Under This Unbroken Sky (7 page)

The day of their escape, her mother gave her the jeweled crucifix, which she had hidden inside the hollow of a tree. She told her that its power had kept their family safe and Maria wanted to believe her. She had to believe her. Otherwise she would have hated her mother for letting them starve. When Teodor was sent to prison, Maria traded the crucifix for the wagonload of grain that the police had confiscated.

She had walked into the one-room prison with its three-foot by three-foot cell in the corner, the same cell that Teodor had been held in before being transferred to the penitentiary five days earlier, and startled the town’s only officer, who was playing a game of solitaire. At the sight of a woman in the precinct, the officer hurriedly fastened his belt, tucked in his shirt, and brushed away the cards. He glanced out the window and saw a ragtag of children clustered around the cart. Their clothes were dirty and tattered. Their belongings huddled around them in gunnysacks. Stove parts and pots and pans protruded from overstuffed bags. The smallest children sat on the bags, scuffing the dirt with their bare feet. A young girl held a toddler in her arms. The oldest boy held the reins of a sickly looking horse. The officer put on his coat and made himself taller. Maria held out her family passport to prove who she was and pointed to the cart.

The grain that Teodor had cut still lay in the back. He had scythed only the heads for their seed. Confiscated property was usually sold to the highest bidder or distributed to gain other favors. In this case, there wasn’t enough grain to sell, it wasn’t worth the bother to husk, and the cart was so dilapidated no bidders had come forward. Maria pointed again to the cart and set a few kernels of wheat on the table. She pointed to herself and back to the wagon. The officer shook his head no. Maria opened the sack she was carrying and set out two jars of raspberry jam and a hand-woven tablecloth and pointed to the cart again.

The officer told her she had to leave. He could smell the garlic on her clothes. She didn’t want to beg. She refused to let him see her cry. She tried to tell him that she needed the wagon for her children. They had taken everything else: the house, the barn, the land, the wheat…all she wanted was the cart and the seed. She was willing to pay.

He didn’t understand a word she said. She was one more of a hundred like her that accosted him in the streets, fell to their knees, came begging at the door—they disgusted him. He moved to escort her from the building. Maria untied the strings around the collar of her blouse and the man’s eyes sharpened. He watched as she reached into her shirt, saw a flash of skin and the shadow of a crease.

The officer looked out the window. The children were shuffling in the dirt, picking their noses, watching a stray dog take a shit. Only the oldest boy stared straight ahead at the police station, refusing to blink. The officer looked back to Maria. She pulled the silver cross from its hiding place nestled between her breasts. It was hot in her hand. She felt his eyes on her throat. She removed the necklace and pointed to the cart.

There was nothing beautiful about the woman who stood before him. She was coarse, with heavy hands, thick fingers, stout and overweight. Her features weathered and tanned like hide, her eyes almost black, her face chiseled expressionless, fierce. But her breasts were large and inviting. She stepped toward him and laid the cross on the desk. He picked it up and examined the jewels, felt the weight of the silver, and put it in his pocket. He pointed at the wagon and then he pointed to her.

That’s when the Blessed Virgin appeared to Maria, her heart bleeding in her hands. A poor woman, in a coarse frock, her skin weathered from the fields. Maria looked into her eyes—eyes that had no color, no center—no pain. The Virgin smiled, lifted her heart to her mouth, and swallowed it whole.

Maria came out of the building, tying up her blouse with one hand and clutching the jam jars with the other. She hollered at the children to put their things in the cart and ordered Myron to hitch up the horse. The officer watched from the doorway, not bothering
to buckle his pants. She threw their belongings on top of the grain. When the children didn’t climb in fast enough, she roughly lifted them in. She yelled at Myron to go, even though he hadn’t doublechecked the harness. Maria walked behind the cart, her head held high, looking straight ahead, counting her children, praying that she would make the fifty-mile trek north to Teodor’s sister’s homestead, the contours of the cross still burning in her palm.

