Above Us Only Sky (11 page)

The Old Man straightened up, dropping his head back, the spot on his forehead as pink as the setting sun. Resting his hands on my shoulders, he said, “You have my sister's eyes. You too have her wings. You
are
a little bird.”

This was one of the places and times in my life where I could exist forever. Play the record, let it skip. Play it again. Climb on and off the Ferris wheel. Pay the carny to leave me up top staring at the horizon. Let the sun set. The wheel is filled to capacity with me, Wheaton, the Old Man, Ingeburg, Freddie, Veronica, and the ghost of the girl who was a real girl named Daina. No one is getting off. We're going round and round, and on our way down, the stomach drops, and on our way up, the heart leaps. This is the best place to be.

PART THREE

The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.

—Harold Clarke Goddard

12

O
n June 15, 1941, Daina used her hands, black dirt beneath her fingernails, to dig a hole beneath a tall pine. It was too shallow to be a real hole, but she pulled her dress overhead and sat in the dirt saucer, pretending to be invisible, her face hidden within a petticoat and skirt, her thighs exposed. As far as she knew, everyone was dead. She attempted to pray to Saint Casimir, Lithuania's patron saint, but no words came.

Dropping her skirt, she pulled her brown hair over one shoulder and braided it. Despite its oiliness and the knot at the nape of her neck, she twisted three ropes together—how Mother would do. Loose hairs fell to her shoulders, and she wished for death.

Then Daina heard a noise.

A rustling. Footsteps. Maybe a bear. Maybe a boy.

She pulled her skirt back overhead. Bear or boy, she did not want to see it or him coming. Daina did not know that her grandmother Aušrin
ė
had hidden beneath skirts in this same forest. If she had known, she might've had voice to pray, she might've felt some kindred spirit, the protection of the pines, but Daina, like her sisters, had been sheltered from horror stories, and for now, she was terrified. Hopeless. She felt the dirt, not only beneath her fingernails, but streaked along her legs and chest. It seemed to have made its way down her throat, making it hard to breathe.

This morning, her mother had been forced into a cattle car bound for Siberia. Daina had run home to tell her sisters and brother.
What are we going to do?
But her brother wasn't there, and while Daina huddled in the wardrobe behind heavy furs with her two sisters, the heat unbearable, Russian soldiers entered the house. As their footsteps grew nearer to the girls' bedroom, Danut˙e, the oldest, put her hand over Daina's mouth, and Audra, the middle girl, grabbed hold of Daina's forearm. Together, they moved Daina into the corner, covering her with a wool shawl. The door to the wardrobe creaked. Daina squeezed her eyes shut. Audra and Danut˙e were pulled from the wardrobe while Daina cowered beneath the shawl. From behind this flimsy screen, Daina saw the ugliest man in the world force himself on Danut˙e. Afterward, he stuck his knife in her gut. From beneath her cover, Daina convulsed, but she did not peep.

Two days earlier, Danut˙e had taught music. She'd gone to university in Vilnius. She was gifted at anything and everything with strings. Now she was dead. Her blond hair stained pink. The plank floors swallowing her blood. On a perfectly fine day, a sunny June afternoon, while professors in other towns drank tea, Danut˙e died, but before she died, she bled.

Daina did not make a peep. Making two fists, she dug her fingernails into her palms and while Danut˙e continued to bleed, she watched the ugliest man in the world try to force himself on Audra—the middle sister—but something was wrong, and Audra, the middle sister, the quiet one, laughed and spit in his face. His boots and the cuffs of his pants were soaked with Danut˙e's blood. Daina bit her lip to stop from screaming. As stifling as it was in the wardrobe, she was cold now fearing for Audra's life. The wardrobe was jostled by one of the men, his forearms, lined with coarse dark hair, his shirtsleeves creased and drab. Daina did not breathe as two fur coats were pulled from their hangers. She imagined herself smaller, a mouse. Outside the wardrobe, two men held the coats while the ugliest man in the world stabbed Audra how one would gut a pig or a deer. Daina looked with horror at the sight and at the two accomplices holding the fur coats. How could they just stand there and do nothing? One of them was no more than a boy, her age maybe, with a gash above his left eye and a cut on his left hand. While he shut his eyes, Daina did not. She watched Audra vanishing.
Not a peep
.

Sometimes it's hard to imagine someone has a mother. How Frederick, Daina, Audra, and Danut˙e were born into a musical family, this ugly man with dirty hands was born stabbing holes into girls. Only there was very little blood, hardly any. It was the strangest thing. Even as he stabbed and twisted the knife, Audra would not bleed. It was as if Danut˙e had bled for both sisters, for their whole family, for the town of Vilnius, for the cause of independence, for all of Lithuania.

