The Bone Mother

by David Demchuk

  I am quite old now, perhaps too old. I have outlived all the sisters I met when I first came here. It is my own death that I wait for, if death can ever come for me, and I knit to pass the time. We have a cook that we’ve taken in, a young woman from a nearby town who bore a daughter out of wedlock. The girl is ten years old. I spend the mornings helping her with her studies, then in the afternoons we play together in the courtyard, and in the evenings I teach her how to knit. With her, I am a child again, with still so much to learn.

  Nadiya

  I was only out of the room for a moment, but when I came back she was gone.

  My husband Emil and I had separated five months earlier when I became aware that he was seeking out the companionship of young men. A pederast, this was the word at the time. Such behaviour was not unknown to me—I would join my friends for evenings at the theatre and the Kyiv Opera and we would often gossip about which actors and singers were more interested in each other than in their leading ladies. Still, it was a criminal act, and his activities were dangerous to us both. While I loved my husband, I could not compromise my desire for a complete marriage, nor could I risk being seen as his accomplice. And so we parted, amicably and discreetly. He set me up in a flat on Reitarska Street in the old city, and deposited a monthly stipend into a separate account in my name. But my daughter and I never saw him again.

  Larysa was quite young, only seven years old, and she missed her father terribly, asking for him over and over. She took to spending more time alone, playing with her dolls and looking at picture books and talking to herself, telling little stories.

  I once caught her standing in front of my bedroom mirror laughing and smiling and asking it if she was pretty. “Do you think I am pretty?” were the words that she said. When I stepped into the room, she blushed and turned away as if she’d been caught doing something shameful. There was something about this moment that I almost recognized, it was like a word on the tip of my tongue, but I brushed it off and told her not to play with my things, to go to her own room and prepare for bed.

  A few days after, my mother sent a telegram asking us to come to Odessa for a beach holiday—our tickets would be waiting for us at Central Station on the 23rd, just one week away. I stopped in at the school a few minutes early so that I could advise them of our travel plans.

  The administrator smiled and took me aside, then said, “Your daughter is finally coming out of her shell, I see. She was so quiet at the start of the year but now she chatters constantly—your new nanny seems to have made a difference.”

  I was just about to tell her that she was mistaken, that we had no nanny, when suddenly Larysa appeared at the office door, smiling and excited, with a fresh drawing in her hand. I decided to let the matter lapse, and thanked the administrator for her time. As we were leaving the building I asked Larysa if I could see the drawing. She unfolded it and handed it to me. It was a woman, tall and handsome with a waist like a wasp, a long black skirt, black jacket, black gloves and a smart black hat. She was surrounded by small shadows. At first I thought they were tombstones but then realized they were the silhouettes of many small children. “Who is this?” I asked. “Is this your new nanny?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “She lives in the mirror with all of the other children and she visits me every night.” Once again I felt that there was something familiar about this, something smouldering in the back of my mind, something just out of reach. However, I knew that children her age often created imaginary friends and playmates for themselves, especially after a loss. I forced a smile and looked at the picture once more.

  “Well, she seems very pleasant,” I ventured. “Does your nanny have a name?”

  “Her name is Miss Skovanka, and she wants to watch over me always.” She held out her hand to me and I instinctively reached for it, then realized what she wanted was the drawing. I folded it and passed it back to her, and she clutched it to her chest as the wind began to whip around us. I placed my hand on her back but she shrugged it away.

  “Miss Skovanka is very kind to take such an interest in you. I think we can take care of you together. I can be with you during the day, and she can watch you at night. How would that be?”

  Larysa furrowed her brow and kept looking forward as we walked. “She said always,” was her reply, which struck me as impertinent, but then I remembered how difficult these months had been and how few friends she had, at school or on the street. A nanny could be just what Larysa needed, even if she did not exist.

