Day and night, men and women begged the Russian soldiers to go home. They were shot and fell to the snow. There are tales passed down from one generation to the next that recount how the snow remained white, that no one bled, but these are stories, fantastical rememberings, or if fact, maybe the men and women were too frozen to bleed.
Aušrinė walked in her mother’s shoes, much too big for her, her wings itching under a wool tunic that was cinched beneath a man’s coat. It dragged the ice.
As she walked, Aušrinė remembered the Lithuanian music her parents and grandparents had taught her. She pictured the scales and notes, their ascent and descent. She was thirsty, licking her lips until they were twice their size, blistered and numb, the skin flaking black. She remembered her mother on violin before the great uprising, before they fled to the forest. The year was 1863. Her parents had explained to Aušrinė that as they were born on Lithuanian soil, so too they would die on Lithuanian soil. They would not abandon their country. Aušrinė thought that she was not as fortunate as her parents. She was forcibly leaving the Lithuanian soil they so loved.
Her grandparents were nervous and old. Aušrinė thought that they would all succumb to the snow and die in some no-man’s-land between Lithuania and nowhere, but her grandfather kept patting the wool cap on her head, assuring her, “We will walk home again. Do not worry, little bird.” He didn’t mean him, that he’d walk home again. He was going to die of exhaustion and frostbite in a foreign land. He meant Lithuania would walk home again. He meant Aušrinė.
When I met the Old Man in 1989, he told me that I should be proud of my Lithuanian heritage. “We Lithuanians are not shirkers.” The Old Man was lively, smacking his fist in his palm. “We are fighters, Prudence Vilkas.” He pointed his cigar at me. “You are a fighter.” Up until the day the Old Man first telephoned me, I had no idea that I was Lithuanian, that other girls had been born with wings, or that I was born a fighter.
When Aušrinė’s grandfather fell to the ice and could not rise, he pressed the gold pocket watch, the same watch my father passed on to me, into Aušrinė’s palm. She slipped it in her coat pocket. The watch was real gold, and all that was left of their estate. Aušrinė concealed it as carefully as she hid her wings, telling herself that she carried nothing, not wings, not watches, not dreams. When her grandmother disappeared in an icy mist, Aušrinė considered falling to the ground. It would be easy to sleep; she could join her mother and father in Heaven. But then she felt a gloved hand from this world, the cold desolate one, squeeze hers. Nearly frozen, she squeezed back. It was all she could do. She had lost her voice.
During the day, Aušrinė walked without resting, and at night, the soldiers herded her and the other exiles into makeshift jails. All the while, the gloved hand that belonged to a boy two years her senior reached out to hold hers. This boy’s parents were also gone, fallen victim to starvation. They had given their last bits of food to him. His name was Steponas, and every time Aušrinė dropped, because she wanted to give up, he pulled her to her feet. He wasn’t letting go. At times, he held her from behind, feeling her shrunken wings against his chest, his hands clenched in a fist, to keep her from falling down.
Their caravan of sleighs broke down on the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan. The exiles were told repeatedly that they would never return to Lithuania and so they worked to make a new home. Lithuania was a memory in their muscles and bones. Lithuania survived in the sweat on their brows as they shaped bricks from hay and mud to build houses before the next winter arrived. Steponas and the other boys erected a cross. As the Old Man explained to me, “They made a small Lithuania away from their Lithuania. They made it their own. In secret, they sang and danced and recounted their Lithuanian history.”
Over many years, the exiles built farms and schools where they spoke Lithuanian. Outside their homes, they spoke Russian, but behind closed doors, always Lithuanian. They lived this way, reaping what they’d sown, making babies, building fences to keep thieves at bay. In 1874, Steponas married Aušrinė. She gave birth to two sons. Their younger son, Petras, was the Old Man’s father. Their older son was called Juozas, but later he would Americanize it to Joseph.
Fifty-four years passed. In between, one generation died and one was born.
