Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  *

  Before Vasily left, he had given Nadezhda a square of red cloth. “It’s a kerchief for your hair,” he said. He pulled loose her old kerchief and stroked his fingers through her hair, brushing her cheek.

  Nadezhda pressed something cold and smooth into Vasily’s hand. He opened his palm to see a rifle bullet. “My father fought for Russia in the war before the Revolution. He kept one cartridge in his pocket for good luck. He survived the war. Perhaps it will bring good luck to you, too.” Vasily closed his fist around the bullet, then wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder. “Come back to me,” Nadezhda had whispered into his hair.

  Spring came again, and the German army began to rally. Summer began, and they began to move again. They weren’t moving on Moscow this time, but along the Volga and into the Caucasus. Rumors spoke again of terrible losses.

  In July, Nadezhda went again to the woods, to the hut on chicken legs and the old woman who lived inside.

  “The Germans have remounted their attack,” Nadezhda said. “We are losing again.”

  “Yes,” Baba Yaga said. “They are moving along the Volga River, and the Red Army is falling back before them.”

  “Please,” Nadezhda said. “Destroy the German army. Stop them for good.”

  “You know the price,” Baba Yaga said. “Are you prepared to pay it?”

  “I will pay your price on one condition,” Nadezhda said. “I want to see Vasily one more time before he has to die.”

  “I can send you to the city where the battle will be,” Baba Yaga said. “But if you go there, you may die with your lover.”

  “Send me,” Nadezhda said.

  Baba Yaga took a horn and blew three blasts. From the sky flew an eagle. “Sit on the eagle’s back,” Baba Yaga said. “He will take you there.”

  The eagle rose in the sky with Nadezhda on his back, and flew with her to the great city on the Volga River—Stalingrad. Baba Yaga went herself to whisper to the man in Berlin with the moustache, and the man in Moscow named Josef. “No retreat,” she whispered to Josef. “We must make our stand now, or die trying.”

  *

  At the end of July, Stalin issued a new order: “Not one step back!” Anyone who retreated without permission would be shot. Still, the Germans pushed forward, further and further, for Hitler had become obsessed with the city bearing Stalin’s name. Nadezhda waited patiently, trusting in Baba Yaga’s word that the Germans would be destroyed.

  The civilian population was evacuated from Stalingrad as the German army approached. Nadezhda remained behind with the other workers from the steel mill where she had found work. “I am no soldier,” she said to her comrades. “But I can kill Germans.”

  One of the other women spoke more eloquently. “We will die here,” she said. “But we will teach the Germans something about Russian bones and Russian blood, Russian strength and Russian will. And no one will do to our children as the Germans have done to us.”

  Nadezhda clasped hands with the other workers. There were no weapons. There was little they could do. But they would not retreat. Not one step back.

  *

  The battle of Stalingrad began with an artillery attack, and Nadezhda spent the first few hours crouching in a bomb shelter with the other workers. As the artillery grew louder, Nadezhda left the bomb shelter—Baba Yaga had said that she would see Vasily again, and after that, Nadezhda didn’t care what happened. The others followed her out of the shelter, and soon they were able to pick up weapons from bodies in the streets. Nadezhda had never used a gun, but it wasn’t difficult to learn.

  Nadezhda took shelter in an apartment building, firing out the window as German soldiers marched through the streets. It quickly became clear that the Germans would have to secure or destroy every building in Stalingrad in order to take the city. They set about grimly to do just that, but Stalingrad was a vast city, 30 miles long, winding along the edge of the Volga. And the new concrete buildings that lined Stalingrad’s dirt streets were not easy to destroy.

  Through the months and months of house-to-house fighting, Nadezhda was never afraid. She would see Vasily; Baba Yaga had promised it. What had she to fear?

  Nadezhda found Vasily one bright afternoon in the coldest part of the winter. He lay slumped behind a low crumbling wall, alone. Nadezhda ran to him and dropped to her knees, taking his hand in both of hers. “Vasily,” she said.

  Vasily was alive still, but would not live much longer. She could feel the blood from his wounds wet under her knees. She had tried to prepare herself for this, but in the end it made no difference.

