The Blackbird Girls

by Anne Blankman

“You’re both talented,” their teacher said. “Everyone else turned in essays. You were the only ones who gave me diagrams and schematics. I’m afraid I had to give you threes because the assignment was to write an essay and you didn’t follow the directions. But don’t be discouraged. I’ve never seen such clever responses to this assignment in my twenty years of teaching. Well done.”

  She patted their shoulders before sending them out to the schoolyard, where Valentina said to Oksana, “I didn’t know you want to be an artist.”

  Oksana looked down. “It isn’t a proper career,” she said softly. “My drawings are stupid anyway.”

  “Drawings can’t be stupid,” Valentina objected. “And if yours are half as good as your drawings of Thunder Stone, they must be marvelous. Will you show them to me? Please?”

  Oksana smiled a little. “Okay.” That night, Oksana spread her drawings across the floor of their apartment. They were pencil sketches of people or familiar sights from Leningrad: the massive Palace Bridge; the spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress; the statues in the Summer Garden.

  Valentina couldn’t stop looking at them. “I love them,” she said. “They’re wonderful.”

  Babulya looked at them, too, and pronounced them excellent. Oksana was as red as a strawberry by now, and Babulya tugged her braids, saying she’d have to grow accustomed to compliments, if she was going to be a famous artist. She hung Oksana’s drawings on the laundry lines and said they were the prettiest decorations she’d ever had.

  From then on, Oksana sketched every night when she didn’t go on a “walk”—which was what she told Babulya she was doing while she delivered packages for Comrade Orlov. She had met him the night after the client had been arrested and given him the passport back. She’d worried he would be angry with her for failing, but he’d said he was grateful she was safe and that she should stay away for a few days, until they could be certain the client hadn’t told the police about him.

  She had told Valentina everything after she had returned home that night. Valentina had begged her to stop working for Comrade Orlov, but she had said no, she had to go on. And when she met him a few nights later, he had smiled at her and handed her a package, she had delivered it, and everything felt normal. She was safe, she assured Valentina later that night, after they had brushed their teeth and were alone in the bathroom, the one place where they could speak freely. Valentina wasn’t sure if Oksana was right, but she knew how badly Oksana wanted the money. So she didn’t say anything.

  * * *

  - - -

  In the second week of October, Babulya sent Oksana upstairs to get an early start on her schoolwork while she and Valentina stayed in the communal kitchen to fix supper.

  “I needed time alone with you,” Babulya told Valentina as she unlocked their cupboard. “Oksana will be twelve next week.”

  Valentina put a pot on their designated burner. “I know. I’ve been making her a pencil holder.” On nights when Oksana sketched or went for a “walk,” Valentina locked herself in the bathroom to work on Oksana’s gift, much to the annoyance of the Kozlov boys, who knocked on the door in vain and finally had to go downstairs to use another toilet.

  Valentina didn’t care: Oksana’s present would be marvelous. When Valentina had taken out the garbage to the rubbish bins in the courtyard, she’d scavenged them until she’d found a broken teacup. Then she’d gone to the far side of the courtyard, to look through the rubbish bins there. The building on the street behind them shared their courtyard, so she had double the amount of trash to go through. She found a handful of bolts and screws. She’d glued the pieces of the teacup back together, and then she’d soldered screws onto the cup’s surface. An old gentleman from one floor down had lent her his soldering gun. She’d taught herself to use it and had only burned herself twice.

  “We need to plan her birthday celebration.” Babulya set out the ingredients for vegetable soup. Around the room, several women stirred pots or washed dishes. A couple of toddlers sat in a corner, playing with blocks. At the table, the man with the spectacles lit a cigarette. His name was Comrade Popov, Valentina had learned, and ever since she and Oksana had arrived he watched them with narrowed eyes. That was how he looked at everyone, though, so Valentina didn’t think much of it.

  “It isn’t every day a girl turns twelve,” Babulya went on, handing Valentina a handful of carrots. “What shall we do?”

