A Silver Willow by the Shore

by Kelli Stuart

  But all she’d seen was an eagerness that no one had ever shown her before. Andrew made her want to be brave, and bravery didn’t seem so terrible. With the pages of banned books seared into her conscience, Nina made the only choice that seemed natural. She said yes.

  She’d gone for a walk with him that day, a walk that ended in a long and passionate kiss. That was the walk that tore through her heart, through all that she’d ever known or believed or understood. It was the walk that made her think leaving the borders of the concrete prison that was Moscow might be within reach.

  At the end of another month, the end of weeks of walks, of stolen kisses in dark corners of the city where the prying, watchful eyes of her Soviet comrades couldn’t chastise her for such foolishness, Andrew asked the question that exploded with possibility.

  “Would you like to come to America?” he asked, his face close to hers, hot breath on her cheek. “You could come and study English there, and I could show you my country the way that you’ve shown me yours.” She’d pulled back in surprise, locking eyes with this man who had to be dangerous. He was an American, after all.

  But Andrew wasn’t a threat. He was safe, and so that day, hidden in an alley in Moscow, in the district outside Mitino where her mother would be waiting for her in their tiny apartment, Nina had made the choice to deny her birth country and enter the new and foreign world that belonged to a man that she felt certain she could eventually love. It was the ultimate act of rebellion, not against her country, but against her mother.

  Shaking herself from the memory, Nina lays the magazine back down on the table in front of her. Impulse had been the driving force of her youth, but it had definitely given her some great memories. Of course it wasn’t so easy as hopping on a plane to America back then. Andrew had to marry her in order to bring her back, a sacrifice more than he’d bargained for in that passionate moment on the street. And with the paperwork and mandatory waiting period, it had been a full year before she could leave—a year of living in tension with her mother. There were long nights of arguing and tears before Elizaveta finally gave up, laying on the guilt as thick as fresh honey as she walked Nina to the minister’s office to sign the papers giving her permission to marry a foreigner.

  Nina chuckles and shakes her head. Impulse may have brought her here, but it hadn’t turned out quite so horribly as had been predicted all those years ago. Of course, her marriage to Andrew hadn’t lasted, just as her mother had told her it wouldn’t, but there had been a mutual respect between the two of them that closely resembled love for a little while, and that was enough for Nina. She had also made sure she never owned a single cat in the years since she arrived.

  “Ms. Mishurova?”

  Nina looks up at the young nurse trying desperately to pronounce her mother’s name. She turns to Elizaveta and finds her deep in thought, a lost and pained look masking her pinched face.

  “Mama?” Nina touches her mother’s arm. Elizaveta pulls herself free from the hidden visions of her mind. “The doctor is ready to see you now.”

  Elizaveta pushes herself to a stand and shuffles to the nurse standing at the door. Nina stands up behind her, studying her mother quietly. She senses a change, a softening in Elizaveta that she’s longed for all her life. Her mother wants to tell her something, and after all these years of waiting, Nina is suddenly unsure if she’s ready to hear it at all.

  Elizaveta

  The trees whisper nightmares.

  We settle back into the car after meeting with the doctor, a handsome Russian man with a voice that melts into his words like warm honey. I gave Nina several pointed looks while we were in the office, willing her to look at him and see what has been so obvious to me from the first time I met him.

  I watch her again now, nervously fiddling with the mirrors, avoiding meeting my eyes. She flips on the radio, filling the car with the sounds of some American band that seems to have recorded their music inside a tin can. She taps her fingers on the steering wheel as she turns her vehicle down the winding road that will lead us back to the house.

  I take in the blurry image of the woman I raised and feel a pang of remorse at years that have grown between us, pushing us away from one another to the point it seems impossible to ever bridge the gap. I lean back and think of my own mother, the way she used to stroke my hair back off my forehead and whisper prayers in my ear at night before bed. I remember the sound of Mama reading in the darkness, her voice barely above a whisper because the words she read were dangerous. They were words of freedom, the lyrical prose of those who would dare speak against oppression. My mama whispered those hallowed words, reading them from a small book by the light of the moon then hiding them in the folds of her skirt when the protection of the darkness fled with the sun.

