An old walnut chair, turned legs, back carved and sanded and softened with age, the seat covered in a threadbare cream and gold brocade, the grey flecked batting peeking through. A chair my grandfather had made, when he and his wife first settled here. A chair from the old house, the first house.
I stopped and stared at it, and it seemed to stare back at me. Confronting me.
Of course it was just a chair, but—why was it here, out in the open, exposed to the elements, at the end of the road? How long had it been here? I approached it, put my hand out to touch it—
—and as I reached out to grab the back, my hand passed through a warmth, a tenderness, a knowing. I let my hand linger—
—then pulled it back sharply, as if I had burned myself. The sharp cool country air snapped around it like a glove that had been left out in the snow.
Suddenly my cellphone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the screen. A message from Riva, just one word:
RUN
A low rumbling hum caught my ear and I looked up the road to see a trio of cars, low and dark, no headlights, just making the turn towards me.
RUN
I rushed down the path through the bushes that led to the old house, shouldered the door, shoved and shoved, pushed my way inside, and then shut it tight behind me. I ducked down, peering through the old thickened glass as one by one the cars pulled up, their engines stilled, and a clutch of men in dark hats and long coats stepped out. Short words, sharp words, some English, some Russian. Men from the town? I couldn’t see. One stared at the old wooden chair, just inches from the first car’s front bumper. He kicked it aside. In the back seat of the second car, a woman, gestured at, shouted at, told to stay—or to get out? I couldn’t tell. She looked down as if she hadn’t heard, but didn’t move. Strands of grey glistening in the afternoon sun. I knew who that woman was.
After my father and his brothers had helped my grandparents build the new house, the old house—just one large room with the window and door facing east—became first a henhouse and then a storage shed, stacked with old wood and baling wire, rusty tools hanging on rusty nails, shelves cluttered with tins filled with cup hooks and screws and hinges and tacks, piles of mouldering books and papers and photos and old wooden pull toys. A blue plastic monkey, long lost from the barrel of its brothers and sisters. A thick layer of dust coated everything. Cobwebs hung from the struts of the ceiling. Every corner was webbed and strung with little gnarled bodies. I dared not look too closely.
We were forbidden from coming in here and, while of course we disobeyed, we only snuck in two or three times that I could remember. We never felt comfortable in here—cold and dark and damp, squat and forlorn, it was the new house’s melancholy older sister. We called it the ghost house. But now it was the haven, the sanctuary, clutching me breathless to its breast. In one motion, all of the men reached into their coats, pulled out and cocked their blunt black pistols—and then stopped, interrupted, as one waved to the others, shushing and gesturing downward. He had heard something. Now they all could hear it. And then, so faintly, I could hear it, too. Someone, a woman, humming or singing inside of the house, to herself or to a small child. Just a few notes in, I began to whisper along. It was something my mother had sung to lull me to sleep.
Bayu-bayushki-bayu
Nye lozhisya na krayu
Pridyot serenkiy volchok
I ukhvatit za bochok
On ukhvatit za bochok
I potashchit vo lesok
Por rakitovyi kustok
Baby, baby, rock-a-bye
On the edge you mustn’t lie
Or the little grey wolf will come
And he will bite you on the bum
Tug you off into the wood
Underneath the willow root
As the men listened, they moved off of the driveway, into the yard, onto the steps, through the door and one by one into the house, as if the tune was winding itself around them and drawing them in.
And then I saw her. The tall sheer curtain at the side of the dining room window shivered, and she stepped out from behind it, perfectly framed, looking towards the front hallway, facing the intruders who were just out of sight. It was odd—I could see her, but not quite see her, my eyes unable to focus. And all this time singing, singing. And then all in a moment, her hair, her face, her body, her clothing, they all at once came together and—
—it’s me, I thought, oh my God it’s me, that’s me in the house, in the window, it’s me, and the woman raised her hand—
A shot. And a thud.
Again. And again. Six men. Six shots. Six thuds. And then she laughed, a light bell-like laugh that stung my ears, and disappeared from view.
The dining room window shattered. Towards the back of the room, down near the floor, a creamy golden light began to flicker and spread. Within minutes, the house was engulfed in flames.
I looked over at Riva, brushing away the tears that were shimmering on her cheeks. She sat in the car and watched the house, watched the door. When it was clear that no one would ever emerge, she moved from the back seat to the front. Turned the ignition. Put the car into gear. Then slowly made her way back up the road to the highway.
Once I knew she was gone, truly gone, I pulled open the door of the old house, the ghost house, then shut it tight behind me, stepped into the sharpening air, walked up the path through the brush, picked up the old walnut chair, righted it and sat on it, and watched the new house burn. It had begun to collapse in on itself, sprays of sparks shooting upward as timbers fell, as the roof buckled, as the floors gave way. To burn a house takes no time these days—half an hour, an hour at the most, much less than a hundred years ago. So much plastic now, and the wood all thin and light and crisp like kindling. Even this house, new in name only, took just a few hours to surrender completely, to crumple and curl as the moon edged up into the sky.
