T means death, death means T. Remember T. REMEMBER!
“My name is Tatiana Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, and I will never, ever live in a prison again. I finally remember. I’m finally free.”
Epilogue
Summer 2015
“Do you get it now? Does it all make sense?” I ask, my mind exhausted, and my body feeling every bit of its sixty-eight years of age after so many hours talking.
I look back and forth between the two raven-haired beauties sitting on the loveseat across from me, mirror images of each other on the outside, but polar opposites on the inside.
“I’ve been asking you my entire life to talk about what happened when you were eighteen, and this is what you come up with when you’re finally ready to speak? An outrageous, morbid story that is completely preposterous. Honestly, Mother, is it so hard for you to just tell us the truth?”
Faina throws up her hands in irritation, rising from the loveseat and snatching her purse from the floor by her feet, turning her annoyed look to her sister.
“How can you sit there so calmly, Mavra?” she asks.
Mavra shrugs and looks away from her sister. We share a smile and once again I take a quiet moment to look at my forty-year-old twins. Faina meaning light in Russian and Mavra meaning dark, so perfectly named when they were born, long before I learned who they would become.
Shaking her head, Faina walks around the coffee table, bends over, and places a kiss on the side of my cheek, always remembering her manners even when she’s angry. “I’m sorry, Mother, I shouldn’t have spoken so rudely to you. I love you.”
She stands back up to her full height, tugging the hem of her light pink suit jacket back into place and pressing her palm down the side of the matching light pink skirt. She glances down at the watch on her wrist before smoothing her hand against the side of her head, making sure her tight, perfectly pulled-back bun is still intact, and there isn’t one hair out of place.
“I have to be in court in an hour, and I need to prepare. I’ll give you a call later.”
My beautiful Faina, the lawyer, so smart and perfect and good. It’s a wonder she lived to adulthood, and I never smothered her in her sleep as a baby.
Mavra and I watch in silence as she throws the strap of her purse over her shoulder and walks out of the room, her heels clicking down the stairs as she goes. When I hear the front door open and close, I turn away from the stairs, patting the spot next to me on the couch.
Mavra gets up, walks around the coffee table and takes a seat, turning to face me, tucking one leg underneath her.
“Aren’t you going to yell at me as well and tell me my story was absurd?” I ask softly.
She shakes her head back and forth, her long, wild mane of black hair swishing around her shoulders. Reaching between us, she grabs my wrinkled hands covered in age spots and holds them in her own soft, younger ones, covered in dirt and scratches.
“You’ve never lied to me before; why would you start now?” she replies calmly.
My lovely Mavra, the gardener. So trusting and open, never hiding who she is or what she feels, even if society says it’s bad.
I run the tips of my fingers over the new scratches on the tops of her hands and the scars from previous ones.
“Looks like you’ve been fighting with the rosebushes again,” I tell her with a laugh.
She chuckles with me, giving my hand a gentle squeeze. “You know I don’t mind the pain. Or the blood.”
“Especially the blood,” I add with a smile.
We sit in silence for a few minutes and I can see it in her eyes that she still has questions.
“Go ahead and ask. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
She ponders for a few seconds, organizing her thoughts before speaking.
“You were never Ravenna?”
I shake my head.
“You were always Tatiana,” she states.
I nod. “I even have the birth certificate to prove it.”
“But Ravenna was real, wasn’t she?” Mavra asks.
“She was. For eighteen years she was as real as you and I. I even have that birth certificate to prove it, but I keep that one hidden,” I reply with a wink.
“You were twins, just like Faina and I.”
I nod again. “Just like you and Faina. One good twin, one bad twin.”
I don’t feel guilty that I gave my twins the same labels my parents gave to Ravenna and me. The difference with my daughters is that they’ve known who they were from the moment they were born. Maybe I was always a little more honest and open with Mavra because she’s so much like me, but I never made them feel like they weren’t equally loved and equally cared for.
“You pushed Ravenna into the lake on the day of your fifth birthday. They never loved you, and they always made you feel like you didn’t belong. Even at five years old you knew she was the good one, you were the bad one, and they’d never see you any other way, so you proved them right,” she says.
I don’t say a word, letting her work through it on her own.