Between Shades of Gray (4 page)

“Don’t be a fool, woman,” barked the bald man. “If you make room, they’ll just cram more people in here.”

The librarian was shorter than me and stocky. She was strong and helped move Ona. “I’m Mrs. Rimas,” she said to Ona.

Mrs. ... She was married, too. Where was her husband? Perhaps with Papa. The baby gave a blistering yell.

“Is your little one a boy or a girl?” asked Mrs. Rimas.

“A girl,” said Ona weakly. She shifted her bare feet on the wooden plank. They were cut and full of dirt.

“She’ll need to eat soon,” said Mrs. Rimas.

I looked around the car. My head felt detached from my body. More people pushed into the small space, including a woman with a boy my age. I felt a tug.

“Are you going to sleep now?” asked a small girl with hair the color of pearls.

“What?”

“You’re in your nightgown. Are you going to sleep?” She thrust a tattered doll toward me. “This is my dolly.”

My nightgown. I was still in my nightgown. Jonas was still in my baby blue coat. I had completely forgotten. I pushed toward Jonas and Mother. “We need to change our clothes,” I said.

“There’s no room to open our suitcases,” said Mother. “And there’s nowhere to change.”

“Please,” said Jonas, pulling my coat tightly around him.

Mother tried to move toward the corner of the car but it was useless. She bent down and opened my suitcase a slight crack. Her hand dipped in and out, searching for something. I saw my pink sweater and a slip. Finally, she pulled out my dark blue cotton dress. She then searched for pants for Jonas.

“Excuse me, madam,” she said to a woman sitting in the corner of the car. “Could we trade places with you so my children can change their clothes?”

“This is our spot,” announced the woman. “We’re not moving.” Her two daughters looked up at us.

“I realize it’s your spot. It would just be for a moment, so my children have a bit of privacy.”

The woman said nothing and folded her arms across her chest.

Mother thrust us near the corner, almost on top of the woman.

“Hey!” said the woman, throwing up her hands.

“Oh yes, so sorry. Just for a bit of privacy.” Mother took my coat from Jonas and held it up to shield us. I changed quickly and then used my nightgown to make an additional changing curtain for Jonas.

“He peed,” said one of the girls, pointing at my brother. Jonas froze.

“You peed, little girl?” I said loudly. “Oh, poor thing.”

The temperature in the car had risen steadily since we had climbed in. The wet scent of an armpit hung in front of my face. We forged our way near the door, hoping for some air. We stacked our suitcases and Jonas sat on top, holding the bundle from our cousin Regina. Mother stood on her toes, trying to look out onto the train platform for Papa.

“Here,” said a gray-haired man, putting a small case on the floor. “Stand on this.”

“That’s very kind,” said Mother, accepting.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

“Since yesterday,” she said.

“What does he do?” said the man.

“He’s provost at the university. Kostas Vilkas.”

“Ah, yes, Vilkas.” The man nodded. He looked at us. His eyes were kind. “Beautiful children.”

“Yes. They look just like their father,” she said.

I COUNTED THE PEOPLE—forty-six packed in a cage on wheels, maybe a rolling coffin. I used my fingers to sketch the image in a layer of dirt on the floor near the front of the train car, wiping the drawings away and starting over, again and again.

People chattered about our possible destination. Some said NKVD headquarters, others thought Moscow. I scanned the group. Faces spoke to their future. I saw courage, anger, fear, and confusion. Others were hopeless. They had already given up. Which was I?

Jonas swatted flies away from his face and hair. Mother spoke quietly to the woman with the son my age.

“Where are you from?” the boy asked Jonas. He had wavy brown hair and blue eyes. He looked like one of the popular boys from school.

“Kaunas,” said Jonas. “Where are you from?”

“Šančiai.”

We looked at each other, silent and awkward.

“Where is your dad?” blurted Jonas.

“In the Lithuanian army.” The boy paused. “He’s been gone for a while.”

His mother looked like an officer’s wife, fancy and unaccustomed to dirt. Jonas continued to chatter, before I could tell him to stop.

“Our father works at the university. I’m Jonas. This is my sister, Lina.”

The boy nodded at me. “I’m Andrius Arvydas.” I nodded in return and looked away.

“Do you think they’d let us get out, even for a few minutes?” asked Jonas. “That way, if Papa is here at the station, he’ll see us. He can’t find us now.”

“The NKVD won’t let us do much of anything,” said Andrius. “I saw them beat someone who tried to run.”

“They called us pigs,” said my brother.

“Don’t listen to them, Jonas. They’re the pigs. They’re stupid pigs,” I said.

“Shh. I wouldn’t say that,” said Andrius.

“What are you, the police?” I asked.

Andrius raised his eyebrows. “No, I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Don’t get us in trouble, Lina,” said Jonas.

I looked over toward Mother.

“I gave them everything I had. I lied and told them he was feeble-minded. I had no choice,” whispered Andrius’s mother. “They would have split us up. Now I have nothing, not even a crumb.”

“I know,” said Mother, reaching out to the woman. “They did the same with us, and my boy is only ten years old.”

Ona’s baby wailed. Mrs. Rimas made her way over to Mother.

“She’s trying to feed the child, but something’s wrong,” said Mrs. Rimas. “The baby’s mouth won’t latch properly.”

Hours passed like long days. People cried of heat and hunger. The bald man griped about his pain while others tried to organize the space and luggage. I had to surrender my dirt canvas on the floor and instead used my fingernail to carve drawings on the wall.

