Free House of Many Gods by Kiana Davenport

survived. As they scavenged for food, they began hearing of new purgesacross Russia. Stalin was making clean sweeps through major cities. Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev. Wanting to beautify them again, make them architectural gems. He wanted to show the world that Russia had recovered from World War II, how healthy and handsome the people were, how well they lived. And so he had begun deporting all of the wounded, deformed, and disabled.
    He rounded them up in every city, poured them into trucks, freight trains, cattle cars, and sent them south to regions the outside world had never seen, had hardly heard of. Even disabled soldiers were thrown away, to Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgzstan. Most deportees froze to death in vasty, empty mountain ranges. The world would not know this for many years. Even Russians would not know, and many of them would not believe. Heroes, whole families, faithful Communists—millions tossed aside.
    Vera was still young but the years, and Archangel’sk, had turned her to a crone. Her spine bent to a spider’s hunch, she limped with the pain of arthritis. Her features had always been mismatched, distinctly asymmetrical, a face that frightened strangers. To Nikolai she was beautiful. At night her arms enfolded him, her body smelling of monthly blood, as she forced food between his lips, depriving herself and growing thinner.
    For a year they hid, living in drainage pipes outside the city. Dirt kept their skin dark and filthy so flashlights could not find them. He learned to stand so still he melted into walls. Once they pressed their faces against a wall for fourteen hours. In that way he learned that if one looks at a thing long enough, they become that thing. But then, the sound of boots running in formation. Another roundup. He saw the shadow of his mother as it limped beneath a streetlight. The shadow of a soldier’s hand reach out and grab her.
    His mother turned and cried, “Run, Niki! Run!”
    He could not. They threw her on a truck and he climbed up beside her, as soldiers flashed lights on his face, and up and down his body. A skinny, filthy kid, but not deformed. He could be useful as child labor in the city. They pushed him off the truck. He watched his dear mother’s face grow smaller as they pulled away, her hand still reaching out.
    That day consumed his boyhood. Consumed him into manhood. After that he pretended he had lost his tongue, that he was mute. They would deport him south, and he would find his mother. But gnawing hunger betrayed him. During a roundup, soldiers hoisted him onto a truck with dozens of broken children. A soldier studied him, then offered him a candy.
    “Hungry?” he asked, holding out the sweet.
    Near-starving, foolishly Nikolai answered, “
Da! Pazhalsta
.” Yes. Please.
    They threw him off the truck.
    Now he lived in typhus-ridden streets, hobbling in shoes of rags and ropes. He slept with gangs of street boys, huddling end to end in straw like corpses. He stole and cheated and lived how he could, depending on his wits. And maybe that was the end of truth for him. That was how Nikolai Volenko learned that, deprived of blood—a mother to protect him—lies were his only salvation.

NOI NO KA ‘ĪEWE

Request for the Placenta
    A NA HAD BEGUN TO LEARN THAT WHAT OTHER HUMANS HAD , they kept. It made her sharpen her boundaries, dig deep trenches in order to protect herself. The one person she allowed into her heart fully and with total trust was Rosie, and together they watched as life in the larger world accelerated. The Vietnam War had ended. American and Soviet spacecraft had linked up in outer space, and somewhere in those years, direct long-distance dialing came to the islands.
    She discovered she could, simply by dialing a number, hear her mother’s voice. One night she crept into the kitchen and looked at a slip of paper, the number in San Francisco. She picked up the receiver, put it down, picked it up again and dialed. Her heart beating so hard, her