I only had a few days to get things in order. I put Polly in charge of anything inside, and Joseph anything outside including the farmland and gardens. After all, his father had been teaching him how to turn a profit since he was five. “Use every inch of what you have, be honest, plan, and remember to smile, always remember to smile,” his father repeated to him daily.
I compiled a list of all the tasks that needed to be completed before I could leave, and I worked night and day with Joseph at my side until every single one of them was crossed off. The last item on the list was of a personal nature but was none the least as important. I promised Irina that I would make it known that no one could slaughter her prize pig, Daffodil, and keep their job and home. Daffodil would be free to roam the rest of her natural life. Fulfilling my promise, I could now leave.
Ben drove me to the train station just as the circus was about to pull out. I made it in the nick of time. When we got settled in the next town, Vladimir pulled the penny fortune-telling machine out of the midway and threw it in the garbage. “You’re going to put it out of business, so I might as well take it out,” he smiled.
Next, he painted a gilded carriage in mysterious colors and draped it with tapestries to make it look more inviting. And inside this carriage, a once aspiring Russian ballet dancer became a fortune-teller.
¯¯¯
Bella was kind, but it was clear she had mixed feelings about me and was unsure of her invitation to have me join them. It wasn’t with her words, but I could see it in her eyes. She questioned my intentions and wanted to know, What does that girl want? Truthfully, I didn’t know.
I had no idea what to expect of circus life. I’d had a lot of dreams, but this had never been one of them. Vladimir and Bella’s patience with me was sorely tested. It took a while before I understood the delicacies of my new profession.
“Donatalia,” Vladimir remonstrated, “you can’t tell someone that in two months’ time, they’re going to be hit on the head with a rock and die. You must remember, the circus is a place of entertainment.” Though I tried to be gentle and diplomatic, I’m afraid I had a touch more of Mme Strachkov in me than Irina or my mother. More than once I packed my bags, ready to move back to Savannah. But the more I thought about leaving, the harder I worked at my job to get better.
Then one day Vladimir came to my carriage to drop off some bread Bella had made. While he was there, an old man knocked on the door.
“Pardon me,” the raggedly dressed man with the kind eyes inquired. “Are you the fortune-teller?” I could see a brood of children behind him, five in all.
“Well, I guess I am,” I answered back. “What can I do for you?” I asked.
“Well um, you see, miss, I’m a miner and lately there have been some accidents.”
I lit several candles and squeezed all the grandkids along with their grandfather into my carriage. It was tight, but no one wanted to be left out. Vladimir stood outside, his ear up against the carriage window. He was listening as hard as he could. “You see, these young ones depend on me. The oldest is only nine.
“Well, to get right to the point, these kids, they’re afraid for me! They want to know if I’m going to get trapped and die the same way their daddy, my son, did.”
I looked at the old miner, then at the children he was responsible for feeding.
Finally, I had learned to phrase my predictions truthfully yet positively and for that I was grateful. I took a deep breath. The scent of Bella’s bread could still be found floating in the air. Its residue lingered on my nose hairs. My senses had been awakened and now they needed somewhere to go. I had practiced finessing my predictions and hoped they’d be helpful. I repeated my answer using different tones, modulating on the select phrases I wanted to emphasize. I spoke very deliberately so that each of the grandkids and Vladimir too, could hear my words: “Spirit says you will live a long life, if,” and I paused, “for the next three months you keep your attention on the sky and are always ready to run or catch what falls.”
The grandkids all sighed a big sigh of relief and fought for a position on their grandfather’s knee. “Calm down,” the old miner said as he tried to decide if the fortune I gave him was good or bad and what he should do. Nonetheless, in this moment his grandchildren were happy so he decided he would be too. “See, you’re going to have lots of time to sit on Grandpapa’s knee. Bobby, it’s Kevin’s turn.”