Andrius jumped down from the car to go to the bathroom but was punched and thrown back in by the NKVD. We all cringed with each gunshot or scream. No one dared leave the car again.

Someone discovered a hole, the size of a plate, in the corner where the stubborn woman sat with her daughters. They had been hiding the hole and the fresh air that came from it. People descended upon her, insisting she move. After she had been dragged off the spot, we all took turns using the hole to go to the bathroom. Some just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. The sounds and smells made my head spin. A young boy hung his head from the car and vomited.

Mrs. Rimas organized the children and began to tell stories. The young kids scrambled toward the librarian. Even the two daughters left their grouchy mother and sat mesmerized by the fantastic tales. The girl with the dolly leaned against Mrs. Rimas and sucked her thumb.

THE SUN BEGAN TO SET. Mother braided my wavy, sweaty hair. I tried to count how many hours we had spent in the prison box, and wondered how many more we had to go. People ate the food they had brought. Most shared. Some didn’t.

“Lina, that loaf of bread,” Mother began.

I shook my head. Was that loaf of bread still there, sitting on my desk? “I don’t have the bread,” I replied.

“All right,” said Mother, taking some food to Ona. Her lips pursed, she was disappointed.

Andrius sat with his knees drawn up, smoking a cigarette. He was staring at me.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Seventeen.” He continued to stare.

“How long have you been smoking?”

“What are you, the police?” he said, and looked away.

Night came. It was dark in our wooden box. Mother said we should be thankful they left the door open. I wasn’t about to thank the NKVD for anything. Every few minutes I heard their boots marching by. I couldn’t sleep. I wondered if there was a moon out, and if so, what it looked like. Papa said scientists speculated that from the moon, the earth looked blue. That night I believed it. I would draw it blue and heavy with tears. Where was Papa? I closed my eyes.

 

Something bumped my shoulder. I opened my eyes. It was lighter in the train car. Andrius stood above, nudging me with his shoe. He put his finger to his lips and motioned with his head. I looked over at Mother. She slept, clutching her coat tightly around her. Jonas was gone. My head snapped around, looking for my brother. Andrius kicked me again and waved me forward.

I got up and stepped between the human bundles toward the door of the train car. Jonas stood at the opening, clutching the side. “Andrius said that an hour ago, a long train came in. Someone told him it was full of men,” whispered Jonas. “Maybe Papa is on it.”

“Who told you that?” I asked Andrius.

“Don’t worry who told me,” he said. “Let’s look for our fathers.”

I looked down off the train. The sun had just appeared on the horizon. If Papa
was
at the train station, I wanted to find him.

“I’ll go and let you know what I find out,” I said. “Where is the train that pulled in?”

“In back of us. But you’re not going,” said Andrius. “I’ll go.”

“How are you going to find my father? You don’t know what he looks like,” I snapped.

“Are you always so pleasant?” said Andrius.

“Maybe you can both go,” suggested Jonas.

“I can go by myself,” I said. “I’ll find Papa and bring him to our car.”

“This is ridiculous. We’re wasting time. I shouldn’t have woken you up,” said Andrius.

I looked out of the train car. The guard was a hundred feet away, his back to me. I hung down off the edge and dropped quietly to the ground, scrambling under the train. Andrius beat me there. Suddenly, we heard a yelp and saw Jonas jumping down. Andrius grabbed him and we tried to hide behind one of the wheels, peeking under the train. The NKVD officer stopped and turned around.

I put my hand over Jonas’s mouth. We crouched near the wheel, afraid to breathe. The officer resumed walking.

Andrius peeked out the other side and waved us on. I crawled out. The back of our train car had Russian writing on it.

“‘Thieves and prostitutes,’” Andrius whispered. “That’s what it says.”

Thieves and prostitutes. Our mothers were in that car, along with a teacher, a librarian, elderly people, and a newborn baby—thieves and prostitutes. Jonas looked at the writing. I grabbed his hand, thankful he couldn’t read Russian. I wished he had stayed on the train.

Another line of red cattle wagons sat on tracks behind ours. The doors, however, were closed and locked with large bolts. We looked around, then ran under the other train, dodging the splatters of waste. Andrius knocked on the bottom near a bathroom hole. A shadow appeared.

“What’s your father’s name?” Andrius asked me.

“Kostas Vilkas,” I said quickly.

“We’re looking for Petras Arvydas and Kostas Vilkas,” he whispered.

The head disappeared. We heard scuffling on the floor of the car. The head reappeared. “Not in this car. Be careful, children. Be very quiet.”

We scurried from car to car, dodging droppings and knocking. Each time a head disappeared, I felt my stomach tighten. “Please, please, please,” Jonas would say. And then we’d move on, with warnings of caution or messages for loved ones. We reached the seventh car. The man’s head disappeared. It was quiet inside. “Please, please, please,” said Jonas.

“Jonas?”

“Papa!” we said, trying not to raise our voices. A match scraped across a wood plank. Papa’s face appeared in the hole. He looked gray, and his eye was badly bruised.

“Papa, we’re in a car over there,” began Jonas. “Come with us.”

“Shh...,” said Papa. “I can’t. You shouldn’t be here. Where is your mother?”

“In the car,” I said, happy yet horrified to see my father’s bludgeoned face. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “Are you okay? Is your mother okay?”

“We’re okay,” I said.

“She doesn’t know we’re here,” said Jonas. “We wanted to find you. Papa, they broke into our house and—”

“I know. They’re attaching our train to yours.”

“Where are they taking us?” I asked.