The Sky Unwashed

by Irene Zabytko

  Marusia prayed fervently to the Blessed Virgin that morning because she suddenly remembered seeing Mary in her dream. Then she put on her tattered corduroy house slippers. The soft flapping sound of the slippers hammering against her callused heels echoed its way into the kitchen, where she warmed up some water in a pot for her morning cup of instant coffee and chicory. She rinsed her mouth with warm salt water to soothe her swollen gums and this time plugged her aching tooth with salt pork. “Ukrainians and their salt pork.” She smiled to herself. “Scratch a Ukrainian, find salt pork.”

  Zosia peered into the kitchen. “Oh, Mamo, it’s you,” she said. “I thought it might be Yurko.” Her eye makeup was smeared and her face looked puffy.

  “No. Maybe he’s working overtime.”

  Zosia grabbed the sides of her neck with both hands as though she were about to choke herself and massaged the base of her skull. “I feel sick.”

  “Of course you do, darling. You’re going to be a mother again.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Zosia snapped. “That’s all I need on top of everything else.” She poured some of the boiling water into a cup and dropped in a small handful of dried spearmint leaves.

  “I’ll wake the children up,” Marusia said, afraid to upset her daughter-in-law. “I’ll take them to school. Good thing it’s a school day. This way you can rest. Then we can all go to the second wedding reception at Hanna’s today.”

  “I don’t care to go anywhere. I’ll stay home and wait for Yurko.”

  THE DAY PASSED quietly. Tarasyk stayed home because he didn’t get enough sleep and Katia came home early from school because her teacher was ill and dismissed the class. She and Tarasyk played outside in their garden and Katia saw three helicopters in the sky. “You know what those are?” she asked the little boy. “Robots that fly like birds, and they’re looking for children to take away….” Tarasyk ran into the house and hid in the pantry for hours before anyone noticed he was missing.

  That afternoon, Marusia was the only one from her family who attended the second reception at the klub. The children were too tired and Zosia was too angry. Just as well, thought Marusia, who was soon bored watching the young people dance to their awful, loud pop music.

  On her way back home that evening, Marusia noticed how odd the sky looked—it was lit up in the distance the way she remembered the wartime sky, when the Germans bombed the villages. Or maybe it was what Zosia called the northern lights, the flashes of color that appeared in a freak sky. Or maybe an electrical storm in the woods somewhere. She rushed home to ask Zosia or Yurko about it, but everyone was asleep except for Bosyi, who whimpered near the door to let Marusia know that her son had not yet returned home.

  THE NEXT DAY was Palm Sunday. Though the church bells did not ring as they usually did for the eight o’clock Mass, the only service of the day, several old people were in attendance. No one expected Hanna and her new husband to appear, because no one expected any of the younger people to show up on holy days, especially when they fell on Sundays. And since Marusia knew that the teachers would ask which students had attended church, it was a good idea not to include her grandchildren in the service because they would only get into trouble, and then Zosia would growl at her for being “so stubbornly primitive.”

  Marusia stood near the back of the church with Slavka Lazorska and the others. They waited with armfuls of pussy willows, as was the custom. Palms were impossible to get. Father Andrei did not appear to open the altar doors of the iconostasis. He was late, which wasn’t surprising since he was probably working overtime at the plant. But when it got to be almost nine o’clock, the women began to whisper among themselves. Paraskevia was especially upset. Father Andrei, her son, had not returned home after his shift ended on Saturday morning. He would not miss a Sunday service unless he was arrested or ill, and yesterday he had missed performing two afternoon wedding ceremonies. She moved to the back of the church, apart from the rest, where she knelt very low on the ground, bowed her head and prayed deeply, her eyes closed.

  “I don’t think he’s coming,” said Evdokia. She looked at the watch pinned to her cable-knit sweater.

  “We should start by ourselves,” said Maia Medvid’. She nudged her husband, Stepan, who hesitantly walked up to the altar, pinched his thumb and the first two fingers together of his right hand, and crossed himself in the Eastern Orthodox manner. He opened the golden doors of the iconostasis. Another elder lit the thin orange candles that stood in front of the icons.

