Under This Unbroken Sky (30 page)

Lesya and Petro jump awake, not recognizing the crazed voice screaming through the door. “Let me in!” From the glow of the woodstove, Lesya sees her mother sitting at the table, dressed in her cloak, a puddle of melted snow at her feet, her hands clasping her stomach. The door sways on its hinges. “Anna!”

The children cower in their bed. “Mama?” Lesya cries. The door
frame cracks. Petro jumps down from the bed and grabs a log to wield as a weapon. He shrinks into the corner. “He’s going to kill us,” he whispers.

Teodor tosses aside the rifle and batters the door with his fists. “Open the door,” he sobs. “Anna…” He batters against the splintering wood, not feeling the pain. The wooden latch jumps, shimmying free with each pounding.

Lesya hobbles to her mother. Her bad foot folds under her ankle and she falls against the soapbox cradle. Empty. “What have you done?”

The door crashes open and Teodor is across the room in two strides; he overturns the table separating him from his sister. Anna doesn’t flinch.

He grabs her by the collar and drags her to her feet. “Why?” He wants to kill her, he wants her to feel what he feels. He drives her against the back wall. “Why?” She doesn’t struggle, she looks beyond him, unafraid. Teodor slams his fist into the wall beside her head and they both know there is nothing more he can do. “Why?” he begs.

“She died,” Anna says, her voice small and grieved.

Teodor doesn’t believe her. He searches her eyes, knowing it can’t be true. Her eyes are calm, peaceful. He looks to Lesya. Blue-gray eyes. Frozen eyes, cracked ice, dripping sorrow.
Tell me.
Lesya looks to the ground. She does the only thing she can. She nods.

Teodor exhales a broken keen, his head drops to Anna’s breast, and he clings to her mantle, sobbing like a child. Anna strokes his hair. His cries fill her empty belly.
She died
, she tells herself.
She died the moment she was conceived.

“Don’t cry,” she tells him, just like she told her. “She’s safe now.”

Teodor pulls away, not wanting to be touched by the same hands that laid a child in a snowbank. He would have buried her.
He would have made a coffin. She. She. She. A girl. Nameless. He backs away, stammering, “I’m sorry.” Sorry for the baby, sorry for the little boy hiding in the corner, sorry for the little girl with the crooked foot hiding behind her hair. Sorry that he will never speak to his sister again.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Anna challenges his burning eyes. Accusing. Judging. Condemning. “Don’t look at me!” Teodor walks out the door, picks up the gun, and heads into the night.

Anna follows him to the door. “She died!” The shrill words sound hollow and unconvincing. She chases after him. “She died!” She wants him to understand. She wants him to see that they’re all just ghosts. “She was already dead!”

But he keeps walking, leaving only his footprints to betray he once existed. Anna stops chasing him, knowing he’s never coming back.

“It’s my land.” She hurls the words. “I want you off my land!”

MARIA AND MYRON MEET TEODOR COMING UP FROM Anna’s on the far side of the stone wall. Maria throws herself around him. She clings to him, praising all that is holy that her husband is all right. Teodor gently loosens her arms.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” he tells her.

“I heard the shots. I heard a coyote. Did you kill it? Did it get away?”
Talk to me.

Teodor hands the rifle to Myron. “You should be in bed. We should all be in bed.”

Teodor leads them home.
Tch-tch-tch
.

“Did you find the rabbit?” Maria persists.

He takes six steps before answering, “There was no rabbit.”

He doesn’t speak again until they are about to go inside the house. “Go on in,” he tells Myron. “I want to talk to your mother.”

He walks to the twin boulders and sits down on the seat of snow. He looks up at the sky. Maria takes a seat beside him.

The same stars are shining down. The dog is still chained; the little bear is safe. The air smells the same. The fields look the same. It should all be different, he thinks.

“There was no rabbit…” Teodor begins.

MAMA IS CRYING IN BED. TATO IS SPEAKING LOW. THE FIRE is burning too hot. Katya swallows down another piece of Christ. The hard, dry dough sticks to the roof of her mouth. She gags. Pushes it back in. Its hardness clumps in her stomach. She chips off another piece and forces it in. She won’t stop until she has eaten every bit of him.

