Now I live in Siberia.
The positive is that the muddy road is frozen solid, which cuts my laundry by half. The negative—aside from the frost accumulating inside my windows—is that it takes us twice as long to dress the twins for the hike to detski-sod.
Now, add the outhouse into the mix, and you get a good picture of my current life.
But I’m popular! And my house smells like brownies. I arrange the plates of chocolate on my kitchen table while Nathan talks to our guests in the next room. He and Chase have visited every family in town, inviting them to this event.
No pressure or anything.
I have to admit, however, that finally my life makes sense. Finally I understand why I’m here. See, what I said to Daphne is true—you fling yourself out there in faith, and God has a way of catching you.
I was born to be a missionary.
I even prepared a three-page Bible study on the opening verses of John. I figure that’s the most popular book for investigative Bible study, so we’ll spend some time there and then maybe move to Ephesians. (Which would help me finish that book myself.)
Hardly a sound can be heard from the family room. I take a breath, shoot a prayer toward heaven, grab my Bible and enter.
I spot Ulia sitting in the corner, her hands folded on her lap. She’s smiling at me, although I have to wonder if she’s just hoping to dish more dirt on poor Maya. Still, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve made a point of picking up the children alone since our conversation.
As I look around the room, I wonder how many women were commanded to attend my event.
No matter. At least they’re here.
Nathan introduces me and then disappears into the kitchen. He and I worked together on the Bible study—he helped me find the right references and write the probing study questions. He’s spent a couple of nights a week at our house over the past three weeks, often appearing randomly at my door, usually with the fixin’s for dinner.
Like I’m going to turn him away. We Minnesotans don’t do that.
He and Chase reunited like old war buddies, and most of the time they stay up late talking after I’ve put the twins to bed.
I’ve learned a few things about Nathan from their conversations. Like, he was once engaged. And when the river freezes, he’ll take a snowmobile from Khabarovsk to get here. I even heard him talking about the apostle Paul and his singleness, and how he wished everyone could be like Paul.
Everyone? Even Chase?
I sit down on the floor in the middle of the group of women and open my Bible. “Thanks for coming,” I say, smiling at the group. I’ve even practiced what I will say so that it doesn’t come out in garbled Russian.
“Today, I’d like to start by studying the Book of John.”
One of the women raises her hand like we’re in class or something. But at least there’s a question. I can hardly wait to get into a deep, penetrating spiritual discussion of life. I smile at her.
She looks briefly at the others and then ducks her head as she asks, “Are all the women in America like you?”
I’m not sure how to take that question. As I’m forming an answer, another woman pipes up. “And is it true that everyone in America has a swimming pool in their backyard?” She leans back, a smile on her lips. “They all have swimming pools on Santa Barbara.” She says it like “Sonta Barrrrbarrra.”
“Santa Barbara?” I ask.
They come alive as if I’ve lit a match under them. “I knew Cruz was B.J.’s father!”
“And I can’t believe Sawyer killed Frank.”
“He deserved it after kidnapping B.J.”
“Sawyer didn’t do it—it was Reese!” The look on this woman’s face scares me. I jump to my feet.
“Ladies! I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ulia looks up at me with a shake of her head.
“Okay, listen. No, we don’t all have swimming pools, and don’t believe everything you see on television.” Wow, I sound like my mother.
The group falls quiet and looks chagrined. Way to make friends and influence people, Josey. So much for my ability to wow them with my scholarly Bible knowledge. As I look around the room, I see not a single Bible, and I suddenly realize that none of them are here for Bible study.
They’re here to view the oddity. At least they didn’t bring sauerkraut. I close my Bible and sigh.
Another hand goes up. I feel like a schoolteacher. I quirk an eyebrow.
“Do you know how to make pizza?”
I glance toward the kitchen. “Uh…”
“What’s that?” Another woman points to the plate of brownies she can see on the kitchen table.