  “A birthday tea!” Valentina chopped the carrots. “We ought to have it on a Saturday afternoon, after school lets out. And we should have lots of sweets. Sugared donuts and fruit dumplings and cake and ice cream—”

  Chuckling, Babulya held up a hand. “As much as I’d like to shower Oksana in gifts and sweets, I’m afraid I can only afford a small, simple party. What’s her favorite dessert?”

  “Sirok.” Just saying the word made Valentina hungry. Sirok was a cheesecake covered in chocolate.

  Babulya laughed again. “It would have to be the most expensive and decadent dessert, wouldn’t it? We’ll have it,” she said quickly when Valentina opened her mouth to beg. “Oksana should have her favorite dessert on her birthday. And we’ll have biscuits and jam and pots of tea.”

  “No boys.”

  “Naturally.” Babulya dropped the chopped carrots into a pot. “I can’t think of any twelve-year-old girl who would willingly invite boys to a birthday tea. Next year, however, may be a different matter.”

  Valentina wrinkled her nose. “Maybe.”

  “You’d be surprised at how these things change. So no boys. I assume girls are acceptable?”

  Valentina wasn’t sure why her grandmother and the other ladies in the kitchen were laughing. “Of course girls are fine. Lyudmila and Yulia should come.”

  “I’ll speak to their mothers. We’ll have to come up with a plan to keep Oksana out of the apartment until the tea is ready, so Oksana can be surprised. And I want you girls to fuss over her. She’s had little enough love in her life, poor thing, and everyone ought to feel cherished on her birthday.”

  “How did you celebrate your birthday when you were my age?” Valentina watched her grandmother season the soup.

  “My mother fixed a lovely tea,” Babulya said. “Everybody gave me presents. That was a rule in my family: we all had to give a gift. My brothers drew me pictures, as they were too little to do much else. My parents gave me a book or a dress. When I turned twelve, they bought me a flute.”

  Babulya had played the flute! Valentina thought of her mother’s piano playing. Both Mama and Babulya were musicians. She hadn’t realized they had anything in common.

  “Do you still play?” she asked.

  “Gracious, no! I haven’t taken my flute out in ages.”

  “That’s too bad,” Valentina said. “Mama plays the piano whenever she can. She tells me it makes her feel as though her soul is flying.”

  Babulya stirred the soup harder.

  But later, after they had eaten and washed up, and Valentina and Oksana were trying to memorize the beginning of Pushkin’s poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” Babulya opened a box she kept stowed in the wardrobe. She took out three pieces of a flute. They were tarnished, and she wiped them clean with a rag. Then she fitted them together and blew across the mouthpiece.

  The first notes were squawks. As Babulya continued to play, however, the notes strengthened and sweetened, until they were so beautiful that Valentina and Oksana put down their textbooks and listened. The music sounded like silver.

  At last, Babulya stopped. She had tears in her eyes. “It does feel as though my soul is flying,” she said, and packed the flute into the box. She didn’t put it back in the wardrobe, though, but left it in a place of honor on a shelf, where they could see it every day.

  30

  Oksana

  FOUR DAYS BEFORE Oksana’s birthday, she went to Comrade Orlov’s shop after school. He owned a photography st
ore on the outskirts of Avtovo, on the ground floor of a shabby, five-story building of stained concrete.

  It was the most wonderful place she had ever seen. Glass cabinets filled with cameras and lenses and film lined the walls. Between them hung framed black-and-white photographs of Leningrad. In one of them, Oksana recognized the silhouette of the Bronze Horseman, her favorite sight in the city.

  Today, Comrade Orlov stood behind the counter, helping a customer select a camera lens. Oksana waited patiently. For the past few weeks, she had stopped by Comrade Orlov’s store on Thursday afternoons. Comrade Orlov had said that because she had been such a responsible employee, she had proven her trustworthiness and she could now know where he worked. Oksana wished Valentina would visit the shop, too, but Valentina always refused when she asked. “Black-market workers are too dangerous to be around,” she would say. “I wish you wouldn’t go, either, Khusha.”

  But Oksana couldn’t stop. Not when she was close to earning enough money to go to her mother.