T
HE TEMPERATURE HOVERS JUST BELOW FREEZING. The sun has shone hard and insistent for the last three days. Blue endless sky, blinding white fields. The rabbits are running; birds descend, scavenging seed; mice scramble over and under drifts; cats pad across the banks, their ears tuned to what’s under the snow. All the life that has been hiding scurries into the world with a heady exuberance, an insatiable lust, to gorge and stockpile. Chickadees herald winter’s short reprieve.
Come out, come out
, they call.
We’re alive. We’re alive.

Dania drapes the trees with bedding. White sheets, freshly laundered, stiffen with frost. She dresses the world with a kaleidoscope of blankets, quilts, pillows, and linens: soft blue, salmon, and yellow mingle with vivid orange and red. She suspends the woven flowers and embroidered stars, deer, rabbits, and wheat sheaves like pages from a storybook. A perfect, sunny world. She breathes in the lemon-scented soap. She will never forget this smell.

Myron has been splitting wood. The pile tumbles around him, large and sprawling. The frozen logs shatter effortlessly. His coat is folded neatly to the side. He needs only a sweater to fend off the chill. He doesn’t think where to place the log or strike the ax; his mind and hands perform automatically. He dances with the wood and the blade in perfect rhythm. The handle, polished by his and his father’s hands, is warm in his grip. He sets the log upend. His arms stretch upward, his strength pours from him through the handle into the blade, slamming into the heart of the wood. The
vibration drives down through the log, a clean line erupts, and one piece falls open into two. He will never forget this sensation.

Ivan gathers the wood and stacks it by the door. Three cords are already piled as high as he can reach. He likes fitting the logs together, stacking them like a puzzle to make the tightest fit. He piles them straight, then gradually slopes them back to bear the weight. He mixes soft wood with hard, large logs with small. Each log displays its rings, telling him its age, its type, whether it rained too much one year, or not at all, if it was healthy or sick. Special wood, like a clean, unblemished white birch or lodgepole pine, he sets aside in a separate pile. They look like ordinary sticks of wood, but inside are birds and spoons, crosses and horses, waiting for his father to carve them free. Tato says the wood shows him what’s inside. Sometimes Ivan thinks he sees an eagle’s beak, a horse’s mane, a dog’s head, a dragonfly, an old man’s hand. He will always remember to look for what is hidden.

Sofia has shoveled proper paths leading from their door to the new barn, to the outhouse, to the twin boulders, and back around the house. The little roads curve and veer across the flatness, cutting through the snow. She walks the paths, loving the sound of her boots crunching on the hard-packed trail. Her skirt swishes daintily, untouched by the mess of snow. Her stockings are dry. Her gloved hands trail over the banks, as though she is like a fine lady strolling through a garden of white lilies. She will never forget the sensation of a wet, sticky snowball spattering the back of her head or the sound of her little sister’s gales of laughter as she chases her through the paths until they explode off the trails in a powdery cloud.

Katya will never forget how round and perfect the snowball was as it arced from her mitten, sailed through the air, and found its mark. A glorious accident, her first perfect throw. She will never
forget the taste of the snow, its coldness slithering down her back, its softness as they tumble through it. How it sticks to their coats and leotards, hats and mitts, clumps in their hair, trickles down their collars. She’ll never forget lying on their backs begging each other to stop. And the quietness of being held by the snow, as they closed their eyes to the sun. Their faces warm, their backs cold. Their fingers covertly rolling another snowball.

They are all trying to forget their father, who hasn’t come outside the last three days. He is sitting in front of the window. Unmoving. Transfixed on a spot somewhere beyond them, down the hill, at the stone wall. He stood when Myron went to check the snares. He didn’t sit again until he saw his son trudging back up the hill. Myron victoriously held up a rabbit for his father’s approval, but Teodor was no longer watching.

Myron didn’t question him about the coyote tracks on the other side of the wall, or his father’s tracks, steady approaching the wall, then breaking into a full run, falling, then staggering down the hill to his sister’s house. Or the rabbit-pelt blanket he remembers his mother making that he found trampled amid the tracks. Or the drag marks. He pushed the pelt under the snow with his toe and brushed away the tracks.

