The Ladies' Lending Library

by Janice Kulyk Keefer

  There is nothing to vacuum at the cottage. The floors are swept of sand every night, but that is Zirka’s job, when the boys have gone to bed for the night. She insists that both boys go down with her to the beach every morning and afternoon, in spite of Andriy’s protests that he’d really be happier reading comics at the kitchen table; she wants to make sure that her sons remember this summer at Kalyna Beach as the happiest, most carefree time of their lives. Andriy tries very hard to give nothing away, putting on a brave face when his mother shoos him away to go play with the other boys. He hides, as best he can, the terror he always feels in the company of boys who are always pushing and shoving and pinching, daring him to hit back.

  Which he will never do, for Andriy hates fighting: it sickens him. At home, watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, he would feel like throwing up when Popeye and Bluto went at it, shoving their fists in each other’s faces, tearing apart Olive Oyl’s house plank by plank. He would look up from the screen and see light pouring from the ground-level windows into the dark well in which the television flickered. And then he’d feel queasy at how they were making themselves prisoners while the whole world was waiting for them, outdoors. The daylight they hadn’t yet felt on their faces, the garden, the grass, the praying mantis hiding among the daisies or the skin of ice on the puddles—all of it unnoticed, eclipsed, as good as dead to them. It made his breathing go shallow and his chest ache. It wasn’t that the world didn’t exist when he wasn’t outside in it, but that he didn’t exist when he wasn’t face to face with things, real things and not crude drawings of them flashing on a television screen.

  The great rock on which the boys are gathered this afternoon—the Seech—is hopelessly real. Andriy sits at the very end, while Yuri stands defiantly next to the throne. For Pavlo has demanded he announce his plan, describe, at long last, the strategy of the raid the Zaporozhtsi are to carry out, or else to relinquish his role as Hetman. Yuri’s eyes are painfully bright; he keeps blowing out air from his bottom lip, which he makes protrude until his upper lip has vanished. It’s to keep himself still, Andriy understands: to keep himself from shouting at Pavlo; from bursting into tears at the way in which he, Yuri Metelsky, is about to be disgraced, like the great Hetman Mazeppa, beaten and tied to his horse, wandering the steppes till he dies of exposure.

  “So you have no clue?” Pavlo’s question is purely rhetorical.

  “We could always kidnap Darka,” Teyko pipes up.

  “For the last time, shut up,” Pavlo warns his brother. He’s not having Darka’s name mentioned by anyone but himself: it was only yesterday morning that she made a fool of him in front of everyone, and all because he’d been trying to peer down the top of her two-piece while she was reading a movie magazine by the lake. “Go away,” she’d grumbled. “Go away and don’t come back till you’ve grown up!” She hadn’t taken him seriously enough to be angry.

  Ignoring Yuri, Pavlo walks right up to the throne, sitting down on the jut of rock as magisterially as he can. “While Yuri’s trying to come up with something better than burning another roll of tarpaper, I’ll tell you my plan. It’s very simple, and it gives us a chance to carry out an operation that will prove just how cunning we are, how—.” He is about to say brave but instead the word “diabolical” comes out.

  “Meaning?” Olek asks dryly.

  “Shut up, you. Look—who is the only guy in all of Kalyna Beach who’s so tied to his mama’s apron strings that he can’t even go for a pee on his own?”

  Andriy braces himself, but to his astonishment the name that rings out isn’t his.

  “Billy Baziuk!” Nick calls, sticking out his tongue, popping his eyes and wagging his head from side to side. Everyone laughs, even Andriy, who still can’t believe his good luck.

  “So let’s do old Billy a favour. Let’s give him the chance to have a bit of fun, away from his mama and her makeup kits. Let’s get Billy a date—a date with Darka!”

  There is a hush: the boys are struck dumb by the audacity of Pavlo’s plan. As he explains it, they will have all the fun of a prank, without any chance of getting caught. And even if they do, what’s the big deal? No one gets sent to reform school for a practical joke. Pavlo is acclaimed, not just as Hetman, but as resident genius as well.

