this was all a terrible, horrible dream, that he would wake up crying in his own bed in his own tiny room, and his mother would come running to hug him and comfort him and make him a cup of hot chocolate before tucking him back in.
The plane landed in Canada and he was so tired he barely felt human. His whole body ached, his still-growing limbs hurting from contorting into weird positions for hours. He felt disgusting too, it had been over a day since he’d left home and he hadn’t had a chance to shower or change clothes. And the anxiety that had been pulling in the pit of his stomach for the past week was churning now, making him dizzy and nauseous and terrified. When he started to shuffle off the plane he passed by the flight attendant’s bar supplies, and he snuck a tiny bottle of vodka and chugged it quickly for courage. His mother would sigh and shake her head if she saw him, but he hoped it would help make him a little less terrified.
What would they be like, these new parents? He didn’t know anything about them. His mother had submitted him to the adoption program herself, she hadn’t even let him see what she had written for his application. They hadn’t received much information about the adoptive family either. He didn’t know what to expect.
He went through customs by himself, and a social worker was waiting for him when he emerged on the other side. “Mykhailo Bachinski?” she said, and then she rattled off something else in English.
“Mischa, Mischa Bachinski,” he said. No one ever called him Mykhailo except for teachers on the first day of school. His mama always called him Mischa. Her Mischka.
The social worker smiled at him but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Let’s go see your new parents,” she said.
He wanted to throw up. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or the alcohol.
She escorted him to baggage claim, and ushered him towards a couple standing off by themselves, a man in a polo shirt and khaki pants and a blonde woman in a pink dress. The woman held a teddy bear and an overly bright smile that dropped as the social worker walked towards them.
“Craig, Kayleigh, this is your new son, Mykhailo,” she said cheerfully.
Mischa tried to smile. “No,” Kayleigh said, shaking her head. “No, no, no .”
The argument was too fast for him to process it easily. The parents argued with the social worker, who protested in a high thin voice. He hung back, ignored, and listened until it started to make more sense.
They didn’t want him. They wanted a baby, not a gangly teenage boy.
He caught a glimpse of the paperwork. His mother had submitted photos of him from when he was a toddler, and she had changed his birth year to make him two years old. She had lied .
He stood there in a daze, listening to them argue without understanding what they were saying, until finally his new father snatched up his suitcase and his new mother followed them out of the airport, sobbing. They had to take him, he realized. They couldn’t put him on a plane back to Ukraine, to home, to his mother. It was already done.
He thought they lived in the city, but they drove in silence for nearly an hour until they reached a small, quiet town. It looked like the suburbs he’d seen in American television shows, but…different. Faded, as if it was dying slowly.
His new parents parked their shiny SUV in the garage and he followed them inside. Their house was bright and white and clean, the furniture pristine and artfully decorated with perfectly placed throw pillows and blankets and tasteful artwork. It looked like an Instagram post come to life.
They discussed something quietly between their teeth while he looked around, holding his suitcase in both hands. “Michael,” the woman finally said.
“Mischa,” he offered. “I am called Mischa.”
A blank, angry look crossed her pretty face. “Michael,” she said again. “We do not have a room for you.”
She spoke painfully slowly, overenunciating every word. He glanced around. It was clearly a big house, and he thought that maybe he misunderstood. “Is bigger here than home,” he said. He had always struggled with English grammar.
“There is not a room ready for you,” she said, raising her voice. “You can stay in the basement for now.”
He didn’t know what they meant until he was ushered down a dark flight of bare wooden stairs and into a low-ceilinged room with a concrete floor. There was one small rectangular window, eye level to the lawn outside, and a single bulb in the ceiling with a chain. Stacks of neatly labeled cardboard boxes and plastic bins were stacked around the room, along with a dusty plastic Christmas tree and a broken exercise bike. An old plaid couch was pushed against one wall, and the man gestured to it. “We’ll get you some sheets and blankets, and there’s a bathroom over there,” he said, and then he left.
