But it wasn’t. It was horrible, and it was a circle, spinning endlessly in the same track.
Unless she stopped it.
She opened the door.
Her mother slipped into the room. Her face was very pale, her eyes rimmed with red. “Lie down on your stomach,” she said softly. “I’ll put salve on your cuts.”
Oksana lay down on the cold tile floor. She didn’t say a word while her mother rubbed salve on her back, or while her mother covered her wounds with bandages. She didn’t speak while her mother eased a fresh blouse over her head. Then she stood up.
She hated her mother so much she was shaking all over. “Leave me alone.” Her voice was so cold she didn’t recognize it.
Her mother’s eyes widened. “Khusha?” she said uncertainly. “I thought we could have a cup of tea together. Dyadya Boris left,” she added. “He’s gone home for the night. I thought we could have tea and talk, just the two of us.”
Only minutes ago, there was nothing in the world she would have wanted more. Now she didn’t want to see her mother ever again.
“No,” she said. “Go away.”
Her mother’s mouth opened and closed. “All right,” she said at last, and slipped from the room. Oksana listened to her footsteps cross the common room. A door shut. Her mother must have gone into her bedroom.
Outside, the sky was black and snowflakes hissed against the windowpane. Oksana wondered if it was snowing in Leningrad. Maybe Valentina and Babulya were listening to snowflakes whisper against glass, as she was. Maybe they were missing her as badly as she was missing them.
“I love you,” she whispered into the silence.
They were her family. Not Papa or Mama or Dyadya Boris. Valentina and Babulya were the ones she ought to be with.
And then she knew what she had to do.
Moving gingerly, she went into the common room to get her satchel. Back in the bathroom, she locked the door and sat on the floor. Her back was on fire. She had to bite the insides of her cheeks so she didn’t cry out from the pain.
She set her pen to paper and began to write:
Dear Valentina and Babulya:
I need help. My mama has a suitor, and he’s just like my father. He hits me, and she does nothing. Today, for the first time, she belted me—because he told her to.
Now I know she doesn’t love me. Or if she does love me, it isn’t enough.
Could you please take me back? You could keep me a secret. I’d never come out of the apartment. No one would have to know I was there.
I left money in a pair of winter galoshes in the wardrobe. Valentina, you can tell Babulya what I did to earn the money. I don’t want to lie about anything ever again.
If you could please send me the money, then I can take a train back to Leningrad. Or if you can’t take me back, please send the money anyway. I really need it.
Thank you. You are my family, always.
Oksana
When she finished, she hid the letter in her chemise and slept with it close to her heart. She thought about adding a postscript to the letter, explaining what she would do with the money if she couldn’t use it for a train ticket to Leningrad.
She would run away. She would go somewhere they would never think of looking for her. She’d come up with a new name. She’d go to an orphanage. She’d heard they were awful places, little better than prisons, but at least the workers wouldn’t beat her. She’d live there, going to school, getting good marks so she could go to a university someday. She’d become an artist. She would become herself.
It was too hard to explain. She would have to tell them someday, when she was older and could find the proper words.
In the morning, she went up to the other sixth-grade girls in the play yard before school. She held up the letter. “Whoever mails this for me gets all my pocket money,” she said, “and I’ll pay you back for the stamp, too.” As the girls clamored around her, she could finally take a deep breath. She would escape. Valentina and Babulya wouldn’t let her down.
36
LENINGRAD, RUSSIA, SOVIET UNION
NOVEMBER 1986
Valentina
VALENTINA RAN AS fast as she could. She had to get to her grandmother. Babulya would make everything right.
She banged through the market’s front doors. The shop was crowded, with three lines snaking up and down the aisles. She weaved her way around the customers until she reached the counter. Babulya, who was weighing a block of cheese, glanced at her.
Wordlessly, Valentina held up Oksana’s letter. Babulya must have seen the fear in her face, for she asked one of the other workers to take over for her. She waved for Valentina to come around the counter. Together they went into Babulya’s office, where Valentina handed her the letter and waited in silence while Babulya read it.
When she was done, Babulya sat down at her desk. “Well,” was all she said.
“We have to help her!” Valentina burst out. “She can’t stay there.”
“No, she can’t,” Babulya agreed quietly. “But if Oksana comes to live with us—even if she does so secretly, vanishing one day without a word of explanation to her mother—then her mother will go to the police and ask them to find her daughter. And where do you think is the first place they’ll look? Where Oksana lived for almost six months,” she answered her own question.
“She could hide in our apartment! No one would know she was there!”
“The police would look. And what sort of life is that for Oksana, living in one small room, never able to go outside or attend school or make new friends?” Babulya pinched the bridge of her nose, as if the thoughts pained her. “I don’t see what we can do to help her.”
“We could all run away together. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the police looking for Oksana in our apartment.”
“Sit.” Babulya pointed at the chair in front of her desk. Reluctantly, Valentina sat down. “My dear Valyushka,” Babulya went on, “we can’t disappear. We don’t have the money to buy false identity papers. Besides, if we and Oksana vanished, the police would suspect we took Oksana, because Oksana recently lived with us. Then the police would hunt down all of us.”