  That evening, between supper and bedtime, Larysa was in her room reading to herself, singing little songs, chittering about her day at school. I was pleased that she was no longer sullen and silent, but I felt a vague unease that she was sharing these childish moments with a figment. I was half out of my chair to ask her to come sit with me when suddenly she let out a shriek. I vaulted across the room, threw open her door and saw that the shoulder on her night dress was torn. “What’s happened?” I asked. “Have you hurt yourself?”

  “We were playing a game, Miss Skovanka and I, and she reached out and tried to catch me.” She had her hand over her shoulder, and beneath I could see her skin was red and raw and scratched. She has done that to herself, I thought as I pulled her close against me. She wants to use Miss Skovanka to gain my attention. Perhaps the nanny has outgrown her usefulness, and Larysa needs my help to let her go. I looked around the room. Unlike the full-length glass across from my bed, Larysa had only the modest square mirror above her dresser. For a moment I thought I caught, out of the corner of my eye, a face, a shadow, but no, it was nothing. A trick of the light in a darkening room.

  “I am sure that Miss Skovanka meant you no harm,” I said. “But, if you like, you can come sleep in my bed tonight.”

  “Yes please,” she said, holding me tighter. And I smiled. After so many years of doubt and worry, it seemed I knew something about raising a child after all.

  I tidied the flat and turned out the lights, Larysa following along like a kitten, then pulled on a nightdress and slipped into bed, and she nestled against my back, away from the mirror, her warmth for a moment reminding me of Emil and what I missed most from him. I listened as her breathing slowed, sigh upon sigh upon sigh. I kept my eyes trained on my bedroom mirror, on my dim reflection across from me, until I, too, fell asleep.

  I awoke with a start. No more than two or three hours had passed. The room was so black I wondered if I had gone blind—but then faint outlines of the furnishings emerged from the darkness. I realized that Larysa was no longer curled against me. I felt around behind me. I was alone under the coverlet. “Larysa?” I whispered.

  I heard her before I saw her. As my sight adjusted, I perceived that she was seated on the floor across from the mirror, naked and shivering, rocking herself, gasping and muttering, strange sounds, strange words. A troubling private ritual. Did she know where she was? Was she even awake? “Larysa?” I whispered again.

  I pulled the covers from the bed, knelt down beside her and wrapped them around the two of us. “Mummy?” she said, as if waking from a distant dream. “Mummy, Miss Skovanka said she was sorry, she would never hurt me, it was just a game.”

  “Of course it was, dear.” She was still half in a trance—fever, chills, beads of sweat. Had she been ill all this time and I just hadn’t realized? The room was suddenly so warm, so close, I thought I might faint myself. I stood up and made my way to the tall hinged windows that faced out onto the street, unlatched and opened them as far as their flat steel chains would allow. I hurried out the door to fetch a glass of water for Larysa—and once again, as I passed the mirror, I saw, I felt I saw, something, a flicker, a presence—I shook my head to clear it, rushed to the kitchen, the sink, the cupboard, found and filled a cut glass goblet, the survivor of a set Emil had found for us years ago. I rushed back, tripping over my own feet, pushed open the door and Larysa was gone. The quilt lay in a rumpled crescent on the floor. The bed was empty, as was its underside. The windows would no
t, could not, open far enough for her to fall or jump out. The wardrobe was empty.

  “Larysa?” I called. Was she in the washroom? No. Was she back in her own room? No. The hallway, the closets, the living room, dining room, pantry—“Larysa?”—then I stopped. I heard a faint chuckle, like the rustle of dry leaves. Hide and Seek! I thought to myself. All just a game! “Larysa, where are you?” I ran back to the bedroom—that chuckle again—then a scattering of giggles, high and sharp and biting. I glanced in the mirror, without even meaning to, and I glimpsed, just a flash: All of them, the little shadows, and centred among them, with one hand on Larysa’s shoulder and the other over her mouth, was Miss Skovanka, tall and thin and pale with hard cold eyes and a crimson slash for a mouth. She smiled at me, an impossible smile, and stepped back into the darkness, pulling Larysa in with her.

