The Lithuanians were so thankful the deportations stopped, but soon enough they realized this was not liberation but a new occupation. This time, the Jews were rounded up, and the horror began anew, as some were taken to ghettos in the cities while others disappeared into the woods to be shot. By the end of the German occupation, the Jews of Lithuania, who had lived side by side with their neighbors for six hundred years, were suddenly gone. Agota winced, remembering how one of her neighbors took part in the shooting squads and was shunned afterward by his neighbors as a “Jew shooter.” When the war shifted again as the Germans retreated, the Soviets returned for Lithuania’s third brutal occupation, this time to stay. Then thousands of Lithuanians—anyone with education, land, wealth, or anti-Soviet activism, the best and the brightest of Lithuania—fled like a flock of lost birds, knowing that death or deportation awaited them at the hands of the Soviets. Unable to go south to Poland or north to Latvia, most fled west into the maw of the war; only a few found fishing boats to take them across the Baltic Sea to Sweden. The rest fled in wagons, bicycles, or on foot.
Agota remembered the morning the Russians returned. Her young son Jonas had been having nightmares, so she held him as they both sat rocking, keeping watch out the window for her husband, who had left the night before to help a relative. She heard a rumbling in the distance, as if a storm were coming. She dressed her son and went into the kitchen where her father-in-law stood at the door already clothed, his suitcase packed. When she asked him why he was up so early, he turned to her. “Haven’t you heard the artillery thundering? The Russian front is approaching. We have to leave.” With a start, she realized that it was not an oncoming storm but artillery that she heard. As her father-in-law went to harness the horses, he told her to pack as much food and clothing as she could fit into the wagon.
Before the sun was fully up, people began swarming through their village, warning that the Russians were only an hour away. They advised us to hide the men because the Germans were seizing them for forced labor. Stuck between one madman and another—Stalin or Hitler—as the bombs came closer and louder. Jonas cried, calling for his papa, but Agota was too busy to comfort him. If she left her husband behind, would they find each other later? She was packing smoked sausages when Pranas ran into the house, and she dropped a large jar of preserves when she saw him. She started to clean it up, but he told her to leave it. The wagon was already out the gate when she jumped off and ran back to the house to get her mother’s photograph. Then she took them all, not able to leave them behind, but like so many other things, they got lost in the war.
Leaving the land that was theirs for so long was like tearing something out of Agota’s entrails. The soil that had been mixed with the blood and bones of her ancestors was sacred to her. And now it felt as if someone had ripped her away and thrown her into the world, raw and unprotected.
Could it be that that morning was only a few years ago? Agota looked at the last wisps of color on the horizon. It was so strange to be up so high above the city, to be able to see Lake Michigan as it curved toward Indiana, to see so far on the flat plains. Some evenings she felt she could see so far she could almost make out the broad expanse of the Baltic Sea, where she used to gather amber on the shores after storms. And beyond, to the birch forests where she used to fill her basket with mushrooms after the rains, and where, if she looked hard enough beyond the birch trees, she could almost see her home.
A flood of memories came to her, spilling out—her small village, circle dances at a wedding, the lowing of cows in the meadow, the orchard filled with fragrant apples, the smell of freshly cut hay, the white birches lining the way to church, the smell of hams and sausage hanging in the smokehouse. Those were young days, full of promise when she had so many endless days ahead.
Suddenly two women stormed into the room with a handful of tickets. Marcele Gudauskas, the general’s daughter who worked on the floor below, marched in like she owned the place, followed close behind by Dora Matas, elegant even in a scarf and apron. “Hello, Agota, we came to ask if you’re going to the picnic tomorrow.”
“What picnic?” asked Agota, suddenly weary. Gone were the birch trees, the hay, and the smoked hams. It was toilets and dirty tile floors again.
“The Daughters of Lithuania are having a picnic at the Ragis Farm,” said Marcele. “They’re trying to raise money to build a youth center.”
“I don’t think I can go,” said Agota. When she looked at the two slender women, she felt fleshy and old.
“Oh come on,” said Dora, “come out and have some fun.” Dora turned to Regina. “And bring Algis and Magda. My Petras and Irena have missed them since we moved to Marquette Park.”
“It’s for a good cause,” said Marcele. She pressed the tickets into their hands. “And besides, we all need to get out and dance with our husbands again.”
Feeling a bit bullied, Agota pocketed her tickets and sighed deeply as she watched the women leave.
“What is it, Agota?” asked Regina. “You look so sad tonight. I’m usually the one who’s sighing.”
“It’s nothing.” Agota tried to smile. She knew that Regina had her own problems with a husband who drank too much and a daughter who wasn’t right.
“No, tell me, what’s bothering you?” Regina asked once more.
“Just remembering the war again. I try not to think about it, but it’s no use. It haunts me. Some days I feel like I’m a hundred years old.”
Regina put her sandwich down. “I’m the same. I keep replaying the day Magda almost died, and I try to imagine what I could have done differently to save her.” Regina rubbed her temples. Her eyes always looked wary, as if she’d already seen too much.