Mischa looked around in confusion, but the anxiety and the jet lag and the vodka made him feel so sick that he stumbled into the little bathroom and dropped to his knees to throw up. He stayed on the floor, his cheek pressed against the cool dusty porcelain, and he could arguing voices through the vents in the ceiling.
“- two , he was supposed to be two , I don’t want a teenager!”
“We can’t just send him back!”
“Did you smell the alcohol on his breath?”
“No, but-”
“We can’t keep him! We have to send him back! Can’t we just…rehome him?”
“I’m trying to get in touch with the adoption agency, they haven’t answered my emails yet.”
“I want him on the next flight back to wherever he came from! I don’t want him in my house!”
Mischa couldn’t catch everything they were saying, but he understood enough. Tears burned behind his eyes, and he sank back against the wall and cried his eyes out. He wanted his mother. He wanted to go home. He wanted to die.
His new parents kept him in the basement. They didn’t lock him in, exactly, but they left him meals by the basement door and kept it closed at all times. He didn’t really want to talk to them either, and he stayed put, keeping himself entertained with books and an ancient iPod that he found after digging around in storage boxes.
Eventually he grew bold enough to explore the house while they were both gone at work. It was a three bedroom house, but they were right, there wasn’t space for him. One bedroom was theirs, obviously, and the other was set up as an office and a workout space. The third bedroom was not meant for him.
He peeked inside and knew immediately why he wasn’t allowed there. It was a nursery, with a crib and shelves of picture books and wicker baskets of baby toys. It was carefully designed for the child his new parents actually wanted, the child they thought they were getting. It was not meant for him.
He assumed they would send him back, but days turned to weeks, and weeks turned into months, and one evening his new mother knocked on the basement door to hand him new clothes on hangers. At first he was excited that they were giving him something, until he realized how boring the items were- gray pants, white shirts, a maroon sweater vest.
“You start school tomorrow,” she said shortly, and she nudged him back so she could close the door.
He had always liked school in Ukraine, but school in Canada was different. He felt so lost, trying to figure out where to go and how to understand his schedule and what he was supposed to do. His textbooks were all in English, and he’d always been able to read English better than he could speak it, but it was still just so much. It didn’t help that his new parents had enrolled him under the name of Michael Sloane. “Mischa Bachinski,” he kept correcting people. “Not Michael, not Sloane. Mischa Bachinski.”
And no one talked to him. When he tried to speak he couldn’t turn off his accent, couldn’t make his words flow like they did in his head, and his new classmates snickered behind their hands and the teachers treated him like he was stupid. He wasn’t stupid. He was smarter than them in four languages, he just couldn’t get anyone to listen to him.
And as time went on, he realized he was stuck.
He was stuck at St. Cassian’s where he was just the troublemaker who couldn’t speak English. He was stuck at the Sloanes’ house, where they left him in the basement where they pretended he didn’t exist while they started the adoption process again to get a child they actually wanted. He was stuck in Canada, kilometers away from his mother, his beloved mother who never responded to any of his letters.
His only way out of there was through the ancient iPod that he loaded with music that he was actually interested in, through the phone his foster parents begrudgingly purchased for him after they forgot to pick him up after detention for the third time, through making music on an old laptop he’d found in the basement and posting it on social media and meeting new friends. Meeting Talia.
He would get out. He would get out of this somehow, far away from this town and this school and the family that didn’t want him,
and he would stay safe like his mother wanted, he would be good, he would start his life over again, on his own terms.
He got in line for the Cyclone with the other kids in the choir, tuning them out like he always did as he texted Talia. It reminds me of the last day with my mother , he told her. We went to the Galaxy Park in Kyiv, and I rode the roller coaster as many times as I could.
She sent back a couple of laughing emojis. We’re about to get on the ride, he texted.
Be safe, she said.
I will, I’ll be good , he texted back.
He pulled the lap bar down.