Camel from Kyzylkum

Some things in life you’ll never forget. There are moments in our core memory that we hang on to closely because we don’t want to forget. The ones that make me smile are the best. There are also moments that stand still and are chiseled into my mind like frames, as if I’m watching a movie. For me, the emotions are as raw as they were many years ago. These memories are among my most valuable possessions. There are also moments in my memory that I want to forget. They are hidden so deeply, almost erased, and never be brought to the surface again.

In my very early childhood, I was a happy little girl with braided blonde hair and a little snub nose. In Vinnitsa, I attended daycare while my parents worked. In the summer, my parents sent me to stay with my grandmother in Belarus. My grandmother lived with my mother’s twin sisters, Inna and Mila, in the city of Gomel, in a small house on the outskirts of the pine forest. Since my grandmother was unfailingly working (she was a medical doctor), my two aunts, Inna and Mila, took care of me. They were fourteen years older than me. We spent a lot of time in the forest; I took naps during the day in the hammock with beautiful pine trees rustling above my head.

Inna and Mila always made sure that I got enough nutrition for my health and growth. When I refused to eat their porridge, one of them, usually Inna, dressed in an old sweatshirt, with a broom in her hand, pretending that she was Baba Yaga, a ferocious-looking old woman from the Russian children’s books. While I was hypnotized and watched her performance in horror, Mila shoveled spoons with the porridge into my mouth. I think this theatrical show was an everyday occurrence until I was about four years old.

When I was five or six years old, I remember walking with my aunts to the store on a boiling summer day. I was tired. I stopped and said to them, “It’s so hot that I would like to take my skin off and walk only with my bones.” Astonished with my highly expressive thinking, they laughed. As the years passed by, my expression metamorphosed into a symbol of that time of our lives and was repeated at family gatherings countless times.

On warm, summer evenings, the youth from the little street at the edge of the pine forest gathered on the porch of my grandmother’s house. They swapped stories, shared laughs, enjoyed each other’s company, and sometimes subtly flirted. The energy and laughter emitted on this porch represented the time when life was still carefree, unexplored, and in front of these young men and women. As I was always with my aunts, I was able to stay with them on this porch and still remember their friends by name, even to this day. It was the best time ever.

When I was six or seven years old, my aunts sent me to the summer day camp that was set in a sunny meadow of a pine forest—there were two dozen tents with beds, where we could take a nap during the day, along with one large canopy that served us as a dining room. All games and activities were held in the open air, right in the meadow. The gentle sun shone with warmth through the pine branches. The balmy, thick scent of resin filled the air, and the needles crunched softly underfoot. In front, behind, and on the sides, reddish pines stood everywhere, and only here and there at their roots did some kind of pale greenness break through the layer of needles. I loved to spend days in the camp with wonderful smells and scenes of the forest. But after a few days, my head began to itch. I had long, thick, light-colored hair, which I braided in two pigtails every morning. As my head continued to itch painfully, I washed my hair every day after camp. This went on for an entire month; for whatever reason, the adults did not pay any attention to my scratching. When my mother came to take me back to Ukraine, she finally checked my hair. It was a lice infestation. My beautiful hair was immediately shaved. When I started school back in Ukraine, the children laughed at me, teased me, and gave me offensive nicknames. That year at school was very traumatic for me. The regrown new hair was much darker, but just as thick. Since then, I have not had long hair. It was always, and still is, just a short haircut.

Memories of the time spent with my aunts in early childhood always bring me a smile, while memories of them in later years are sad.