Daina thought that she had stopped breathing. When she did breathe, it was too noisy. The ugly man was going to find and kill her. She did not want to die.
Not a peep.
Not then.

If there'd been one man—just the one ugly one—Daina would've fought him. She would've burst forth from the wardrobe and wrestled the knife from him. She would've slit his throat. She could've done it, she knew, but there were three men, not one, and she was trembling. Then she yelped. She did not mean to. She covered her mouth, expecting the three men to turn toward the wardrobe, but no one had heard her. No one turned to see. The earth, vibrating on its axis, had hiccupped for Daina, tuning out her cry. She was going to be spared. Like her older brother Frederick, Daina understood that without a survivor, there's no one to tell the story.

After the men had gone, Daina fell out of the wardrobe and crawled through Danut˙e's blood, already cold, having turned the floorboards red. She tried to pull the two sisters together, to join their hands. Danut˙e was surprisingly light and Audra equally heavy. Daina tried to say a prayer to Saint Casimir. She tried to cover her older sisters with the shawl they'd used to hide her in the wardrobe, but it was too small. Daina attempted everything and accomplished nothing. She fled the house and ran into the pines.

There is a Lithuanian proverb that says, “If you flee from a wolf, you'll run into a bear.” Sitting in her saucer, the sound of bear or boy approaching, Daina was ready.
Come.

The rustle was not a bear. It was the boy from her bedroom, the boy with fresh wounds on his hand and above his left eye. The boy who'd shut his eyes. Daina would not fear him. She pulled down her skirt and stared at him. In her bedroom, she had wanted to survive for her sisters' sake, but now that they were gone, she wanted to die. Her mother was on her way to an icy fate. In truth, she knew that her mother was probably dead. Aleksandra was never acquiescent. She was never one to do as she was ordered. Daina assumed her brother had died alongside her father. They were gone, all of them, everyone she loved, and now there was nothing to do but join them.
Just kill me! Kill me, soldier boy.
On all fours, the boy who was not a bear scuttled toward her. Pulling a hunk of bread from his pocket, he set it by her boot and backed away.

Just get it over with.
Daina had already dug her own grave, at least the beginning of a grave.

The wounded boy pulled off his Soviet coat and heaved it to his right. Beneath the coat, he wore a button-down dress shirt. He smoothed the collar and bib like he'd never seen it before. Then he fell to his side, whimpering like a trapped animal. He clawed the dirt the way Daina had done. Overhead, sunlight broke through the pines, spilling onto his shirt and soaking the earth. The brown bark turned rich like good chocolate. The dull earth took on the appearance of a starry sky. This boy wasn't going to kill her. Daina reached to feel the two stilled wings on her back. It would have been better if this boy were some bear instead of a sniveling murderous boy. He kept crying. She kicked her legs out, sprinkling dirt in his direction. It was a dare.
I dare you to kill me.
The boy who was not a bear sobbed. Daina kicked more dirt in his direction.

After a while, the boy got to his knees and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.

Daina stared at him. Neither of them had spoken. Then the boy, reaching into his sack, pulled out an apple. He rolled it toward Daina. It was fresh and red in the light. Daina looked from the boy to the apple. She didn't want it. Then the boy, who was most assuredly not a bear, started talking. His name was Stasys Valetkys. He'd been kidnapped. He spoke Lithuanian and not Russian. He'd seen terrible things. What was her name? Did she have a name? “I am running,” he said, “and hiding.”

Daina could not speak, and he could not stop speaking. “I have seen the most horrendous things. I have lost my parents.”

Daina knew firsthand what he'd seen. He'd seen her sisters butchered, but this boy had no idea that she had been there hiding. Daina stared at the apple. It was too shiny and the sun was too bright. She shielded her eyes from the dappled light. When she was born, Daina's mother called her wings a godsend. The midwife, wiping the wings clean, crossed herself. She thought that Daina was born from the devil. She didn't know that the mother, Aleksandra, was wild for birds, that Daina and her wings were a miracle. Petras, Daina's father, knew the folklore, the family history. His mother, Aušrin
ė
, was born in Lithuania. She was born with wings. As a child, her wings had been bound, and as an old woman, they had dragged the dirt. The wings never meant that anyone could fly. Not Daina. Not Aušrin
ė
. They were grounded birds, like ostriches and emus, long-legged, flying nowhere. Only in death did Daina imagine that she might soar high enough to see her family again.

