Mummy, Come Home: The True Story of a Mother Kidnapped and Torn from Her Children

Then, in late 1991, I found out that I was pregnant.

‘Well, we’d better make the best of it, I suppose,’ Sergey said uncertainly when I told him the news. ‘Weren’t you being careful?’

I just looked at him. I was only fifteen and didn’t really know anything about the facts of life. There was no sex on television, no half-dressed women in adverts and no sex education at school. I’d heard older girls talking of course but didn’t understand and had trusted Sergey to know what we had to do. He was so much older than me.

‘Do you think…’ I hardly knew how to say the words. It wasn’t what I had dreamed of at all. ‘…do you think we should get married?’

He knew as well as I did that unless I was married I would be branded a slut and our child would have a miserable life, bullied at school and looked down on forever. Only a ring on my finger could prevent it.

‘Yes, I suppose we’d better,’ said Sergey with a smile, although he didn’t look as happy as I’d hoped he might at the prospect. ‘And I really will have to find a job—otherwise how am I going to support my wife and child?’ He smiled and kissed me, and I tried to be positive. He must be pleased, mustn’t he? Wasn’t this what we had been planning all along?

While we arranged our wedding, which took time, my stomach began to swell and it was obvious I could no longer work at the café. I had to go somewhere safe where I could escape the looks and the whispers until I was married.

‘You’re not coming back here!’ shouted my mother. ‘I’m not taking you in because you’ve been a little tart! Get rid of it, that’s my advice. Children are only a thankless burden.’

There was only one person I could turn to—my father. I had not seen him for over a year and I was frightened of what he would say when I turned up on his doorstep, but I needn’t have worried.

‘Oxana!’ he cried, smiling and wrapping me in a huge hug. ‘Where have you been? Come in, come in. It’s wonderful to see you.’

Relieved, I went inside our old apartment. It was so nice to be back. It felt like home again. I explained to Papa what had happened: that I had met Sergey and was going to get married, but that I couldn’t live with Mama any longer. He looked down at my growing stomach.

‘I assume that this is the reason you need to get married,’ he said.

‘Well…I…’ I couldn’t meet his eye.

‘Let’s not worry about that now,’ he said kindly. ‘You are welcome to live here as long as you need to. And your fiancé can come too, if he likes. There’s room here and I’m tired of living on my own. Some company would make a nice change.’

‘Oh, thank you, Papa!’ I cried, throwing my arms round his neck. At last, things were beginning to go well for us.

Silently the happiness grew inside me with my baby.

I was married just after my sixteenth birthday, wearing a white flower in my hair and a blue blouse and skirt. Sergey and I exchanged vows and cheap metal rings, and then we were man and wife. I knew some people believed it was bad luck to get married without a dress and gold but I told myself they were wrong.

Sergey and my father seemed to get on well and we all lived together happily enough, waiting for the arrival of the child. Sergey got a job in a metalwork factory and I was so happy that we could save up for our own house. But times were hard after Ukraine became independent following the fall of the Soviet Union and he often came home without wages. He wasn’t alone and anger filled the air as prices went up and electricity and food shortages got worse. I was still one of the lucky ones, though, who had butter, eggs and meat as often as my father could get them, and I began to grow fat with my pregnancy and plenty of good food.

I had no idea what was happening when my waters broke on 31 May 1992. Papa knew though, and he took me at once to the hospital. My labour was difficult and painful but it was also short, and my beautiful son Alexander—or Sasha for short—was born quickly. When they handed him into my arms, I was shaking.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ a nurse said to me when she saw tears on my face. ‘He’s fine.’

But I wasn’t crying because of fear. I was happy. I had been born again in the moment that my son came into the world. The day at the beach was far behind me now. I was a different person, a mother, and my life could begin again.

When we got home, I spent hours staring at Sasha as he slept. He looked so peaceful—his skin the colour of milk and his cheeks like peaches—and so perfect that I felt almost scared to touch him. What if I dropped him? But Papa showed me what to do when I needed help.

‘Here,’ he said when I first tried to give the baby a bath and he kept slipping in my arms. ‘Watch and learn.’

There were so many new things and sometimes I wondered if I’d ever be able to learn them all. But gradually I discovered how to massage Sasha’s belly when he cried or stroke his head to help him sleep. I loved being a mother in so many ways and it gave me a warm feeling to live for someone else. The past seemed so far away now. I had another life to live for, another person who would carry my blood when I was gone.

It was not easy though, and Sasha was a difficult baby. He hardly slept at night but only cried and cried until the noise filled my head and felt like the only sound in the world. I began to feel more and more exhausted, and locked into a world where there was only the baby and me, as I fed him, changed him and tried to stop him crying. Sergey had seemed pleased with his new son but he couldn’t care for him the way I did—he could not offer his breast—and sometimes got angry during the night when the baby’s cries woke him.

Soon he began to spend more and more time with his friends. Now I was alone all day when he and Papa were at work, and without my husband in the evening too. As the weeks turned into months, I grew terribly lonely.

‘Why can’t you come home to see us?’ I’d ask, when he finally got home. ‘Your son needs you—I need you.’

‘Because I want to relax away from a crying baby,’ he’d reply. ‘It’s your job to look after him not mine.’ There was a hardness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before and it scared me.

Soon I couldn’t sleep or eat and my weight had started dropping. Within six months I’d lost five stone—my cheeks were sunken, I had black circles under my eyes and felt tired all the time. I was almost scared to go to sleep in case I didn’t wake up when the baby needed me. It was like being sucked into a whirlpool and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

It was no good turning to my mother—she had no interest in me or her grandchild, and spent her time drinking greedily with her friends. Papa was the only person who did all he could to help—going out first thing to buy me milk and leaving work early to help me at the end of the day. I forgave him for all the events of the past and was grateful for his love and support now, when I truly needed it.

But however difficult it got, there were moments when Sasha made it all worthwhile—a smile or a laugh could lift my heart and I knew then that whatever happened I would love him forever.

Sasha was about three months old when my father suggested that we go to collect Sergey from work. It sounded like a good idea to me; I’d never seen him at his factory before and I was curious. When we got there, I left Papa and Sasha outside while I went to ask when Sergey would be leaving.

‘There’s no such person here,’ replied the receptionist bluntly.

‘Yes, there is. You must be mistaken,’ I said with a smile.

But then I was shown into an office where a supervisor sat surrounded by files and he said the same thing. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Kalemi, but I can’t find your husband’s name anywhere,’ he said after looking through his papers. ‘He isn’t listed as an employee.’

‘But he must be here,’ I replied. ‘My husband has worked here six days a week for eight months.’

The man pulled another a pile of papers off a shelf. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said eventually. ‘A Sergey Kalemi did apply to work here last October.’

‘Yes, that’s him.’ I was relieved.

‘But I’m afraid he never showed up.’

I stared at the man. I didn’t understand what he was saying. ‘You must be wrong. He’s been working here for months.’

‘I’m sorry but I’m not. Your husband applied for a job last October and got it but never turned up to start work.’

My heart thumped. How could Sergey not be working here? He’d been out twelve hours a day since before Sasha was born. Maybe he’d got a job at a different factory and hadn’t told me. There must be an explanation.

I walked out to meet my father.

‘So where is he?’ Papa asked as I lifted Sasha into my arms. ‘Not finished yet?’

‘No.’

‘What time will he be out?’

I held the baby tightly as I stared straight ahead. ‘He won’t,’ I said slowly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They say he’s never worked there.’

There was a second of silence as colour flooded into Papa’s face. ‘What?’ he said quietly.