  “Nadezhda?” Vasily said. “It can’t be.”

  “I’m here, my love,” Nadezhda said. “I’m here to be with you.”

  Vasily turned his face towards her. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “The bullet you gave me, for good luck—I used it.” A faint smile crept to his lips. “I killed a German with it.”

  Nadezhda pressed Vasily’s hand to her face. “Our sacrifice is not for nothing,” she said. “The German army will be destroyed here.”

  Vasily nodded, but did not open his eyes. For a moment, Nadezhda thought he had died, but then he took another breath and his cold hand moved from her cheek towards the knot at the back of her neck. Nadezhda bent her head, and he loosened her kerchief and stroked his fingers through her shorn hair one last time. Then his hand fell away. Nadezda took his hand again, to hold a moment longer. Then an artillery shell rocked the ground where Vasily lay.

  Nadezhda knew she didn’t have much time left, but she wanted to die fighting, as Vasily had—not mourning. Vasily had a rifle; Nadezda took it from his body and slung the strap over her shoulder. Standing up, Nadezhda turned and saw the house on chicken legs.

  “Turn, comrade; spin, comrade; stand, comrade; stand,” Nadezhda said. “With your back to the armies and your door to me.”

  Baba Yaga came out of her hut. Though before she had always been an ancient hag, today she appeared as a maiden younger than Nadezhda—but her eyes were still as old as the Black Sea, burning like lights in a vast cavern.

  “What are you doing here?” Nadezhda asked. “I thought you stayed in your forest.”

  “Sometimes I must attend to matters personally,” Baba Yaga said. “This was one of those times.”

  “Vasily is dead,” Nadezhda said.

  “In one week, the Red Army will crush the army of the Germans, and their commander will surrender. There will be more offensives, but the Germans will never recover from this defeat. I have granted your wish,” Baba Yaga said.

  “May I ask you a question?” Nadezhda said.

  “Pick your question carefully,” Baba Yaga said. “I eat the overcurious.”

  “Will Russia recover from this defeat?”

  “Life in Russia will never be easy,” Baba Yaga said. “But Russia will always survive. Russian blood and Russian tears, Russian breath and Russian bones, these will last like the Caucasus and the Volga. No conqueror shall ever eat of Russia’s fields. No czar shall ever tame the Russian heart. Your Comrade Josef will live another ten years yet, but when he dies, his statues will be toppled and his city will be renamed. That is what you wished to know, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Another artillery shell exploded nearby; the ground shook, and the house stumbled slightly on its chicken legs. White dust settled slowly over Baba Yaga and Nadezhda, like snow, or spiderwebs.

  “Tell me, Comrade Daughter,” Baba Yaga said. “Are there any bullets in that gun?”

  Nadezhda checked. “No,” she said.

  “Then take this.” Baba Yaga held out her hand; glinting in her palm, Nadezhda saw one bullet.

  “What is the price for that?” Nadezhda asked.

  “You have no payment left that interests me,” Baba Yaga said. “This one is a gift.”

  Warily, Nadezhda took the bullet and loaded it into the rifle. When she looked up, Baba Yaga and the hut on chicken legs had vanished.

  Nadezhda
heard the sound of marching feet. She flattened herself against the remains of one wall, crouching down low to stay hidden. She peered around carefully, and saw German soldiers approaching.

  Nadezhda knew that in the dust and confusion of Stalingrad, the men would pass her by if she stayed hidden. Perhaps she could still slip away to the woods, survive the war, live to rebuild Russia and to drink vodka on Stalin’s grave.

  Nadezhda turned back to look at Vasily one last time. Then, in a single smooth movement, she vaulted over the low wall that concealed her to face the German soldiers.

  Russia’s blood can be shed; Russia’s bones can be broken. But we will never surrender. And we will always survive. “For Russia,” Nadezhda shouted, and raised her rifle.

  ISABELLA’S GARDEN

  Want to plant something.”

  “How about we make Play-Doh cookies, sweetie? Would you like me to roll out Play-Doh for you?”

  “Want to plant another punkmin.”

