Philipovna

by Valentina Gal

  I liked those evenings when Xenkovna had a few minutes to spare for me. I uncovered my Mama’s sewing-machine. I turned the wheels and pushed the treadle. I played with the bobbins, but I didn’t know how to make the machine work. In time, Xenkovna would meet Luba at the kolhosp and learn how to sew. It seems that she inherited the practical skills from Mama for her sewing was as exquisite as was her baking of bread. So it was that, without saying a word, I relinquished my treasure and the sewing machine that had been my mama’s became Xenkovna’s machine.

  I dug through Auntie’s trunk and found the old embroidered outfits and her precious blue wool skirt that was given to her by the old mistress of the estate.

  I tried it on and imagined how I would look in it when I grew up. I would spin in it till its ten metres flared out like a huge umbrella. I would stop only when I was dizzy and felt like I might fall over. I was glad that Auntie couldn’t sell it in the famine because I knew that my Mama might have worn it sometimes, too. I tried to put things back neatly so that Auntie wouldn’t know I was rooting around in her special place. Because she never said anything about it, I guessed that she either didn’t look into the trunk anymore or didn’t have enough strength to care.

  Once after Xenkovna learned to sew, she pulled me into the room where the sewing-machine was. The blue skirt flowed over her arm and there was a strange expression on her face.

  “Ask Mama for some of her skirt,” she said. “She always lets you have anything you want from her.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I want to take this apart.”

  “But why? It’s beautiful as it is — and it’s Auntie’s special gift.”

  “I know, but we don’t have clothes to wear and no warm material to make anything with. If I carefully take it apart, I can use one of the flare panels for you and one for me to make us each a skirt. Then I can put the rest back together for Mama. She’ll still have lots of flare left.”

  “But we have no blouses,” I said.

  “We’ll raise silkworms in the spring, like the other girls at the kolhosp do. The trader says that girls like us raise them from as far away as India, Persia and China. We can earn enough silk from the silk traders to make a blouse. If we do well, Luba says we’ll have a new blouse for Christmas. You can help me raise silkworms.”

  So we learned about silkworms. After I tended the garden each day, I cut up the mulberry leaves and spread them on the trays of dark babies that the trader would bring at the beginning of each month. I watched the worms get lighter with each shedding of their skin until the fourth time when they turned the colour of cream. Then, we would set up a pot over a fire in the garden to boil the worms out from their silken cocoons. We tried not to do it in the house as the smell of those worms rivalled the memory of the smell of the sick room in the orphanage. I always tried to get Xenkovna to do that part. I felt so sorry for taking the coats of silk off of those little worms even though I knew there would be a blouse for me at the end of it all.

  The best thing I discovered in my rooting around the spare rooms of our cottage was Uncle Misha’s guitar. I didn’t let anyone know I found it. I would rush home, do my chores and sit with it by the fire. I would turn the keys on the end of it till the sound was right. I didn’t know that I had perfect pitch then. I plucked the strings the way I remembered Uncle Misha doing it.

  “Don’t you dare let her catch you with that!” Xenkovna said when she came home early from the kolhosp and found me strumming by the fire one day. “She will become unravelled.”

  I decided to take the guitar out into the barn so that Auntie wouldn’t hear me. I found one of Mitya’s ragged blankets and wrapped the instrument in it for safe keeping. I was afraid at first, always expecting the ghost of the Unravelled One to appear. But the music from inside the guitar would drive the ghosts away and the familiar songs from the evenings at the fire with Uncle Misha slowly came back to me. It was like reuniting with a steady old friend.

  When I could play a song straight through, the tears would come and I would pray to Mama asking if I was playing it well enough. Other times, the memory of Uncle’s kind smile overwhelmed me and I’d have to put the instrument down for a while until I could breathe again and get myself past the pain in my chest.

