"Where are you going, Nadya?" she asked, pulling another cluster of flowers out of her bag.
"Chicago." I answered.
"Then, that’s where we’re going."
We shared our first apartment with them and two other couples. Eventually, we bought a house, and Ana and her husband Nicholas, or Niki, as she liked to call him, bought the house next door. For a few years Ana and I worked together as cleaning ladies in some of the big office buildings downtown. After our shift we would sometimes stop for coffee at Chuck’s 24-Hour Diner, down the street from our work.
The coffee was too strong and reminded me of the coffee we were served in the camps, so I would add milk and sugar to try and cover the taste. Ana always drank hers black.
"Nadya darling, I heard you telling the kids stories out on the stoop. You have a bit of the author in you. You should write down your stories."
I blushed, as I always did, hearing her compliments.
"Ana, don’t be silly. Those are just little fairy tales to keep the children quiet." I looked down at the menu, even though we never ordered anything but coffee.
"You’re gifted, dear. Like Lesya Ukrainka or Olena Teliha."
"Olena who?" I asked, ashamed of my ignorance.
My schooling had ended with the war, but as a young woman, Ana had been sent away to school in Kyiv. Her family had been very wealthy, something to do with oil. Once the war began, she returned home to be with her family. When the Germans arrived in Lviv, they executed her parents and other wealthy business people, and their property and investments were transferred into German hands. Ana was a survivor.
"Olena Teliha. In Kyiv she was the head of a writer’s group and edited the journal Litaures. Oh, she was very good, and beautiful, too." Ana sighed and patted her black curls.
"What a waste. I heard rumors that she died at the hands of the Gestapo." Ana gazed out the window, her eyes glazed. After a moment she looked back at me.
"You know, dear, you shouldn’t keep silent."
I shook my head, "What do you mean?"
"You have stories. I know: I’ve heard them. What does Pavlo think about it?"
I laughed. "Pavlo? He doesn’t think anything about them. "
Ana frowned at me, her eyebrows meeting in the middle.
"You’re still not talking?" She began to chew on a hangnail.
When I shook my head, she slammed her palms down on the table.
"You have to talk to him. He should be your best friend, you know."
"Ana, we don’t have the kind of relationship you and Nicholas have."
"I’m not talking about the sex matters again."
"Neither am I." I looked around to see who was watching, but the only other people in the diner at four o’clock that morning were an old homeless man sleeping in the corner and the waitress and cook laughing in the back. I was still embarrassed.
"Nadya, things are not perfect between Niki and me. We disagree, but we talk. Just the other day, he told me not to work as a cleaning lady. He said I was above it, that we didn’t need the money so badly. Well, I told him, I like it. I like having my own money."
"It’s so different with us, Ana. We almost never see each other. He works days, I work nights. He’s not like Nicholas. He won’t help me cook or clean. That’s my job, he says. This won’t change with talk. Besides, I don’t mind. It was good enough for my mother."
She sighed, "I’m not talking about the cleaning. I’m talking about your souls. They should get the chance to see each other sometime. Darling, you both have to open up a little. Forget about everything else and talk with your hearts."
She reached over and took my hand. "You’re all locked up, Nadya. Sometimes it’s hard even for me to reach inside and see who’s hiding there."
Turning my hand over, she softly traced the lines with her finger.
"At least your hands give me a little clue," she said.
I smiled at her, "So that’s why you look at my hands from time to time?"
She looked up and stared into my eyes. "Yes,’ she said seriously. "Hands can reveal so much about a person. If you won’t tell me, I have to find out the truth somehow."
I started to pull my hand away, but she held it tightly.
"What do you want to hide from me?" Ana asked. "Have we not been friends forever?"
"What could you possibly see?" I asked her. "If you see anything at all; what do you see?"
She shifted her attention back to my hand. "Oh, I see, darling. I see too much pain and regret. I see that you are surrounded by love, but you keep a wall around yourself. Nadya, you need to learn how to open your heart again, now that the silence has slipped in."
