Katerina's Wish (5 page)

“‘Shake the tree once and take what it gives you,' Autumn told her. Two apples fell from the tree, and Marushka hurried home with them. Well, of course, the stepmother was amazed, but she was angry, too, because they were the best apples she had ever eaten, and she wanted more. She ordered Marushka back up the mountain, but her greedy daughter said, ‘Marushka ate them all; that's why she only brought two. She's cheating us. This time we will go, Mother, and we will get everything we deserve!' And what do you think happened?”

“They got just what they deserved?” I guessed with a smile.

Old Jan nodded. “When they met the seasons, they were rude and selfish. So angry old Winter rose up and waved his wand, and a great blizzard blew over the mountain, and they were never seen again.”

“And what became of Marushka?” I asked.

“The farm became hers from that day forward. The seasons blessed her with fine crops, and she made the house and everything around her beautiful. So you see, Trina, things can get better for a good, hard-working girl.”

“It's a nice story,” I said, “but I don't think anyone is going to rise up, wave a wand, and make the coal mine go away.”

Old Jan laughed a wheezing, coughing laugh. “No, I suppose not. But if you are a good girl who works hard to help your mother, just maybe things will get better.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but it is harder for those of us without magic wands.”

Old Jan smiled, his eyes twinkling. “Aneshka says she got her dumplings because you saw a magic carp. That is just as good as a wand.”

I frowned. Aneshka must have told everyone her idea last night after dinner. At this rate she would have told everyone in the camp in no time. Everyone would be laughing at me. “I don't believe in such nonsense.”

“Ah, but believing is never nonsense,” Old Jan said. “You have to believe something can happen before it will, you know.”

“Marushka didn't believe she would find her violets or strawberries or apples, though.”

“So she didn't, but she tried to find them anyway, trusting for something to happen, even when she didn't know what it might be.”

“My father's like that. That's how we ended up here. Momma says only a fool believes such things.”

“Some would say Marushka was wise, and others that she was foolish, I suppose. You have to decide for yourself which you think she was.”

Though I had heard the story before, I had never thought of it that way. I was still pondering Old Jan's story when Marek stepped out onto the porch, pulling his suspenders up over his shoulders as he came. When he saw me, he quickly combed down his rumpled hair with his fingers. He smiled at me. I smiled back and then quickly looked elsewhere to hide the discomfort I always felt in his presence.

“Good morning, Papa. Good morning, Trina.”

“Good morning, Mark,” I said, careful to pronounce his name the American way, which he had used since going to work in the mine. He said foreigners didn't have as good a chance as Americans at getting good jobs, so he no longer wanted a foreign-sounding name. Since his father's injury, getting and keeping a job had been his biggest concern.

“Good afternoon, you mean,” Old Jan said.

“To you it's afternoon. To me it's morning,” Mark said. He sat down beside me to put on his boots. I watched his hands as he laced and tied each one. When I had first arrived here and started attending school, I had shared a desk with him, and those same hands had guided me through lessons. They were entirely different hands now. He had lied about his age to work in the mine, since he hadn't been quite fifteen, and I had marveled that the coal company had believed he was sixteen. Now, looking at his hands, it seemed believable. When they had helped me at school, they had been like everyone else's in the schoolhouse. But now the fingernails and the creases at the
knuckles bore the permanent stain of coal, and red scars and nicks showed where the chips of rock had cut them as he hammered and drilled underground.

Everything else about him seemed older too, and that's what made me so uncomfortable. He no longer joked and smiled like he had back then, no longer teased me or pulled on my braids for a lark. When his family spent time with mine, his concerns were all those of my father—wages, rumors of unions, paying off debts. It was like he had grown up and I hadn't, and I didn't know what to say around him that he would want to hear.

“I've come to clean. Is Karel up?” I asked.

Mark nodded. “He's just finishing his breakfast.”

“Then Trina will want to be getting her work done,” Old Jan said. “Be a good lad, Marek, and fetch Trina some water in her buckets.”

“Glad to,” he said, still grinning, and he picked up my buckets. “Will you come with me, Trina?”

“I should get started here,” I said, jumping to my feet a little too eagerly. Mark looked disappointed as he set off with the buckets alone.

I got to work sweeping and beating the rugs. When Mark returned with the buckets filled, I scrubbed the counter and table in the kitchen, then scrubbed the floors, starting in the bedroom and working forward through the kitchen until I finished at the front door. I straightened, stretched my back, and heaved the buckets of now dirty water over the porch rail out into the yard. Old Jan and his sons were on the porch, and they invited me to sit down and rest with them, but I declined. I knew my mother would not be expecting me back right away, and there was something I wanted to do in the few free minutes I had.

“Let us pay you,” Mark said, as he did every week, and as always, I shook my head no. My mother would not allow it, not when they were neighbors and friends and had been through hard times.

I said good-bye and hurried to the creek, where I set down my buckets on the bank. I walked downstream, but I paused as I neared the bend in the bank. Were the tree and the pool really there? It all felt too much like a dream, and I was suddenly nervous that it wasn't real. I stepped around the bend and breathed a sigh of relief. There stood the tree, its leaves moving gently in the breeze. Below it the shaded pool looked cool and inviting, just as before.

I paused in the shade of the tree and looked at the water, but I saw no sign of the fish. Suddenly I felt very silly. What had I been expecting to see? Had I really thought I could come make a wish and be back in Bohemia for supper?