As the First World War neared its end, Aušrinė’s husband, Steponas, and their two sons, Juozas and Petras, made plans for their return to Lithuania. Petras had dark hair and blue eyes. Like the Old Man. Like Freddie. I am tied to all these people by more than wings and watches. If I ever think to forget where I come from, my scars itch and my breathing quickens.
The Old Man said that as an old woman, Aušrinė stopped concealing her wings. Instead, they bulged and quivered beneath whatever shift she wore. The townspeople in the village in Kazakhstan called her Paukštis, bird. Their village thrived. The farms produced crops. Not everyone was making plans to walk back to Lithuania. For many, too many years had passed. It was too risky to leave. For some, they were too old for the long journey, and for others, they couldn’t find proof of their Lithuanian identity. The children and grandchildren of the exiled knew Lithuania only through stories and music. Aušrinė and her husband hadn’t seen Lithuania in more than half a century. Petras had never seen it. Papers had to be drawn. It was a difficult undertaking, but they all agreed that they must return. Aušrinė and Steponas and their children, Juozas and Petras, and Petras’s wife, Aleksandra (the Old Man’s mother), gathered all the possessions they could stow in two wagons and began the yearlong trek back to Lithuania. Aušrinė and Steponas never doubted returning to a land they knew from distant memory kept close in the bone because the land itself, the rich soil, belonged to them. Lithuania was their birthright.
Aušrinė’s grandfather’s gold watch was hidden inside a mattress along with what valuables the family had acquired over five decades. The mattress, piled with a chest, carpets, and bedding, was in the bottom of a camel-drawn wagon. According to the Old Man, when they first saw the ancient Lithuanian forest, Aušrinė’s wings expanded, slicing through her wool shawl. The group wept at the sight, not of Aušrinė’s wings, but of something even more spectacular: their homeland.
In 1918, when Aušrinė sat on Lithuanian soil, drawing lines in the dirt she remembered so well, she was sixty-four, the same age as her grandfather when he died in the snow. As predicted, she had walked home again.
In the 1920s, Petras, who taught music at the university, and his brother, a tailor, purchased a plot of land. The earth was thirsty for Lithuanian sweat. Everything Petras planted grew as if fertility spells had been cast. The Old Man told me, “Nothing died, Prudence. I whacked a stick at the flowers, because I was a stupid boy, but nothing died. The stalks grew to spite me. The gardens were lush with vegetation. The ladybugs like jewels.” According to the Old Man, it was a magical place.
Last night, I tagged white pelicans, the first I’ve seen this year. Later, I called Veronica to ask if she knew about the Old Man.
“Your father told me a few days ago.”
“What do you mean? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I figured you knew more than I did. I figured you’d call me when you were ready.”
Although the Old Man still refers to her as the “woman who is not Lithuanian and not German,” Veronica likes him. It’s hard not to like him. Last night when I put a band on a toddler pelican, it flopped around in the nest and the female and male pelicans shielded it with their feathers. There are fewer toddlers this year. Usually, we see three per nest, but this year, there are only one or two in each nest. We don’t know if there is a new predator or if the pelicans are laying fewer eggs. On the phone, Veronica said, “Are you going to fly up and see him?”
“Of course.”
“I can fly up with you. I can drive your way and we can fly up together.” When I didn’t respond, she took my silence to mean yes. I know that she is trying to be nice, but this sadness feels
like my own, not something to be shared.
Next week, I have a group that’s supposed to take a charter boat to see the purple martins flock in the tens of thousands to roost under Mariner’s Bridge, one of their many stops, en route to South America. I won’t be able to go this year because I need to get online and buy a plane ticket. I have to find a replacement to tell the students and visitors about the importance of building and protecting the man-made structures that the purple martins call home. Their homes are no less important than anyone else’s.