Maria checks herself in the mirror. Her hair, smoothed back in a bun and parted in the middle, frames her round face. Small lines show at the corners of her eyes and lips. A practical face. She makes the effort to soften her worry frown. She is surprised how much younger she looks even with a slight smile. She straightens the wooden cross so it falls just past the first button of her blouse. The first night they lay beside each other, after almost two years apart, Teodor asked about the crucifix. She told him that she traded it for the cart and grain. When he reached for her hand, she pulled away. She said it had to be done. Nothing comes from looking back.

The next day, he went to the grove of white birches and selected an unblemished limb. He carved the cross following the grain, revealing a perfect whorling heart at its center. He sanded the edges round and smooth. Drilled a hole through the top and threaded a leather string. When he placed the cross over her bowed head and it touched her chest, she grabbed it away. He took her hand in his and kissed it. Gently, he placed the cross against her chest and covered it with his hand. In his eyes, she knew that her God had forgiven her.

Maria herds the children out the door. They fan across the prairies, a jumbling parade of quick steps and swinging arms, some running ahead, others lagging behind, veering to the right then to the left, before settling into a ragged line marching east into the
rising sun. It is only seven. She is confident they will traverse the eight miles in time for the nine o’clock service.

ONE WEEK LATER, TEODOR BREAKS THE LAST ACRE. HE and Myron plow the last twenty feet by the waning moon’s light. Walking home, they follow the dim beacon of the kerosene lamp Maria hung outside the shed, the only star anchored to land. After giving the horse extra hay, Teodor enters the shack, pulls off his muddy boots, and announces that soon it will be time to sow.

THE NEXT DAY, AFTER CHURCH, MARIA ASKS TO SEE THE field. She and Teodor head out alone, leaving Dania in charge. Maria still wears her black skirt and crisp white shirt from the service. Her hair is braided and coiled in a bun. She holds the skirt hem up to keep it from dragging in the mud and catching on nettles. Teodor guides her around marsh holes and puddles and takes her hand to help her over the stones.

Maria tells him the news from town and Teodor listens. Occasionally, she stops and pulls a long blade of sweet grass to chew on. They wander slowly, stealing glances at each other, reacquainting themselves with the oddness of being alone together. The sun is low by the time they reach the fieldstone wall marking the start of their property. Teodor helps Maria over the wall. She lifts her eyes across the tilled ground.

Long black furrows stretch ahead of them, not straight and rigid but rolling and soft. Maria takes Teodor’s hand. They walk through the rows, a furrow between them. They walk from one end to the other. Teodor points out where the biggest stumps and rocks had been, where the horse had thrown a shoe, and where the pickax had shattered. When they reach the end of the furrow, they turn: Teodor from habit and Maria wanting to see again. The sun
casts their shadows across the waiting ground. Maria asks to see the house. Teodor says it isn’t ready. She asks again.

They walk the remaining half-mile not speaking. Maria keeps her eyes fixed on the building perched atop the hill, afraid that if she blinks it might disappear. They climb the path worn by the cart’s wheels up to the front of the house. When they are a few feet away, Teodor stops and lets Maria continue alone.

The house is long and low. The logs, stripped of bark, seep sap from their wounds. The six-foot walls are complete, the sides interlocked with notches. Soon the roof will be going on. A large hole for a window is set next to the door’s opening. Maria reaches the door and runs her hand along the frame over the hand-hewn timber. She notices the slashes in the wood, where it has been planed and carved into shape. Each mark, her husband’s mark.

She steps inside a massive room tented by blue sky. On the back wall, the golden sun blazes against the wood. Her backlit shadow, framed by the door, looks back at her. A rectangle of light floats beside it. She turns and looks out the window’s opening. Wild grass speckled with milkweed, clover, and starflowers unfolds from the threshold of the house to the black, rectangular swatch of freshly turned earth. The horizon blushes pink and orange.

Teodor watches Maria burnished in the light. She looks at him, her eyes shining. Her hair has come loose. He brushes it from her eyes. It is the first time he has touched her since his return.

Maria leans against the wall between the door and the window and lifts her skirt.

