“Southern society in the United States has its own rules and ways of doing things and it’s lovely,” she went on. “But it’s young in comparison to our country. Very few do anything on the scale of us Russians. Why, the czar’s ball at the Winter Palace several years back…that’s a good example, people spoke of that event around the world. Mrs. Butler could see that I didn’t much want to talk about the aristocrats of St. Petersburg, so she changed the subject back to the present, another subject I had hoped to avoid. “Where do your friends in Savannah live, and what do they do?”
“She’s a ballerina, and her father a prominent businessman,” I said, deciding to stick to the story I knew best. “Her mother died several years ago.” Deciding I had said enough, I pretended to be absorbed in my French book that was resting on my lap.
I remember to this day how Irina Anjelika Rusakova Butler looked that first moment I saw her on the train. She’d have made a fine Southern belle if it weren’t for the scarf around her neck, which was very Russian. Going back in time, I don’t think I fooled her for one second. With her sharp intuition, she probably knew from the start that I was talking about myself.
I sat quietly thumbing through my books, truly paying little attention to any of them. Curiosity had gotten the best of me, and I asked Mrs. Butler a question about herself. I had meant to stop at just the one, but she turned out to be so entertaining and full of joie de vivre that I became a captive audience. Her tone reminded me of my mother and the way she used to tell me stories. I could almost imagine Mrs. Butler reciting the story of the Firebird or that of Ivanushka and Alanushka. Her voice became so hypnotic, I didn’t want to miss one word.
¯¯¯
The second wife of a Confederate colonel, Mrs. Butler was a widow when I met her. Sparkly and warm in her gestures and speech, she chatted as if we were old friends.
“I came to Savannah in eighteen seventy with my father and his caviar. And I met my Colonel Butler at a party when I caught him spitting our delicacy into his napkin. What a guilty look he had!
You should have seen the colonel, Donatalia,” she continued, “still very handsome and distinguished-looking. He had all sorts of medals for bravery and a charm about him that made my heart sing.” The colonel had treated her to the world while he was alive, she told me. “I suppose all that fighting made him really appreciate life. He was dazzled by my cold-water Russian skin and loved my happy spirit. I think that after the Civil War, he preferred a belle less wounded than the Confederate girls who’d lost their homes and families.
“When he got down on one knee to propose, everyone in his circle was on pins and needles, waiting to see what my answer would be. We were the gossip of Savannah.
“One night,” she continued, “the colonel took me to a huge country affair. All of high society was in attendance; it was called the Grand Indigo Ball. I remember the ballroom had the most beautiful crystal chandeliers that were made by a craftsman in England. I was told they were the only ones he ever shipped across the ocean.
“Large paintings hung like murals on the walls of the Savannah low country painted in silver and gold. I felt like royalty on my colonel’s arm.
“We arrived a little late—on purpose, I might add. As we entered, I stopped the gentleman from announcing us, and I looked at my loving colonel and then at the crowd below and declared, ‘Y’all, it’s a yes!’”
I laughed at how she’d said y’all with her beautiful Russian accent.
“After that, we didn’t need to be announced,” she went on. “Everyone cheered, first for the colonel, and then even for me. I was different, which was generally not looked on kindly in Savannah society, but over time everyone came to love and accept me. Sometimes our friends even said I was more Southern than them. The colonel had that effect on people. He brought out the best in everyone.”
She looked at me. “Never apologize for who you are, Donatalia.”
For a moment, she was quiet—thinking of her husband, I thought. Then she brightened. “Have you ever ventured this far south? Savannah is one of the most glorious places in the world. I swear! We have magnificent ancient spreading trees called Live Oak that are covered in what they call Spanish moss. The funny thing is Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor moss. I’m told it has more in common with a pineapple of all things.” And we both laughed.
“Some people think it looks like an old gray beard, but it reminds me of a delicately wrapped present covered in angel hair.
