What Ascended, What Remained

I met Laika the way you make a promise: up close, soft as breath, already vanishing. Autumn had begun to bloom, and I was seventeen, living in Moscow with my papa during the Space Race. My name was Natalya Ivanovna Kovalenko. As a child, I believed that trust was the same thing as knowing. Parents are supposed to tell their children the truth, after all. Laika wasn’t my first secret, but she was my first truth.

She didn’t come to me as a birthday gift wrapped in a little box with a pretty red ribbon. I came home after school one afternoon and heard barking as soon as I opened the front mahogany door. My blonde hair was tied into a ponytail, and I wore a red jacket and a long blue, polka-dotted dress. The foyer was red and the floors were beige. To the left was a white archway that led into the living room. Father was sitting on our brown couch next to a small dog. A terrier, no doubt, but something else. A mongrel. I don’t mean for that to sound unkindly, but that is the correct classification.

Laika continued to bark and ran up to me. I looked at Father, my eyebrows lifted in surprise. He wore a blue shirt, pants, and shoes. His black hair was slicked. Calmly, he got up from his seat and greeted me with a handshake.

“Father, who is this?” I asked.

“Natalya, meet Laika,” he said.

I immediately understood why he named her that. In Russian, laika means “little barker”. I looked at the pooch. She was white with brown spots around her eyes, ears, and the tip of her tail. Laika stared up at me with these large black eyes, not knowing what to make of me. I crouched down to pet her but she began to slowly back away.

“You’re okay,” I said, assuringly.

As if she understood, Laika walked back and allowed me to pet her. Her fur was soft like cotton candy.

“Thought you might like a little bit of responsibility,” Father said.

I froze. I had been fired from my waitressing job the day before. They must have sent my father a letter. I glanced at him.

“You think you can keep secrets from me, girl?” Father inquired.

I shook my head in response.

“You should have told me,” he continued. “We’re family, and we can’t keep things from each other,”

I looked back at Laika, not knowing how to respond. She lay down on the floor.

“Does she belong to one of your friends?” I asked.

“Y-yes,” stammered Father. “He is going to be out of town for a month,”

“A month?” I repeated.

“Yes,” Father said. “You and I will take care of Laika,”

“It will be like having three people live in this house again,” I said.

I remembered the story of how my parents met. My mother was working as a floral assistant, and my father, who was a young law student at that time, often walked past on his way to the local university. Finally, he walked in and said that he was buying flowers for her. They wed three months later and, in January 1940, they had me. My parents remained married for two more years before my mother died of pneumonia. For reasons I didn’t know then, Father turned away from us.

“What are we going to do with her?” I asked.

“As I said, we are going to take care of her,” said Father. “We’ll take turns walking Laika, feeding her, playing with her, that kind of stuff. Don’t worry, Natalya. I already bought some toys,”

“Where are they?”

“You two can play later,”

“Why?”

“You need to get your homework done, young lady,” Father said, turning to face me again.

“You don’t know if I have any,” I argued.

“You always do,” Father stated.

I sighed and smiled. He was right. I used to think that homework was the worst thing in the world. God told Adam to work in the Garden of Eden at the world’s beginning. When his wife, Eve, was tricked by Satan and subsequently made Adam eat the forbidden fruit, mankind’s work turned deadly. For example, if we wanted to write a message, we would use the typewriter. We didn’t have the technology to bully other people halfway across the world.

I walked up the stairs to my room, Laika trailing behind me.

For some reason, I couldn’t go to sleep that night. My room was small. My bed was in a corner in front of a window that overlooked the street below. On the other side was a drawer full of clothes and a little writing desk with a lamp on it. The walls were painted light green with a floral design. Against the wall near my desk was the guitar Father had gifted me for my fifteenth birthday.

I suddenly realized that something was lying on top of my feet. I looked and saw Laika at the foot of my bed. She returned my look. The moonlight made her look like a little ghost. I glanced at the clock on the wall, which read 10:45.

“Can’t sleep?” I said.

Laika continued to stare at me. I remembered that Father had gone off to work several hours earlier. To be honest, I didn’t know what he did for a living only that it involved men in coats. He was always vague when I asked him about it. I grabbed my guitar and lay on the bed, next to Laika.

“This is a song that Father used to sing to me when I was just a little girl,” I explained. “It helped me go to sleep,”

I strummed a few notes. At this, Laika’s ears perked up. I didn’t do anything for a moment, trying to recall how the song went. Finally, I began to strum and sing. The song is called “Темная ночь” which, romanized, is “Tyomnaya noch”, or “Dark is the Night” in English. I was about halfway through the song when I noticed that Laika had fallen asleep.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in, Father,” I said.

Father opened it. He wore a long white coat.

“Natalya, were you-?” he said. “Never mind. I want Laika to come and sleep with me,”

“Why?” I asked.

“You have that guitar,” he pointed out. “I suspect that she wasn’t sleeping with you?”

“Correct,” I answered.

“She might have better luck with me,” Father said. “May I please take her, Natalya?”

We looked at each other for a minute, speechless. Father had never asked me to give anything to him. However, he had a point. Laika probably would have slept better with him. If I had known what they were actually doing…

Life is full of amazing moments, but there are also a few regrets. Regrets are like grief. They never truly go away, but life makes them easier. As you get older, the regrets don’t effect you as much, and I wish that was the case for me.

I was too tired to say anything more so I nodded and fell into a dreamless slumber.