  I wish my daughter held such memories, but I know they aren’t there. Something inside me broke a long time ago, and it erected a wall that separates me from everyone else. I grip the seat belt across my chest and turn my face away from her toward the window, trying to shake the images that threaten to spill from my memory.

  The horizon buzzes by the car faster and faster as we pick up speed. We crest a hill before the nose of the car tilts back downward, a thin back road leading us deeper into the surrounding trees. They are still thick and green, not yet thinned out by the chill of the winter. They form a canopy that hovers over us on either side, whipping by the window and leaving me off balance.

  This stretch of road is the most frightening part of the drive. It reminds me of the place I long to forget completely. The earthy scent of the wooded landscape wars to upend the memories I so carefully curated those years I lived in Moscow. I replaced fresh air and open spaces with concrete buildings and busy sidewalks so that I could feel safe. This place that Nina has made her home is not a haven, not for me. It is too open, too fresh. I feel exposed between these leafy walls. They are too much like my nightmares.

  “I’m going to drop you at home and get you settled before I go back to work, okay Mama?” Nina says. She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. I nod once so she knows I heard her, then lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes.

  Mama’s face floods my mind the moment I begin to drift off, and I snap my eyes back open, looking around wildly. The sound of tires spinning on gravel jars my senses as I quickly reorient myself to my surroundings. It’s been happening more lately. When I close my eyes, I see her—my mother. She looks back at me, but I cannot read the expression on her face. I never look at her closely enough to know what she thinks or how she feels. I pull myself away as quickly as possible, wrestling the memories back to the place I tucked them away so long ago. But they’re chasing me, these visions, and the pursuit leaves my nerves frayed.

  “Here we are,” Nina says. Her voice is bright, her words infused with a forced cheeriness. I glance up at the small home that I now share with Nina and Annie, and I’m momentarily overwhelmed with emotion.

  When I moved here, my plan was to redeem the years I had lost with Nina. I didn’t really understand that you can never get the past back. It simply trails behind you like the tail of the moon’s reflection on the surface of a pond. You can neither change the past nor hide it. You can only try to run away from it.

  Nina opens my door, and I jump. Looking up, I blink at the sight of her face in the mid-morning sunshine. She helps me to my feet and steadies me, then steps back and lets me shuffle past on my own, her arms hanging awkwardly by her side. We enter through the front door, and I inch into the kitchen, then stop and turn back to her.

  Nina steps to the fridge and opens it up. “There is some lunch meat in here, Mama,” she says. “And we still have apples and oranges. Will that do for your lunch?”

  I nod my head in response. Nina straightens up, turning to look at me. She’s still small and thin, age having found favor with her over the years. Her hair hangs thick over narrow shoulders. She shifts from one foot to the other, then takes in a deep breath.

  “Okay,
” she says, clasping her hands together. “You’ll be alright then?”

  I nod quietly. I want to offer her some kind of smile or encouragement, but words get locked up on my tongue, an occurrence that’s happened more frequently over the last several months. Nina glances at her watch, then looks back at me and clears her throat.

  “I’ve got to go,” she says. She turns to leave and calls over her shoulder. “I’ll see you tonight!”

  And then she’s gone. I am alone again, and the silence wraps around me like a fist, slowly and methodically squeezing the breath right out of my lungs.

  Annie

  Annie slouches down in the back of the room, her sweatshirt pulled tight around narrow shoulders. The teacher drones on and on about school policies and procedures, but Annie has long since tuned him out. All she can think about is how hungry she is. An hour ago, the thought of food made her stomach turn, and now she would eat cardboard to settle the hollow feeling inside.

