Masha Traub
Writer, journalist

No hands

05 October 2011

I had a best friend Tanya. We got back in first college year passing the entrance exams and for five years since then learned how to guess thoughts and moods of each other. Tanya was a beautiful, happy and daring; she lived each day as the last one. This feature of her character to find time for enjoying was fascinating to me. Only she could visit me at eleven at night and pull me outside to a movie or just to the park to have look at the starry sky. Only she could make me laugh till my stomach was aching. We were very different types of personalities and I do not know why we were so tightly bound.
After graduation from the university I found job, got married and gave birth to a child. In these developments I acted as a traditional bore. My marrige was one for a life-time. The first baby should be definitely a boy. Tanya was ironical about me. She also tried to find a job but could not stay in one company longer than two months. Either she was rough with the lady hom she was reporting, or had a romance with the male head of department. Or she was disrupting the deal not reporting to work at all.
Men did not stay too long in Tanya’s life. But it was impossible not to love her. She was casting spells with her ease, fun and adrenaline, which was gashing from her being contagious to the people around her. As contagious as flu or chickenpox.
 
I was always afraid when she drove me. We attended the driving school together, and I was secretly envying her. While I plastered my car with exclamation marks and slippers to indicate that the rooky driver is behind the wheel, Tanya drove as grandmaster. She was fascinated with speed. Frankly, I was also fascinated. I always tightly fastened myself, closed my eyes and pressed my feet into non-existing brake pedal when I sent in a passenger seat next to her.
 
Tanya was laughing that one day I would break the floor of her car managing to eat an apple at a wild speed, litting a cigarette, chatting with passengers, switching radio channels and flirting with other drivers waiting for a green traffic light. Tanya loved to drive a car, she knew Moscow and parked in such a way that men nodded approvingly.
Tanya gave birth to her daughter, Nastya six months later than me. From whom, no one knew. Tanya was not bothered with the fatherhood issue. The little girl was hers. Full stop. Nastya resembled her mother like nobody else. Tanya's parents hoped that the birth of the grand-daughter would bring to reason their wild daughter, calm her down. But motherhood did not change Tanya at all. Parents did not present her with a stroller and a crib. They bought her a car seat. Very funny seat of pink color, the flowers. Tanya was putting her baby into the seat and drove with her around the city: to the fitness club, to cafes or made shopping.
At that time I stopped driving. I was scared. Ad nauseam. I also had a child seat colored as a leopard skin. I installed the seat inside the car but did not drive my son inside. I was afraid. In general I trusted only a stroller. I could not even drive to the clinic as I permanently looked back to check on my son.
I think the end of this story was quite predictable. Tanya was driving at insane speed at the Moscow outer belt. She did not notice a truck parked at the curb when she was taking over another car. And she crashed into the parked car. It was a miracle but that time she survived. She got heavy injuries but survived. Her daughter Nastya was sitting behind. She did not have a scratch: the little girl was fastened in the child seat and she was crying with fear not pain. Tanya broke leg but it was healing on a fast track. Her hand was put together by metal pins and took longer to recover. Tanya had to cut her gorgeous hair above the forehead where several stitches were applied. Tanya dyed brilliant green the remaining forelock and stayed in her usual positive mood. With one hand she cooked porridge for Nastya, changed her diapers, quickly hopped around her apartment on one leg and negotiated with her parents to buy her a new car. Tanya's parents were well off people. They loved their daughter madly and never refused her single wish. The day the plaster was removed, the parents gave Tanya a brand new car. A new car seat for Nastya was already fastened to the back seat.
 
In fact, the version of a eighteen-wheeler parked with turned off tail lights was invented for her parents. The eighteen-wheeler was there alright, but Tanya had alcohol in her blood.
 
For some time Tanya drove carefully. She began a new relation and she was flooded by her new love. She took her daughter Nastya with her to dates as she considered it perfectly normal and natural. But it appeared that her new boyfriend was of the opposite opinion. He ditched Tanya, explaining that he was not ready to take responsibility for the child. She was not his daughter and she was a stranger for him whom he did not need. If she were alone that would have been the whole new ballgame.
Tanya was racing home. She was sober as a judge – the medical tests confirmed it later on. Most likely she did not feel good and she was hurt bu those words. She could be even crying. She went to the oncoming traffic lane. To get her body out, the rescuers had to cut the car in half. Everyone who was at that time next to the smashed car – the witnesses, doctors, rescue workers, all they nearly went mad as from the deformed car they heard a baby crying. The crying came to screaming. The fact that the woman behind the wheel was dead was immediately evident. Everyone who practiced praying or was taught to pray, even those who did not believe in God, they were praying that the baby was unhurt. The reasoning was simple - if the baby was crying the baby was alive. Which under the circumstances could be considered a miracle.
Tanya's parents blamed themselves for buying her a new car. They put the blame for her death on themselves. Nastya was feeling well. The car seat was twisted and corrugated yet once again it saved her life.
 
One month after Tanya’s burying a pleasant young man showed up at the doorstep of the parents' apartment. He said that he was the Nastya’s father.
 
Now Nastya is living with his father who has never married and who is devoting himself to his daughter. Tanya's parents are alive too. At the anniversary of the daughter’s death they look through her pictures. In these pictures Tanya is standing next to her car.
As for me, I'm still afraid to drive children in my car. I gave birth to daughter and I clamped the baby seat to the passenger seat. During this past time I drove my girl two or three times. Both times I was nearly shaking with terror. If I had five seat belts and three seats, I would have fastened and tied my children by all of them. I can protect them at home myself but inside the car we are apart. And there is no reliable protection means invented.

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