chapter nine! the wee russian
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"A reading from the Holy Gospel,"
the priest spoke loudly from the front of the church, in which the O'Malley, Quinn and McCool family stood.
Mary and Eileen had for once allowed all four of the teenagers to stand together, in hopes they would be able to find their exchange student faster.
"Which one's ours?" Orla asked, looking between her three cousins, Erin and the O'Malley twins, Aoife and Orin.
"You can't own a person, Orla," Orin sighed, shaking his head at his naive cousin.
"She didn't send a photo. Her family probably don't even own a camera," Erin spoke up, her own eyes scanning the seated exchange students at the front, "She'll find Derry a bit overwhelming at first, just because of how advanced everything is here. All the cracker stuff we have."
"They have some pretty cracker stuff where she comes from, too, Erin," Orla disagreed, still peaking at the new people on the alter.
"Oh, really? Like what? Disease? Poverty?" Erin dramatically wondered, snapping to face Orla who didn't seem the slightest bit fazed.
"No. You can get this wee woman made of wood, right? You pull her apart and inside her, there's an even wee-er wooden woman," Orla began to explain, "and you pull the wee-er wooden apart-"
"Do you mean Russian dolls?" Aoife asked, her attention drifting from the Priest to her tall cousin, "I think you can get them in Derry too, Orla."
After the collection basket was passed around the church, the Priest began once again,
"And today we welcome some very special guests, the weans from Chernobyl, who've come over to give their wee lungs a bit of a clear out, because, ah, sure, there's all sorts wafting around in their neck of the woods."
"Lovely job so far, Seamus, but you know, keep it moving. Raw Hide's on in fifteen minutes," Sister Michael told the old Priest before she looked between the congregation and the new arrivals,
"Now, one might question the wisdom of sending you here, of all places. Out of the frying pan into the, well, maybe not the fire, but certainly a different type of frying pan. Or some sort of wok at the very least. But please don't worry yourselves too much about the whole civil war, sectarian conflict carry on. There's just one thing you need to know.
We're the goodies. Welcome to Derry."
• • • • • • •
"It's class, isn't it?"
Erin asked the Ukrainian they had been assigned, as the jumbled family walked back to the Quinn household for their weekly breakfast. Caoimhe and Imogen ran ahead, holding tightly onto each other's hands as the teenagers and Conor, who had gotten free from the group of parents. Erin had pulled Katya in front so she could have her all to herself.
"Hmm, it's much how I imagine," the dark-haired girl hummed, looking around their surroundings as they walked.
"Oh, because of my letters?" Erin shamelessly boasted, "Well, descriptive narrative has always been a strong point."
"No, not your letters," Katya dismissed, "I see on news."
"What do you mean, you've seen on news? You don't have news in the Ukraine. You don't have televisions," Erin exclaimed in shock as the Ukranian girl began to argue back.
"They're not cave people, Erin," Aoife rolled her eyes, pulling her denim jacket closer around her body.
"Yes, we do,"
"No, you don't,"
"We do,"
"Really?" Erin asked, to which Katya replied with an 'of course' as she rolled her eyes.
"Erin, stop hogging the Russian," Mary scolded her daughter, Gerry nodded beside his wife.
"Yeah, come on, Erin. Give your cousins a go," Gerry pleaded with his daughter.
"She's Ukrainian, actually,"
"Yeah, go on, loves, speak to Katya," Eileen encouraged her twins, pulling her husband along with her.
"Stop interfering, Eileen, let them be," Seamus scolded his wife, knowing how much the twins, well any of his kids hated it when his wife interfered.
"Orla, say something to Katya," Sarah smiled at her nervous daughter.
"Your name sounds a bit like cat," Orla spoke unsurely to the newcomer, receiving a nod of support from her mother.
"God, aye, so it does," Sarah added in surprise.
"Don't know a Jack McGinley, do you?" Joe asked, pushing his way towards Katya,
"Moved to Moscow, '89'89, it would have been. Stocky fella. Curly hair, bit of a lisp."
"I do not know this person," Katya dismissed, with a sign already not a fan of the family she'd been paired with.
Joe sighed, offering the girl a kind smile, "Ah, maybe just as well, love. He's an awful prick."