  “Pull out your student manuals and read through them for the remainder of the period,” the teacher says. What was his name? She hadn’t been paying attention when he introduced himself. She opens the manual to page one and tries to focus on the words, but they all seem to swim together. Reaching into her backpack, Annie grabs a pencil and does the one thing that soothes her.

  Moving her hand in the slightest of strokes over the page, she lets the calming rhythm of the pencil ease the tension in her back and neck. She doesn’t know what she’s drawing. She never does when she begins. She just lets her fingers move, and when they stop she can see the results.

  The noises of the room begin to fade, and her intense hunger subsides as the pencil moves slowly, up and down, across the page, dark shades here, and the wisp of a shape there. The minutes tick by, but Annie doesn’t notice. She doesn’t think about anything. She just draws.

  She jumps when the bell rings. The boy sitting next to her snickers. Sliding out of his seat, he glances over her shoulder.

  “Someone you know?” he asks. Annie snaps the book shut, hiding the picture she hadn’t even had a chance to study yet. He raises his eyebrows and holds up his hands in mock surrender.

  “Sorry,” he says, a wry grin spreading across his face.

  “Forget about it,” Annie mumbles. She shoves the manual into her backpack and stands up. The room begins to spin, so she grabs the desk to steady herself.

  “You okay?” the boy asks. Annie glances at him and blinks hard. She nods her head as everything slowly settles.

  Moving quickly, she heads for the door. The boy catches up with her.

  “I’m James,” he says. “I’m new here. My dad got a transfer from Milwaukee if you can believe it. Senior year, and I’m starting a new school.”

  Annie doesn’t respond, mainly because she isn’t used to anyone talking to her. She prefers anonymity. She hasn’t had a real conversation with anyone besides Toby in a long time.

  “So...do you talk, or are you mute?” James asks, raising one eyebrow. Annie sighs.

  “I’m Annie,” she says. Her voice catches in the din of the bustling hallway, and she wonders if he even heard her. She can feel him grinning beside her, though, so she turns and looks at him briefly.

  “Hi, Annie,” he says, holding out his hand. She takes it hesitantly. “You should keep drawing,” he continues with a grin. “You’re good at it.”

  He turns and disappears into the throng of students hustling through the halls, all trying to find their second period. Annie pulls her backpack off her shoulders and digs out the manual. She opens to the first page and studies her picture carefully.

  It’s a picture of a little girl sitting by a lake. Ripples of water seem to dance in the invisible breeze. Her face is turned up toward the sun, a small smile pushing her lips upward. She has her knees pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs. Between her fingers, she holds a small flower. Annie stares at it for a long minute until the bell breaks her concentration. She quickly tears the page out of the book and crumbles it up, tossing it in the nearest trashcan.

  Turning around, she rushes toward her next class, all the while wondering why on earth she would have drawn a picture of herself as a child.

  Nina

  Winter’s fist clamped tight and cold,

  But still we labored on.

  “Mama, Annie, I’m home!” Nina hangs her coat on the hook by the door and steps into the house. It’s quiet.

  “Mama? Annie?” She walks into the kitchen and flips on the light, then sets the grocery bags heavily on the counter. The countertops are clean, the sink empty. Nina smiles. Her mother cannot stand a dirty kitchen. A dish left in the sink sets Elizaveta’s tongue clucking in an almost rhythmic succession. Years ago, before Annie grew sullen and withdrawn, she and Nina would leave dirty dishes strategically placed throughout the house and make a game of how long it would take Elizaveta to find and clean them all. They’d huddle on the corner of the couch, pressing their fists to their mouths to suppress their giggles.

  Nina’s smile fades. It’s been a long time since she laughed with her daughter.

  Walking to her mother’s room, Nina knocks lightly. “Mama? Are you okay?” she asks.

  She turns the knob and pushes open the door. Her mother’s room is dim, a small lamp by her bed the only light illuminating the small space. The walls are a pale grey, and above her full size bed Nina hung two large prints of Moscow. The first is an old black and white photo of St. Basil’s Cathedral that she’d found at a flea market years after moving to America.