She winked at me. "I’ve got a little Gypsy in me."
Her words were so familiar, and they made my heart heavy.
Picking up her coffee cup, she said, "Remember this, my sweet, silence is not the only option."
Ana had found me curled up in a ball in the garden behind the garage. We had buried Mykola’s uniform that morning. That night, sleep rescued Pavlo first, while I lay there drowning in the stale air. Suddenly I had to run away, so I slipped out of his arms and went outside.
The night was so cruel. The skies were clear, the winds cool, and the ground warm. I lay flat on the ground, smelling the greenery, feeling quiet, hearing hunger inside and out. If only we had lived closer to the cemetery, I would have slept on his grave to keep him warm.
But he wasn’t there. Only an empty box. He was alone in foreign soil, like me.
Suddenly chilled, I curled up against the side of the garage, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of the twisting in my gut. I felt like it was my fault. I remembered Mama Paraska’s words: "There will be a price. There is balance in the universe."
Ana must have seen me from her back porch, because she came outside and walked into my yard. She had a coat in her arms, which she put around my shoulders. I smelled peppermint and only then looked up.
"Nadya, dear, come with me."
She drove us to the beach and we sat on the hood of her car facing Lake Michigan.
"It’s really beautiful," she said. "Looks more like an ocean than a lake."
I couldn’t speak. I just sat, leaning my head on her shoulder as she gently stroked my hair.
"You know, I think that we should do something special," she said, hopping off the hood. I heard her footsteps behind me. After rustling around in the trunk, she came back with a white votive candle. Then she walked over to a bush and plucked off a bunch of green branches. Taking my hand, she led me to the sand.
"Sit down, Nadya. Weave these into a wreath, like you used to at home."
My fingers began to work in a pattern I hadn’t practiced since I was a girl. The coolness of the leaves soothed my fingers, drawing me out of my thoughts until all I saw was the pattern of twisting branches. Soon it was finished.
I looked up to see Ana. She stood facing the water and held the candle in both her hands rubbing her palms back and forth along the short base. After a time, she turned around, knelt in front of me, and buried the bottom of the candle in the sand between us. I could smell sandalwood. Ana took the wreath from me and placed it around the candle. Then she pulled a prayer card from Mykola’s funeral out from her pocket. She wrapped it around the candle, blocking the wind and securing it with sand.
"My dear Nadya, take this lighter and say his name as you light the candle. Picture his face. Remember."
I whispered, "Mykola." The lighter licked wax off the wick until orange and blue light sprang up filling the entire candle with a soft glow. I watched the flame sway and flicker, drawn to the bright white light in the center of the fire’s tongue. Some flames will stand calmly, only shimmer as they burn. But this candle’s dance was an up and down jump, an anxious child bouncing on his father’s knee. I watched its steady bobbing, hearing my breath settle into the same rhythm, the tides a distant echo.
Ana walked over to me and took my hand, helping me stand. She led me
closer to the edge of the water, and together we knelt on the sand.
"Cup your hands and scoop up some water," she said, doing the same.
"Hold it, even as the droplets fall between the cracks. These are the precious Waters of Life, Nadya. They are the same ones that flow underground and from the clouds. They connect us all, no matter how many miles we are from home. This is not our native shore, but the waters still make their way home, just like our tears.
"Waters are the womb of the earth. As you hold these waters, think about Mykola. Think about his life and all he brought into yours. These waters can hold your grief . . ."
I closed my eyes and pictured his smiling face. I heard Ana’s words somewhere in the distance, like a song in a dream. But closer was the smell of oranges and leather, two of Mykola’s favorite things.
"Death is a part of the cycle of life. It has always been this way. Death is a story we remember in our hearts and retell in our bones when we rejoin the Earth . . ."
But I have had too much death, too many sacrifices. Why did I have to continue to lose those dearest to me, my Mykola, my little angel who wanted to save the world? Who at ten years old gave his favorite Christmas sled to Vinnie across the street after Widow Ostromohylska backed her rusted Ford Fairlane over Vinnie’s dog Rocco. Mykola, who blushed when that pretty Lusia girl blew him kisses in church, who braved the German Shepherd in Mr. Cantonini’s yard each year to bring me lilacs on Mother’s Day.