  Then Yuri speaks up. “She won’t even let you get a peek at her boobs—so how’re you going to get her to go on a date with Billy?”

  According to the code, Pavlo should be taking a swing at Yuri for what he’s just said, but all Pavlo does is to smile, a broad, deeply unpleasant smile, as he calls Andriy’s name and motions him over.

  Andriy waddles up as quickly as he can. When everyone’s eyes are on him, as they are now, he feels even fatter and clumsier: his walk becomes exaggerated, the wobble of his chest more pronounced. But for once there are no calls of Titty or Pampukh, no wolf whistles, no feet stuck out to trip him. For some reason, Pavlo has singled out Andriy, and the rest of the boys are stumped, wondering why Pavlo’s bestowing his favour on Yuri’s kid brother. For Pavlo’s voice isn’t scornful, as it usually is when he addresses Andriy or deigns to notice his existence. Pavlo is speaking to Andriy as if he were a trusted lieutenant, almost an equal, while Yuri is pushed to the edge of the group.

  And so the New Hetman of Kalyna Beach unveils to them all the exploit he’s imagined, and the means by which it is to be arranged and carried out. When he has finished, he swears them all to secrecy. Even Yuri, to his brother’s great surprise, agrees to swear—what’s more, he volunteers to get Katia on side.

  Boy crazy is the expression all the ladies are using, not just about Darka Marchuk, but about what they call “the whole younger generation.” Perhaps they pick the expression up from the books they’re reading so surreptitiously, or perhaps the words materialize from whatever’s in the air that summer, and not just at Kalyna Beach. Girls today are boy crazy, and it’s simply a disgrace. The fact that there are no boys anywhere near enough for Darka to chase doesn’t deter the ladies: it’s not the act so much, they say, as the state of mind.

  They would never have been allowed to run after boys, calling them on the phone, hanging about at corner stores or soda fountains and making eyes at anything in a pair of pants. Not that they didn’t have boyfriends when they were Darka’s age, but that’s all they were—friends who happened to be boys. They did everything in groups: picnics at Centre Island or Niagara Falls, dances at the Ukrainian Hall, or just walking home after school, or church. And if a boy tried to get fresh, put his hand where he shouldn’t or started to say things that you even suspected were wrong, you didn’t for heaven’s sake encourage him. Of course there were always accidents, but in most cases the boy lived up to what was expected of him; marriage followed, the baby was born and the couple settled down to a respectable life like everyone else. It’s this crazy idea these girls have today that they can get away with it all, that they don’t have to pay for what they do, that they can slip into dark alleyways with every sweet-talker who comes their way and then prance down the aisle in pure white, with a boy from a good family, a boy with a future—that’s what gets the ladies’ goat, as they gather on their faded blankets down at the beach on yet another perfect summer afternoon.

  Not, Sonia ventures, that it’s always the parents’ fault. Olya’s a wonderful mother, and Walter’s always been a hard worker, if not the best provider. Darka’s their only child, and if that’s made them spoil her, who would have done otherwise, in their situation? Darka’s a good girl at heart, this is just a temporary wildness, but what’s so hard is that she doesn’t know, won’t listen to how dangerous things are getting for her now. One slip and she could be ruined for life. You couldn’t be too careful, especially if you had Darka’s natural advantages.

  “38–22–38,” Sasha quips, but Sonia continues, in a passion. “It’s not just your measurements, it’s the way you carry yourself—what you say about yourself by the way you walk, and sit down, and even drink from a bottle of pop. A man can al
ways tell when he’s dealing with a lady. I modelled for five years, and I can tell you, there were times when things could have got out of hand in the worst way, but people always knew I wouldn’t stand for any of that, that I was a lady.”

  “Nasha Grace Kelly—our own ice queen of the runway.”

  “You can laugh all you like, Sasha,” Sonia retorts, “but I know what I’m talking about—”

  Zirka jumps in, on Sonia’s side for once. “Just you wait another couple of years till Tania’s Darka’s age. You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your mouth, just see if you won’t.”

  But Sasha isn’t about to be provoked. “Oh, I’ll just pack them off to Samoa,” she laughs. “They have a much healthier attitude towards life over there.”