Agota looked at Regina as if she were speaking in riddles. “But Magda’s alive.”
“She’s alive but not the same. The little girl I brought into the bomb shelter was bright and lively. The one I pulled out was like another girl altogether. Later, the doctors said it was brain damage. I don’t know how to explain it, but something in Magda died that day.”
Agota had seen Regina’s ten-year-old daughter, but she had always assumed that she was retarded. “What happened?” she asked softly.
“When we were running from the Red Army, we were almost left behind because of Magda, who was not yet five. After I finished packing the wagon, I couldn’t find her. I searched until I finally found her in the bathhouse digging to bury her toy tea set the way she had seen us bury our silver service earlier. She wanted to make sure her favorite toy wasn’t damaged or lost.” Regina shook her head, sipping coffee. “After we crossed the border, I heard the air raid signal before I heard the planes overhead. The British bombed during the day and the Americans during the night. Grabbing Magda, I ran for shelter, pushed by a river of people until I lost sight of my husband. I held Magda’s hand tightly, afraid to lose her in the crowd. We scurried down to the cellar of a bombed-out building where only the outside walls were left standing. There was nowhere else to hide. We were cockroaches fleeing into the cracks and crevices of a ravaged town.
“The door to the cellar closed and everyone huddled together, the stench of nervous sweat filling the dim room. Outside, the percussion of bombs started. Far away at first, but getting closer. Soon you could hear the whine of bombs before they hit. The noise became unbearable. Magda screamed and cried while I prayed as the ground beneath us trembled, and the walls rattled. A bomb hit nearby, and the room shook as dirt and dust rained down on us. One woman became hysterical, yelling that we’d be buried alive. She panicked and fled as two men ran after her, trying to calm her. I stood to look for my husband, shouting his name. Magda, afraid to be left behind, began to cry, and I felt her small hand slip out of mine as another bomb hit, knocking us to the ground. A corner of the room collapsed, leaving it open to the dangerous sky. I choked on the dust and the dirt of the explosion. People were shrieking and climbing out of the shelter.
Two women lay dead in the rubble. I screamed for my daughter, looking for her. Jurgis found me and we searched together, but Magda was nowhere.
“And then we saw her tiny hand. The rest of her was buried under dirt and rubble. I started digging, crying her name and clawing the earth until my nails were bloody. Jurgis finally pulled her out, and I wiped the dirt from her face. Jurgis listened and heard a faint heartbeat. We knew that if we could only find help, she might live. He climbed out to look for help. I held her as the bombers flew away. Then I looked up at the now-quiet sky and wondered whether to curse God for a world in which bombs fell on helpless children or whether I should thank God for the little bit of life that was still left in Magda.”
“Regina, how terrible. I’m so sorry.” Agota bit her lip to keep from crying. Another variation on the horror stories they all told one another.
At midnight Agota put away her cleaning supplies, said good-bye to Regina, and left the office building, taking a bus filled with babushka-bound ladies, grimy factory workers, and janitors. Sitting in the back of the bus, she opened a window and stared at the anemic mannequins in the store windows lit by weak fluorescent lights. A lone man walked down the empty street. She watched him for a long time until the bus pulled away with a sigh.
Everyone sat silently with tired faces. A young woman in a blue jacket had fallen asleep with an open book still in her lap. An old Negro woman in a worn brown coat sat down heavily next to her. Agota looked at the woman’s hands—working hands also. They all worked as if in a dream, as if they had died already, and Chicago was some gray purgatory. Before she came to America, she had never seen a Negro, an Irishman, or an Italian. This country was filled with the refugees of the world. That was America. How many lost flocks gathered from around the world?
Once home, Agota went to her children’s room to check on them. Jonas had kicked off his blanket, so she carefully covered him and kissed his forehead, thinking of Regina’s daughter, Magda. Suddenly she wanted to hold Jonas close, so thankful he had survived the war intact. Then she kissed Ona and went to the kitchen. On the table, she found a letter from her brother in Lithuania and opened it quickly. Reading letters from her family was like deciphering a code. Everyone had to be so careful about what they said because Stalin seemed to have spies everywhere. Every word had to be wrapped in shiny paper like a piece of candy to elude the Soviet censors. And the constant talk of the weather—the only way Agota knew if they were in trouble was when they wrote about the terrible storms. But this letter brought news of a death: her great-aunt Teta Ona had died of pneumonia. Agota made the sign of the cross and stared at the Formica table, aching to be at her funeral, to see her beloved face once more before it was returned to the earth.
And what about the rest of the family? Sleep often eluded her as she worried, constantly anxious over what Soviet fate had befallen them. Only prayer helped soothe her.
When Agota woke in the gray dawn, she had been dreaming about Teta Ona catching lightning bugs with her in the meadow behind their village. Across the room, the nylon curtains billowed in the morning breeze and for a moment she didn’t know where she was, until it finally sifted back to her that it was their apartment in Bridgeport.