I know logically that I met the Old Man in 1989 when I was sixteen, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like we’ve always known each other, like we’re spokes on the same bicycle wheel. We’ve been part of this vehicle for as long as Lithuania has been a nation, since our homeland was a grand duchy, the wealthiest land in Europe. At the wheel’s center are Aušrinė and all the other Vilkas birds who blurred the line between grounded and free, between imprisonment and flight. In that way, the Old Man is also a bird. We are Lithuanian freedom fighters, and now is the time to stay and fight.
When I see the Old Man, I will remind him of this.
3
Prudence
In 1980, Veronica and I went away. We migrated like geese, except that they have a destination, and we did not.
Veronica did not understand that leaving Freddie would be irreversible, that the farther she drove from his guitarist’s hands, the harder it would be to go back. We drove south past McDonald’s, Howard Johnsons, Holiday Inns, and Motel 6s. I remember that the roads, the rooms, and the fast food tasted the same—how gray would taste if you could eat it. Even though it was December, there would be no Santa photographs, no tree trimming, no presents.
At first, Veronica planned to stop in Chattanooga. It was a decent-sized city, but then she figured that if she was leaving Nashville, she ought to at least leave the state of Tennessee. Next, she decided on Atlanta, Georgia, but approaching the city, there were too many highways with too many lanes; too many billboards and too many cars. She kept driving through the small town of Cordele, where she thought about heading due east to Savannah but couldn’t make up her mind. While I pretended to sleep, Veronica pulled off the side of the road. She turned on the overhead light and opened her map to choose a destination. All the while, I kept my mouth shut, just praying that we’d go back. Moving her finger circularly above the map, she landed on Jacksonville, Florida, and folding the map willy-nilly, tossed it to the passenger’s seat.
We got a room with a stained burgundy carpet and a dead-bolt chain hanging from one screw. Veronica told me that her father had never loved her, that it was no surprise that Freddie never loved her. I was only seven, so I wasn’t going to convince her otherwise.
Veronica was A plus number one at feeling sorry for herself. She had somehow forgotten that she had made this decision, no one else but her. We stayed in this room off Interstate I-95 for three days until Veronica’s eyes nearly swelled shut from drinking and crying. Then two child abductions were reported on the local news, and that was it. She was done. Jacksonville was not for us. She stuffed our clothes in a paper bag and we were once again in the car, directionless. In 1980, the last thing I wanted to do was run. I sang along to the radio, Stevie Nicks, “When you build your house, well then call me home.” It was like Stevie Nicks was speaking to me. Home didn’t seem like a tall order, but it was.
I listened to Veronica lament how she met Freddie in this juke joint in Troutville. He was playing country standards, and right away, she thought he was the man for her. She liked the looks of him, but there was something else too: his passion for music. When Freddie played “Long Black Veil,” Veronica got onstage and took the microphone. She imagined herself a siren and Freddie her sailor. She bewitched him. I didn’t doubt that they loved each other, but even at seven, it seemed to me that they were too selfish to be together.
There were no cell phones back then, no GPS, no way to track anyone down. Who knows what my father was doing that December? Waiting for us to return? Playing tributes to John Lennon? A little of both?
Veronica was reminiscing, talking about their first night together, how they split a beer and had sex with her head sandwiched between a banjo and an amplifier. All the while, I was thinking that maybe she was talking herself into turning around, but unfortunately, she wasn’t and we weren’t.
This was the beginning of the end. It’s sad how things devolve, how if you hear just the early part of Freddie and Veronica’s story, this romantic romp between a blue-eyed guitarist and knobby-knuckled songstress, you imagine they’ll go on forever.
Veronica had tied her line to Freddie’s. That’s how she put it. I know all about ties, lines, rope, grass, cords, glue, paste, knots, yarn, floss, the stuff of nests stringing us together. I understand. I think I’ve always understood. I even understand why Veronica had to sever her line to Freddie and strike out on her own. I just didn’t like it.