• • • • • • •
"Your ma said we could come up and look at the Russian,"
Michelle announced as she, James and Claire peeped around the door frame.
Aoife lifted her head from where she lay on the head of Erin's bed scribbling her answers to her homework, smiling when she spotted James' curly head
"Ukranian," Erin sighed, her correction falling onto deaf eyes as her friends stumbled into the room.
"Is this her?" Michelle asked, her eyes fixated on the dark-haired girl on the bed, who sat beside Orla, who hadn't been able to stop staring at the girl since they'd returned from church.
"Isn't she cracker? She's half mine," Orla smiled, only to have Erin quickly dismiss her, "Aye, she is. Mammy said so."
"You're so lucky, Erin. I begged my ma to let me have one, but she said we've no room now that my dickhead ballbag English prick of a cousin has moved in," Michelle grumbled, glaring behind her at James, "Talking about you, James, in case you're wondering."
"Yeah, that much was clear, thank you, Michelle," James sarcastically thanked the girl, moving over and dropping down onto the bed beside Aoife.
"Have you seen the one Jenny Joyce got, the fella? Massive, massive ride. I've been thinking, it might be time for me to lose the rest of my virginity. And he's definitely a contender," Michelle schemed to the girls, before leaning down to Katya and shouting in her face,
"You help me? You put in a good word with your Cossack friend so we can?"
Michelle stopped her shouting, making an obscene gesture to the Ukranian girl to help her to understand that she wanted to have sex with the boy. The curly-haired girl stopped for a minute before turning to her best friend,
"Unless your Conor or Orin is willing to step up?"
Aoife bolted up, scrunching her nose as she looked at Michelle, "You are not having sex with my brother, any of my brothers."
"Will you stop that?" Erin batted the girl's hands to stop her from making the gesture before Clare pushed the two girls away so she could stand in front of Katya.
"I'm very sorry for all your trouble, you know, the whole hoo-ha at the power plant," Clare apologised, to which Katya half-heartedly nodded, "When you think about it, we've actually got a lot in common, 'cause we understand what it's like to a young person in a troubled place."
"Hm, it is not the same," Katya dismissed with a shrug, "Chornobyl was a terrible nuclear accident. You people like to fight each other and, to be honest, what person really understands why?"
"No one likes to fight," Aoife rolled her eyes at the Ukranian, before returning her gaze back to James, who was still anxiously standing in the doorway.
"Well, there's actually a political element to it, Katya, and there's a religious element," Erin corrected, crossing her arms over her chest.
"But you're not two different religions here, you're different flavours of the same religion, no?" Katya explained, but Erin wasn't having any of it.
"Well, yes, but it's a little bit more complicated than that, Katya," Clare panicked, the guest rendering her speechless.
"To me, is stupid,"
"Yeah, well, no one asked if you thought it was stupid did they?" Erin passive-aggressively snaped.
"Oh, my God, it is stupid," Clare panicked, once again beginning to hyperventilate, "It is so, so stupid."
"Who is this?" Katya asked, pointing over at the curly-haired boy, ignoring Clare's meltdown.
"That's James," Aoife smiled, she and James had been spending lots of time together recently, more than the group of friends had realised.
"You are handsome," Katya smirked, her eyes running up and down James' body, "and also sexy."
"Is her English not great?" Michelle asked, watching the girl with confusion as she stood up and pushed her way to James.
"What's happening?" Clare asked, the girls watching as Katya harshly pulled James in and began kissing him.
"Why would she do that?" Erin questioned, just as confused as her friends were, "Why?"
"Fuck knows, he's mingin'," Michelle answered, her gaze trailing to her best friend, who sat with a heartbroken look echoing across her features.
"She seems to be really enjoying it," Orla noticed.
"Is he enjoying it?" Aoife worriedly asked, resting her hands on Orla's shoulders and leaning over the brunette, a strange feeling overwhelmed Aoife's body as Katya and James continued to kiss.
"It's hard to tell,"
"Well, if he's not enjoying it, isn't that sort of sexual harrasmenty?" Clare questioned, unable to pull her eyes off the two, much like her friends.
"I think it would be yea', Clare," Aoife nodded, the pained expression on her face being completely missed by her friends.
Orla hummed, pulling a roll of sweets from her pocket and holding it out to the girls,
"Does anyone want a fruit pastille?"