I decided to leave on the day I was given a baby with my bottle of vodka. On a dark January morning we stood waiting in line under the high, blank wall of the factory, under the tall chimney that meant so much to us. Ypsilanti spoke of times to come. Vladimir ruminated over his missing mother. Alexsei closed his hands in prayer. And in the grey light of dawn I unbuttoned my trousers and pissed onto the pavement. That was the day we sixteen-year-old boys were to become men.

A weak bulb shone miserably over the entrance to the factory. A torn flag hung from a rusted pole. We shuffled in line up the steps and into the marbled hall, into the smell of the place, which was so much like the smell of the river that ran through the town. Someone coughed, and we moved forward in line to where Gregor, the foreman, stood on his rostrum, poised to present us with the bottles of vodka that were to make us men.

I hated Gregor, his bloated presence, his position that my father should have held. I hated him for his imported white shirt, his infringement of the dress code, and I loathed him, not for his vanity, although there was much to be made of that, but for the pomp he invested in the ceremony. None of this, I thought, was his to give. Yet, in spite of myself, I was grateful that he summoned such ostentation. Behind him on the wall were hung faded paper decorations, curled with age, sorrowful remnants of a less bureaucratic time, pinned there just for us, on this one day in our lives.

With pride our fathers had told us what was to come for as long as we could remember. But they did not tell us about the babies. They forgot to tell us that.

A record played a scratched, tinny flourish of trumpets, and Alexsei, first in line, stood, smiling, ready. Before Gregor turned as we expected to the shelf for the first bottle, he did something curious. He gestured towards a curtain and, stroking his nose, he waited as a laundry basket was wheeled, squeaking and squealing, along the floor to the rostrum. I thought I heard something then, a cry or a whimper, but I dismissed it. Nothing could disrupt this day that was ours.