“Mama?”
She looks up and wipes the strands of potato skin from her hands without looking at them. “Yes? Are you finished with the mak?”
“Mama. Did Tato have black hair?”
She stares at me, and although her face doesn’t change, her eyes widen and narrow and widen and narrow as if waves of something are passing through them.
“Why?” she says at last. “Why would you ask that?”
“I was thinking. I have black hair and the poppy seed is black, but you don’t have black hair.”
Mama stands, just looking at me. Her mouth is open a little. At last, she speaks.
“Yes,” she says. She pauses and moves her tongue over her lips. “Yes. He had black hair, just like yours.”
“What else? Do I look like him? What was he like?”
“Why do you want to know?” Mother puts down the potato she is holding. She wipes her hands on the front of her apron, leaving a long, brown stain over the cloth. She comes over to the table and sits down next to me. She looks into my eyes, and I think that I shouldn’t have asked the question. She is breathing in and out very heavily.
“I’ve told you about him, my love.”
“But I want to know more. What did he look like? What did he do?”
Mother reaches out and touches my hair. She takes a strand of it and untangles it carefully. She wraps it around her finger.
“He had hair like this,” she says slowly. “And eyes like yours. Dark. Deep. Loving. Eyes.”
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Where is Tato?”
She is curling and uncurling the strand of my hair around her finger. I can hear her breathing.
“He is somewhere,” she says. She stops. Her face changes. Her features look like they are being pulled down by a heavy weight, one by one. Her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. She tries to pull them back and her face looks so strange. Down, up. Down, up. She swallows.
“I don’t know where he is. He is somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
“Is he going to come back?”
“I don’t...” she stops. “No. No, he is not going to come back. He is gone and he is not going to come back.”
She is still touching my hair. She takes a deep breath.
“And we don’t need him to come back. We are fine here together. We are fine, my darling. We are fine my little swallow, my lastivka.”
“Mama?”
“Milenka.”
“Why did Tato leave? Why isn’t he going to come back?”
Mama carefully unwraps my hair from her fingers. She leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. She holds her lips on my skin and strokes the back of my head with her hand. Then she pulls away and looks into my face. Her eyes are full of tears. She tries to say something, but she can’t. She is shaking her head.
At last, she says something, very quietly. I cannot hear what she says.
“Mama?”
“He didn’t know...” she whispers. She picks up my hand and holds it to her cheek. I start to cry, too. I can’t bear to see her like this, hurting.
“Mama?”
“He didn’t know...” she says again. Her eyes and forehead are creased up, and she looks so very small and scared and old, and the skin of my hand is wet from the tears on her face.
“...how wonderful you would be.” She breathes in deeply and holds the breath inside her.
She breathes out. “He didn’t know how wonderful you would be.”
She lets go of my hand, reaches across the table for a cloth, and wipes her face with it. I try to stop crying but I can’t. It is so awful to see Mama cry. Our faces are mirrored now; wet faces, old and young. She crying for me and I for her. She wipes her tears again and then takes my head in her hands.
“But I know,” she whispers. “I know how wonderful you are. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you cry. He doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry he isn’t coming back.”
And I think, he left because of me. All these tears are because of me. All Mama’s tears and sadness are because I came, and then Tato left.
I gather them up inside me. Fallen under the table, onto the floor, onto the chair. Each of Mother’s fallen tears I collect carefully, and I take the ones from her old cheeks and then my own, and I store them inside of me in a secret place. My fault. My tears. My mother.
Mama gets up from the chair. She looks shaken. I am quiet now. I have hidden away what needed to be hidden. I will not ask again. Mother goes over to the sink and takes a cloth. She dips it into the water jug and comes over to me and carefully washes my face. Then she kisses my cheeks, my nose, my hair.
“How about that poppy seed?” she says. “I’m going to make pancakes for dinner with honey and mak. Would you like that?”
“Yes, Mamochka,” I say. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
T
When the pancakes are cleared away, Lyuda pours herself a glass of samohon, and steps out into the warm evening. Over the wooden fence, she can see Kolya working in his garden, digging with a spade. He has a basket next to him, which he is filling with vegetables. He looks up and raises his hand to her.
“Lyudmilla Hrihorivna,” he calls. “How are you for samohon? Need any more? I have some fresh in the shed.”
Lyuda raises her glass. “I’ve got some left.”
“How about a rabbit? I’ve got traps in the woods. I can bring you a good fat one tomorrow. Something for your little girl.”
She shakes her head. “Kolya, you know I won’t.”
Kolya straightens up and comes over to the fence.
“Your mother would have wanted you to have a rabbit,” he says. “She’d have wanted me to keep an eye on you. We were friends, you know. I used to play in that garden with her, when I was your girl’s age.”
Kolya wipes his hands on his trousers. His ruddy face is covered in tiny purple veins and short, silver bristles.
“Anyway. I’m here if you need anything. A rabbit. Samohon. A new husband. Just say the word.”