T
EODOR WAKES TO A CHICKADEE’S SONG. HE SEES A robin facing south, choking back a big, fat worm. When he puts on his boots, he hesitates and empties them first, and a June bug falls onto the floor. All signs of luck indicating that today is a good day to plant.

The ground has absorbed the early summer rains, the sun has dried the puddles, and the earth is warm and swollen. The clouds are towering puffs with white bottoms. The birch leaves have flipped, showing their silvery-green underbellies to the sky, promising a soft rain in the next few days. A slight breeze blows from the south. The full moon has passed and the new moon is rising.

Teodor never plants under a full moon. He has heard the stories of seeds failing to germinate and seedlings shriveling. The same stories caution against breeding livestock or birthing under a full moon or run the risk of lame colts, two-headed calves, and stillbirths. Something in the moon’s light causes monstrosities caught between life and death to be born. But today everything is perfect.

Teodor is surprised by his good fortune of late. First, Josyp Petrenko, who holds the quarter-section northwest of theirs, loaned Teodor his disc harrow and horses to help smooth the field, in appreciation for Teodor repairing a broken wagon axle and saving his family the shame of being late for church. Josyp’s a respected man. He’s paid off his homestead. He owns two horses, two oxen, three cows, a bull, and has just built a new barn. Now he is Teodor’s friend.

And Maria managed to thresh and winnow almost three bush
els of wheat from the confiscated stalks. Enough seed to bring in a good harvest so he can pay off his debts, provide for his family, maybe get ahead a little, and even repay Josyp Petrenko’s generosity. They are planting three weeks late, but if the weather holds, if it is dry but not too dry, and the heat of summer spills into fall, there will be enough time.

The two families stand at the edge of the broken ground, even Anna has joined them for this occasion. Silhouetted against the sky, they look like a child’s paper cutout stretched across the horizon, each person six rows apart. Strapped across their shoulders are bulging sacks cradled in their arms. The children tilt slightly backward, balancing the weight. They are watching Teodor.

It has been light for an hour. When they arrived, they lined up at the cart and Teodor dispensed the seed, adjusting the quantity to each child’s size and weight. Ivan and Petro eyed each other’s bags to make sure the amounts were the same. Anna insisted on carrying far more seed than Teodor thought she could handle. When she started swaying from the weight, he refused to give her any more. Her face red from the exertion, she carried the bundle high on her belly. Teodor filled his pouch last and brushed the remaining seeds from the cart floor, careful not to lose a single kernel.

He stands at the edge of the field, running his fingers through the loose seed, feeling its dryness slip through his fingers. The furrows glisten with the morning dew. The horse grazes, gently tearing at the tall grass on the other side of the stone wall. Its tail contentedly swishes back and forth.

“Ask,” insists Maria. Teodor hesitates, but even he is unwilling to take such a risk. He asks. He asks for help from the sun, the souls of the ancestors, the spirits in the fields and the woods to help make a good harvest; protect them from lightning, storms, waters, fires, and grasshoppers; and bless them with the sacred
bread. The families cross themselves. Teodor reluctantly makes the sign. He does this for Maria.

Teodor fills his hand, takes a step forward, and strews the seed side to side in sweeping graceful arches. Like a priest, he anoints the ground:
Accept me, accept me
.

The family steps forward as one advancing line, scattering their offering in a silent, holy procession. The seeds catch the sun as they spin through the air, falling to life.

J
ULY BRINGS THE FIRST VEGETABLE HARVEST. YOUNG green fruit, bitter and hard, nestles against swollen ripe vegetables that if not picked soon will fall and rot on the ground. Every morning the children free the overburdened plants from their offspring. They twist off the stems of beans, pickling cucumbers, and early tomatoes and toss them into overflowing buckets. They cut back lettuce, thin carrots, pull onion bunches, strip the vines of peas…only to discover the next morning the garden has birthed again.

They eat from the vine—shelling sun-warmed peas, one for the pail and one for their mouth, and no one tells them they can’t. The first day, they gorged themselves so much, they had diarrhea and bellyaches for three days. The novelty of fresh food has worn off. They chew absently on celery and rhubarb stalks, not because they’re hungry but because they can. They have settled into the daily chore of harvesting.