I’m not sure what to call it. “Karichnovaya,” I say, which translates to “brown.” I make a face.
“She makes pechenye,” says a voice behind me. I turn and am surprised to see my neighbor, Olya, who must have snuck in while I wasn’t looking. She doesn’t look at me, keeps her eyes to the floor. But her presence ignites a hope inside me that catches my breath. I don’t look at Ulia, hoping that my conversation with her about Olya and Vasilley isn’t written all over my face. See? This is why I shouldn’t listen to gossip!
I nod at Olya’s words. I do make cookies. “Chocolate cookies,” I add. (I don’t know how to translate “chip.”)
“Teach us,” says a woman sitting on the arm of my sofa. “We want to learn to make American cookies.”
Another woman points to the plate of brownies in the kitchen. Nods and smiles fill the room. Cookies, huh?
Nathan peeks his head around the corner. “Say yes, say yes!”
Well, if cookies will make them listen and show them that I care…Apparently Russian women and American women aren’t that different, after all.
“Please,” I say, “come into my kitchen.”
Chapter Ten
More Than I Expect
“So Olya actually came to your Bible study?”
Chase has brought home a hunk of venison and is pressing it through a grinder he borrowed from Anton. So this is how ground meat becomes ground meat. He adds a little of Olya’s sala to the mix (minus the hair and skin) to add fat. I know—adding fat? But deer meat is so lean, it will dry out without it.
The things I’ve learned in Siberia.
The kids are in bed, having eaten their fill of the three hundred thousand cookies I made in front of my captivated audience today. The eagerness of the crowd prompted me to use my entire supply of chocolate chips, and even crack open a jar of peanut butter for a batch of peanut-butter delights.
I figure if Jesus can multiply a few loaves and fish, He can replenish my chocolate-chip supply for the good of His kingdom.
Everyone went away with a doggy bag—a term, I’ve discovered, that doesn’t translate well.
Nathan left, also, catching a boat for his next stop north. I saw him talking quietly to Chase in our entryway before he left. I hope he’s not disappointed by my lack of spiritual accomplishment today.
I’ve never been so full. Yes, I know, I didn’t have to eat them, but what’s the point of baking them if…Oh, never mind.
“I can’t believe Olya was here.” I reach out for another cookie, then pull my hand back. Just because they’re there…“She acts like she hates me, but she’ll smile when I buy sala from her, and she sort of defended me today. Go figure.”
“I think she does like you—she just doesn’t know how to take you.” Chase adds salt and pepper to the bowl of ground meat and begins to stir.
“I assume you mean that in the nicest of ways?”
Chase looks up at me, winks. “Of course.”
“I just wish I knew what goes on over there.” I nod toward the separating wall between our homes. “I never hear any fighting. But she definitely had a black eye.” I am clinging to the hope that she banged herself on the outhouse door.
Chase scoops out a hunk of meat and dumps it into a plastic bag. “Vasilley is a trapper. Although I heard h
e was trained as a plumber, so who knows.”
Plumber? Plumber?
“According to Anton, they have a daughter, but she doesn’t live with them.” Chase twists the bag shut, opens the newly defrosted freezer—thank-you, Nathan—and adds it to the growing pile. “She lives in Moscow with Vasilley’s mother.”
Okay, I have to have another cookie. They’ll just go bad.
“What is she doing there? Going to college?”
Chase gives me an odd look. “Olya’s just a little older than we are. Her daughter, Albena, is only five.”
“Five? What’s she doing in Moscow?”
Chase ladles another portion of meat into a bag. “I guess Vasilley’s mother came out here for a visit and asked if Albena could visit her for the summer. That was three years ago, and evidently no one has the money to fly Albena home.”
He closes the bag and adds the meat to the freezer.
“She’s been gone for three years?” I’ve lost my appetite. I put the cookie back. “Olya hasn’t seen her daughter for three years? Because she can’t afford a plane ticket? That’s awful.” I remember, suddenly, how she looked at Chloe and Justin. My stomach churns. “We have to help her.”