Lyuda gives out a little snort. “Kolya, you’re too old for me. You’re probably a hundred years old.”
Kolya winks at her and nods. “At least I know a thing or two,” he says. “Like how to keep a woman happy. Not run off like a lame dog. Like that fellow of yours. Good for nothing.” He draws phlegm into his throat and spits on the ground and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and turns back to his digging.
“You mind your own business, Kolya!” Lyuda takes a quick sip of the samohon, pushing her anger down, and turns away from him towards the lilac tree. She sinks beneath it, onto the earth pressed down by Angela, and takes another long sip.
Kolya was wrong. Volodiya wasn’t a good for nothing. He was a man with dreams. Lyuda knows she shouldn’t go back into the memories, but all of a sudden the images are lighting up in her head, one after the other. It is a long time since she has allowed herself to look at them. She pictures Angela in the sunshine beneath the willow branches and with a little sigh, she opens herself up and lets the memories come.
She is back when she first met him, when he had moved to the village for a job building houses in the surrounding hills. She had fallen in love and had let him take her everywhere in his old run-down car, a bright red Zhiguli. They had driven all over the oblast, the region, to waterfalls and woods, castles and lakes. They would pack a loaf of Borodinskiy bread and a kovbaska sausage to last them the day, and they would come home sunburned and happy and aching from making love on the forest floor, or beside a waterfall, or in his car.
And she had fought so hard with her mother over him. Her mother, who couldn’t bear that he was so much older, that she hadn’t finished school, that he was just passing through the region. They had screamed at each other day after day while her father had sat in the corner, crushed by the fury of his women, and not said a single word. And then her father had died, and she felt that her mother had somehow b
roken, had given up the fight. That Lyuda had won.
And then, on that hillside overlooking the mountains, he had put the ring on her finger – a band of gold – and he had kissed her. “I’m going to build you a house right here,” he had said, and she believed him. She believed everything he told her. Even now.
Lyuda shakes her head and half laughs, half chokes. Even now, she thinks. Even now I still believe him. She has tears in her eyes again.
All he had wanted was to make something of himself, away from the kolkhoz, the collective farm, where his parents had spent their lives. He had an urgency to him, a burning determination to create a life for himself from his wits and hard work, which was all he had. That was why she believed him. Because all he had to rely on was himself, and he had dared to dream of making the life he wanted. And he had chosen her to share that dream with.
I didn’t know a thing, she thinks. I would have done anything for him. I was such a fool. And yet, she pauses. And yet I have this little girl who dances under the willow trees like a stream of sunlight.
Lyuda looks up, and above her the lilac tree and beyond that the dark sky is so beautiful, full of stars, and she thinks that the tree is like her daughter; an impossible expression of light and beauty and radiance. She lifts the samohon to her lips and takes a sip. It burns through her, and she closes her eyes with a little grimace.
I wonder what I will tell Angela, she thinks. I would like to tell her the truth. But I don’t know what the truth is. I know that I did everything wrong, that I should have listened to Mother. I know that everything should have been different. I shouldn’t have believed him. I shouldn’t have let him go. But what can I tell her when everything was a mistake, and yet all those mistakes led to her?
She shakes her head and knocks back the last of the vodka. She shivers. She shouldn’t have thought of these things.
“It doesn’t help to go back,” she mutters. “It only brings more pain.”
The night sky trembles around the garden, seeping down through the lilac, and fear creeps in shades of soft black over the soil towards her. It moves slowly and deliberately over Lyuda, covering her in a web of its darkness.
Lyuda breathes in deeply, sucking the fear down into her lungs and into her body.
She breathes out, a pale breath of hope which fades too easily into the quiet night.
She feels again the dizziness from the samohon, and from the heat, and from the village sounds around her. A dog is barking, the toads are singing, cra-cra-cra-cra, and an owl hoots in the distance.
Lyuda puts her head in her hands.
T
The sleeping bedroom is stiflingly hot and I have pushed the patched sheet off my body and onto the floor. Mama is breathing heavily in the bed next to me, her hair spread out over the pillow. My Nightspirit comes, and we rise together, and above the house the air is so light and fresh in the deep night-time and I let it flow through my spirit, lifting it.
You must return to the willowbank, my Nightspirit says. Your mother is passing her tears on to you.
“I don’t want Mother to leave.”
If she leaves then I will come to you. You will be protected.
“I wanted to make her happy. I thought I could. It is so difficult.”
You can still help her. It is not finished yet.
“I will do anything.”
She kisses me, and her kiss fills me with a blast of silver light. I will go to the willows.
She leaves, and I return to the bed where I am sleeping. I smile, and reach for the fallen sheet, deliciously cool.
10
I carry the metal bucket into the kitchen, holding it with both hands, and put it down on the stone floor. I fetch the cracked porcelain bowl we use for washing and a sliver of grey soap and a threadbare towel, and lay them on the kitchen table, next to the jar of flowers and the honey cake. Picking up the bucket, I carefully pour the clear water into the bowl until it is almost full.