“And the architecture—it’s grand in its own way. Why, it stopped the northern general Sherman in his tracks during this nation’s Civil War. When he entered Savannah, he was so moved by its beauty that he didn’t have the heart to destroy it. Instead he wrote a letter to President Lincoln and gave it to him as a Christmas present.”
Mrs. Butler smiled. “Savannah has charm. You’ll see.”
¯¯¯
Though I’d been miserable and frightened when I got on the train, now, as I listened to Mrs. Butler, my flight started to seem more like an adventure. I began to get curious, even excited. Fear of the unknown could wait until I arrived. For now, I only wanted to lose myself in the comfort of Mrs. Butler’s voice. I could almost dance atop the lilt and cadence of her speech.
After talking for several hours, Mrs. Butler seemed to come to a decision and asked who would be picking me up at the station. Unable to lie to her, but not wanting to tell the truth, I paused. I could feel my eyes getting teary and I was about to speak when, very diplomatically, Mrs. Butler extended her hospitality. “My house is much too big for one person, and sometimes it gets lonely. I wonder if your friend would mind if you spent a few days with me?”
I’d always been cared for, and I didn’t know how to start living on my own. Profoundly relieved, I accepted with gratitude.
¯¯¯
When we arrived in Savannah, the doors opened, and a warm, soft breeze carried the smell of fresh tobacco into the train. I stuffed my babushka in my traveling case, took off my jacket, and unbuttoned my sweater. The slow, soft sounds of the people chattering around me seemed reassuring. The horns of the ships in the distance made me feel as if I’d landed in some exotic place. It felt good to stretch my arms and legs and know they had some place to go.
I helped Mrs. Butler down the steps as the porter gathered her bags and my leather case. Her driver greeted us with a big, warm smile, and Mrs. Butler told him I’d be staying with them for a while. Then he opened the door of her spacious Ford Model B.
I pressed my nose to the window, the landscape so different from anything that I’d ever seen. We rolled past fields of cotton and the big, soft green leaves of tobacco and what Mrs. Butler referred to as Chinese vetch, though later people would call it soybeans. I wanted to tell the world that I, Donatalia Petrovskaya, from St. Petersburg, Russia, was in Savannah and the state of Georgia.
We passed a few dilapidated shacks with laundry drying out front on lines strung between trees. It reminded me of the scenery I had seen from the train window. In the back of a truck going the other way, I saw black men in chains and a white man carrying a rifle. Mrs. Butler explained that the men had committed crimes and picked cotton to help pay for them. On our twenty-minute journey, we honked hello to several other automobiles that looked like hers. Finally, we pulled onto a long driveway that would take us to Colonel Butler’s farm. At the end of the drive was a mansion draped in what Mrs. Butler had described as Spanish moss. It was flanked by weeping willow trees so lovely I could barely speak.
An elegant porch wrapped around the house, its roof supported by the grand white pillars so typical of the South. On it hung two swings, one facing east toward the Butlers’ tobacco, the other facing the cotton fields to the west. After the Civil War, Mrs. Butler told me, the colonel had been so sick of the division between North and South that he’d moved his porch swings so they faced east and west. The eastern swing, he said, represente
d prosperity; the western swing, opportunity; and the north and south—well, they weren’t going to get any more of his attention.
There I planted myself, surrounded by cotton, tobacco, and soft Southern voices.
Chapter 15
How interesting it was to learn that the crop my father and Archie used to spin their garments originated in India, had been known to grow wild in Egypt and Peru, and was growing in a field next to me while I sat on Colonel Butler’s porch swing in Georgia conversing with his widow. “It’s been documented in the journals of Spanish explorers,” Mrs. Butler said, “American Indians were growing cotton in Florida as early as the fifteen hundreds.”
I told her about my father and Archie’s business and I could see that she was stitching together the bits and pieces of my story as if she were a quilter. It was clear to her that I was loved and therefore she assumed there were people worrying about me.