Pranas stirred from his side of the bed. It seemed to her that he was leading a separate life, waking before dawn to work long hours at the stockyards. He came home tired, his clothes smelling of death. She didn’t see him much except on weekends. Pranas turned over. “Go back to sleep. It’s Saturday.”
“I can’t,” she snapped.
“Then come back under the covers and I’ll help you sleep.” He gave her a playful smile and pulled her over to him.
“Stop it,” Agota said, getting out of bed and putting on her bathrobe and slippers.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, getting up on one elbow.
“Nothing,” she said as she scooted out to the kitchen.
As she stood over the white enameled sink, filling the tea kettle, her son came into the kitchen in his pajamas with his stamp album under his arm and sat down at the yellow Formica table. Jonas was such a serious boy for an eight year old, a collector of things—stamps, bottle caps, bugs, anything. Was he always so serious or was it the war that made him so?
“Jonas, do you remember Sapnai?”
The slender boy shook his head and looked up at her, concerned. “Do you think we’ll ever go back there?” he asked, his sandy hair falling over his eyes.
Agota cut thin slices of farmer’s cheese. “When we left Lithuania, we thought it was only for a few weeks or months until the war ended, or until President Roosevelt and Churchill talked to Stalin at Yalta. But now I don’t know when we’ll be able to go back.”
“I don’t want to go back there,” Jonas said, frowning. “It’s full of bombs, and there’s no TV.”
Agota was stunned. “But it’s our home. My family is there. Your father’s family too.”
“This is my home. In Chicago.”
“You go over to your Irish friend’s house and watch the Lone Ranger as if there’s nothing more important in the world. Don’t you realize your uncle is still fighting in the woods with the partisans right this minute?” Agota shuddered to think of the Soviet Army searching for these men. The war still hadn’t ended there. “Lithuanians are still being deported to Siberia as you watch your silly TV program.”
“It’s not a silly program.” Jonas frowned. “I want to stay here.”
Agota was too upset to say more. It had never occurred to her that her children would want to stay here, that they might become Americans. She finished cutting thick slices of rye bread and took the whipped butter out of the Frigidaire. God willing, we’ll return home soon, she said silently like a prayer.
“Morning, Mama.” Ona cheerfully padded into the kitchen. Her daughter was born in the displaced persons’ camp in Europe and was the only one in the family who had never seen war.
“Sit down, Onute. While I make pancakes, I want to tell you and Jonas a story about my childhood.”
Jonas made a face. “Again?”
“It’s about Teta Ona, my great aunt, may she rest in peace.” She blessed herself. “I got a letter that she died, and you’ll never know her.” Agota took a deep breath. “Onute, you’re named after my Teta Ona. And, you know, you’re starting to look a bit like her.”
Ona rubbed her eyes. “Was she pretty?”
“Yes, with wheat-colored hair like yours and the same blue eyes.” Agota gently stroked her daughter’s hair. “She came to stay with us between the wars when Lithuania was still independent. I remember that day, nothing moved but the white smoke from the chimneys—the whole world still as I sat at the window waiting for my Teta Ona. At first, we were so busy with preparations that we didn’t notice what she had brought with her.”
“What did she bring?” asked Ona. “Gifts?”
Agota shook her head. “My grandmother liked to watch for omens. In Lithuania, everything was carefully watched for signs of good fortune or bad. Luck, illness, death, and a good harvest could all be foretold by the cards, or dropping hot wax into water, or even watching the storks in their nests.” Agota looked at her children and thought that no one had ever foreseen a life in Chicago.
“And because our heads were filled with excitement over her visit, we never noticed that Teta Ona had brought a domovoi with her. We should have known because she came from Russia, which is filled with evil spirits.”
“What’s a domovoi?” asked Jonas.
Agota smiled, glad he was asking. “Like a house spirit, an imp. It wasn’t until after the first week that we finally noticed that the domovoi had decided to make his home in our pantry. He rattled around so much that no one dared go in there except my grandmother. I was so afraid that I never went by that door without blessing myself and spitting three times over my right shoulder, and even so the hair on the back of my neck woul
d stand up.”
“Mine too!” Ona shivered and grabbed her thin braids.
“Just before Saint John’s eve we went to church, leaving Grandmother at home. As soon as our wagon was out of sight, she took out a cross, some holy water, and magic roots from the Rowan tree that had been struck by lightning. For protection, she draped herself with rue. Once she was armed and uniformed, she opened the pantry door and told the imp to get out. Then she blessed herself three times and went into the battle.”
“Did it kill her?” asked Ona, biting her lip.
“Almost,” answered Agota. “When we returned from church, we found her unconscious on the kitchen floor, and the pantry was a mess of overturned shelves and broken jars. In a fever, she mumbled nonsense for three days. When she finally came to her senses, she told us how she had fought the domovoi and cornered him with her last bit of strength, pouring holy water on him and banishing him to the marshes. The last thing she remembered was a howling and whistling.”
Lost Birds Page 3