My mother grew up in Troutville. Freddie was the bigger fish she’d been looking to fry. One trip, headfirst, through her darkened bedroom window while her father slept, and she was ready to go, to leave forever, squeezing my dad’s hand, pretending that she had to sneak off, when in reality she could’ve traipsed through her father’s front door, and he would have gladly let her go. Veronica was pulling anchor, setting course, and reeling in this fine-looking out-of-town musician. She was pretending that her father would care that she was leaving. She was pretending that her mother hadn’t left when Veronica was three. She was pretending that she knew how to be loved, that somebody had loved her before. Veronica was great at pretending.
After my parents were married, they got a room at the Moby Dick Motel, where they admired their adjustable bubble-gum wedding bands. Freddie never did buy her a real wedding ring.
I remember our destinationless trek, listening to Veronica’s stories, kneading the hem on my T-shirt, craving clean clothes and a hot bath, real food: steak and mashed potatoes, something homey, but Veronica kept driving. We only stopped when the road ended, when we were face-to-face with the Atlantic. I remember squinting in the light that glinted off the water. We weren’t the first homeless people to drive until the road ended. Los Vientos, Florida, was a township for the troubled. Whether you’d run out of luck or out of love, you eventually ran out of road. If they’d had a billboard for Los Vientos, it would’ve said, “Where the uprooted and downtrodden hide between sand and surf.” Nothing concrete, nothing stable. We sat Indian-style on the beach, watching seagulls skim the surf. I knew there were worse places to be.
Within two weeks, Veronica got a job assisting an uppity Realtor. She thought it was a far cry better than working at the Piggly Wiggly. Next, she found us a home, a rental property in a dilapidated section of Los Vientos where the houses were squat with tar paper roofs, the doors hidden behind crumbling latticework.
Most of Los Vientos was dilapidated. There were a few nice homes, but the majority of the money was across the causeway in Saint Mark’s. We got the keys to our clapboard shack on January 20, 1981. Our suitcases were piled largest to smallest like a fancy cake on the front lawn. Veronica was on the back stoop smoking and hiding, stifling cries that intermingled with the squeaks and squawks of grackles preening in the yard. This was the same afternoon that I met my best friend, Wheaton Jones. Veronica and I had been at our new house less than two hours when Wheaton walked up our cracked sidewalk. His right sneaker was torn around the rubber sole, and there were sandspurs on his tube socks. His curly hair was long, swooped at his shoulders. He said, “I’m Wheaton Jones. I live across the street.” He brushed the curls from his eyes, which were white like bowls of milk, like you could fall into them.
He said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” I asked. Needless to say, he was peculiar.
He shrugged. His eyes had turned an iridescent green. Even now, twenty-four years later
, I remember every detail of that first meeting. I asked him his age and he asked mine. We were both seven. My birthday was March twenty-ninth and his was April fourth. Using the concrete walk, he pulled back the torn rubber sole of his shoe and I could see a hole in his sock. “Are you a Girl Scout or a Brownie? Do you know how to darn a sock?”
“I don’t sew.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“In the country music capital of the world.” It sounded better than saying Nashville. Then we were quiet, in our own ways equally defeated that there was nothing else to say.
Wheaton and I sat side by side on the front stoop. Seagulls squawked. Occasionally we’d hear Veronica take a deep breath. The suitcases remained, like a statue, on our prickly lawn. For lack of anything better to say, I confessed to Wheaton, “My mother thinks my father never loved her.”
“Did he?”
“I think so.”
“That’s good.” He fingered the hole in his shoe. “I think my mother is in love with Mr. Doddy.”
“Who’s that?”
“Just this man who lives down the street.”
“I might be able to darn a sock. I’ve never tried.”
“You have pretty hair,” he said.
“Thanks. My mother calls it unruly.” Unruly was a good word to use.
Wheaton said, “I’m generally unruly.” I liked how he picked up my good word.
“Tell me more.”
He said, “People don’t like me.”
“Why?”
“I can see things that other people can’t see.”
I didn’t believe him. Of course I didn’t believe him. “What are you talking about?” I said. “Can you see God or something? I knew a girl in Nashville who said she could see God.”
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