They sit heavily in the dirt as they root for the ripest vegetables to pluck. Their fingers automatically search out potato weevils and cabbage thrips and smush them as absently as brushing away crumbs. The heat keeps them pressed close to the earth’s coolness. Maria fills the extra daylight hours with more chores: gather wild raspberries, sterilize jars, muck the barn, change the hay, repair the willow fence, stake unruly plants, fertilize, weed, water…a never-ending list of things to do.

Vegetables pile up on the table and on the floor, some for tonight’s dinner, the rest to be washed and pickled. Braids of onion and garlic
hang from the rafters. Dill dries in upside-down bunches. As Maria bottles the eighteenth jar of yellow beans and looks to the next three pails awaiting her, she decides that it is time to go to town.

She chooses Dania and Lesya to accompany her. Sofia is relieved that she won’t have to carry the heavy baskets or be seen selling wares on the street, but is also dismayed that she won’t see the new Sears Roebuck catalog or be noticed by an English boy. The children sort the vegetables, scrub them, separate the bruised and damaged, then pack the flawless in baskets nestled with straw. They cover the bounty with crisp, white linen cloths and line them up on the parched, dusty grass. They step back and admire the half-dozen baskets laden with treasure, a caravan of riches about to embark on a journey. Maria knocks on Anna’s door and asks whether she would like to come.

Anna has put on weight. Her face is tanned from helping in the garden. Her shorn hair has grown a little and she even let Maria trim it once. She manages to help with the canning, smiling and nodding as if she is listening. Only when Maria looks directly at her while recounting a child’s indiscretion or a day’s funny event is she unsettled by the emptiness of her sister-in-law’s eyes. Anna must notice, because invariably she contributes to the conversation, more of a query to keep Maria talking, or remembers something else she needs to do and turns away.

Every morning, Anna goes for a long walk. She follows the same path west toward the bush. She doesn’t wipe away the sweat damping her face. She lets her skirt trail in the dust. She walks briskly, her breath labored, until she reaches the shade of the trees. Then she slows and carefully searches for signs. A paw print or a tuft of fur. She stops at a hollow beneath two twisted poplars. This is where the grass is trodden down and the dirt sometimes scratched away. This is where they sleep.

Initially, Anna would quickly leave her offering of a piece of bread, a half-eaten pyrih, or a cracked egg, a gift of thanks, and hurry away, not wanting to trespass. She would retreat to the stone wall and watch for their shadows darting between the trees. Rarely would she catch a glimpse. But every morning when she returned, the food would be gone. Lately, Anna lingers at the spot. She has started to leave her scent. She has sat on the grass. Touched the tree. Took a bite of the bread. Left a stocking. She wants to tell them,
I am one of you.

The coyotes have moved farther away these last few weeks. Fatted and contented, they have retreated into the wilds to feast on gophers, rabbit, and fawns. But there is at least one that has stayed for her. She has seen its print in the mud. When she placed her hand over it, she was surprised that its track was smaller. She sits still, hoping she is being watched.

As the blistering sun climbs, Anna heads toward the stone wall. She knows the coyotes pass by it at night. She wonders what they must think of this strange thing that has cropped up in their fields. She wonders what they can smell. She runs her hands over the rough stones, then climbs over onto Teodor’s side of the field.

Now that Teodor has been free of the field to work on the house full-time, he is pushing to complete it before the harvest. Anna can see him and Myron shingling the roof. She watches dispassionately. They are a part of the prairies like the gophers, the sky, or the fence posts.

She visited Teodor’s new house once, in the early morning, before the world had woken. It rose gray and empty from the twilight. Gaping holes for the door and window. The rafters in place, but the roof not closed in. The framework of the house not yet marred by life. Full of promise and possibility. She wandered through its interior, absorbing the smell of fresh-cut timber, the dew clinging
to her dress, the swallows and chickadees announcing the light. The sun rising orange, scalloping the clouds red, and she felt sad. Sad that this house would lose its innocence. The carefully hewn beams will crack, the chinking will crumble, the door and window will settle and twist. The roof will leak, the foundation will rot. The winds and rain and snow will strip away the facade. She ran her fingers over the logs, pondering a recess chiseled into the north wall, a small rectangle, eight inches wide and ten inches high. A strange anomaly in the straight, pure lines. She didn’t hear Teodor approach or she probably would have fled. She has been avoiding her brother, unable to find words.