Maria and Teodor haven’t spoken since that night. Too much was said that night. They can’t find the words to start again. When she finally found the strength to enter the house, she stood in the middle of the room, unable to comfort her children. She knew the sight of them would release the tears and she would tell them everything. No child should know such things.

In the past three days, she has bottled two dozen jars of borshch and sauerkraut; rolled countless holubtsi, using up three of her soured cabbage heads and four cups of rice; baked buckwheat rolls; and braised rabbit. Each meal is a grander feast. The chil
dren eat hesitantly, not asking for seconds, worried by their mother’s sudden abandonment of restraint.

She doesn’t let the children help. She doesn’t look them in the eye. She doesn’t hold them, or touch them. She consumes herself with her recipes, chopping and stirring, frying and baking. She empties her mind. She cooks from early morning to late at night. She washes the cast-iron pots and scours them in boiling water, unable to get them clean. Her hands are red and chapped. She hasn’t prayed. She hasn’t sent any baskets down the hill. She doesn’t allow herself to think about them. She is out of milk and eggs. She crosses from her mind recipes that require milk and eggs and scrubs the pots harder.

Teodor sits with a stillness learned in prison. If he sits quiet enough, long enough, he can make himself disappear. Empty his mind, no more thoughts. He can become a rock, the dirt floor, a log, the snow. He can just exist and not feel.

He gets up, startling Maria, who steps aside not knowing which way to turn. He crosses to her side of the room, slides aside the picture, retrieves the jug, and pours himself a drink. He feels her eyes watching his hand. He hammers the drink back, lets it burn his mouth, sear his insides, clean his brain. It churns in his stomach, gags at his throat. He stoppers the jug, puts it back in the wall, returns to his chair, and waits for it to dull the ache.

He should get up and check the horse, cut the fence poles for the new paddock, clear another acre of bush, get ready for the spring, finish the barn, build a granary, sharpen the tools…there is so much he could do if he was still alive.

A snowball hits the window with a thud, splays wide, and trickles down the pane. Teodor looks at the dissolving shape, trying to understand what has broken. Maria marches to the window, her mother instincts rearing up. They look outside and see a circus of
snow children, laughing faces, ducking and running, dodging a snowball ambush. They see their children. Still innocent. Still alive.

Ivan pats another snowball in his mittened hands, waves at them to come out, ducking too late to evade Myron’s perfect aim.

Maria places her hand on Teodor’s shoulder. It’s time for them to go outside.

LESYA SHOVELS THE CHICKEN SHIT FROM THE COOP. She doesn’t speak to the two hens. She doesn’t dally. She does her job, briskly and efficiently. She changes their water, tops up their feed, reaches under their warm, fat bodies, retrieves the eggs, and sets them in the pail. She looks at the empty roost. The straw has been brushed away, revealing the chipped, faded advertisement of the smiling chin and the hand holding a cake of soap. A hard white lump of dung mars the model’s perfect teeth.

Lesya recognizes the soap. It’s the same soap that Aunt Maria gave them. Half a bar, anyway. It’s the soap her mother has been washing herself with. She’s had two baths a day since that night. With each use, the bar of soap diminishes. The edges round and soften. Now it is the size and shape of a pale-gray egg. Soon it will crack and break apart and there will be nothing inside.

Her mother has been cleaning everything. She’s changed the bedding, swept the floor, scrubbed the table, washed all the dishes, mended clothes, and burned the ones that were stained. She’s rearranged the shelves, folded and packed away the summer clothes. She’s cleaned up everything except the soapbox sitting in the middle of the floor.

Lesya gathers up an armload of clean straw and spreads it over the roost. She forms a deep nest and sets the two eggs inside.
Happiness…
she calls.

Happiness…
she sings, her voice chokes, knowing it won’t come.

PETRO STANDS ON THE EDGE OF THE ROAD, LOOKING ACROSS the field toward town. At first, he planned to make another attempt to find his tato, but his feet stopped when he reached the road. He took a few steps forward and couldn’t go farther, like his ankles were shackled. A part of him afraid to leave, another part afraid to stay. What if he went searching and while he was gone his tato came back? What if they passed each other coming and going, going and coming? What if he veered too far east or too far west? They would never find each other. Petro kicks at the snow.