And I noticed, the more helpful I became, the more people lined up to hear what I had to say. My reputation grew, although I was certain my mother must have been turning over in her grave. I could hear her and Mme Strachkov speaking in Russian about how they hadn’t struggled to teach me French so that I might read the palms of French immigrants residing in the southern United States. Over time, however, I realized that I truly had a gift and if I let go of the past, perhaps I could even be happy.
Then one morning it happened: I woke up content. I didn’t know how long it would last, but I now knew how it felt. My life up until then had been all about drilling and training. In Russia, I’d learned the art of discipline and practice. With my mentor and friend Irina, I’d developed my senses. But now, in the circus, for the first time in my life, I was truly becoming my own person. Vladimir was like family to me and Bella and I were slowly developing a friendship. I understood all the reasons she could resent me, but then I’d think about her generosity, her fun, kind spirit, and my animosity would melt away.
“Come eat breakfast with us,” she often asked, and Vladimir frequently invited me to dinner. Vladimir and Bella took to calling me Donatella. Bella liked it because it sounded Italian. I liked it because it had no history. Donatella could become whoever she wanted to be.
¯¯¯
I practiced my midwifery skills almost as much as my fortune-telling. In three months’ time, Bella’s belly brought her riding days to a halt, too. We had just finished our morning coffee and were sitting quietly by the fire when she felt a disturbance in her belly and asked if I would check her out. When I placed my ear to her belly, I heard a boom, boom echoed twice. Two hearts were beating instead of one. It was clear Bella and Vladimir were going to have twins!
I relayed the news with a pinch of sadness mixed in happiness. It was hard for me to be completely happy. My fantasy of marrying Vladimir had been rooted since childhood.
Vladimir could have jumped over his high wire, he was that excited. I knew what I was feeling was not rational. But if I was happy for them both, then why did it hurt me so?
As thrilled as Vladimir was about the upcoming birth of his babies, he was that anxious, too.
At night, when he couldn’t sleep, I’d see him walking past my tent on his way to play cards with the roustabouts. In particular, he had developed an unusual fondness for a heavyset giant of a man whose name was Boris. Boris was Russian, too. He came from the city of Perm in the Ural Mountains. Perm, when translated, meant “far away land,” and far away it was for on the other side of this mountain range, Siberia started, Europe ended, and Asia began.
Boris worked in construction. He had come to the United States to follow a girl, but by the time he got here, she was with someone else. A friend of his who worked for Vladimir had mentioned that he had a strong, hardworking friend looking for a job.
It was rumored Boris could carry four times his own body weight. We didn’t believe it until we saw him carrying an eight-hundred-pound piano down three flights of stairs all by himself. Vladimir hired him on the spot.
Vladimir took a special liking to this big burly man. They could talk in Russian, play cards, and relax. “Boris is easy to be around,” Vladimir would say to me. “I find him calming.”
Somehow, this giant man that most others found frightening displayed a gentle kindness toward Vladimir and genuine affection. And it didn’t hurt that Boris let him win at cards!
“Do you want to know a secret, Donatella?” Vladimi
r asked one night when Boris was out with friends and unable to play. Bella had gone to bed early and Vladimir was trying to convince me to join him in a hand of his favorite game, poker.
Poker reminded me of Hervé, but Vladimir promised if I played just two hands, he would share a secret; something he hadn’t even told Bella. I found it impossible to turn him down.
“You can’t tell a soul,” he said, and he made me swear on my mother’s grave. “When Boris was a child…”
“This isn’t even about you?” I scolded.
“Listen carefully,” he swung back at me. “You’ll find this interesting!” He continued on as if there had been no objection.
“You know Boris is from Perm. Well his father mined copper in a cave all day so he spent his days in darkness. But when he came home at the end of the day, he insisted their house be filled with light until he left for the mines again the next morning. As a result, Boris and his brothers and sisters all learned to sleep in the light.