When they were young, they had no secrets between them. Now they’ve lost the ability to speak to each other. Afraid that through words, they will reveal too much. Afraid that each will see into the other and know what is being hidden.

“What’s this?” she asked, running her hand along the carved-out niche. Teodor shuffled his feet and searched for an answer.

Anna answered for him. “A secret?”

Teodor grinned and confirmed her guess. “A secret.”

“What do you have to hide?”

But there were no more words. Teodor picked up his tools and set to work. Anna watched him strip bark from a log for a while. The green sweet skin peeled off in long strips, exposing alabaster flesh. She watched her brother crafting a new life, a new home for his family. Saw how much care he had put into every notch, noticed the tightness of the fits, and the pine trim he had framed around the window. She saw every cut of love and could have wept. But didn’t. Neither of them would have known what to do with the tears. She has never gone back.

Anna’s skirt skims against the foot-high blades of wheat, tender and green. The wheat bows and parts before her, closes behind
her, veiling her path. She cuts across to the very center until she reaches a small circular spot of flattened stalks. There she sits. She unbuttons her blouse and lays it neatly on the ground. Then she unstrings the corset, breathing in deep as it releases her. She opens her breasts and belly to the sun.

Her breasts are swollen. The nipples are larger and a deeper brown. Her belly protrudes round and low. This sensitive skin, usually kept hidden from the sun, is raw and red from a burn that has not been allowed to heal. Heat blisters weep and the imprint of the corset, like skeletal fingers, grip her belly. She slips off the corset and arches her belly toward the sky. It has been four months and it’s still inside her.

She sits in the field, willing the sun’s fire to sear its way inside her. She is unable to stop her hand, which claws fistfuls of cool black earth and shovels it into her mouth.

Anna tells Maria she thinks she’ll stay home today.

“IT’S WARM!” IVAN SCREECHES WITH DELIGHT AS HE RUNS naked into the water, splashing torrents of spray in a shower of rainbow light. “Come on!” He dives in headfirst and disappears from sight. Katya holds her dress high above her waist and wades into the water. Minnows flicker around her feet in the shallows. Her toes follow them slowly, so as not to scare them away.

“Don’t go out any farther and don’t get your dress wet,” Sofia admonishes her, “or I’ll whip your behind.”

“No you won’t,” Katya challenges, “or I’ll tell Mama.”

“She’s not here,” Sofia reminds her, and Katya lifts her dress higher. Petro stands barefoot at the edge of Bug Lake, shyly gripping his shirt in his hands, acutely aware of Sofia staring at his thin, underdeveloped body. Ivan resurfaces, hooting and hollering, shaking his long hair from his eyes. “Come on in, don’t be a chickenshit!”

“Watch your tongue!” Sofia says with her hands on her hips, the
self-appointed adult while the others are in town. Ivan ignores her and floats on his back.

“Chickenshit, chickenshit, chickenshit…”

The cool water embraces him as the burning sun evaporates the droplets on his belly. He tilts his head back, submersing his ears, enamored by the deep bass sound of his voice echoing in his head. He stretches out the words, altering the pitch. “Chic-ken-shit…”

Bug Lake is not much more than a watering hole skirting the west property line. By the end of August, it dries into a slimy green mire that’s maybe four feet deep. The children can walk across it, if they keep their chins up. But at this time of year, it’s deep enough to swim to the bottom and almost run out of air before getting back up. At dawn and dusk, perch and pike jump, creating the illusion of raindrops hitting the water’s surface.