They had to rescue Oksana somehow. Or else she would be alone, with no one to help, nowhere to hide. And Eleonora Ivanovna and her suitor would keep hurting her.
Babulya reached across the desk to take Valentina’s hand. “Look at me,” she said. Her face was serious. “The best way for Oksana to remain safe is for her to vanish on her own. Go someplace where no one would look for her. Live with a stranger, someone the police couldn’t trace her to. And I can think of only one person who might be able to take her in.”
For a moment, they looked at each other. Then Valentina understood. “Your blackbird girl,” she breathed, and joy flooded her heart because they would be able to help Oksana after all.
Except her mother didn’t agree with her and Babulya. “You haven’t even asked Feruza,” she pointed out to Babulya. “What if she says no? And won’t it look suspicious if Oksana joins her household—a blond Ukrainian girl with a family of dark-haired Uzbeks? Besides, Oksana will need money for travel and false identity papers.”
“What is this money Oksana mentions in her letter?” Babulya asked Valentina. “Did she earn pin money fixing things for the neighbors like you do?”
Valentina opened her mouth to tell them about Oksana’s black-market work, but her mother kept on talking. “Who could make identity papers for Oksana anyway? We don’t know any forgers!”
“Couldn’t we ask around to find one?” Valentina asked.
Her mother sighed as she took off her hat. She’d barely come in the door from work before Valentina and Babulya had told her about Oksana’s letter. It was her first week at her new job. She’d gotten a position as a music teacher at a primary school that was on the opposite s
ide of Leningrad, so she had to take the train home and didn’t get back until early evening. “Ask around for a forger?” she repeated. “Valyushka, that’s hardly something we can mention to our neighbors! Someone would probably report us to the police, and then your grandmother and I would be arrested and you sent to an orphanage.”
Valentina sagged. Her mother was right. Without false identity papers, Oksana couldn’t start a new life with Feruza in Uzbekistan. And even with new papers, Oksana’s sudden appearance in a family of Uzbeks would look strange.
There was nothing she could do to help. Oksana would have to stay with those awful people.
Valentina kicked the wall. If only there were something she could do!
“Valya,” her mother said in a warning voice.
“Let her be,” Babulya said. “The child needs time for her sadness and anger.”
Valentina couldn’t bear to be in the room anymore. She went down the hall to the communal bathroom so she could be alone. She braced her hands on the sink and thought. When Babulya was a child, she hadn’t given up. She had kept on living, even when she didn’t want to.
Well, Valentina wouldn’t give up, either. She’d help Oksana. No matter what she had to do. She could take the money out of Oksana’s galoshes and travel to Minsk herself and then—what? The two of them run away together? The police would find them. Besides, she’d never leave Mama and Babulya.
She thought again of the black-market money in the galoshes. All that money, and there was nothing they could do with it—
She remembered the foreign passport she and Oksana had unwrapped. There was someone she knew who could make false identity papers: Comrade Orlov.
And she knew where to find him! Oksana had told her about his photography shop. Valentina would go there straightaway after school tomorrow. Should she tell Mama and Babulya? They’d be sure to object, saying it was too dangerous and they’d go themselves. But if they went in her place, what if Comrade Orlov didn’t trust them? Then he wouldn’t help Oksana.
But he might be more willing to believe her. A child was less likely than an adult to lie, he might think. Plus, she was Oksana’s best friend. Perhaps Oksana had told the man about her.
No, she wouldn’t say a word to Mama or Babulya. She would do this all on her own.
* * *
- - -
The next day after school she went to the photography shop. She had hidden Oksana’s black-market money in her satchel, while her mother and grandmother had been fixing breakfast in the communal kitchen. Taking a deep breath, she went inside.
The shop was one small room, with glass cases containing cameras and photography equipment. A man in a brown suit stood behind the counter, writing in a big book that looked like the account ledger Babulya used at her shop.
The man looked up. “May I help you?”
Valentina took the money out of her satchel and set it on the counter. The man’s eyebrows rose. “Aren’t you a bit young to be carrying around so much money?” He sounded amused.
“My friend Oksana used to work for you,” she said. “This is the money she earned—”
The man grabbed her wrist. He pulled her after him, through a curtained doorway into a small back room. Then he let go of her. His face was furious.
“Don’t you know better than to talk about such matters out in the open?” he snapped. “So you come to me from Oksana, who was one of my best couriers and who left me without a word of explanation? I ought to run you out of my shop, simply for being friends with that unreliable girl.”
“She isn’t unreliable,” Valentina said quickly. “Her mother showed up one day and took her home. Oksana barely had time to pack. That’s why I’m here.” The words tumbled out so fast, she was breathless. “Oksana needs false identity papers. I’ll pay you for them. If I don’t have enough, I’ll work for you to pay off the debt.”
Muttering something under his breath, the man left the room. Unsure if she was supposed to follow him, Valentina waited. He came back in, holding the stack of money.
