Chapter Text
A Russian adoption odyssey: when love isn't enough
When we first met Kevin, in an orphanage outside Moscow, we couldn't believe our luck. Like most international adoptive parents, we'd come to Russia on the strength of a promise and one picture: a skinny blond boy with big blue-green eyes, scowling endearingly at the camera.
Everyone who adopts from Russia has heard the horror stories about Russian orphanages, the dark rooms lined with babies and toddlers confined permanently to cots. Although the orphanage was definitely grim, we found that Kevin was a lively, energetic little boy who (we were told) had only been there for seven months, since the death of his grandfather.
Of course he didn't speak any English, so we mostly had to communicate without words. Kevin did cartwheels and spun around and sang for us, what we were told was a Russian folk song. It looked like he was trying to charm us – and charm us he did. We thought we'd beaten the odds.
But once we got him home to Georgia, we started to see a different side of Kevin...
***
Life in the orphanage was tough, but Yuri was tough too. He might be small for his age, but he could bite and kick, and after a while the older boys kept a respectful distance.
He didn't make any friends at the orphanage, but that didn't bother him. Every day he would go and climb a little tree in the grounds, and sit there on a branch imagining that he was going to be adopted by Yakov Feltsman.
A few weeks before his grandfather died, they had watched the Olympics together. That's where you'll be someday, his grandfather had said. Sitting beside Feltsman. Do you know that he found Victor skating in a public rink?
Coaches went looking for talent, Yuri knew. Maybe he came to the orphanage every so often to look at all the older children. Check their teeth, stretch their legs up to the sky, see how high they could jump. Yuri could jump higher than anyone. And he could skate already, he could do a toe loop. Once Yakov saw Yuri, he wouldn't even need to look at the other kids. Then he would take him home...
...but Yakov Feltsman never came.
***
Although it had been six months since his grandfather had died, six months in the orphanage, Yuri hadn't given up.
Maybe he wasn't a cute baby, but at least he wasn't one of those lumps who'd spent their whole lives in the orphanage, pale and wasting away behind the bars of a cot. He wasn't a retard, he didn't rock back and forth or hit himself, he didn't scream at night. He only kicked when someone deserved it and he only stole when he really had to. He knew what it was like to have a family.
He was six years old and people said he was cute. He could write his name, his whole name, even though it was very long and complicated. Юрий Николаевич Плисецкий. He could jump and dance and skate. He was the best kid in the orphanage. Of course someone would want him. They would be lucky to have him.
That was what he told himself at night, when he hugged the pillow close in his dormitory and tried not to miss his grandfather or wonder what had happened to his cat. If he did cry, he never let anyone see.
"There's a family coming to adopt you, Yura," said Olya Ivanovna one day, out of the blue. "All the way from America. If you want to go to live in America, you must be good when they visit."
"Yeah," breathed Yuri.
He hardly knew anything about America, but he had heard enough to know that it was a wonderful place, and that he must be special for them to want to take him there. He promised himself that he would prove to them that he was worth taking.
"God help them," muttered Olya. "If they only knew."
***
They lived in a place called Georgia. Not the real Georgia, another one somewhere in America. They were obviously rich because the house was huge: his new parents had a bedroom, and Yuri had his own bedroom, and there was a third bedroom that nobody ever used. There was a garage with two cars in it, and there were even two bathrooms, which was crazy.
They bought him clothes, more clothes than he'd ever owned in his life. They bought him books in English, which he couldn't read. They bought him a new bike to ride.
Outside, the sun boiled down. The house was at the end of a street, a long way from the other houses, with only a few spindly trees for shade. The street ended in a big circle of black asphalt, and Yuri stood there in blank amazement as the heat rippled off it. Under the rubber soles of his sneakers, it felt almost sticky. There were almost no cars driving; there were no people walking around at all. He had never seen a place like this before.
He rode the bike around in aimless circles and came inside again with his skin blistering red from the sun. Maybe it was always too hot for ice skating here.
His new parents didn't understand anything he said. They talked to him all the time in English, like they thought he ought to understand them, even though he was just a little kid and they were the adults. He never even heard them say his name. They just said Kevin, Kevin. It took him a long time to realise that they meant him.
"Я русский!" he said. "Не понимаю."
I'm Russian. I don't understand.
In reply they just smiled; even when he did something they didn't like, they still smiled. He wondered when they would stop smiling, why they didn't know that he couldn't speak English, whether they would decide that he was stupid and send him back to the orphanage. Sometimes he half wished that they would.
But still he didn't give up. He couldn't give up now. He owed it to his grandfather.
He tried drawing pictures of himself skating, himself standing on a podium next to Viktor Nikiforov and Stéphane Lambiel. They smiled proudly at the pictures and put them up on the refrigerator.
"Виктор Никифоров," he said slowly and patiently, pointing up at the picture. "Стефа́н Ламбье́ль. Я."
Viktor Nikiforov. Stéphane Lambiel. Me.
Was it possible that they had never even heard of Viktor Nikiforov?
"Skate," he said, frustrated now. It was one of the few English words that he knew. He mimed pushing off with one foot, sliding a little in his socks on the slippery kitchen floor. "Skate. Want skate."
Later that week they gave him a skateboard. It had a big red bow wrapped around it. He looked back and forth between their beaming, hopeful faces and wanted to cry.
"Do you like it, Kevin?" said his new mother.
It was too much. He hurled the shiny new skateboard at her, as hard as he could.
"Yuri!" he screamed in Russian. "My name is YURI! Yuri Nicolaievich Plisetsky!"
They couldn't pretend that they didn't understand what he meant.
"Your name is Kevin now," said his new father, the smile finally wiped off his face. "You're Kevin Baker. Our son."