“His entire childhood lanterns were lit during the day throughout their home and that became what was normal. To this day, our big Boris must sleep with a light, for this giant of a man is afraid to sleep in the dark! Can you imagine that, Donatella?
“Boris shared with me his innermost secret and when he did I was so moved, I saw the light inside of him.”
One month later, just when Vladimir and Boris usually played cards, Bella went into labor.
Chapter 21
December 1911
I stood on the ice-encrusted midway. Nothing was stirring—not a leaf, not a bird. The freak storm from the night before had left the circus grounds encapsulated in a thick layer of ice. The world was silent and crystalline when I heard the distinct crunch of feet walking on frozen ground. I turned to see who it was. Vladimir was walking toward me. Despite all my resolve, my heart beat faster the closer he got. “Bella needs you,” he said when he was certain I could hear him.
The last few weeks, he’d been stretched between joy and fear. By the time I saw his face I forgot the foolish past. Vladimir looked like a ghost of himself, almost translucent with fatigue. Wordlessly, I followed him to their carriage. When I entered, there was Boris sitting next to Bella telling her not to worry, “Vladimir will be back soon with Donatella.”
“Thank god it’s you!” Bella said between the sharp pains of labor when I entered.
“You two go play a hand of cards, but stay near in case I need you,” I said to Boris and Vladimir. “You did your part by fetching me.” Then I turned to Bella. “You are going to be fine.”
The next hours were a blur. Vladimir proved to be helpful by gathering towels and hot water for me and Boris made Bella a simple chicken broth so she’d have something warm to drink.
And as the sun crept above the horizon, early the following morning, a cry of new life could be heard over Bella’s scream.
Minutes later, a second cry bouncing off the sides of the glittering tents rang clearly through the circus grounds, alerting everyone that the newest Vronskys had arrived.
I wrapped the babies in blankets and laid them on Bella’s chest before fetching Vladimir who was right outside the door. Then I left to get some rest.
Vladimir swore his firstborn stole his heart the moment he saw her, so she became Ann Marie Heart. Her sister had eyes like coals, so dark they almost looked black, and so sharp and warm they melted his soul, thus they named her Spade and nothing more.
I fell instantly in love with the twins. It was a deeper love than I had felt for anyone other than my mother or father. Ann Marie had fine auburn curls similar to Lillya, and Spade’s hair was dark and straight with a deep satin-like glow.
¯¯¯
Bella smiled, she had been sleeping, but then her face turned surprisingly grave. “Donatella, I have something to ask you. You have a great gift—I’ve seen it, and it will only get stronger. But I must ask you not to look into my daughters’ futures, as tempting as I know that is.”
I flushed, stung. “But, Bel—”
“No!” Her voice was so sharp I sat back, shocked. “Please let me explain.” And she took a deep breath and continued.
“When I was a girl, I asked my grandmother, a great interpreter of tea leaves, if she would look into the future of my favorite cousin and see if she or I would win the spelling contest. My grandmother flashed her evil eye at me. ‘Never read the tea leaves of someone close to you,’ she said. ‘It’s bad luck.’ Perhaps you’ll say it’s just foolish superstition from the old country. But I believed her then, and I believe her now.”
She caught my eyes and held them. “Swear it, Donatella.”
I had no choice. I promised.
¯¯¯
The girls were strong and healthy. Bella made a carrier that she could slip over her head and strap around her back. In the front she sewed two pouches, one for each baby, with holes for their tiny legs to slide through.
I bought a book filled with blank pages in which to keep a record of all those I assisted in entering the world. I had many others to fill in, but the first two names I entered there were Ann Marie Heart and Spade. I held the pen in my hand a second longer, feeling that something was missing. Then it came to me and I added “Queen” in front of both names, for if they had been born in Russia, like Vladimir, they would have been treated almost like royalty.
¯¯¯
At Christmas, Vladimir decided it was the perfect time to throw a party celebrating the birth of the twins. We decorated the “big top” with garlands and wreaths of Spanish moss, sumac berries, and holly and put the largest Christmas tree we could find right in the center of the tent, with presents for all the children who would attend.