I put the bucket down softly, so as not to wake Mother, and then I lean over and cup the water into my hands and splash it over my face. I rub the soap between my palms, then drop it on the table and turn my hands one over the other, the white lather rising, and bring the suds up to my face and rub them over my skin, closing my eyes tightly. I count to three in my head while I rub, one... two... I love the smell of the old soap and the smell of the water from the metal bucket – fresh, acrid, a touch of stone from the walls of the well, the waiting water – three... and I push my head down into the bowl and feel the lather sliding from my skin back into the liquid. I bring my head up and splash the water over it again and again until it is rinsed clear. I reach for the towel and bring it up to my face and hold it against my clean skin.
I drape the damp towel around my neck, pick up the bowl and carry it outside to the garden, pouring the dirty water into the corner by the wooden fence. Then I carry the bowl back into the house and set it down on the kitchen table. I pour fresh water into it for Mother. The bucket is almost empty. I take a tin jug and pour out the remainder of the water and then pull the towel from around my neck and drape it over the top.
The bucket is empty now.
Mother enters the kitchen. Her eyes are swollen and narrowed from sleep. She is wearing a cotton housedress with patterned red and blue flowers. She takes a stained apron from the back of the chair and ties it around her waist. She sees the water jug and the empty bucket and says nothing. Her hair is uncombed, tumbled around her wide, pale face.
“Mama.”
“Good morning, little one,” she says.
“Mama, can I run to the willowbank? I won’t be long.”
She strikes a match for the gas and lights the circle of fire, turning the knob. She puts the small saucepan over the circle and pours the water into it to heat. She takes a glass from the cupboard and empties the remaining water and lifts it to her mouth and drinks.
“Yes,” she says. “But breakfast will be ready soon.”
I carry the empty bucket and lay it down on the garden step and I come back into the kitchen. I cross the room to Mother and rise on my toes and reach my arms around her neck to kiss her cheek, and I whisper, “Thank you, Mama.” She turns her lips to my head and kisses my hair, the glass of water in her hand, her eyes swollen from the light.
“Lastivka. Little swallow,” she says.
T
“You must break the rope.”
Grandmother Zoryana reaches out a hand to me. My hair is wet from swimming and fat droplets of water are rolling down my skin. I put my hand into hers and her fingers feel like dried twigs.
“Grandmother, what is happening?”
Her blue eyes focus on my face.
“Your mother cannot free herself from her memories,” she says, her voice creaking. “Her tears are touching you. Even I am being pulled back. You must break the rope.”
I wind a strand of my hair around my fingers. A droplet of water runs down my shoulder.
“What will happen to Mama? If the rope is broken?”
“She will be able to see what would have happened. She will not be held in this one place, with the choices she blames herself for. It will free her from regret.”
“What does that mean? Will she be happy? Will she forget all her memories?”
Grandmother tightens her grip on my hand. I am standing in front of her and I want her to let go, I want to swim back across the river. Grandmother is scaring me.
“She will be able to go to a different place.”
“Will she come back?”
“The rope will grow again. Our thoughts and feelings will bring the strands back together. But your mother will be able to see. Just for a short time, she will be free of everything she thought was a mistake.”
I do not understand what she is saying. I do not understand what has changed. Grandmother sees the fear in my face. She releases my hand and her eyes are suddenly kind.
“The rope contains all our memories, Angela. All our emotions. The f
eelings we had when we made our choices. It holds us to the single path, so that all the other possibilities are closed. If you break it, then time can breathe a little. The other paths can enter, just for a short while.”
She reaches for a strand of willow, and holds it out to me.
“This is the path your mother chose,” she says. “The path that led to here.”
She reaches for another. “And this is the path that another choice would have brought.” She takes a third and a fourth. “And this is another and another. If you break the rope, then all these paths are possible again.”
I understand.
“And what about me, Grandmother? What will happen to me? What will happen to you?”
Grandmother smiles. “You will be fine, little Angela. You are not held by any single path. You are a bridge between them all. That is how you can fly in a bird and flow as water.”
“And you, Grandmother?”
“I do not know. The memories are stronger than I thought. I will be here, Angela. I will protect you until the rope grows back.”
I turn away from Grandmother and look out at the river. I can hear a bird singing, I hear the hissing water, I feel the grasses pushing up through the soil. I feel the pull of all these lives, these spirits that I can flow into, as easily as imagining a dream. Everything is open to me and I know that the same stream moves through every path, that beats the wings of the bird up and down, that catches a falling flower and lets her dance in the air as she comes to ground, that pushes the sleeping petals open in the grey morning. All this is within me and moves in me and everything calls out to me to share myself, to flow with them, to share the knowledge of these different paths.
But Mama cannot do this. She cannot see the light moving in everything around her. And I have tried to show her but she cannot reach far enough. She tries, but she is pulled back into the tunnel of her own belief, and then I cannot get to her.
The Woman Behind The Waterfall Page 6