  So she waited while the customer paid for his purchase and left the store. Then she went to the counter, expecting Comrade Orlov to give her a package and an address.

  He handed her a paint set. Under its glass top, Oksana saw seven paints—all the colors of the rainbow—and a brush with bristles that looked impossibly soft and fine. It was so beautiful that Oksana had to catch her breath. What she wouldn’t do for paints like these! And a proper brush, not the fountain pens or pencils she had from school that she had to make do with. She could create real pictures with these paints.

  But they weren’t hers. “Where do I take this?” she asked.

  “The location is in this shop,” Comrade Orlov.

  Oksana looked up quickly from the paints. What did he mean?

  He smiled at her. “Happy birthday, Oksana.”

  Then . . . these paints were for her? She couldn’t believe it. She stared at him until he began to laugh.

  “It’s your birthday present,” he said. “Last week, you told me you were about to turn twelve. And it’s time you nurtured your gift properly.”

  Oksana touched the paint set’s glass top. “This is mine? Truly?”

  Comrade Orlov laughed again. “Truly. The paints are from France,” he added, taking them from her and opening the hinged glass cover. “They’re watercolors. See how pale they are? And once you begin working with them, you’ll see the colors bleed together a bit on the page. The effect is a picture that looks soft, almost like a dream.”

  Watercolors! Oksana had heard of them, but had never used them in school. She was accustomed to oil paint, bright and bold, not these delicate colors. They did look like they came from a dream. She couldn’t wait to go home and try them out.

  She was smiling so wide her face hurt. “Thank you, Comrade Orlov. Thank you, thank you so much!”

  He waved away her thanks. “Go along,” he said, handing the paints back to her. “I haven’t any deliveries today, but I’ll expect to see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Comrade Orlov.”

  She put the paints in her school satchel, which she hugged to her chest the whole walk home.

  Later, after they had washed up from supper and Babulya sat on the balcony, playing her flute, Oksana showed Valentina her paints, and Valentina said grudgingly that she supposed even black-market men weren’t so bad—sometimes.

  * * *

  - - -

  Two days later was a Saturday. Once the noon dismissal bell rang, Yulia and Lyudmila fell in step alongside Valentina and Oksana.

  “Let’s go to the park,” Valentina said. She sounded excited.

  “Yes, let’s!” Yulia said.

  Oksana’s stomach grumbled. “Let’s go after lunch.”

  Valentina sent a strange look to Yulia and Lyudmila. “You can’t possibly be hungry,” she said. “We just ate breakfast.”

  “That was hours ago,” Oksana said. “And Babulya says I’m growing and should eat a lot.” At some point, she had begun calling Valentina’s grandmother Babulya instead of Tetya Rita. The first time, she hadn’t meant to, but when Babulya and Valentina hadn’t objected or even seemed to notice, she had continued doing it. The name Babulya felt right.

  The girls rounded the corner. Oksana and Valentina’s apartment building stood halfway down the street. Thank goodness! Oksana was starving. She could scarcely wait to eat her ham-and-butter sandwich.

  Valentina darted in front of her. “You can’t go home!”

  “Why not?” Was something wrong? Oksana tried to look at the apartment building, but Lyudmila and Yulia blocked her way.

  “Because . . . because . . .” Valentina stuttered, her eyes wide. Then she tapped Oksana on the shoulder. “Because you have to catch me first!” She sprinted away.

  Oksana grinned and tore down the street after Valentina. The sheer joy of running swept through her, and she laughed. She glanced over her shoulder: Lyudmila and Yulia were on her heels.

  Down another street, two right turns, skirting babushkas in black clothes and stray cats and other children delighted to be free from school. Oksana shot around another corner and saw the gleaming waters of a canal in front of her.

  Babulya said no two canal bridges in Leningrad were alike. During the summer, when Oksana and Valentina had been free to roam the city, they had climbed onto the parapets of the arched granite bridge over the Fontanka River. They had crossed the Palace Bridge, from which they could see the green-and-white splendor of the Winter Palace, and they had rubbed the Blue Bridge’s obelisk for luck.

