The first day of summer camp was an explosion of sound. The orphans jumped from the van shouting our names, the names of the “Colorado team.” They drowned us in hugs and laughter. They unpacked small bags of belongings that they had managed to keep from the wandering hands of orphanage staff and from each other. They wanted to tell us everything that had happened to them in the year we were apart, even if some of their stories were not easy to tell. Hands tugged at our shirts, pulling us, begging us for a moment of our time to listen to everything that they had kept inside for so long. But there were two hands that clutched at nothing but air, one voice that did not stir amid the noise. I didn’t notice her until the excitement settled, and then I saw her rocking alone. She was good at finding corners. One of the kids told me, “That’s Alisa. She doesn’t talk.”

I’ve never been very good with people like her. I have learned some Romanian over the years and I’m proud of the fact that I can communicate with the kids, but with her my words meant nothing. My dad never seemed to mind, though. He sat with her on that first day, ignoring the chaos around them. She shrank from hugs, so he hugged her gently. She recoiled from touch, so he stroked her short dark hair. She didn’t talk or seem to listen, so he talked to her anyway. She didn’t look anyone in the eyes, so he looked at her and told her she was beautiful. It confused the other kids, who reminded him again that she couldn’t understand him. He kept on talking. He sang her a song, a tune he made up, with words that repeated over and over. “Alisa, Alisa, my little girl.”

The week went on and we saw her smile, then laugh. She clapped perfect time to the music that blasted from a tiny radio. She crammed as much food as she could into her shrunken body. She rocked back and forth, back and forth. And then the day came when the kids piled back into the van amid sobs and goodbyes and drove back to the orphanage for another year.

The next summer Alisa was still silent. She still rocked, and she stiffened when I gave her a hug. Another week of camp, another week of music and laughter, and finally we saw that elusive smile that played across her lips when my dad sang her song. Alisa, Alisa, my little girl. He stroked her hand, the one with the deep scar that never really healed because it was the place where she bit herself whenever she was upset. At first our team thought that maybe a week away from the orphanage, away from the staff that beat her and the kids that taunted her or ignored her, a week full of noise and games and love might let her come alive. But it was such a short amount of time, and after three years we stopped hoping. After a week she always had to go back to the place where she would hide in dark stairwells, in quiet corners where she was no one’s little girl.

My dad never stopped talking to her, even during the fourth summer. I’m sure that she understood almost nothing he said to her in English and broken Romanian. He didn’t expect her to. That wasn’t the point, he said. He just wanted to make her feel special. He sang her song, he talked about work, about the weather, about her eyes. Then he asked her a question, the same question that I asked when I met her four years earlier. “Cum te cheama?” And for the first time in the thirteen years of her life, she spoke. She said “Alisa.”

I am human. I hear you. I understand you. I know what love feels like. I can do anything if I feel safe. I am no longer alone. I am a person. I have a name.

A short while later she said my dad’s name, “Scott,” the name of her best friend. She didn’t say much else that summer, but it didn’t matter. We knew she had taken a giant step.

The next year when she got to camp she ran up to me and gave me a hug. I couldn’t believe she could do that. I pushed her on the tire swing as she sang camp songs as loud as she could. He voice exploded into the air, filling up the years of silence. Then she began to hum the tune of her song. Alisa, Alisa, my little girl. I had so much that she didn’t: a loving family, a safe home, friends, a childhood, a future. But there was one thing I had that she had also, if only for a week every year: my father’s love. And so despite the chasm between us, she would always be my sister. Sora mea, Alisa.

*Alisa’s name has been changed.

Mary Dewey
attends a university that is too religious for her
likes thinking about big ideas
wishes she had more time for yoga