Free Separate Kingdoms (P.S.) by Valerie Laken Page A

just how Russians were. A silence settled over the car, and in time they passed from the downtown streets on to the smoother, more orderly highways leading out of town. Josie sat quietly, trying not to imagine the orphanage, hoping it would take a very long time to get there.
    She had read the Human Rights Watch reports. She had seen pictures and documentary films of twisted, forlorn babies lying half naked on plastic mattresses. The photos showed cold metal cribs lined up in rows, almost like cages. She had seen one film about an orphanage that had no electricity and sometimes even lacked heat and running water. The children, even the healthy ones, were said to be dazed and indifferent for lack of interaction. They were rarely held; they might not know their own names. Some of them would have even given up crying.
    The agency’s booklet said nothing about these things, except to mention in the back end of a paragraph that some children might suffer from sensory integration disorder or have difficulty making the transition to a “forever family.” And maybe it was true; maybe Human Rights Watch reported from orphanages much worse than those near the capital. Maybe the steady feed of adoption money made this orphanage heaven compared to the rest. That’s what Josie told herself as they moved farther from the city and off onto quieter, narrower country roads. She watched the green fields and forests rushing past the car windows, the little dachas appearing in clusters now and then. Every so often Artur would point out some landmark or tell them which famous Russians had houses nearby. But before she felt ready, the car slowed down and turned onto a rutted dirt road, approaching a small guardhouse. There was no one inside it to stop them, so they drove past.
    At the end of the road, beyond a few withering shrubs, stood a building that had once been pink but was now faded to white near the top and saturated with gray filth along the bottom. There were grates on all the windows, and no traces of children in the yard. No swing sets. No bicycles. The entrance stood under a small portico, held up by four large, peeling white columns, and in black letters above the entry hung the words. Baby home.
    Artur got out of the car; Meg and Josie stayed frozen in the backseat.
    “Well, this is it,” Meg said, feigning ease.
    “Yeah,” was all Josie could say. The air around her hummed.
    They collected their bags of gifts from the trunk, shouldered up their purses and video camera, and mechanically followed Artur up the stairs. Inside, the foyer was austere and clean, with high ceilings and deeply worn parquet floors. The air smelled of cabbage, and there seemed to be no one, no voices, no sounds, anywhere. Artur went down the hall and came back a few minutes later with a short, heavyset woman wearing a white lab coat over her dress. She led them to a large office, where Josie and Meg set down their bags and waited. The woman collected Meg’s dossier of documents from Artur, and sat studying them at the desk for several minutes. Josie started to worry. She nudged Meg and glanced at the gift bags.
    Meg nodded. “We have these gifts for the orphanage.”
    The woman held up her hand to quiet Meg.
    When she finished with the documents she said something to Artur that surprised him. “Apparently,” he said, translating, “they actually have two children who are, ah, eligible for adoption, that you can meet today.”
    Two children. It struck Josie suddenly as incredible good fortune: two children to choose from, not one. There was an abundance. But glancing at Meg’s already dismayed face, the implications sunk in: How did one choose between two children? And what about the little boy in the photo? Was he one of them?
    Meg said, “I can only afford to adopt one child.”
    “Of course,” Artur said. “Of course. But if you would like to meet them both—”
    “Is that common?”
    Artur shrugged.
    To be summoned across the ocean to