  Zirka’s never heard of Samoa: she’s dying to ask her to explain, but Sonia leaves her no room.

  “It doesn’t matter what’s healthy, Sasha. What matters is that you have to pay for everything you want, and that it’s better not to find yourself paying a whole lifetime for something you decide wasn’t worth even five minutes of your time. That’s what women do, what we’ve always done and always will—we pay, and we pay, and we pay.”

  It’s safer, after this onslaught, the ladies decide, to keep mum. Sonia has some bee in her bonnet, her whole body exudes tension like a halo made of a fire so keen that though it’s invisible, it spits and crackles. They lie down on their blankets while Annie Vesiuk goes off to check on the kids, and Sasha keeps turning the pages of the copy of Margaret Mead that she’s brought along, wrapped up in a towel.

  The cousins are walking into the undergrowth on the other side of Tunnel Road, dodging saplings and low branches, and twigs that seem to grow for no other purpose than to gouge out an unwary eye. When they reach the place where a broad, high slab of granite sticks up from the tangle of sumach and goldenrod and wintergreen, they sit down with their backs against the rock. Katia sees no point in delaying: she asks Yuri straight out what happened the night that Pan Durkowski caught him spying.

  “Did he have his gun? His Lager—his Luger, I mean?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, did he interrogate you, did he slap you around under klieg lights, did he—?”

  For a brief moment, Yuri considers telling his cousin the truth: how, when old man Durkowski collared him, he decided to go along instead of breaking loose. So he could be one up on Katia, who was always off plotting with Tania; so he could have an adventure, and a secret of his own to keep. His ruse had worked only too well. He recalls each shameful moment inside the Durkowskis’ cabin: the old man commanding his wife to empty a sack of dried peas on the kitchen floor, then ordering Yuri to kneel on the peas until he was man enough to apologize.

  And himself, refusing, easily resisting the hands that are trying to force him to his knees, daring to provoke the old man: “Not until you show me your Luger!” Pan Durkowski staring at him as if he were crazy, or senile. “The one you used when you fought with the Germans. Your Luger and your SS badge.”

  And how, out of nowhere, he’d felt against his neck the press of a cold, hard, narrow tube: the barrel of a gun. And a voice, a stranger’s voice, neither a man’s nor a woman’s, shouting harshly, “Hände hoch!”

  How he’d had no choice but to raise both arms and hold them up until they hurt. How he’d been ordered to apologize to Pan Durkowski and asked what they teach in the schools these days, that a boy of his age could believe it was something to be proud of—a Luger, the SS. How, as the gun had shoved into the nape of his neck, there’d been the click of a trigger, and a trickle of pee had run down his leg. How tears had welled in his eyes, tears of shame and confusion. And how, when he’d made his apology, and the gun had pulled back, a hand had been put on his shoulder, a hand that turned him round to face no enemy but Pani Durkowska and the length of cold copper pipe she held in her hand, as she made with her mouth a clicking noise that anyone could tell was nothing like a trigger.

  “Come on, Yuri, tell me,” Katia pleads. “Unless all that happened was Pan Durkowski taking off his belt and smacking you. Bad boy, such a bad, bad, boy!”

  She makes her voice as teasing as she can, to show Yuri that of course she doesn’t mean it. But her cousin turns on her, shouting so loudly that his face looks as if it’s about to break apart.

  “Why should I tell you?” And then, pausing for effect, he fires the best shot he has: “You’re just a girl.”

  Katia pulls back her arm and socks him in the gut. Yuri stares up at her, dazed and winded, before grabbing her shoulders and pulling her down against the boulder. They wrestle, two wiry kids, the boy with the advantage of strength, the girl with some fund of fury that lets her hold her own against him, until they both sink exhausted, side by side, their backs against the earth, their eyes staring up at a whirl of leaves and sky.