  The police came and went. They were led by an odd little man in a uniform I did not recognize. His Russian was forced and foreign. Abduction was what he surmised. I could not persuade him otherwise—and, with no forced entry apparent, my estranged husband was the sole suspect. I telegraphed my mother and advised her I would be travelling alone, and would explain why once I arrived. But when I stepped up to the ticket counter and showed my identification, the clerk handed me my ticket and also an envelope—a reply from her which merely said “I know.” The next morning, when I arrived at Odessa Station, my mother was waiting on the platform with her driver, and this was the story she had to tell as we drove to her home near Lanzheron:

  “I am not surprised you have forgotten, as you were very small, but when you were a girl a friend of yours vanished in just the same way as Larysa. Several children disappeared—we thought at first it was a murderer, but then we heard the stories from our own families. This goes back many years for us, decades, even centuries.

  “As you know, our land has suffered many invasions and annexations. It was not uncommon for husbands to be killed, wives and children to be taken and enslaved. There are tales of women who resisted and fled, who hid in the dense Carpathian woods and made their own lives there as thieves, prostitutes, anchorites, healers, and seers. One was known for gathering orphans, concealing them and protecting them from predacious, murderous soldiers. She was known as Dama Shkovanka, or ‘Miss Hiding Place.’

  “Of course, as these stories too often unfold, she was observed and followed by a clutch of hussars back to her home, and when she refused to release the children into their custody, the soldiers slaughtered them in front of her, and then tortured and killed her as well. Forever after, it is said, she will torment their descendants, taking some of their children for her own. How she chooses, when and why, we do not know. But her eyes are always on us, from within mirrors, from behind picture-glass, and in the reflections on polished silver and tin. She watches and she waits. She calls to our young ones in a voice that only they can hear, she gains their trust and pulls them in—for her loneliness is insatiable, and she craves their company. I would have dismissed this as a fantasy if I had not seen the effects myself. And, too late, I tell you now what I thought you already knew.”

  We passed much of our visit in grief and in silence. I sat cloistered inside the house, in corners, away from the light. I found my eyes searching over every shining surface in hopes of spying my daughter’s face looking back at me. And then, when I returned to my flat, I could not stop myself: I threw open the door to Larysa’s bedroom and into it I moved every mirror of every size, every hanging glass, every metal tray and cup and vase—hundreds and thousands of rubles I spent in corner shops and antique stores until all four walls were covered, every surface—and each night I sat on her bed and prayed that she would show herself. I do it still, I will do it tonight. I sit and watch and wait, as Miss Skovanka once watched me.

  Dragoi

  When I was thirteen, shortly after the end of the war, my mother and sister and I moved from the eastern village all the way to Krakow, where my Aunt Polina lived. Both my father and Polina’s husband had been killed in recent battles, and Polina had found a house where we, the widows and children, could live together. While she and my mother had never been close, they were lonely and afraid now and faced an uncertain future. Polina, in particular, feared retaliation for her German husband’s Nazi ties, had apparently removed her rings, destroyed her wedding certificate and had returned to her maiden name. My mother hoped that a new home would be a new start, and that we could support each other in whatever challenges we faced.

  And yet: even though her driver met us at the train station and brought us to her home, Polina rushed to the door in a panic as if she’d forgotten we were coming. She pushed the key to the new house into my mother’s hand, stammered something about unexpected guests, and then had the driver take us away without her. We drove off in uneasy silence, weaving through the streets until we pulled up in front of an unassuming house on Ulica Szeroka. As the driver brought our cases up the steps, he assured us that Polina was preparing to join us, and would do so at her earliest opportunity.

  She never did. Later that night, perhaps when the driver turned the key in the lock, or when my sisters and I pulled the dust cloths from the worn but elegant antique furniture, or when my mother tucked us into our freshly changed beds, Aunt Polina fell down her cellar stairs shrieking and tearing at herself, had a heart attack, and died.