Chase is dismantling the grinder. “Vasilley already told the village council that he didn’t want their help.” He puts the pieces into the sink. “Which is why they’re somewhat ostracized from the community.”
“Why doesn’t he want their help?”
Chase pumps water and puts it on the stove to boil. “Why doesn’t anyone want help? Pride?”
“Oh, that’s stupid.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I know a few people who might suffer from the same ailment.”
He comes over and kneels before me, taking my hands and running his thumbs over them. They’ve healed somewhat, but the tips of my fingers are still cracked.
“How come you didn’t tell me your hands were getting so chapped?” He looks up, and his blue eyes hold pain. My throat tightens. “No, don’t answer that. I should have noticed.” He opens them and kisses the palms. “Forgive me?”
Oh, Chase.
I lean forward, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Yes.”
He cups his hand against my face, and I lean into it, realizing how long it’s been since we’ve had a quiet kitchen, sleeping children and no company.
Chase’s arms can make me forget where I am, make me believe that everything is—and will continue to be—right in the world.
It’s a long time before we realize the water has begun to boil.
We do the dishes together—him washing, me drying. “Tell me something,” he says, handing me a plate. “Did you come to Siberia because of me?”
I stare at him, not sure exactly what he means. “Do you mean because it was your idea?”
He is scrubbing the grinder, the hot water sending up steam. I’d be crying in pain. “No. Because you thought…well, that you had to.”
I eye him. “Isn’t that what submission is all about?”
He looks up at me, stricken. His eyes are wide and he’s stopped scrubbing.
“What?” I ask. “Isn’t that what it says in the Bible?”
He closes his eyes, hanging his head as he leans on the counter with sudsy hands. “I can’t believe I got you into this mess.”
Yeah, me too!
No! Be humble. Gentle.
“I’m okay, Chase. We’re okay.”
But he doesn’t believe me. “We have no running water. The skin is peeling off your hands. And now our house is covered in ice.” He shakes his head. “I guess I was delusional to think that maybe you came here because you believed in the project.”
I toss the towel over my shoulder and press my hand to his chest. “Chase. This is a great opportunity for you. That’s why I came to Siberia.” Because we all know it wasn’t on account of my stellar evangelism skills or my ability to make friends.
“I thought you’d find a way to help people—you always do. I would never have made it in Moscow without your brilliance.”
Now you’re singing my song, bub. Except he smiles on the last word, and I know he’s trying to skim over fears lying just below the surface.
I’m having flashbacks of our high-school days, of him tapping on my bedroom window, begging me to take a motorcycle ride just so he could feel my arms around him. I did catch on to that, by the way. It just took a while for me to realize that sometimes a guy wants to know that the girl will hang on, no matter where he takes her.
“I believe in you, Chase. That’s why I’m in Siberia.”
But Chase’s smile dims, and he turns back to the dirty water. “I don’t know, GI. Maybe you should have said no.”
I think back to the day he came home and plopped a red-fox fur hat on my head that gave my brain an allergic reaction, causing me to say yes. “You’re pretty hard to say no to.”
He doesn’t look up.
“Besides, maybe I’m also here for a reason now.”
He’s wearing hope on his face as he rinses the grinder, hands it to me.
“Olya. Maybe I’m supposed to help her.”
“How?” He’s draining the water through the hole in the metal sink. Of course, it drains down into a bucket, which we then lug outside and toss into the outhouse, but still. At least I have a sink.
“Help get her child back from Moscow?”
He bends down, grabs the bucket. “How?”
“I don’t know—you’re the anthropologist. You figure it out.” I snap the towel at him. At least he’s smiling.
“How about inviting her to Thanksgiving dinner this weekend?”
Thanksgiving dinner! My face must betray the fact that I’ve completely forgotten Thanksgiving. C’mon, give me a break. It’s not like anyone else in Siberia is celebrating Thanksgiving. It’s an American holiday.