  “There isn’t room for more punkmins—pumpkins. We already planted three pumpkin hills.”

  “Want to plant moaning glowies.” Morning glories. I looked beyond the garden, at the chain link fence that bordered the neighbor’s yard. Well, we hadn’t planted over there yet; why not?

  “We’ll have to go buy seeds,” I said.

  “We can go to the garden store!” Isabella said brightly, and ran to put on her shoes.

  I stepped out onto the back porch while she searched for her sandals. The pumpkins were coming up, their big leaves sprouting off of thick fuzzy vines. So were the carrots, the eggplants, the cucumbers, the beans—all the beans, even the ones that Isabella had dropped on top of the dirt—the lavender, and the mustard greens. Of all the things my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter had insisted on planting, I thought the mustard greens were probably the weirdest. At least with the eggplant, I could understand why the big purple globes on the seed packet had caught her eye. Mustard greens weren’t flowers, they weren’t purple, and they weren’t something she usually ate. But she’d thrown an absolute fit when I’d tried to slip those seeds back into the seed rack, so into our cart they went.

  I had stopped pretending that the patch of dirt out behind our house was my garden anymore. And really, that was just as well. Gardening—fertility, I joked to my husband Charlie, on those rare days when I had a sense of humor about it—had never really been my thing. Seeds I planted did not sprout. Flowers withered. Tomatoes stayed green on the vine right up until frost. As an experiment, during one of those bitter, bitter summers before I managed to get pregnant with Isabella, I planted five zucchini hills and got not a single fruit.

  Well, I did get Isabella. It just took four years of trying. Fertility charting, invasive tests, Clomid, injectables, and finally, in vitro. But we had our baby.

  Isabella came trotting back, her sandals fastened neatly onto the wrong feet, a naked baby doll under one arm, and a big smile on her face. “Now we can go to the garden store!” she announced, so I got my purse, and we walked down to the little neighborhood shop where they knew Isabella by name.

  *

  Isabella headed straight for the revolving seed rack. “Hang me up,” she said, lifting her arms. I lifted her up so that she could reach the top of the rack, and watched as she selected three varieties of morning glories—blue, purple, and white—plus more seed packets on her way down. I flipped through her selections: climbing black-eyed susans, climbing snapdragons, trumpet vine, scarlet runner beans. She’d decided to go along with the “decorate the fence” theme, apparently. Well, she’d also grabbed a package of ornamental kale. And turnips. And cabbage. “You’ve never even eaten cabbage,” I said, holding up the packet. “Or turnips.”

  “Want to plant cabbage! Want to plant turnips!” She snatched the seed packets and laid them protectively in the cart.

  “How about we just plant the kale? I can probably find a spot for the kale.”

  “Want the kale too.”

  Well, it was only $1.29 per packet. I sighed and went to pay for our latest pile of seeds.

  *

  I found places for cabbage and kale and even the turnips, and then we spent the rest of the afternoon planting vine seeds along the fence. Therese, our next-door neighbor, came out to check her mail while Isabella was working. “Quite the little helper you’ve got there,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said, thinking that she didn’t know the half of it.

  “She’s a doll. When are you going to give her a baby sister? Do you want a baby sister, sweetheart?”

  I ground my teeth and stood up. “Come on, Isabella. Let’s go plant more turnips.”

  Back in the vegetable garden, Isabella dug a furrow with her toddler-sized trowel. “Want a baby sister,” she said a few minutes later, carefully dropping seeds into the dirt.

  “I don’t have one for you, kiddo,” I said.

  “Want to plant a sister.”

  That actually made me giggle. “They don’t sell that kind of seed at the garden store.”

  *

  I bought Charlie a pound of gourmet jelly beans for Father’s Day. He generously shared the flavors he didn’t like with Isabella, who didn’t care if it was peanut-butter or popcorn flavored as long as it was candy and we were letting her eat it. She ate all of them except for one, a creamy bean with yellow flecks, which she held up and looked at thoughtfully. “Want to plant it,” she said.

  “It’s a jelly bean, not a seed,” I said.

  “Want to plant the bean.”