I had been in Savannah for three days. Tomorrow would be Thanksgiving. I would give myself until Saturday and then I would begin my search to find the Bradleys. All this talk about cotton made me long to see them. The thought of how Mary Bradley’s arms wrapped around me would be so reassuring. I found I could not stop myself and I asked Mrs. Butler, who now insisted that I call her by first name, Irina, if she happened to know a nice lady named Mary Bradley.
“Not George’s wife? Sweet Mary Bradley of the cotton Bradleys?” Irina asked.
“Why I suppose so,” I answered back, and I went into great depth about my father, Archie and Winnie, Rosie, and my pony Sasha who learned to play soccer. We talked and talked throughout Thanksgiving Day and stopped only to say grace before we sat down to eat. Irina insisted that the help have the day off, as she believed the holiday had more of a symbolic importance to them than a Russian widow. She mentioned Polly. Anything having to do with food and the kitchen supposedly fell into Polly’s jurisdiction.
“She went to visit her ailing father on some island off of South Carolina. Polly comes from a special breed of people,” but Irina didn’t say anything more.
Neither of us were very handy in the kitchen, so my most vivid memory of my first Thanksgiving was the conversation, the company, and Irina’s generosity.
“The Bradleys sold their farm about six months ago,” Irina saind, breaking the news to me.
“Where are they?” I asked in a panic trying not to convey how much I had depended upon their being in Savannah, knowing the kindness Mary Bradley had shown me the first summer after my mother died.
“I was told Mary wanted to travel the world, and on a trip they took to Africa, they stumbled upon an orphanage that needed help. Mary just could not leave the children that would have suffered had she gone. George, who had always been so devoted to his business, understood Mary’s true nature and decided to take a sabbatical. Unable to live without her, he sold the farm and joined her. She had always gone wherever he asked her to go, I guess he felt that it was his turn to support Mary.”
I was happy for Mary, but I couldn’t hide my own sadness. I started sobbing uncontrollably. Irina didn’t quite know what to do, so she just let me sit with my tears until they stopped.
“Now tell me what has happened,” Irina commanded in a voice that would only listen to truth. Once I got started I couldn’t stop, and I talked about my dreams of being a prima ballerina, all my teachers and friends, my accident, my mother, Catherine, Mme Strachkov, my father, in no particular order. When I was through, she simply looked at me and said, “Tomorrow we will write a letter to Catherine, she must be worried sick!”
Irina never judged my actions of the past nor did we discuss the future. I continued to stay and Irina never asked me to leave.
After years of conversing in English with her funny Southern accent, I think Irina enjoyed being able to speak with someone in Russian again.
The house was large but simple; nonetheless, Irina kept a staff to cook, clean, and garden. Still, there was always plenty to do to help, and there were ways to keep busy. Irina loved animals and all things natural. Why, just the day after Thanksgiving, Ben—her driver, handyman, and sometimes butler—knocked on the door. Ben had a quiet way about him. He was a tall, thin man with big hands that appeared to be quite capable of fixing a large piece of farm equipment or making the tiniest lure to bait a fish. He also proved he knew how to keep calm during excitable situations. When he left, Irina told me her favorite animal was about to give birth, then asked if I would assist her with the delivery of her prize pig’s offspring.
“All you have to do is change your clothes and follow my instructions, and don’t be surprised if they keep on coming,” she said. Irina was like that: one minute, a very proper lady, and the next, if you didn’t know she was the lady of the house, you would have thought she had been hired to tend the animals. After changing my clothes, I followed her to the barn.
I’m not sure who squealed louder that day, Daffodil after giving birth to twenty-one piglets or me! “You just might have some promise, Donatalia,” Irina said when we were through. We walked back to the house to clean ourselves up and get something to eat.
Just as she had with the many emotionally scarred Confederate soldiers she’d met through Colonel Butler, Irina helped take the pieces of my shattered life and reassemble them into something I could believe in, but it wasn’t easy.