“You don’t have to go in,” Sofia dismisses Petro as she looks for a nice place in the shade, free of bugs and pokey roots. She has brought her mother’s good woolen blanket that’s kept tucked away in the blanket chest for safekeeping. It has never been used in Sofia’s memory and she is certain her mother won’t notice it has been borrowed. Besides, she’ll have it back in with the camphor balls before Maria returns home. She also has a thin Hudson Bay blanket to string in the branches for shade, her version of an umbrella she saw in a magazine that Ruth brought to school.

The black-and-white photograph showed a group of men and women dressed in white stretched out on a blanket, with a picnic basket, eating strawberries and drinking from tall glass goblets. It was titled “Picnic in the Park.” The women, with their upswept hair, giggled at the camera. The young men, dashing in straw hats, lay on their bellies, looking up at the girls. One had his mouth open as a girl held a fat strawberry above him with a white-gloved hand. Sofia arranges herself on the good blanket, with her knees tucked
coyly under her, like the girl in the photograph, and sets out a bowl of wild raspberries she has picked along the way. Their vibrant red contrasts beautifully with the blanket’s muted blue, ivory, and salmon floral design, the green grass, and Sofia’s yellow smock.

“Chickenshit!” Ivan bellows louder.

“Shut your trap or we’re going home!” She snipes at Petro: “Are you going in or not?” Irritated that his skinny shadow is falling on her blanket.

Petro wants to go in, but he doesn’t want to take his pants off.

“Look away,” he says.

“I’ve seen a bare ass before.” She raises her voice to make sure Ivan hears: “I saw his chicken ass last week running from the outhouse. Saw his little dangly too, bobbing up and down, like a hen peckin’ seed.”

Ivan splays his arms low to create a tidal wave and drives it at Sofia. The wave peters out before reaching shore.

Sofia laughs. “Sookie baby.”

“Cow.” Ivan fills his mouth with water. He squirts it at her in a long, high arch that almost reaches her toes.

“Don’t get Mama’s blanket wet!”

“You’re scaring the fish,” Katya whines, trying to calm the rippling water.

Ivan fills his mouth again and aims for the blanket.

“Don’t…I’m warning you, don’t do it.”

Ivan spits the water high, a perfect stream cascades toward the blanket. Sofia steps in front of it, blocking the potential disaster. Water blooms across her chest, turning the fabric transparent, illuminating her small buds.

“I can see your teats,” crows Ivan. Petro can’t help but look. Sofia whips off her smock and Ivan is surprised to see soft blond down on her crotch.

“I’m going to drown you.” Sofia races into the water after him, not caring about her recently curled hair. Water wheels wildly around her as she chases him down. Ivan swims for his life, screaming for help.

Petro slips off his pants and runs in to save his cousin. From behind, his tiny butt is stark white against the deep brown of his back and shoulders. As he hops past Katya, shouting, “I’m coming!” he forgets the long, thin black-and-purple bruises slashed across his backside, betraying the previous night’s punishment.

If he was asked what he did wrong, he couldn’t explain. She didn’t say. He probably should have waited for Lesya, who was still in the outhouse, but the scarecrow kept watching him. He ran to the house, checking over his shoulder to make sure it hadn’t followed him. Once inside, he headed straight to bed. Maybe his mistake was stealing a glance at his mother.

She was in her nightgown, sitting at the table with her back to the door. She had a willow switch in one hand. Her other hand clutched her belly. Her gown was hiked up to her waist. Her face was flush from exertion, her eyes red as if she’d been crying. As he passed by her, he saw whip marks on her upper thighs and belly. It was her stillness that scared him. “Mama?” he said.

She looked at him, like he had called her a dirty name. She wrenched her gown down, bolted from the chair, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled down his pants. He was so shocked, he forgot to cry. With each strike, she hissed, “You didn’t see anything! You didn’t see anything! You didn’t see anything!”

Petro tried to cover his bum with his hand. “I didn’t see anything, Mama. I didn’t see. I didn’t…”

Maybe it was his small hand against his bony bum, or the welts already appearing, or his pleading voice, but it was more likely the baby kicking that made Anna drop the switch. It kicked hard,
sending a shock of pain against her spine. It kicked again. Anna dropped to her knees.