  We also learned some songs in school—Russian songs that were about propaganda. I didn’t like those, but occasionally, the teacher would teach us something from his school days or a folk song that his father taught him. I liked the way the Russian language tickled my tongue when I tried to figure it out. But the desire to play the guitar and sing any song I could remember drew me to the instrument and pushed me out into my hiding place in the barn. I could spend hours there.

  I learned to keep my eye on a certain beam that was cracked and hanging loose. I figured out that, if the shadow of that beam crossed over the floor in front of me, the sun was low enough that it was time for me to go into the house. One afternoon Xenkovna came looking for me because she had come home early from the kolhosp.

  “You should go and play that with the young people who sing in the village in the evening,” she said. Her eyes glistened with the memory.

  “Do you really think I could?”

  “Of course. You sound like a little nightingale.” She bent to kiss me. “You can’t be shut up in this cage forever. You must grow up like everyone else.”

  “They don’t think that I’m like everyone else,” I said.

  “Who are they?”

  The words choked in my throat. “The others in my class. They call me ‘Stalin’s bastard’ when they think I can’t hear.”

  “Don’t worry, when they hear your music, they’ll forget. We all must live past it someday. After all, we’re all Ukrainians. We’ve always sung and danced in the square. Our families have lived here together for over a thousand years.”

  She was right. I did go to sing with the boys and girls. Though I got a curious but cool reception, the shock of finding out that I could play the guitar and pick up a melody quickly crossed the abyss between us. Music does that. It puts a song into a sad heart and lightens one’s step wherever life might take them. It is a leveller in so many ways. But my heart ached for my lost friend. Would I ever see him again?

  When I asked about Mitya, no one knew where he was. It was as if he had fallen into the river.

  “One day he appeared from behind the wood pile with a rabbit,” Xenkovna said, “and the next thing I knew, he was gone. He didn’t even stay to eat with us.”

  I scoured the woods and riverbank looking for Mitya. I waited at his Mama’s grave and I searched for clues by the place where his Mama’s cottage used to stand. I longed to have just one more look into those wild blue eyes. I prayed to God and my own Mama to please send him back to me.

  One warm October afternoon, after I was dismissed from class, I heard someone calling my name. The voice sounded familiar but I couldn’t see anyone.

  “Philipovna. Over here,” the voice called from behind the corner of the school.

  There, in the afternoon sun, on the side of the schoolhouse away from the path, sat a scraggly boy. In spite of the filthy clothing, matted hair and thin face, I recognized those steel blue eyes.

  “Mitya!” His name choked in a sob as I took in his appearance. “Where have you been?”

  “The Comrades put me to work in a sugar factory,” he said. “I worked till I couldn’t stand up. I fainted at the place. They took me to a Children’s home. I stayed there till I thought I’d be strong enough to walk back here. I didn’t think I’d make it. The bastards will probably come to find me soon. They’ll put me in jail for being absent from work.”

  “You look terrible.” I reached to put my arms around his boney frame.

  “Don’t touch me.” He pulled away. “I’ve got dysentery. My stomach hurts.”

  He leaned against the building.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. I came home to die.”

  �
�You can’t die. I’ve just found you again.” It took all of my strength to keep from screaming.

  He slid down the side of the schoolhouse to the ground.

  “I’m so cold. Can you get a blanket? My stomach ... it hurts so much.” He doubled over, hugging himself in pain.

  I touched his forehead. It was burning up.

  “Can you walk home with me? I’ll help you.”

  “No. I just want to sit here.”

  “I can get Auntie Anna. Everyone else is at the kolhosp.”

  “No. Don’t get anyone. They’ll get into trouble. I need a blanket.”

  I ran home to fetch a blanket. I tried to take my Mama’s feather bed, but it was too heavy; so I took one of Auntie’s lighter blankets from the hearth. As I was going out of the door, I saw the Unravelled One’s black shawl hanging over the back of Auntie’s chair. I grabbed it too. I ran back to Mitya.

