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“Shane?” Yuna said, getting the attention of her seven-year-old son sitting on the bench beside her. He was gently swinging his skate-clad feet against the bench, and trying his best to eat the carrot sticks she had handed him. He was struggling a bit, his missing front tooth making it harder than normal.
“Uh-huh?” Shane answered, slightly distracted by the offending piece of carrot refusing to break.
“That boy. Over there, with the curls. Is he new?”
Shane finally looked up at her, and moved his eyes to stare towards the other boy.
“I think so,” he said with a shrug.
Yuna hummed a little in response, keeping her gaze on the young boy, as his mother tied his skates. Mother? Or sister? No, when her head turned, Yuna saw clearly that she was old enough to be a mother for a seven-year-old. Maybe somewhere in her late twenties. Her face was young.
Next to her, Shane managed to bite across his carrot, finally realising he needed to use the teeth further in the back, instead of his singular front tooth.
“Make sure the new boy feels welcome, okay? Maybe he needs a friend.” Yuna placed Shane’s helmet onto his head, and watched with a little smile as he confidently headed onto the ice. Besides them, Shane’s team mates began lacing up their skates. Shane always insisted they come early to practice. The rink was beginning to fill up, sounds of people talking and whistles blowing rising to the ceiling.
With her arms folded gently across her chest, Yuna watched Shane head straight for the new boy. At least he was good at listening to her. The little blond boy, with messy curls, looked like how she supposed an angel would look, if it took the shape of a mischievous seven-year-old.
Wherever this boy had moved from, he had definitely skated before. He was good, almost as good as Shane. Almost.
“Hi. I’m Shane. What’s your name?”
Her son recited the introduction like lines he had rehearsed. Yuna bit her lip to keep from frowning. Sometimes, she worried about Shane’s social skills. He seemed a little robotic, almost. Like he knew what he was supposed to say and do, but not how to convey that convincingly.
She felt like a horrible mother for even thinking her son was robotic. But David had mentioned it too. Had even suggested they take him to a doctor for some tests. Yuna had refused. Shane was fine. Just a bit different.
The curly haired boy stared at Shane with wide blue eyes, his mouth pointed down in a frown. He seemed scared.
Maybe he was shy.
He cast a glance towards his young mother, who smiled softly to him, before calling out in a language Yuna didn’t understand. She vaguely recognized it as a slavic language. Polish, maybe. Or Russian.
The blond boy lit up like a candle at whatever his mother had said, and excitedly, he pointed at his own chest.
“Ilya!” He said with a big grin. Yuna realized with a little tug that he was missing the opposite front tooth from Shane. Like a pair.
Yuna watched as Shane smiled back. She hadn’t expected that. Usually, the moods of other children had no effect on Shane. But he turned his own gloved hand towards his own chest, and proudly said his name back.
“Sheen,” Ilya said, pronouncing it with an accent. As Yuna began moving down along the rink, towards Ilya’s mother, she could see the smile disappear and Shane begin to frown. He hadn’t liked that Ilya pronounced it wrong, she could tell.
But he tried again, for which Yuna was proud. Ilya once again repeated it back wrong. Yuna almost laughed as Shane huffed in annoyance. This was good for him. Just as Shane gave it a third try, Yuna reached Ilya’s mother, and stopped behind her.
The other woman was pressed against the glass, staring out at her little boy. She was almost ethereally beautiful. Wild blonde curls bounced around a pale, soft face, and a green coat making her look almost like a woodland fairy.
“Your son looks like such a sweet boy,” Yuna began, but stopped herself when the other woman physically flinched. She had clearly gotten scared, and took a second to breathe before turning around to face Yuna. All colour had drained from her already very fair features.
“I am so, so sorry!” Yuna continued, “I didn’t mean to scare you at all. Very sorry!”
Yuna figured this wasn’t the time to point out that the other woman's reaction was simply from getting a little jumpscare. It was full blown panic, flinching away, as if expecting pain. She swallowed down the want to say something, and instead held out her hand.
“I’m Yuna Hollander.”
Carefully, still unsure, the other woman grasped Yuna’s hand. Her nails were bitten down to the fingertips, frayed edges harsh against her cold, pink fingertips. Did she not have mittens or gloves? Yuna’s perfectly manicured nails seemed a little frivolous compared.
“Irina Rozanova,” the other woman answered so silently it was almost whispering. She pointed towards herself, the same way Yuna had just seen Ilya do. It suddenly dawned on Yuna that perhaps the little boy wasn’t the only one struggling with their English. “Mama for Ilya.”
Her accent was strong, the words barely hanging together as a working sentence. A quick glance up told Yuna that the boys were still talking out on the ice. Shane was smiling again. Good.
Carefully, Yuna shook the other woman’s hand, and held her left hand to her chest.
“Yuna,” she repeated from earlier, slower now. “Shane’s mama.”
Irina gave a tight smile, and a little nod. The way she moved told Yuna that this woman expected the conversation to end there. But that wasn’t Yuna’s style.
This woman’s son was making Shane laugh out on the ice. It was such a rare sound for him to make, at least in front of other children. There wasn’t much Yuna wouldn’t do to keep him just like that. Smiling and happy on the ice. So she squared her shoulders, determined to keep the conversation moving. If she was good at something, it was talking to people.
At a slower pace than earlier, Yuna began speaking again.
