It was below zero Celsius. In a cold train cart, halfway filled with coals, squeezed against each other were hiding orphanage kids. Marina, my mother, was amongst them. It was her third attempt to run away from the orphanage.
When Marina was 1,5 years old, her mother passed away. At that time, her father was over 70 years old. In the Soviet Union (USSR) government’s eyes, he was too old to take care of his six children. All of them were taken away. He begged the government to keep his children together in the same orphanage. They did.
The director of Marina’s first orphanage truly loved children. All the personnel was attentive and caring. Marina and her siblings were always fed, had clean clothes and beds. Marina was spoiled there and felt protected. Her oldest brothers, Sergei and Kolya, would always look after her. Nobody could touch a hair on her head.
“Shhhh, be quiet guys. I think they stopped our train for the inspection,” said Kolka, the most dangerous boy in Marina’s orphanage. All the kids were scared of him. When he was at one of his newly planned run-away sabotages, everybody could breathe in the orphanage, especially girls and teachers.
“Mama,” Marina whispered as she heard men’s voices approaching the cart.
After losing her mother and being taken away from home, Marina spoke in a language that nobody could understand. The governmental workers assumed that she had a speech disorder. They sent her to an orphanage for deaf children. Surrounded by mute and deaf kids frustrated Marina, she would often scream at them. Teachers thought that Marina had anger issues and sent her to another orphanage for misbehaved kids.
A sudden and loud knock against the train scared children. They squeezed their teeth to stay quiet but someone made a noise.
“They are here!” Screamed a policeman. A sound of a police whistle made kids deaf for a moment. Then, above their heads, appeared numerous blinding flashlights. Marina knew that this time she would not see her mother, her father, and her sister.
“Get up! Get the fuck up, you stupid filthy kids!” The policemen began grabbing kids by collars, arms, and legs. They were pulling children out as if they were garbage bags.
Hi there,
Your ability to communicate detail and emotion is profoundly developed. You inject fragments of dialogue into the story at exactly the right points, and I felt a real pang in my heart as I vividly envisioned the cold, petrified little girl that was Marina.
I did need to reread the excerpt to understand that the orphanage from which Marina was attempting escape was not the one you’d described earlier in the work, the one where she’d been well-clothed and cared for. It would strengthen your piece to clarify this point, but I really, really like your writing style.
Lastly, unless it was a typo/mistake, you used European grammatical/punctuation rules in at least three places in the beginning: “Less than 0 Celsius” (although I believe that this was done on purpose, because that scale of measurement was used in the setting of your story), “amongst” (American English prefers “among”), and “1,5 years.” I would change the latter two points to “among” and “1.5,” respectively, unless you feel that their exclusion would harm the piece.
All in all, this section of the story was told beautifully and graphically, and I genuinely look forward to seeing more of your work.