Nichni Politsiyi. Words I remembered from my earliest days here. My grandfather sitting in this chair, in that window, all through the night. I was five, I think, or six, and we had come to visit for Easter weekend, though we never went to church. Funny that. But I remember getting up out of my bed, late in the night or early in the morning, ever so quiet, creeping into the hall, my hand lightly touching the wall, my bare feet softly padding along the floor, and my grandfather’s whisper from the dining room: “Who’s there?”
And I whispered: “Me, Papa—where are you?”
And he said softly: “Come have some water and go back to bed.”
And I crept around the corner into the dining room and there he was, in this chair, in the window, in the dark. Sitting and watching. He had a glass of water for me. I took it and drank it, set the glass down.
“Now go to sleep,” he said.
“Why are you here?” I asked. “What are you looking for?”
“Nichni Politsiyi,” he answered, and then: “It’s not for you to worry about. Go back to your room and sleep.”
“I want to watch with you,” I told him, but he shushed me and turned me and gave me a pat on the rear.
“Off with you,” he said. “And let us hope we never ever see them.”
But now I had.
By the time I was old enough to ask who they were, what they wanted, no one would say. My mother, standing at the sink, clattering plates and bowls and cutlery as she washed the dishes, pretended not to hear me and when I pressed the case, she turned and hissed, “That’s enough.” Then stopped, and slowly lifted her hand from the water—something had broken, a glass or a jar, her palm was slashed across the lifeline and the blood was streaming through the white soapy froth down to her wrist. I pulled an old tea towel from the front of the stove and she pressed it to the wound and sighed once more, almost to herself, “That’s enough.”
I look back now and realize: our family lived in fear. My parents, my grandparents, they came to this new land and brought their fears with them, and they underscored everything like the faint, staticky hiss o
n my grandfather’s old Riga radio. At a time when our neighbours thought nothing of leaving their doors unlocked, ours were checked every night and every morning, and the windows, too.
Never walk into a dark room, we were taught. Always look in the car’s back seat. Never cross a strange animal’s path. Always know where the door is and keep your left eye trained on it. My father’s youngest brother died before I was born, just a teenager, he fell down a well. These things happen on farms, farms are dangerous places. Something like this, no one sees or hears you, your life slips away while parents, brothers, neighbours scour the property calling for you. Your name being shouted far above your head by ever more frantic voices, your name formed out of cries and sobs, this becomes the last sound you hear.
The second youngest, handsome and studious and possibly gay, died in a one-person car accident when I was ten, just lost control of his car and flew off through a guardrail and down a fifty-foot drop. Cool clear night, starlit sky, not another vehicle for miles. “Untimely accidental demise,” said the obituary, unconvincingly. Suicide, my mother said one night when I was listening on the stairs, but my father just sat silent.
And as I sat in the old wooden chair watching the new house succumb to the flames, I wondered what had really happened, to both of them, if there was something more.
When I was a little girl, we would drive back from my aunt’s in Elphinstone well after dark. There was one short stretch where the road dipped and rose like a roller coaster, and my dad would turn off the headlights and we rolled rolled rolled in the pitch-darkness and my mother would cry, “Don’t do that, you’re scaring the children!” when, of course, we loved it and she was the one who was scared. But after Uncle Ted died, we always drove that stretch slowly with the lights on full so we could see the road ahead and everything on it.
I stood up from the old walnut chair and approached the house, peered into what had been the dining room. The furniture, of course, was destroyed, and small fires still burned here and there, but the floor on this side was more or less intact. I could see the shattered window glass, the six charred bodies. The bullets, gleaming in the firelight. Had they shot themselves? Or each other? And who, or what, had lured them in?
Oh my God, it’s me, it’s me—
I wrapped my scarf around my right hand, reached up and into the ruin, picked up one of the bullets and looked at it closely. A tiny stamp into the metal along one side, a sword pointing down behind a crescent moon. I gently dropped it back on the floor where I found it, then turned back, started walking back, back towards the berry bushes, the winding path. I had seen that stamp somewhere before, somewhere in the old house, the ghost house, and now I wanted to see it again.
At the bottom of the path I stopped, stood still and silent. The old house’s old grey door was wide open.
I switched on the tiny blue-white flashlight on my phone and peered inside, stepped inside. It was unexpectedly warm, and dry, dust hanging in the air like a fog. I was alone, and yet—and yet—it was as if someone was behind me, around me, lightly lifting my arm, turning my hand, shining the light onto the papers and photos in the corner. I went to them, knelt before them, reverently, but without yet knowing why. One of the pages partway down the pile was turned so that a small round insignia at the top was revealed. Black and white, yellow and red, the sword and the crescent moon. I lifted the pages, went to pull out the one and saw that beneath, and above, were many similar pages. Forms of some kind, typewritten in Russian, with names and dates and in some cases small photos. Male, female, families, children. Some had letters and numbers stamped, some had handwritten scrawls. Each was dated and signed at the bottom—1939, 1940, 1942, 1938, 1936. Most from during the war, but some from before.
Thirty-seven. Who were they?
As I gathered them up, I saw one more, away from the piles of paper and photos, peeking out from under a crate in the corner. I tugged it out, held it up, to the light of the phone. I couldn’t read any Russian, didn’t recognize any of the other names, but this one I knew. Ковальчук. Kowalchuk. My grandmother’s name. And stapled at the side, my grandmother Lexi’s frightened young face.
