Dissolved in Ohio:
Chapter Ten
Natasha’s Final Flight
The red flag had been flying high and proud at the hotel in Blagoveshchensk. By the time the Ponishes got to Sheremetyevo Airport and proceeded to board the plane for the Delta Baby Flight to JFK, it was in a gale-force wind.
Two trips on the Russian airlines from Amur were to be nothing compared to flying 10 hours over Europe and the Atlantic.
The family sat apart for the majority of the trip. Peter sat in the back of the airplane with his screaming, hyper daughter. She fought to break away from him and began to run around the airliner.
Natasha’s energy level never dissipated. She did not sleep a wink. Peter, Margaret and Tucker were exhausted but could not sleep themselves for they too were in constant motion, either walking her up and down the airplane, having fellow passengers try to calm her, or trying to hold her as she raged, screamed and cried with no tears. Just as she had done on the flights to Krasnoyarsk and Moscow, she tore paper up into tiny shreds, over and over again.
She banged her head against the seat, against her father — she would not sit still.
For ten hours, from Moscow to JFK airport in New York City, Peter and Margaret stood at the back of the airplane. Passengers and the stewardesses tried to help them with Natasha by entertaining her, but she was relentless in her compulsive behavior and was out of her mind and out of control.
The flight attendants had seen enough Russian adoptees to know what was normal behavior and what wasn’t. Natasha behavior was off the scale. One of them said to Mrs. Ponish, “You’ve been ripped off with that kid.”
When the plane hit a pocket of turbulence, and the “Seatbelts” sign flashed, Peter had to go to physically hold Natasha in his arms, close to his body as they sat in the small airline seat.
Natasha would have none of it. She bent down and laid her teeth deep into Peter’s hand, clamping down. It is a wonder she didn’t break his skin.
As she raged, Margaret noted the utter terror on the girl’s face. She later learned children with RAD don’t like being out of control or of their familiar surroundings. Natasha was enraged beyond anything Margaret had ever seen in a child.
Too much time being confined in an airplane with a mentally sick child, having their hair pulled, Peter’s hand bitten and their resolve broken, they ultimately landed at JFK and got through customs.
Their nerves frazzled and their minds fried, Peter and Margaret decided: they were NOT getting boarding another airplane with Natasha for a flight back to Cleveland. They just could not do it, even to go back home. They relinquished their plane tickets and rented a car for the long drive on I-80 to Ohio.
Another travel adventure by automobile began. Margaret sat in the back of the car with Natasha in a car seat; Peter drove, and Tucker caught some sleep in the passenger seat, shell-shocked and drained.
Tucker, after having lived through Natasha pulling his hair, biting him and her shrieks, both in Russia and in the airplane, was confused by what he experienced. Certainly this wasn’t what being an older brother to one of God’s orphaned children was all about. He felt ignored by all the attention that Natasha demanded of his parents, and realized that Natasha was a very ill little girl with more issues than he could have possibly imagined.
Eight hours after leaving JFK, at three o’clock in the morning, U.S. Eastern Standard Time, the Ponishes arrived home in their rented car.