Besides ourselves, several other circus owners came, along with many of the best trapeze, high-wire, and equestrian artists in America. It was an exotic group, indeed.
Vladimir proudly showed off the twins. Women cooed over Ann Marie and Spade. The babies seemed to be fascinated by the sequins on the girls’ sparkling costumes.
The men convened by the fire outside the tent where they lit up their cigars, lifted snifters of old French brandy, and congratulated a beaming Vladimir.
“Yes, very well done, though next time monsieur, I will wish for you two boys,” said Henri, the Frenchman. Henri owned the circus that was based down in Baton Rouge.
Vladimir stared at him, aghast. “What do you mean?”
Henri shrugged and puffed his cigar. “Girls like yours will be beautiful, but doesn’t a man need a son to carry on the family name and business, or am I old-fashioned?”
“Things may be different up north, but us Southerners go by tradition,” said a rival circus owner from Atlanta who went by the name Jim Baldwin. Then he slapped Vladimir’s back with his big beefy hand. Jim was a huge man, but he was small compared to Boris. Vladimir filed the thought when he shared all of this with me later.
“Girls are great, but a boy inherits the keys to the kingdom,” Baldwin said.
Just then, Bella and I appeared and the subject was abruptly dropped. But Vladimir would not forget the words that had been said. He was Lillya’s son, after all, and his daughters would come second to no one. Later that evening, when most everyone had gone and Bella was putting the queens down, Vladimir shared with me his conversation with Jim and Henri.
“Men, men, men, men. They love their women, but they don’t want them for heirs. How foolish. Look at my mother and all she contributed to our family.” I thought about her too and my own mother. Did my father have to defend my mother when she only gave him a girl? From that moment on, my feelings toward Vladimir became more brotherly or that of a favorite cousin.
Even when she was a child, I could see the fire in Ann Marie, and not just because she was born under the sign of Sagittarius. Red reflected who she was and how she would live her life.
She was fascinated by horse
s. Bella beamed with pride every time she saw her daughter stroke their soft muzzles and scramble fearlessly over their backs: Ann Marie had inherited her passion, as well as that of her mother and her other grandmother, Lillya. She was riding in front of Bella by her first birthday. “Faster!” It took a while for Bella to figure it out. “Asta,” she’d cry, her little hands clutching the horse’s mane, relishing its power and speed.
Quietly determined, Spade was in many ways the diametric opposite of her twin. She spent hours walking carefully along any log she found. Her favorite colors were olive and black, and all things dark intrigued her. She made an exception, though, for lightning bugs, which she never tired of chasing.
¯¯¯
It would have frightened Mme Strachkov, but I found it deeply satisfying when on New Year’s Day 1914, just over two years after the first set of twins had been born, I was able to tell Bella, “You’re going to have two more.”
Vladimir was as nervous as he’d been before the first twins’ birth, if not more. As Bella’s due date approached, he paced during the day and lost himself in endless games of poker through the night. On the steamy July night when Bella went into labor, I could hear him outside the birthing car, mumbling to himself, playing solitaire. Snap! Snap! Snap! When he wasn’t working the deck, I could hear him pacing and whispering to himself.
Bella mumbled through her pain with sentences no one understood. When the third queen appeared, with a wail like an angel, Vladimir burst into the room, then ran back out.
Ten minutes later, the fourth queen appeared, and Vladimir cradled the bundles in the soft dawn light filtering through the curtains and cooed at them as they slept.
The first had a face so bright that it sparkled. They christened her Diamond Claire. The second, it seemed, had no intention of leaving the comfort of her mother’s belly without a suitable audience. She kicked and then waited, and then kicked again, until Bella howled like a siren. But not until Bella had squealed the highest note in her register did the baby girl bounce her way onto the table so we could welcome her to this world.
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