  “Come outside with Daddy,” Charlie said generously. “I’ll help you plant it.” She hopped down from her chair and wrapped her hand around his thumb, her other hand still carefully cradling the bean.

  When I first saw the jelly bean vine coming up, I assumed it was a morning glory or something. The leaves were shaped like Valentines, and the color was a light, silvery green. When I took Isabella around the garden and we looked at everything that was coming up, she pointed at it and said, “That’s the bean plant.”

  “The scarlet runner beans?” I asked.

  “Daddy’s bean,” Isabella said.

  It flowered the first week of July, and shortly afterwards produced thick pods that looked almost like green beans except that they were the color of cream. I pulled one off immediately out of curiosity, and looked inside; the beans were tiny and immature, but I could see the rainbow of colors tucked inside the pod. I shivered and almost ripped out the whole plant. Then, curiosity overcoming my worry, I tasted one. It was sour, like fruit that needed time to ripen.

  By the next day, the pods were as thick as fingers, and Isabella decided it was time to harvest them. We took out a basket and picked all the big yellow-white pods off the plant. Then we took them inside and sat at the dining room table and shucked them, putting the beans in a jar. They’d grown in the full range of flavors. The beans I dropped into the jar were yellow, orange, and cotton-candy pink. I set aside one of the big creamy pods for Charlie to see when he got home, in case he didn’t want to believe me.

  Even with the pod, he clearly thought it was some sort of elaborate prank. He peeled the pod back, popping a light orange bean into his mouth, and laughed. “Hey Izzy-Bean, come here, let me give you something.” He took a quarter out of his pocket and put it in her hand. “They always told me that money doesn’t grow on trees; let’s just see if they really know what they’re talking about. Let’s you and I go outside and plant a money tree and see what comes up.”

  *

  It took just a week of daily watering to get the money tree to sprout.

  Charlie thought I must have gone down to the garden store to get some other seedling tree, just to mess with his head.

  “And the jelly bean vine?”

  “You could’ve bought jelly beans.”

  “The pod they came in?”

  “You aren’t seriously telling me it sprouted.”

  “You are seriously not listening to me, because that’s exactly what I’m tel
ling you.”

  It usually takes fruit trees years to bear fruit, but Isabella’s money tree bloomed in early August, though it was only about as tall as she was. The flowers glittered in the sun, and their petals clinked when Isabella picked them. She got out the brass vase I let her use for her cut flowers, and arranged the money flowers in it. I left it at Charlie’s place at the table.

  Charlie sat down slowly when he saw the money tree flowers. He touched the blooms, making the petals ring like wind chimes.

  “Should’ve had her plant a twenty,” I said.

  Charlie glanced at me nervously and touched the flower again. Then he took a quarter out of his pocket and compared it. “They’re not quite right,” he said after a few minutes. “They’re a little irregular—the design is right, but they’re not perfect circles, and they’re a little too small.” He looked up. “They definitely won’t work in vending machines.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Twenties would probably have some flaw, too. They’d be missing the anti-counterfeiting strip or something.”

  “Well, it’s probably not ethical to spend any of it, anyway,” I said, flicking the petal with my fingernail to hear it clink again. “I mean, it is counterfeit money. Just because Isabella grew it doesn’t make it, you know, kosher to spend.” I glanced at Isabella, who was watching Charlie with a sober look on her face, her naked baby doll in her hands. “But it’s a beautiful flower, sweetheart. I think Daddy loves his money tree.”

  “I do, definitely,” he said, and lifted her onto his lap.

  “Want to spend the money,” Isabella said, plucking a petal from the flower and dropping it onto the table.

  “What do you want to buy, kiddo?” I asked.

  “Want to buy a baby sister . . .”

  *

  September came and little green pumpkins were growing on the pumpkin vines. The morning glories covered the fence, blue and purple and white. There were purple eggplants swelling like tiny lilac eggs, and sweet orange carrots, and more cucumbers than we could eat. Isabella carefully scrubbed each turnip and stacked them in a plastic crate in our dining room; I looked up turnip recipes, never having eaten them before.