"He has always been a part of you, no matter how far away. Even while in Vietnam, when he slept there and you slept here, you were connected. You are still connected. The Earth holds you both, and she can hold your tears like all the waters of the world. Let them go, Nadya. Let them flow into the water."
I let the last of the water flow from my fingers into the lake, but I had no tears. Inside I felt as if I were scorched dry, as if my heart would never feel again. We knelt there in silence.
Driven by a longing for the moon, the waves created a rhythm to match my pulse. The pounding of blood in my head echoed their slap against the sand. Their seductive caress against my knees and ankles made me think of my Aunt Katia, the rusalka who succumbed to the water’s sweet escape. But somewhere underneath their hushed prayer, inside the rhythm of my own heartbeat, one word whispered near my ear:
"Mama."
At that moment, when my only thought was to join the waters, to dissolve and be carried away, to lose my pain in their promise, Mykola was there. I could feel him. Somehow I knew that to speak would break the spell. To open my eyes would sever the connection of blood, of water, of heartbeat. But I knew in my bones that he was standing next to me.
"Mykola is your child. He is a part of you, always—a part of everything. To come here is to heal, to connect, to remember." Ana’s voice flowed through the water, through my blood. I could feel her words like the spray against my neck, like the sand under my nails—a part of everything. Her voice came from beneath the sand, above the clouds, on drops of water, inside my own head. Maybe she said nothing at all. Maybe it was just the wind.
***
I kissed my fingers and ran them along the ground in front of her tombstone. Ana was the first person I learned to trust in America.
***
"Why is it that you and Pavlo never celebrate your wedding anniversary, Nadya?" Ana asked one night while we stood talking over the fence between our houses. She and Niki had just come back from a trip to Mexico, where they had celebrated their tenth anniversary.
I was holding a picture of Ana wearing a two-piece bathing suit; her husband was in colorful shorts decorated with dancing mice, his skinny legs white against the sand. I exhaled long, and we stood there in silence for a while. Then I glanced over to the house and turned back to Ana.
"Well, those were hard times." I said, feeling instantly foolish. She had lived through the same war.
She looked at me, not saying a word, the question in her eyes. Ana spoke sentences with her face.
"I didn’t want to marry him," I said quickly, then looked toward the Chicago skyline. "I had no choice."
We spent so many nights talking over that fence. She knew me better than anyone else. She was my best friend, my sister. Five years earlier, when she and Niki moved into the new condominiums near the church, I thought my heart would break.
She smiled at me and said, "But it’s only three blocks down, Nadya. I’m not moving to California. These condominiums are new and shiny. And no more mowing the lawn or shoveling snow. You know, Niki isn’t as young as he used to be. It’s getting to be too much for him, although he would never admit it." She winked at me and gave me some seeds from her last herb garden to plant in my own, wrapped in an embroidered handkerchief.
But it was no longer the same. I couldn’t just step outside and call her name through the screen door. I had to call her on the telephone, because if I just stopped by, she might not be home. Three blocks might have well been thirty miles because we began to see each other less and less. She and Niki began traveling more and more: Spain, Italy, New Mexico, Argentina, Greece, Egypt, Arizona. After each trip she would call me over, and we would have one of her homemade fruity drinks and look through her latest photo album filled with places I had never even heard of.
"Nadya, Look at this. This is the Grand Canyon."
"Is it in Europe?" I asked, gazing at a photo of enormous red rocks set against a sky of impossible blue.
"No, it’s right here in America, but far west. It’s so beautiful, dear. It makes you feel so small. We rode donkeys all the way down to the bottom. Niki almost fell off three times. It was breathtaking."
She set the book down on her lap and looked at me.
"You know, we should go on a trip together. Just you and I. No men. What do think?"