“Did you move here recently?”
She could see Irina process the words. The familiar set of the jaw when the words were doing a turn around in the head, figuring out how to structure a response. It was a look Yuna had grown up seeing every day.
“Eh- yes, From Russia. Bad English.”
Irina pushed a curl behind her ear, and scratched her nose. Yuna felt her heart soften for this woman. She remembered so well how it had been for her parents.
They had been in Canada less than a year when Yuna was born. All her childhood, she had helped translate things. Watched as other adults spoke to her parents like they were children, or dumb.
They had never complained of course. They weren’t like that. But Yuna knew how it had pained them, not being able to understand things. Having to bring Yuna or her brother with them to translate at the dentist office or the grocery store.
Maybe she could help Irina and Ilya avoid that same situation.
“You eh- skate?” Yuna pointed at Irina, then the ice. The blonde shook her head.
“No, no.” She looked like she wanted to say more. Like blunt no’s weren’t actually the real answer. Irina probably had a whole story to tell, but no words to tell it. Yuna decided it was fine. She would find a way to learn the story anyway.
“You?” Irina asked back. Yuna smiled, and shook her head. She knew almost everything there was to know about hockey, but she had never actually been interested in playing it herself.
“No. Um- Shane’s dad- papa. He skates. Hockey.” The reply came out a little stuttering, but Yuna couldn’t help the slight smile she was sure overtook her face when she spoke about David. Twelve years together and he could still make her feel like this.
David didn’t play hockey as much now as in college, but he was still on a team. A bunch of former talents who quit before reaching the professional leagues, meeting up twice a month to have fun.
Irina nodded instead of answering, her gaze moving towards their boys. It seemed they had decided to race each other, still waiting for the rest of the team to join them on the ice. The sound of their skates scraping the ice was hard, like little punches.
Ilya was fast. Easily keeping up with Shane, who Yuna knew was well above average for his age group. It was hard not to be a little impressed. It would be good for Shane to have someone challenge him.
“What about Ilya’s papa?” Yuna tried, and watched in slight horror as once again Irina’s whole body tensed up like she was waiting for a blow. There was clearly something wrong there.
“No. No papa,” Irina stuttered, panic lacing her words. “Me, Ilya, Andrei. Old- eh- old boy?”
“Older brother?” Yuna supplied, after a second trying to understand what Irina meant. She nodded, seemingly grateful for the help.
Yuna frowned. Irina clearly wasn’t old. And here she was, alone in a foreign country with two young boys. Ilya was the same age as Shane, give or take. If she had an older son, she would still have been a teenager when she gave birth to him. And whoever the boys father was, Yuna had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t a particularly kind man.
Out on the ice, Ilya shouted something in Russian, and both mothers turned to look towards the voice. Shane was sitting on the ice, a little sweaty and panting. Ilya’s arms were thrown around his neck, holding on in a semi-hug.
A lump formed in Yuna’s throat as Ilya continued speaking in rapid Russian, and she watched Shane gaze up at him with a slightly lopsided grin. Never before, in her son’s seven years of life, had Yuna seen him react that way to another child.
Her lips would burst from hard she was biting into it, trying to keep emotions below the surface. Shane would be fine. She knew it in her bones. He had a friend.
The rest of the boys came sliding onto the ice along with a coach. Ilya and Shane pulled themselves up, and took their place in line.
“Yuna!” One of the other mothers was shouting for her from the snacks table. Probably trying to rope Yuna over to get all the gossip on the new boy. With a sigh, she turned back to Irina, who was watching the practice begin.
“I have to help,” Yuna said, nodding towards the other mothers. Quickly, she dug out her little notebook from her purse, and scribbled down the number for their house phone. Neither she nor David had gotten on the cell phone trend yet. She doubted she would ever need one.
After putting her name on it, Yuna tore out the paper and held it out.
“Call please. For anything. Help for you, or a friend for Ilya, maybe?”
Irina accepted the little note slowly, and nodded once. Yuna gave her softest smile, then headed back towards the other women. Not that they would be pleased.
They would get no gossip about this sweet woman from her.
—--
Yuna watched in the mirror as Shane buckled himself into his booster seat. His eyes were heavy, tired as he always got after practice and too much social interaction.
“Did you like Ilya?” Yuna asked carefully, as she reversed the car out of the parking lot. Shane took a second, then nodded.
“Yeah,” he said, seriously as only he could. “He was nice. But he said my name all wrong.”
Yuna chuckled. She couldn’t wait to tell David about this. He would laugh, she was sure of it.
“Well, Ilya is from Russia, honey. He doesn’t speak English, and his mouth is used to forming words in a different way. Like you when you when we practice French and Japanes.”
“That makes sense. I taught him some important words today.” Shane puffed out his chest a little, clearly pleased about having been of help to someone. He was an only child, and youngest of all his cousins, on both sides of the family. He was usually the one getting helped.
“What important words?”
“Um- well, skates. Of course. And coach. Hockey stick. Oh, and ice!”
Yuna held back a snort, and felt warmth all through her chest. Her boy truly was the sweetest, most hockey obsessed boy in all of Canada. With a fond smile, Yuna watched him through the mirror again. Shane was looking out the window, nodding his head to some song only he could hear, and swinging his little legs so they gently kicked the back of her seat.
“Those are some really good words, honey.”