  A few days after the funeral, my mother was upstairs bathing my sister and I was sitting alone in the kitchen, when I heard a strange sound coming from the basement. As if an animal had somehow gotten trapped and was whining to be freed. In our previous house, a fox came into the cellar through a loose window and smashed some jars of my mother’s beets and sauerkraut. I called out for her but she couldn’t hear me. I decided to be brave and go downstairs to see if it was a fox, and perhaps I could release it. I knew it might be rabid, so I put my gloves on just in case.

  The staircase down was narrow, with pantry shelves along one side, stocked with canned goods. Nothing behind them. The animal sound was coming from farther down, somewhere behind the stairs. I reached the floor, put my hand out towards the centre of the room, feeling for the beaded chain of the ceiling light. I found it, pulled it, splashed the room with harsh white light. In the corner behind the stairs was a new-looking coal furnace. Could something have come down the chimney? As I moved closer, my gloved hands ready for the capture, I realized the sound was of someone sobbing. Someone beside or behind the furnace. Someone I couldn’t see. I drew closer still, looked one way and then another. No one was there, I was alone, but still I could hear it—coming, it seemed, from within the wall.

  The rest of the basement was lined with stone, but this corner was built over with bricks. I leaned in towards those on the staircase wall, as this was where the sound was the loudest—and suddenly one brick fell out, was pushed out, and then another, and I could see in, and what I saw was a hand. A large, thick-fingered hand, gloved perhaps like mine. And then the fingers moved.

  I flew up the stairs and crashed into my mother, almost knocking her down. I could barely form words, I was so frightened. My mother told my sister, still wet and wrapped in her towel, to go back upstairs and wait while we investigated. Normally she would have protested but she could see the fear in my face, and went back up to our bedroom.

  I shushed my mother as we crept down the stairs, brought her around and pointed at the bricks, at the hole in the wall. She moved slowly with me, and then closer to the hole, peered into it. “See?” I asked. “See the fingers?” She nodded—then reached in, touched the hand.

  “Clay,” she said. “It’s made of clay.”

  “I saw it move!” I said. “I heard it crying!”

  She gave me a stern look and was about to scold me—when the sobbing began once more. She looked at the wall, and then looked at me. “I know what this is,” she said. “And I know who we must call.” She ushered me back towards the stairs. I reached for the chain but she stopped me. “Leave the light on,” she said. “And be care
ful on the steps.”

  Two days later, very early in the morning, my mother answered a knock at the door and welcomed in an old woman, older than any I had ever known or seen. I never knew where she came from, or what her name was. The way she moved and spoke made me think of our village home but I did not remember ever meeting her. My mother handed her a small cloth bag which she tucked into her coat pocket, and then she walked directly to the kitchen and down into the basement. None of us followed.

  My legs ached from standing by the time she returned, though she could only have been gone a few minutes. She did not even try to take my mother aside—she addressed her directly in front of us, and this is what she said.

  “You must leave, before nightfall if at all possible. You can come back to the borderlands with me, if you wish. This is a stolen house, as is every chair and table and bed and bucket within its walls, stolen and now cursed. It belongs to the Yevrei, and the creature downstairs is a Golem—formed of clay by a master of the Kabbalah to protect the wife and child who lived here before you. The husband was taken by soldiers and executed; it is his soul which inhabits the monstrosity, and it is his heart that breaks with grief. For his wife and child were taken before he could possess the statue, and now they, too, are dead. He is trapped here, filled with rage and despair. You are in peril if you stay.”

  “You say this house is stolen,” said my mother, “but my sister Polina bought this house, she bought it for us to live in together.”

  “Your sister bought it from a thief, and she knew she was doing so. She knew the house, she came to see it while the family still lived here. She was the first victim of the Golem, and the thief who arranged the sale was the next. The Golem bears you no ill will, but he cannot let you stay.”