For a moment I savored the thought of traveling to someplace exotic. But I couldn’t leave Pavlo and the kids. Who would prepare Sunday morning breakfast? Besides, we didn’t have that kind of money to spend on a vacation. We had just lent Mark money for his new house.
"No, Ana, I couldn’t do that." I shook my head and turned the page on her album. Niki was holding her hand while she stood atop a stone fence overlooking the canyon. "I’m needed here," I whispered.
"Nadya darling, you have never done a single thing just for yourself as long as I’ve known you. Pamper yourself once in a while. Family is important, darling, but so are you. Think of the fun we’d have. We’d flirt with all the old men, and if we go to Europe they would chase after you because you have aged very well and most European women look like the grave. The Italians say they look like "la morte in vacanza," which means death on vacation. Come on Nadya. It would be our grand adventure, something to hold onto.
Still, I refused.
Later, when Lesya’s younger sister Tanya went to visit her boyfriend in Kyiv, an exchange student she had met through the Ukrainian Club at her high school, Ana tried to convince me to go with Tanya. In all their travels, Ana had never gone back to our motherland. Niki refused.
"Imagine going back after all this time?" she said while mixing our weekly Saturday night cocktails.
I could not imagine going back. I didn’t dare. There were too many secrets that I was not prepared to face.
Sipping my drink that night, I wanted to tell her everything—about the camp, Andriy, the vorozhka, Stephan, and my family, but I was so afraid to speak it aloud.
I searched my memory for something safe, something I could share with her, and so I told her about Andriy Polotsky and Mama Paraska. I told her about that fork in the road, when I had chosen Pavlo and let Andriy and his mother walk out of my life forever. I didn’t tell her why, that would have been too painful. Because of Ana’s miscarriage—caused by kicks from the boots of German soldiers—she and Niki had never been able to have children. When I finished telling her about Andriy, she walked over to me and gave me a big hug.
Kissing the top of my head, she said, "Thank you for telling me this, Nadya." She smiled at me,
"What if you could see him again after all these years? Aren’t you curious?"
I shook my head, "That was a long time ago. There’s nothing to revisit."
"Maybe, maybe not," she said with a coy smile. "Darling, sometimes life presents you with an unimaginable surprise. Look at our meeting. Who would have thought? Remember, purple kisses are everywhere, but unless you pluck them and make tea, there is no magic."
Living in the condo, Ana came to miss her lush garden and decided to grow marjoram, rosemary, sage, rue, and chamomile in her window box. When she and Niki traveled to the Ukrainian Festival in Dauphin, Manitoba, Ana asked me to water her seedlings.
I unlocked the door and took off my shoes. Laying the mail on the table by the door, I walked straight to the kitchen window, determined to water the plants and go home. Pavlo had a chess game with Yuri Radchenko, and I had the morning to myself. The truth was, without Ana, I had little else to occupy my time. I wanted nothing more than to hide in this sanctuary, but I felt awkward about being alone in their home. Of course, Ana told me she had no secrets from me, her home was my home. I wished I could be as open with her.
I filled the watering can and walked over to the window box. Ana’s green thumb always rewarded her with healthy plants, and her herbs were growing beautifully. She said her secret was the songs she sang to them every sunrise while she brewed her tea. I think it was because she loved them.
The herbs watered, I looked around. My Baba always said that you could feel the happiness of a family in their home, that their joy filled the rooms and lightened the air like spring flowers and baking bread. Ana and Niki’s home certainly felt cheerful, passionate, and welcoming. I fought with myself to stay, to look around for clues into their happiness, the happiness that I was missing. Walking slowly through the rooms, my fingertips grazed the surfaces of counters, tables, chairs, feeling for secrets.
I looked down at their Oriental rugs and big, fluffy jewel-toned pillows scattered about the room. As if any moment, you might find yourself sinking to the ground and would be greeted with soft luxury. Ana and Niki didn’t really collect knickknacks, but it seemed that every possible surface was covered with candles, half-melted and hinting at romantic evenings. Traces of their scent still lingered in the air.
The Silence of Trees Page 14