  The second is a picture of the street she and her mother lived on for the entirety of her youth. Nina had taken the photo with a small camera that Andrew gave her when he returned to Moscow to marry her. The quality was poor, but it didn’t matter. The fuzzy photo matches her memories.

  Nina studies the photo, soaking in the sight of the small market that stood on the opposite corner from where she and her mother lived. Hours and hours, the two of them stood in lines at that market, waiting to purchase whatever produce might be available when they reached the front. If Nina closes her eyes, she can still hear the sounds on the street outside her home—the trolleys clanging in the distance, the babushkas on the corners selling headscarves or table linens. Sometimes they’d stand out there with a box of puppies, selling them to anyone who stopped and expressed even the slightest interest. Nina had begged her mother for a puppy when she was younger, gazing longingly at the squirming little balls of fur from the line while her mother grasped her hand.

  “Don’t be silly, Nina,” her mother would chide. “What would we do with a dog? I am working all day, and you are in school. And besides, then we would have to stand in another line just to get food for the dog. I will not stand in more lines.”

  Nina opens her eyes and stares a moment longer at the picture, crossing her arms tight over her chest. Her childhood memories are comprised of standing next to her mother in lines. She turns to look at Elizaveta who sleeps soundly in her chair in the corner, a book in her lap. Her chin rests on her chest and she breathes slowly.

  Nina creeps forward to study her mother more closely. She glances down at the book in Elizaveta’s hands and recognizes her mother’s scrawling handwriting. It’s not a book, but a journal. A pencil lies in the crease. Very slowly, Nina leans forward to study the page. At the top is a picture, small strokes of the pencil form the outline of a fence. Stretching across the top of the fence are circular loops with sharp edges, barbed wire. And between one of the slats of the fence, Nina sees a single eye peering out. She bites her lip as she studies the picture.

  It’s been years since Nina saw one of her mother’s drawings. She didn’t even know Elizaveta still put pencil to paper. As a child, she used to watch her mother in fascination when she drew, because she never seemed to realize what she was doing when she began. Peering beneath the small drawing, Nina reads the words her mother has scrawled across the page.

  “My earliest memory is cold. I remember
feeling terribly cold all the time. My mother used to tell me to think of warm things, and I would be warm, but it never worked because I didn’t know anything but the cold. And I hated it.”

  Elizaveta lets out a snore causing Nina to stand up sharply. She quickly backs out of the room and closes the door behind her. Resting her hand on the doorknob, Nina pauses for a moment, ingesting the words she just read. She closes her eyes and her mind drifts to her childhood, to the year when she was seven years old and a particularly cold winter had settled upon Moscow, clamping down on them with an icy fist. Rations were low, and Nina and Elizaveta had to wait in longer lines than usual for whatever produce might be available when they finally got to the front. Her mother always hoped to get some butter, but they could never seem make it to the front of the line before it disappeared. Many evenings, Nina and her mother left the market with nothing more than a bar of soap, a small tin of tea, and maybe a loaf of crusty bread if they were lucky.

  “I’m cold, Mama,” Nina would whine, pulling against her mother’s vice-like grip on her gloved hand.

  “It’s okay, Ninochka,” her mother would answer. “You simply have to think of warm things, and you will be warm. Quick, let’s think of warm things together.” And they’d take turns listing all the warm things they could think of: Fire, borsch, a summer night, a cup of hot chai. They’d make their list as the line crawled along, and somehow it had worked—Nina had felt warm.

  Or maybe she’d just forgotten the cold.

  She pushes herself away from the door and turns toward the stairs. When she reaches the top, she pauses at Annie’s door. Nina can hear her daughter moving around in her room and she lifts her hand to knock on the door, then stops, fist poised but unable to initiate the contact. Nina wants to go in, to ask about her first day of school and see how she’s doing, but she knows her questions will be met with biting, mono-syllabic answers. She decides to wait until dinnertime to speak with Annie.