He remembers how far he walked the last time. The snow never ended. He never saw the town. His father wasn’t following the road, maybe he wasn’t going to town. Maybe Tato was looking at something else when he used to stand here. Petro scans the fields but sees just a gray curtain of clouds rolling in from the east.

If he goes, who would chop the wood? Not his mother. And Lesya isn’t strong enough. He spits twice, like his father. The second spit sticks to his lip and dribbles down his chin. He wipes it away with the back of his mitten.

He misses Lesya the most. She doesn’t talk anymore since her hen ran away. The same night the baby ran away. Petro wants to believe that his uncle stole the baby. He broke down the door and took it like he took the horse. But he knows the baby was gone before his uncle arrived. He saw his mama carrying it outside. Poor little mouse.

Petro thinks the hen was found by someone who knew it could dance. Now it’s wearing a fancy dress and hat, performing for rich people in a traveling show. Maybe the baby is with it. The World’s
Largest Tailless Mouse and the Amazing Dancing Chicken. He looks across the field. He could go find Tato, the hen, and the baby, and bring them all home. Be a family, like the family on the hill. On
their
hill.

If Teodor was gone, like Tato said, everything would be better. Everything would be theirs. The wheat, the house, the money. They could live in the house on the hill and have their own rooms. There’d be nobody to make him feel the way his uncle made him feel the night the baby ran away. That same feeling when the teacher slaps his wrists with the switch for speaking Ukrainian. Or when the town boys laugh at his clothes, or the little blond girl refuses to sit beside him because she says he smells. It makes him want to cry. It makes him want to kill something.

If Teodor was gone, Tato would come back. He’d brush Mama’s hair and make her laugh. Her hair would grow long and beautiful again. She’d dress up in fine clothes and Tato would be proud to be with such a lady. And Mama would tell Tato how much their boy had helped while he was gone. She’d show him the stack of wood that he cut all by himself. They’d ask to see his muscles and they’d notice how he’s outgrown his pants. How his trouser hems dangle above his ankles. Lesya would talk again. She’d tell him stories and hold him until he fell asleep and her hen would dance on the foot of the bed. And the baby…the baby wouldn’t cry.

Petro’s first instinct is to run into the bush and hide when he sees the police car lumbering toward him, veering slowly through the wagon ruts, spewing black smoke from its tail, its engine growling. But he doesn’t run. He stands there, like he just happened to be walking down the road. He holds up his hand and waves them down, like old friends, just like his father.

The car rolls to a stop. Petro shifts his weight to his left foot and slides his hand deep into his pocket as the window lowers.

IVAN SHIFTS THE BASKET FROM ONE ARM TO THE OTHER. He leans backward, balancing the weight. Mama said he’s not to talk to anyone. He’s to set the basket on the stoop and leave. She waited until Tato and Myron were in the barn and she could hear them busy hammering. She sent Sofia and Katya to collect twigs for kindling and Dania for water. Then she told him the basket was for Lesya and Petro. She said it was their secret, he wasn’t to mention it even to Tato or he wouldn’t be allowed to go again.

Ivan is thrilled that he has been entrusted with such a special job. He’s worried, too: he’s never had to keep a secret from Tato. Maybe he’ll get to see Petro. A surge of excitement quickens his pace. He wants to show him his new mittens, and the mice holes in the snow, and the hollow tree you can sit inside, and the red berries that will make you sick, and the tree that tastes sweet when you peel back its bark. But then he remembers he’s not allowed to talk to him.

He sucks solemnly on his last butterscotch candy. It coats his tongue but doesn’t bring him any joy. Today it seems sticky and thick. Ivan glances up at the gray, swollen sky. A light wind is building from the northeast. Tato says it’s going to snow. He’s been watching the crows all morning. They are sitting in the fields, not moving. Tato says it’s a sign of bad weather, when the birds are afraid of the sky.

Ivan looks down at the gray house, gray barn, gray posts. Even the smoke coming from the chimney is gray. His arms ache where the handle cuts into his forearms. He plops the basket on the snow; it’s heavier now than when he left. He peeks under the cloth: jars of borshch and sauerkraut and half a loaf of bread. He grabs the handle and drags the basket behind him like a sled. He’s almost
halfway there. He can’t see anyone outside. The thought that they can see him coming when he can’t see them worries him.