  This bridge was made of plain metal. Here in Avtovo there were no fancy bridges. Valentina was up ahead, standing at the edge of the canal. Oksana hurried toward her. Autumn sunshine shone like burnished gold on the surface of the river, and the sound of the water lapping the sides of the canal was as gentle as a lullaby. There was beauty everywhere, Oksana realized. It felt like a grown-up thought.

  She reached Valentina and smiled. “You’ve always been faster than me.”

  Valentina’s face turned red. “Let’s not talk about that.”

  Oksana felt heat creeping into her cheeks. She knew what Valentina meant: the last time they had raced each other in Pripyat, on the morning of the explosion, where smoke had drifted across the sky and the air in the schoolyard had tasted of metal. And she had called Valentina a cheating Jew.

  Her face was on fire. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered.

  “There you are!” Yulia exclaimed behind them. “You’re both too fast.”

  Neither girl responded to her. They looked at each other. Oksana hoped Valentina knew how sorry she was.

  Then Valentina’s grin flashed out. She grabbed Oksana’s hand and squeezed. “Let’s go home. Babulya would say we’ve worked up a good appetite from all that running.”

  Something welled up in Oksana’s chest, something so warm and gentle that she couldn’t contain it. She squeezed Valentina’s hand back. Valentina forgave her. She still wanted to be friends!

  “I’m starved,” Lyudmila chimed in. “I could eat a cow!”

  “Why do people say that?” Yulia asked. “Wouldn’t the hooves hurt, going down?”

  Oksana and Valentina laughed. They linked arms with the other girls and walked back. Oksana’s heart swelled until she thought it would burst. What lovely friends she had, friends who forgave her for the bad things she had done, friends who didn’t care if she was perfect or got low marks or wanted to be an artist instead of an engineer. They liked her exactly the way she was.

  When they reached their building, Valentina invited Yulia and Lyudmila to come upstairs with them.

  “What are you doing?” Oksana whispered. “You know they can’t stay for lunch.” Babulya never had friends over to share a meal. She didn’t have the money to feed extra mouths.

  “They won’t stay long,” Valentina whispered back.
“I want to show them the blueprints for my telephone invention.”

  Oksana couldn’t imagine Lyudmila and Yulia had any interest in telephones, but she didn’t want to hurt Valentina’s feelings. Together, the four of them trooped up the stairs. As they walked along the corridor to their room, Valentina shouted, “You’ll love my blueprints!”

  “Why are you yelling?” Oksana asked.

  “I’m not yelling!” Valentina yelled, and opened the door to their room.

  Oksana stepped inside and froze.

  The apartment had been transformed. Babulya had taken down the washing and had strung ribbons of all colors on the laundry lines. The table had been covered with Babulya’s only tablecloth. There were baskets of biscuits and plates of sandwiches and a platter with chocolate sirok. Cups had been set at each of the four place settings.

  Babulya stood next to the table. “Happy birthday, dearest Oksana,” she said.

  This was her birthday party. A party just for her.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t speak. All she could do was smile at Babulya.

  Babulya must have understood, for she took Oksana’s hand and led her to the table. “I know your birthday isn’t until Monday,” she said, “but we wanted to have the whole afternoon to celebrate.” She looked over her shoulder at the other girls. “Let’s have a feast.”

  Everyone cheered. As Yulia and Lyudmila sat down, Oksana hugged Valentina. “Thank you,” she managed to say around the lump in her throat. “Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me before.”

  Valentina hugged her back, hard. “Happy birthday.”

  “This is the best birthday of my life,” Oksana said.

  “It hasn’t started yet,” Valentina objected.

  “It’s already the best,” Oksana said. She went over to Babulya. Then she did something she had never done before: she took Babulya’s hands in hers and kissed them. “Thank you, Babulya. For everything.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Babulya reached for a tea cup. “It’s my honor to deliver Oksana’s birthday toast. Oksana, you are a smart, strong, and creative young lady.” She lifted the cup higher. “To Oksana!”