Chase just stares at me. “You forgot.”
“I…ah…”
Now he’s laughing.
“Don’t laugh. We don’t have a turkey or anything even remotely near it.” I haven’t seen chicken since Moscow. And even there, it didn’t resemble the poultry I’d come to know and love stateside.
“Let me take care of Thanksgiving,” Chase said, turning toward the door. Then he stops, leans down and kisses me on the cheek. “The Lord knows I have plenty to be thankful for.”
During my first year in Moscow, the fact that Russians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving stymied me when the holiday rolled around. While the rest of the city went to work, my fellow Americans and I stopped and gave thanks around a stuffed bird that cost roughly half a month’s wages.
I fell for the turkey nostalgia during my first year of marriage, also. It’s more ingrained than one might think. But this year, as I stroll through the market noticing the meager meat selection, I realize something.
Siberians don’t eat turkey. Lamb, cow and reindeer, yes, but turkey, no. I have trouble scrounging up even a chicken leg.
It’s not what you eat, but that you eat it thankfully, right?
I’ve always enjoyed shopping at the market—even at Burr’s tiny corner market staffed by eight to ten chilly vendors, most of them selling dirty potatoes and bags of ground venison (aka reindeer). They look cold, especially the woman with the fuzzy gray scarf tied under her chin. She’s wearing mittens with the fingers cut off, and is stamping her feet and blowing on her hands.
I know Chase said he’d take care of it—and we just ground venison—but I can’t help it. My heart says to buy two kilos of venison. They probably had lots of venison at the first Thanksgiving, right?
Although the mercury is well into the minuses, it’s clear and sunny as I walk home. It snowed again last night, and a layer of sparkle bedazzles the ring of lush pine that encircles the village. It’s a fairy-tale setting along the now-frozen Amur River, the sky a pale blue, the smell of wood-smoke on the breeze. I could be in the middle of a painting, and I find myself singing a Christmas carol.
“O Little Town of Bu
rrrrr, how still we see thee lie…”
Lydia barks, shoving her nose through the slats of the fence as I pass by and enter my yard. I stomp the snow off my boots, hang up my parka and enter my warm house to find Anton sitting at the table enjoying a cup of tea with Chase.
I’m surprised to see them here, given that they left early this morning to do something manly.
“Hey,” I say, still humming. I plop the venison on the table. “Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Yum,” Chase says, then translates for Anton. I’m always amazed (and jealous) at the way Russian rolls off Chase’s tongue. I catch about half the words, but I know that Chase is explaining Thanksgiving. Anton is still wearing his dark fur shopka, and with those dark eyes and equally dark pants and sweater, he seems more imposing than he is. Or I’d like to think so.
“And about a month after Thanksgiving comes Christmas,” I hear Chase say. He’s on a roll now, explaining about gifts, Christmas stockings and, finally, the trees we decorate. “Similar to your New Year’s tree, but we go out and chop it down at a tree farm every year.”
I’m not sure what Chase is referring to, because we haven’t chopped down a tree from a tree farm since we were kids. He tagged along one year when our family drove out to Uncle Bert’s place for our annual fir. It was the year after his mother died—his first Christmas alone with his father.
I don’t correct him because Chase needs all the happy memories he can get to balance out the bad ones.
I set a cup down, fill it with water and add a teabag. If someone loves me, maybe they’ll send instant coffee from America for Christmas.
“It’s a lucrative business,” I say, stirring my tea. “My uncle Bert makes half his income for the year from his trees.”
“A farm for trees?” Anton’s eyes have begun to shine.
“Bert chops them down and runs a stand in town, too.” I sit down, reach for one of my cookies that Chase has pulled from the freezer. I keep a sanity supply, of course. “Most people don’t want to go cut their own trees, so he makes a killing.”
Get Cozy, Josey! Page 11