Just then, my phone buzzed and buzzed, almost leaping out of my hand, as a cascade of text messages flew by. All from Riva, all from hours before.
I TOLD YOU TO RUN WHY DIDN’T YOU RUN
oh god i’m sorry i’m so sorry
Those men i don’t know them they’re friends of my fathers they just came out of nowhere i
Are you there?
The phone rang for a second, I don’t know if that was you or
Are you there?
Are you alive?
What happened in there?
If you’re there, if you’re somewhere, say something anything
A word a letter
Anything
I thought for a moment, then texted back:
I am in the old house
Three grey dots appeared on the screen, pulsing back and forth. She was typing.
What old house?
I typed back:
The ghost house.
A long pause, and then the three dots again.
The ghost house is gone, it’s been gone for years. It burned down when we were six. It’s all overgrown now, nothing is there.
Katerina? Is this you? Where are you?
The ghost house had burned down. Of course I knew this. Sons crash cars and fall down wells, and houses burn. People vanish. These things happen on farms. I reached out to touch the wall in front of me. My fingers pressed against old grey wood—and then gently through it, its particles redistributing like tiny flies around my fingers. The wall was made of ash. The door, the roof, the crates, the books, the piles of paper and photos, all of it ash, grey upon grey upon grey. The evening breeze rose and swept through the old house, sending the ashes skyward, a swarming cloud of soot that spread high and wide, thinning until it vanished. I looked around and found myself kneeling in a patch of clover where the eastern wall of the house had been. Everything was gone.
Katerina?
Confused, I absently scratched at my arm, which was hot and itchy and sore. I looked down and saw that my skin there was cracking, peeling, flaking. And underneath, a red-orange glow, like coals in a furnace, like embers, like lava. The more I scratched, the more my flesh fell away, and the brighter the orange glow burned.
I could not stay any longer. I now knew—I can’t say how—that while these men were dead, more were on their way.
I’m coming, I texted back to her. I’ll see you soon.
To get to the Huliaks’ from my grandmother’s house, you have to cut through the western field, which over the years has been seeded with barley, alfalfa, and hay, but these last few years has been resting, replenishing, before the cycle begins anew. Even so, you walk along the southern fence to the edge of the Huliak property, look north towards the outbuildings and past them to the main house, long and low and suburban, with a faint light coming from within. We always walked this way as children, west and north from fence to fence to gate to path, telling the stories that we’d been told and singing the songs that we’d been taught.
Here is a story we tell our children. Perhaps you were told this, too. Two sisters, twins, were born to a woodsman and his wife—but the woodsman had chopped down the oldest tree in the forest, a sacred tree, and so a witch of the wood cursed his daughters. Hana was made of fire and could burn you if you touched her. Gerda was made of ice and could freeze away your fingers. And of course, Hana and Gerda could never touch each other or they would both die.
The wood witch had a kind and powerful sister who heard the cries of the woodsman and his wife. She could not lift the curse, but she took the ice-child Gerda to raise as her own and keep her apart from Hana the fire-child. As she grew older, the wood witch befriended Hana the fire-girl and persuaded her that a more powerful and terrifying witch was holding her long lost sister captive. Because she didn’t entirely trust her new friend,
Hana began to drop secret notes in the woods for Gerda to find, and one day Gerda answered them with a note of her own, telling the truth.
Furious, Hana burned the wood witch’s house to the ground, killing her—but also ensuring the curse could never be broken. Gerda saw the smoke above the trees and went running for her sister, but before the kindly witch could stop her, she rushed into Hana’s arms, embracing her. The fire-sister Hana melted the ice-sister Gerda, and the water as Gerda melted turned Hana into ash. At the last moment, the kindly witch turned them both into flowers—the small red and white flowers known as Snow of the Mountain and Fire of the Valley that you find tangled together in the forests of the Old Country. In this way the sisters live on as the flowers live on, and through the story we tell.
I’m coming. The sun had long ago dropped from the sky, but the moon was high and bright above. And as I walked from fence to fence to gate to path, my skin now falling in tatters from my incandescent body, my radiant arms outstretched, thousands of tiny red flowers sprang up behind and around me, night-blooming in my wake.
I’m cutting through the field, Riva.
I will see you soon.
Krisztina
I am the girl in the water. I am the rusalka.
One day when I was thirteen, I woke up very ill, so tired that I could not get out of my bed to go to school. Mama felt my head, listened to my chest. I had no fever, no cough, my heart was strong. I was a good student and rarely unwell, so she kept me home, but I could see she was concerned. At lunch I could eat very little, the smell of everything was overpowering to me. I was sick all over myself and again in the sink. Finally she warmed some clear broth for me and brought it to my bed.
“Mama,” I said. “I have a fish in me.”
It was as if she didn’t hear me, so I said it again, and louder. “Mama. I have a fish in me. The fish is making me sick.” And I took her hand and pressed it to my belly. The little fish quivered and curled under her hand, and she pulled it away as if she had burned herself.
The Bone Mother Page 3