Daina sat in her dirt saucer, staring at the boy Stasys. She was waiting to be a turnip or a bird, rooted or free. She was bothered by the sun and by Stasys. She wished he'd slit her throat or his own. The darkness came up from the ground, rising like fog. Daina bit into the bread that Stasys had offered. Why was this boy who watched her sisters die allowed to live? She knew that the boys and men in town had been rounded up and shot. Why was this one spared? Daina tried to shut Stasys out, to pray, but still no words came for Saint Casimir. Stasys said, “My father was a doctor. My mother was a teacher.” Daina did not care what his parents were. She would've preferred a bear.

Again, Stasys asked her name.

She refused to speak. Stasys continued, “The Russians made me go with them.”

Daina did not care. In the darkness, she grew ravenous, eating more of the bread and biting the apple without a thank-you. After some time had passed, she spoke. “Has the Red Army taken the coast?”

“I don't know.”

“I want to go there.”

“Where?” The cut above his left eye was caked with dried blood. Instinctually, Daina wanted to clean it, but she wouldn't.

“To the coast.”

“Do you have family there?”

“Sort of.” Her family had gone there, had been there every summer on holiday to Palanga. “Let's go there.”

“Where?”

“To the sea.”

“But your family,” he said.

“Is gone,” she finished.

Stasys said, “I don't know. We'll be picked up.”

“If I'm going to die, I want to see the water one last time.” Daina was thinking that time was short. She was thinking that on the walk there, she could recall her mother's voice, her mother singing arias. She could remember how her wings had responded to the light. And even if she and Stasys were stopped and killed en route, she would be going somewhere, not just sitting and waiting to die.

Stasys said, “Maybe we should hide deeper in the forest or find someone to hide us.”

Daina said, “You can do that—if that's what you want to do.”

He looked at Daina. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.” She lied.

“Me too.” He also lied. “I can't let you walk off alone.”

“Yes, you can.” She had the spirits of her dead family to watch over her. Certainly it was a short matter of time until she joined them in the afterlife. Never in her darkest imagination, in her worst nightmare, had she conceived of anything like what had happened today. Now it seemed like there was no choice but to participate in the madness, to choose a course. Hers was Palanga. To remember birds and music. To pray for the dead. To try and pray to Saint Casimir—if words would come.

Stasys said, “I'll go.”

“So be it.”

Under cover of darkness, they started walking west. They used the North Star to guide their course. Stasys attempted conversation. He didn't talk about the dead. Instead, he asked for her name once more. What year of school was she in? Did she go to university? What did her parents do? In response, Daina asked him to please be quiet, and so the scarred boy who was not a bear mumbled to himself much of the time. He needed to hear a voice—even his own—to know that he was still alive.

After a few days, Daina resolved to tell Stasys her name. She would have to cooperate with him to some extent in order to get to Palanga. Some sort of story would have to be invented. The truth would not do. They agreed to tell people that they were married. If they were brother and sister, strangers might ask about their parents. It seemed easier to be married. Why were they walking? Because their grain store had been sovietized, leaving them homeless. They thought there might be work to the west. It seemed like a reasonable lie, a necessary one, but Daina and Stasys were clearly children, so their lies fooled no one. Just the same, it was 1941 and everyone told lies. No one minded that Daina and Stasys stuck to theirs.

On the road, Soviet tanks rolled east. Daina and Stasys traveled through the woods, individually pretending to be pine trees. As children, they'd both heard the Lithuanian folktales about the woods coming to life, and they wanted to believe. During the day, they hid in granaries and churches, wherever they could find a corner or crevice. On June twentieth, as they sat in a pew with their heads bowed, a humpbacked woman, her face partially hidden beneath a gray wrap, approached them. She kneeled beside Stasys, who, despite the woman's appearance, was worried that she was secret police. With his hands together, he stared ahead at the statue of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child. The base of the Virgin was broken, her feet missing. The elderly woman whispered, “There is someone in town who will hide and feed you. He is a good man, and you can stay as long as you need.” She crossed herself and passed a slip of paper across the back of the pew where their hands were folded in prayer. Stasys and Daina trusted no one, but out of desperation, everyone. They had no choice. At any moment, they could be discovered and charged with treason or charged with nothing. They could be shot or sent to Siberia or sent to Siberia and then shot. They didn't know who sent the old woman or why she was helping them, but they were hungry, and they hadn't turned down a good turn yet. After the woman left, they waited in the church, nervous that someone would find them. At least, Stasys was nervous. Daina was always expecting capture, and with this expectation had achieved a sense of calm.