  “Here’s your Mama’s shawl. That should make you feel better. Should I get you a drink of water?”

  He nodded as I wrapped his shivering shoulders in the shawl and covered him with the blanket. I brought him a drink from the well behind the schoolhouse. Everyone was gone by this time so I didn’t have to worry about being caught. I held the dipper as he took a sip.

  “I will tell my Tahto that I really tried. I tried to get the bastards who killed him. I just didn’t have time to grow up enough.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked through my tears.

  “Have another drink. You’ll feel better.”

  “I want to be with my Mama and Tahto and Sharik, wherever they are. I’m so tired.”

  “Please Mitya, don’t talk like that. You’re scaring me.”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of. This isn’t nearly as scary as the stuff they did to me.”

  I didn’t ask what they did to him. I didn’t want to know. I had seen enough of what the Comrades had done. I sat beside him and held his hand. His eyes closed as the sun dropped down into the evening sky.

  “I’m going home now,” I said. “I have to tell Auntie Xena.” He didn’t answer; he was asleep.

  I ran home to find Xenkovna. We met each other where the path to our house broke away from the main path of the village.

  “Slow down,” she said. “You look as though you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “Almost,” I said. “Mitya’s home.”

  “God have mercy! We’ll have to celebrate.”

  “No, he’s too sick. He said he’s come home to die.” My tears burst out again. “Do something, please. He says he’s come home to die.”

  “Oh, Philipovna, let’s hope it’s not that bad,” she said. “There’s been too much of that. We do have more food now. I’m sure some warm tea and a little care and he’ll be getting better. He’s a tough young fellow.”

  By the time we got Auntie Anna and one of the old Uncles to help us bring Mitya home, he was dead. We each held a corner of his blanket and took him straight to the cemetery. We buried him next to his parents and his dog Sharik. He still lies there in peace.

  Auntie kept her promise to my Mama and my Godfather. I often wonder if more of my cousins would have lived had she not made that promise. But what do we the Children know of our Father God’s plan?

  I had to find my way as my Godfather had predicted so long ago. I thought I’d be like all of the others, finish school, find a man to marry and have a family just like my ancestors did for generations. Little did I know that the tide of war would sweep through that village on May 29, 1942 and set my life into a whirlwind adventure. So, by the Grace of God and with the lessons of perseverance and love from my Auntie, I found my way through Europe, across the ocean and into Canada where I could live in peace. I finally understand the meaning of Tahto’s lesson of the ducklings so many years ago. I couldn’t really live unless I was free.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to express my sincere thanks to the following:

  The Ontario Arts Council for bestowing the Writers Works in Progress grant at its maximum amount in 2012.

  Dorothy Bull and her late husband Robert for financial assistance with editing.

  David Chilton for many hours of help with editing, which were complicated by the fact that I’m totally blind, and many more hours for support and encouragement.

  Daniel and Andrea Leising for listening to years of discussion and struggle as this project came to fruition.

  Grace Luke for her constant faith in me.

  Without their help I would not have been able to fulfil the promise of writing my mother’s story.

  Vera Philipovna Kyslenko, I trust that you are in the peace that you’ve always longed for.

  About the Author

  Born the blind daughter of Ukrainian immigrants in Hamilton, Valentina Gal was educated at the Ontario School for the Blind in Brantford, which is now considered an institutional school. She graduated with a Master of Arts from McMaster University. In 2015, Valentina was a finalist in the Writers Union Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. In 2012, she was a finalist in Creative Nonfiction Writing for Diaspora Dialogues, Toronto Public Library, where she was mentored by Andrew Pyper. Also in 2012, she was awarded a Writers’ Works in Progress grant to help her work on Philipovna: Daughter of Sorrow. In 2011, she served on the Toronto Writers Co-op Editorial Committee. In 2008, she was a finalist in the Writers Union Postcard Story Competition. She now makes her home in Fergus, Ontario, where she continues to write.