I stepped over the tree's root, into the quiet space and sat down, my back against the tree. The shade was pleasantly cool and the soft sounds of the leaves and the water relaxed me. I leaned back and closed my eyes, thinking about magic fish and wishes, and about Marushka. She was wise, I decided. Certainly she had gone looking for something impossible, like my papa had done when he came to America. But she had been modest and good and sought nothing for herself, and so she had made friends instead of enemies. That was why she had received what she needed. In the stories with magic fish or fairies or rings that granted wishes, it was the selfish ones who were harmed rather than helped by their wishes. They were the fools. I smiled to myself at a new thought. If Marushka saw a magic carp, she would make the most of her wish.

What would you wish for, Wise Katerina?

My eyes flew open as I jerked upright, the voice ringing clearly in my mind. A perfect ring of ripples was widening in the pool before me. I leaned forward, my heart in my throat. There, just under the surface, I could see the carp, its tail waving slightly in the current. I was sure it could see me, too. Had it spoken, or had I been drifting off? What would I wish for, if I had a wish? My mind flashed to our village in Bohemia, but there was only one thing I could wish for if I were going to be Wise Katerina. I took a deep breath to quell the pang of homesickness at my heart, and I spoke.

“I wish for a farm where my family can be happy and live well—the farm my papa wants. I wish for a farm here in America.”

AS SOON AS THE
wish was spoken, the fish darted off under the bank and disappeared. I waited. Nothing happened. Everything felt very ordinary, and once again I realized how foolish it was. I got to my feet, glad no one had seen me. I walked back to where I had left my buckets and I filled them, then climbed the slope and walked home. Nothing there was different either. Not one thing all evening. The feeling of foolishness grew, along with bitter disappointment. I had actually been hoping, I realized. Hoping to be saved by a magic fish! I was almost fourteen, too old for fairy tales or wishes. I could not stop myself from dreaming entirely, though. All that night, I found myself in fields of ripening wheat.

With the laundry behind us for the week, we had other chores, but we had a little free time in the afternoons, too. Out in the street, kids gathered for games of kick the can, hopscotch, and skipping rope. I went along to watch my sisters, but I was too old to play. The girls my age gossiped over knitting or
mending. I sometimes joined their conversations, but too often it turned to talk of boys. It made me think of Mark, and right away my feelings got tangled up inside me. I would send my thoughts off instead to the pool by the creek.

I felt strange, like a part of me was still waiting for something to happen, hoping it would. I suppose that part of me wanted to be like Marushka, or like my father, able to believe in the impossible. But as the week passed uneventfully, my hope dwindled. Even my sisters stopped talking about wishes, and things seemed to go back to normal.

Sundays were the only day of the week that the mine closed down and Papa stayed home. Momma, my sisters, and I got up quietly and went to church while Papa slept late. When we returned home on the Sunday after I made my wish, Papa was sitting on the porch reading the newspaper, his legs stretched out comfortably before him.

Momma sat down beside him with a contented sigh. “You girls can run along and play today,” she said.

At once Aneshka was clamoring to go play in the creek.

“If Trina will go with you, to keep an eye on you,” Momma said.

I agreed, so we changed out of our Sunday best and set off. Momma needn't have worried about the water. There were already several families spending the afternoon on the broad, grassy bank where we had done laundry. The creek was filled with laughing, splashing children, shouting in a mixture of languages, but playing together as if they understood one another.

I sat down on the grass and watched my sisters. Aneshka ran out into the middle at once so she could splash her classmates who were already there. Holena stayed close to the bank,
looking for pretty pebbles and gathering them into her apron. Before long her quiet amusement was interrupted as a wild game of tag broke out. The older children, Aneshka among them, raced past her, splashing water and mud in all directions. A flailing arm caught Holena square in the back and she toppled forward, landing facedown in the icy water, soaked from head to toe.

I hurried to her, scolding the older children as I went. I helped her to her feet and up onto the grassy bank.

“Are you all right?” I asked her.

She nodded, but her teeth were chattering from the cold water and she was blinking back tears. I wrung the water from her skirt and invited her to sit with me in the sun to warm up. We watched the game continue for some time, Holena chewing her lip uncertainly. A big Welsh family had arrived, and the Welsh children were especially wild. We were always wary of the Welsh, who lived on the other side of camp. There were plenty of rumors that the careless Welsh miners had caused more than one deadly accident in the mine. Their children seemed just as troublesome as they went splashing and shouting into the creek. Aneshka wasn't bothered by them, and I knew she could hold her own. Holena, though, wasn't one for so much rough-and-tumble play. I stood and held my hand out to her.

“Let's take a walk,” I said. “I know a quieter place I think you'll like better.”

With a sudden, bright smile, she jumped up and took my hand. We set off downstream. I felt a little uncertain as we walked. I hadn't, until that moment, considered sharing my special place with anyone. I certainly didn't want to share it with Aneshka, but Holena was different. She appreciated quiet and beauty and wouldn't disrupt it with mindless prattle.

Holena was still holding my hand as we rounded the bend. At once the high slope shut out the sound of the children splashing and shouting. We could hear the burble of water and the chirping of birds. I could hear another sound, too—one I hadn't expected. Someone was whistling a tune. And not just any tune, but a Bohemian folk song.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked to the tree. A man was reclining in the shade with his feet propped up on one of the roots. It was silly of me to think a place so close to the camp was a secret, but I was disappointed to learn it wasn't.

“It's Mark!” Holena said. She let go of my hand and skipped toward him.

He heard her voice and sat up, the sun lighting his face. He smiled, looking glad to see us.