  In her narrow room, at the top of her wardrobe, in a cardboard box that once held a pair of too-tight, barely worn shoes, lies Darka’s whole stash of treasure: mascara and half a dozen lipsticks, a compact, three different kinds of cologne, eye shadow in plum and turquoise and pearly white; two pots of rouge; foundation, pancake makeup with a little sponge to apply it, and best of all, a set of false eyelashes. She hasn’t yet had a chance to try on the eyelashes—she’s afraid they’ll stick for good and she’ll have to cut them off, so that no one will discover what she’s been up to. If they weren’t so blind they’d have guessed already: it’s not like she could have walked out of Venus Variety with all this loot. But they were born blind, or else they don’t think she’s worth a second glance, for all they’re after her to watch this, stop that, and stay within the lines.

  She hadn’t had to tell Frank, he’d known by instinct—or maybe she had said something to egg him on, a complaint about how they were shifting her around like a piece of furniture. The sleep-house wasn’t such a bad place: there was a three-quarter-size bed, plus a table and chair; there was even a shower and a toilet, so that it was a little like having your own apartment. They should have let her stay there from the beginning; it would have meant she was up here not as the hired help, but as a guest who would naturally do her share in making the household run, looking after the kids, doing the occasional load of laundry. But she’d been offered the sleep-house only when Marta had come up for a week of what no one could describe as holidays.

  They couldn’t have made it easier for him if they’d tried. There’s a back door to the sleep-house, so he never risked being seen from the main house. They didn’t need to worry about being heard, either: the mattress was soft and saggy, the springs so shot they barely creaked.

  When he’d come to her first, in the cellar, it had been like one more set of chores to cross off her list. And he had asked so politely; he had kept his distance. If you please, Darka, pull down the straps of your bathing suit; would you be so kind, Darka, as to show me your breasts? He hadn’t touched her at all, just leaned against the wall, sipping from his silver flask, watching her step out of her bathing suit and back into it. As if she were on stage and he were in the back row of the audience, as if she were modelling for him, not a swimsuit, but her skin, or as if her body were nothing more than a swimsuit. It got so she was hardly aware of him being there at all, in the dim, cool cellar: it was as if she were in her own room, standing in front of the mirror, looking her body over, checking it against the list in How to Have a Perfect Figure. Breasts should be pert, not floppy: the perfect breast is one that fits into a champagne glass. Hips: full but not pudgy. Buttocks: nicely rounded and above all, firm. When you stand with your legs together there should be three diamond-shaped spaces: between your calves, just under your knees and between your thighs.

  What he’d done to her in the sleep-house, what she’d let him do to her … Because she was scared he’d tell on her, tell about the gifts he’s given her—accuse her of stealing them. Because he’d say she asked for it, she never stopped him. Because if she didn’t let him do it to her there, the
n, no one else ever would: she’d be stuck up at the cottage with a bunch of old women and their brats for the rest of her life. Because she was curious about how it happens, from start to finish, and with Jamie it’d always been a little bit of this, a little bit of that and never all the way. Because when she poured him a glass of the whisky she’d stolen from the main house, he drank it down like a glass of milk. Because he’d wanted it so badly, wanted her, Darka, and not that stale crust of a Lesia Baziuk, who always looked at her as if she were so much dust on the road. Because for once she, Darka Marchuk, has the power to give someone what he wants, what he says he’s dying for. Because he calls her honey-baby, and says he’ll help her, he’ll do anything she wants, give her anything she needs, take her away from here, far away and forever.

  Because when they do it, it’s as if there are two of her, one sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward, watching, and the other one lying back as he parts her legs and shoves into her, pounding again and again and again. And then it stops, and he rolls back, heavy as a driftwood log, as she stares at the ceiling, the way she’d stared at the ceiling of her dark, narrow room in the main house, wondering if anything would ever happen to her, if her life would ever begin.

  The first time, he’d left right after, putting his finger over her lips, not saying a word. She’d counted to a hundred once she heard the door close behind him; she got up, reached for the bottle of whisky and, remembering an ad she’d read in one of her movie magazines, set about douching. The whisky hurt, and she was glad: it was like pouring hydrogen peroxide into a cut; if it foamed and stung, you knew it was working. She had felt very grown-up, very sensible, very calm, as she rinsed the sheet and took her shower, letting the water run a long, long time, washing her blood and the smell of him out of her skin.