One day Elizaveta had been in the girl’s dormitory rec room. It had a vaulted ceiling with twelve windowed eves and had once served as the chapel before it moved to the administrative building. She was alone, cleaning; all the children had daily chores that rotated on a weekly basis. Yevgeny arrived, crouched before her, and told her he had a surprise for her. Smiling, showing his crooked and yellow cigarette-stained teeth, he presented her with a matryoshka doll. He told her it was her birthday present, even though her birthday wasn’t for another month. Regardless, she had been thrilled. She had not had a toy of her own since her parents vanished and she was taken from her home.

Yevgeny told her to go ahead, play with the doll. Elizaveta sat on the floor and studied the outer layer. It depicted a woman dressed in a sarafan. She separated the top and bottom of the doll to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside. There were three more in total, each hidden inside the previous, the smallest being a baby turned from a single piece of wood and non-opening.

While she played with the dolls, Yevgeny began massaging her shoulders with his strong hands. She didn’t like this, though she didn’t know why. It simply made her feel uncomfortable. Even so, she didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He was her friend, one of her only friends in the orphanage, so she let him knead her shoulders all the while wishing for him to stop. Then his hands moved down the front of her chest. She was twelve then and had started to develop breasts. His hands moved around the small mounds, then over them, rubbing. She told him to stop. He didn’t, saying he wasn’t doing anything, they were just playing. His fingers pinched her nipples. Jumping to her feet, leaving the matryoshka doll behind, she hurried from the rec room. She thought Yevgeny would follow her, but he didn’t. She went downstairs to the inner courtyard to be with the other children. She didn’t tell anyone what Yevgeny did. She didn’t think anyone would believe her. Plus, she still wasn’t sure what actually happened, or if it was wrong. She just knew she didn’t like the feeling of Yevgeny’s hands on her.