“Identity papers are expensive.” He tossed the money onto a desk. “If you’re foolish enough to go to the police to tattle on me, I’ll say you’re a liar.” He bent down to look her in the eye. “And who do you think they’ll believe, little girl?”
“You.” Her heart beat very fast. “Please help us. Oksana is in terrible trouble. Her mother and her suitor beat Oksana. We have to get Oksana away from them. She needs new identity papers so they can never find her.”
The man’s eyes searched her face. “How can I know you’re telling me the truth? Prove you truly are Oksana’s friend.”
She had no idea what to say. “You gave Oksana a set of paints for her birthday,” she began, wondering what else she could come up with. “Oksana worked for you because she wanted to earn money for a train ticket to Minsk. And . . . and . . .” She faltered as the man stared at her without expression. “And she’s my best friend! She’s in danger. See for yourself.”
She set her satchel on the floor and fished through it until she found Oksana’s letter. Comrade Orlov took it from her. As he read, his face hardened.
“Oksana told me about you.” His voice was gruff. “She said you and your grandmother were kind. The way she said it . . . she sounded as though it was a miracle that you would be good to her.”
He looked Valentina squarely in the eye. “I’ll get the fake papers. It will take some time. A week or two, at best.” He handed the money back to her. “There’s no charge,” he said, and now his voice was gentle. “Not for Oksana and those who would help her.”
37
MINSK, BELORUSSIA, SOVIET UNION
DECEMBER 1986
Oksana
THEY WEREN’T COMING. Oksana knew it in her bones. Neither Valentina nor Babulya had replied to her letter, and it had been two weeks since she’d sent it. She trudged behind her mother and Dyadya Boris. Even at seven p.m., Volodarkovo Street was still crowded with people hurrying home from work or school. In the descending darkness, passersby looked like black blurs.
Dyadya Boris was annoyed. He was talking to her mother in the low, tight voice that Oksana had learned to dread, for it meant he was going to smack one of them once they were home and no one else could see.
Tonight he had taken them to a restaurant for supper. It was supposed to be a grand treat. Oksana hadn’t been to a restaurant in ages, and she had tried to enjoy her sorrel-and-kidney soup and gravy-drenched duck. But her stomach rolled so badly when she was with Dyadya Boris that she had only been able to choke down a few bites.
He and her mother walked a few paces ahead of her down the street. Oksana followed them, her head down and her arms wrapped around herself, trying to keep warm.
“Ungrateful child,” Dyadya Boris said to Oksana’s mother. “She wouldn’t even try the fried cheese cakes.”
“Oksana has a delicate appetite,” her mother said.
“You’re always making excuses for her,” he muttered.
No, she wasn’t, Oksana thought with a burst of anger. Her mother didn’t sit quietly by anymore. When Dyadya Boris demanded that Mama punish Oksana, Mama obeyed. Whatever Dyadya Boris wanted, Mama did. She had slapped Oksana in the face. She had pushed her into a wall.
Afterward, Mama was always sorry. She’d apologize and cry and bring Oksana ice and ointment and bandages. She’d beg Oksana not to make Dyadya Boris angry.
And the whole time, Oksana’s hatred of her mother burned so hot she felt as though she would burst into flame.
If Babulya and Valentina didn’t send her the black-market money soon, she would have to run away with empty pockets. She’d get away, as far as she could, and she’d come up with a new name. She’d walk into an orphanage and tell them she had nowhere else to go. They’d take her in, she knew. It wouldn’t be a home, but an institution, with strict rules. But it would be s
afe. No one would hurt her.
“I want a drink,” Dyadya Boris said.
“I don’t have any vodka at home.” Oksana’s mother scurried to keep up with him.
Oksana gritted her teeth. She knew the routine by now. Dyadya Boris would stop at a store and pick up a bottle of vodka. He’d sit at the kitchen table and drink and get meaner. Oksana would wish she had a room to hide in, but of course the common area was her bedroom and she’d sit on the sofa, huddled as small as could be, hoping he wouldn’t take notice of her.
But tonight he would. Because he was already furious.
Somebody grabbed her hand for an instant, then let go. What had just happened? Oksana turned around, scanning the crowd of people streaming along the pavement. Who had touched her? She didn’t recognize anyone—
And then she saw Valentina. She stood a few feet away, watching Oksana. Behind Valentina, wearing a cap pulled low over her face, was Babulya.
They had come!
She made a movement toward them. Valentina shook her head and pointed across the street at an alley between two apartment towers. She must want to meet there. Of course. Oksana’s mother and Dyadya Boris mustn’t see them. They wouldn’t approve of Oksana seeing her Jewish friends.
Nodding and holding up a hand, signaling that she would come soon, Oksana hurried after her mother and Dyadya Boris. Her family—her true family—had come! She felt as though fireworks were exploding in her heart.
Her mother and Dyadya Boris were walking into a shop. Oksana’s mind raced. She couldn’t let Dyadya Boris buy vodka and go to the apartment. He’d stay there for hours, or maybe all night, drinking and smoking and complaining. She wouldn’t be able to get away from him to talk to Valentina and Babulya. She had to do something!
The Blackbird Girls Page 24