She created an exercise routine to help me build back the muscles in my legs that I had lost. “The Colonel fell off his horse and his doctor gave these to him.” She verbalized the truth: “You are no longer destined to become a prima ballerina, but that does not mean you cannot dance at all. Donatalia, there is something else out there for you to love.” Her optimism was infectious. Occasionally I’d catch myself smiling and I’d forgot my slight limp.
Irina wrote Catherine a letter, but no one had heard from my father in months, so I began a campaign. I wrote to family friends —anyone I could think of who might tell me news of “my” Russia—but received not one reply. My anger toward my father for having sent me away changed to worry.
Days turned into weeks, and Irina became not only my friend but my family. She introduced me to Savannah society, telling people that I was a younger cousin of her favorite cousin Katya who had died; and she had sworn to look out for me if ever it were needed, and so it was she began to wear some of my family history, and I began to wear hers.
Although we often conversed in Russian, Irina insisted we also speak in English. Every night she tutored me, and when we’d had enough, she’d say, “Donatalia, will you dance for me?” Then I would leap and spin for my amusement and hers, using every inch of her spacious parlor. Sometimes, when Irina’s mood and spirit were aligned just right, she’d sing Russian folk songs or put a record on her phonograph and sway to the music as if she were seventeen.
Irina had a young woman who worked for her. Her name was Polly. And as Irina described it, Polly owned the kitchen. “I own the house and the land, but the kitchen is Polly’s. In the kitchen, I ask Polly for permission. When she speaks, she repeats herself like a parrot: ‘My name is Polly, that’s Polly. It’s like holly. You know, Christmas holly, only with a P. P for Polly.’ She’s as colorful as a parrot, too. She always dresses in bright colors, never pastels. But don’t let the way she speaks fool you, she’s sharp as a whip!”
When I first met Polly, I was a bit apprehensive. I knew that Irina depended upon her and if one of us were to go, it would be me. Determined to get Polly’s approval and to be on her good side, I came up with a scheme that I hoped would win her over.
In the middle of the night, I tiptoed down the stairs. Using my hands to guide me, I found the kitchen. I had memorized where Polly kept her favorite spice, cinnamon, in the front row of her spice drawer, the third from the right in between the nutmeg and cloves. I smelled the container to make sure I had the right spice then gently slipped it into my pocket.
When I woke up the next
morning, I could hear Polly cursing in the kitchen. “How can I make my apple pie without my favorite spice? Who’s going to want my oatmeal?”
Polly pulled out every spice from her drawer. She banged pots and pans so loudly looking for it everywhere that, of course, I had to come down and see if I could help. Actually, my plan wouldn’t work unless I convinced Polly to let me help her.
I emptied cupboards looking for the cinnamon, trying to be as loud as she to demonstrate how hard and far I would go to be helpful. Finally, when she was on the opposite side of the kitchen, I pulled the cinnamon from my pocket and carefully tucked it behind the coffee grinder. But several minutes later when I circled back, it wasn’t there. When Polly saw the look of horror cross my face and saw that I had been sufficiently shocked, she opened the spice drawer and surprise of all surprises it was there, exactly where it belonged.
When I realized Polly had played the joke on me, I looked at her expecting to see malice, but instead she smiled, and we both burst out in laughter and we laughed until tears fell down our cheeks.
At dinner that night, Polly awarded me the first slice of her pie. Irina could tell something unwritten had passed between us. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew she would not have to choose.
To this day, I cannot smell cinnamon without thinking of Polly.
My suitcase had laid next to the bed unopened all of these days. When I got back to my room that night, I instinctively began to unpack.
I set the playing cards Hervé had given me on the walnut table, next to my mother’s abalone hairbrush, in its silver case, and the perfume Lillya gave me. On the small table next to the bed, I laid my book of Russian fairy tales and in its top drawer I placed a small carved wooden box that held my few remaining pieces of jewelry. Finally, I pulled out my sensible walking shoes, a dainty pair of button-up ankle boots, and an old, worn pair of toe shoes, and lined them up on the floor under the left-hand window.
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