“What are you afraid of?” Harold said, squeezing Alexander’s reluctant hand. “When you get big, you will have meaningful work. You still want to be an architect? You will. You will have a career.”
“I’m afraid,” said Alexander, extricating himself from his father, “that it’s just a matter of time before I am, before we all become nothing more than fixed capital.”
Edward and Vikki, 1943
TATIANA WAS SITTING BY the window, holding her two-week-old baby with one hand and a book with the other. Her eyes were closed, and then she heard a breath, and instantly opened her eyes.
Edward Ludlow was standing a few feet away from her with an expression of curiosity and concern. She could understand. She had been very silent since her baby was born. She did not think that was so unusual. Many people who came here, leaving their life behind, must have been silent, as if the enormity of what was behind and what was ahead was just dawning on them in their small white rooms as they stared at the robes of Lady Liberty. “I was worried about you dropping the baby,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you …”
She showed him how tightly she was holding Anthony. “Don’t worry.”
“What are you reading?”
She looked at her book. “I’m not reading, just … sitting.” It was The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems by Aleksandr Pushkin.
“Are you all right? It’s the middle of the afternoon. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She rubbed her eyes. The baby was still sleeping. “This child not sleep at night, only day.”
“Much like his mother.”
“Mother on his schedule.” She smiled. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Ludlow hurriedly. “I wanted to let you know that an INS worker is here to talk to you.”
“What he want?”
“What does he want? He wants to give you a chance to stay in the United States.”
“I thought because my son … because he was born on American ground …”
“American soil,” Dr. Ludlow corrected her gently. “The Attorney General needs to look at your case personally.” He paused. “We don’t have many stowaways coming to the United States during war, you have to understand. Especially from the Soviet Union. It’s unusual.”
Tatiana said, “Does he feel is safe to come here? Did you say him I have TB?”
“I told him. He’ll be wearing a mask. How are you feeling, by the way? Any blood in the cough?”
“None. And fever is gone. I feel better.”
“You’ve been going out a bit?”
“Yes, salty air is good.”
“Yes.” He stared at her solemnly. She stared solemnly back. “The salt air is good.” He cleared his throat and continued. “The nurses are all amazed your boy hasn’t caught TB.”
“Explain to them, Edward,” said Tatiana, “that if ten thousand people come to see me every day for whole year and I had TB every day for whole year, only ten to sixteen people contract disease from me.” She paused. “It’s not so contagious as people think. So send in INS man if he thinks he strong enough. But tell him odds. And tell him I don’t speak so good English.”
Smiling, Edward said her English was just fine and asked if she wanted him to stay.
“No. No, thank you.”
The INS man, Tom, talked to her for fifteen minutes to see if she spoke rudimentary English. Tatiana spoke rudimentary English. He asked about her skills. She told him she was a nurse, and that she could also sew and cook.
“Well, there is certainly a shortage of nurses during the war,” he said.
“Yes, much of it here at Ellis,” said Tatiana. She thought of Brenda being in the wrong profession.
“We don’t get many cases like you.”
She made no reply.
“You want to stay in the United States?”
“Of course.”
“You think you could get a job, to help in the war effort?”
“Of course.”
“Not be a public charge? That’s very important to us in time of war. You understand? The attorney general comes under scrutiny every time he lets a person like you slip through his fingers. The country is in turmoil. We must make sure you stay productive, and that you have allegiance to this country, not your old country.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “As soon as my TB goes and they let me work, I will get job. I will be nurse, or seamstress, or cook. I will be all three, if need to. I will do what I have to after I am good again.”
As if suddenly remembering she had TB, Tom stood up and went to the door, tightening the mask around his mouth. “Where will you live?” he said in a muffled voice.
“I want to stay here.”
“After you get better, you’ll have to get an apartment.”
“Yes. Do not worry.”
He nodded, writing something down in his book. “And the name you want to go by? I saw on the documents you brought with you that you got out of the Soviet Union as a Red Cross nurse named Jane Barrington.”
“Yes.”
“How fake are those documents?”
“I do not understand what you mean.”
Tom fell silent. “Who is Jane Barrington?”
Now Tatiana was silent. “My husband’s mother,” she said at last.
Tom sighed. “Barrington? Not very Russian.”
“My husband was American.” She lowered her gaze.
Tom opened the door. “Is that the name you want to use to get your permanent residency card?”
“Yes.”
“No Russian name for you?”
She thought about it.
Tom came closer to her. “Sometimes refugees who come here like to cling to a little bit of their past. Maybe they leave just the first name the same. Change the last name. Think about it.”
“Not me,” she replied. “Change all. I don’t want to—how you put it? Cling to anything.”
He wrote something down in his book. “Jane Barrington it is, then.”
When he left, Tatiana opened her Bronze Horseman book as she sat once more by the window, looking out onto the New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty. She touched the picture of Alexander she had kept in there; without looking at it she touched his face and his uniformed body, and she whispered small short words in Russian to comfort herself this time, not Alexander, not his child, but herself. Shura, Shura, Shura, whispered Jane Barrington, once known as Tatiana Metanova.
Tatiana’s days consisted of feeding Anthony and changing Anthony and washing Anthony’s few nightgowns and cloth diapers in the bathroom sink and going on short, fragrant walks outside the hospital and sitting on benches with Anthony wrapped in blankets in her arms. Brenda brought her breakfast to her room. Tatiana ate lunch and dinner in