  “Hey, Yulia, maybe you should sing,” Evdokia said to the tall woman leaning against one of the wooden beams in the center of the church. Long ago, during Stalin’s regime, Yulia Pan’kovych had been about to begin training as a mezzo-soprano with the Kyiv Opera when she was arrested and exiled to Siberia for refusing to denounce her music professor, who was accused of teaching anti-Soviet songs. Yulia was well into her seventies, but despite her humped back, her voice was still mellow and resonant, and it reverberated as she sang the somber Lenten hymns. The others in the small gathering of old women and their husbands joined in, except for Paraskevia, who was still on her knees swaying and mumbling the prayer of repentance and beating her slightly sunken chest with her yellow fist.

  When they finished the songs, the worshippers lingered together a little longer, praying silently for hope and courage, for loved ones, living and dead, and for the Union—such as it was. Some of them stood and prayed, as there were no benches. Others knelt, kissing the floor. They rose and, at the holy water font near the door, blessed the pussy willows. Then the candles were extinguished and the altar doors closed. It was time for everyone to leave and the church to be locked.

  Paraskevia was the last to go. Marusia waited for the old woman to finish her prayers before tapping her shoulder. Tears flooded the older woman’s little peanut eyes, and Marusia helped her stand up on her feet.

  “God grant you peace,” Marusia said.

  Paraskevia shook her head and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. They blessed themselves with holy water and walked arm in arm outside into the humid day.

  Paraskevia couldn’t help crying. “The end of the world. Taste the air. It’s not the same. And my son is gone.”

  Marusia flicked her tongue out for a second. The air did taste different, like steel. She watched Evdokia do the same.

  “Feh!” Evdokia grimaced, then rushed to Lazorska. “Hey, Pani Dokhtor, my eyes are itchy and watering.” She saw that Lazorksa’s eyes were just as red.

  “Something in the air. Maybe pollen. It’s spring, after all,” the healer said.

  “And my old man also gets such horrible hay fever…. What cure do you have for it?”

  Before Lazorska could answer, Paraskevia released herself from Marusia’s arm and yelled out to the group, “Trahedia! Tragedy! Go home and hug your grandchildren! Save yourselves from this crooked generation because it’s the end of the world!” She turned away and kept shouting and beating her chest with her fist while scuttling down the path leading back to her lonely house.

  “She’s getting crazier than ever,” said Evdokia.

  From her oilcloth shopping bag, Slavka Lazorska fished out a dried sunflower head that was still rich with black seeds. She pulled some out of their husks and passed them to the other women. “Paraskevia is a wise woman. She knows things I never heard of.” She spat the seed shells out. “But admit it, here we are in God’s own backyard, and we are all suffering from some devil’s curse in the air.”

  “Maybe she’s just worried about her son,” Maia put in, and Marusia wondered if Yurko was all right. He would surely be home by now.

  “I suppose the priest was too tired to come today,” another woman said.

  “Well, when he came to Hanna’s reception, he danced his curly head off,” Evdokia said. “Everyone saw….” She was looking around for her own husband, who was smoking a forbidden cigarette with some of the men but stopped when he saw her frowning at him. He angrily took out his empty pipe and suck
ed on it.

  Evdokia ran after him with a pussy willow. “I’m not hitting you, the pussy willow is—Easter will be here a week from today!”

  “Ow, she’s beating me! Ow!” Oleh shuffled away from his wife and smiled. “Help me!”

  Everyone laughed at the childish custom which no one fully understood, but enjoyed nonetheless. Some of the men gently tapped their wives with the pussy willows. Marusia tapped Evdokia, who giggled.

  After a while, Yulia Pan’kovych cut in. “Did anyone hear a terrible noise Saturday night? It woke me up! I swear my bed was shaking.”

  Some of the women nodded their heads. “It might have been shooting,” Maia timidly offered. The women laughed. “No, really. I remember during the war when a man shot his ex-wife and her new husband on their wedding night. It was terrible.”

  “Well, unfortunately my granddaughter’s new husband is still walking the earth,” Evdokia said. “Unless Hanna shot him. And who would blame her.”

  The women chatted about the weddings they’d attended the day before and what times the Sunday receptions were to occur, but they disbanded early because they were uneasy and wanted to be at home.

  On the way, Marusia worried over Paraskevia’s bitter words. She was disturbed that even Lazorska was aware of some unknown evil intruding on them. Her eyes smarted and teared, and the metallic taste in her mouth grew stronger. “Feh,” Marusia spat, “it’s this pollution. Too many of those damn factories around here.” She wiped her eyes and felt relieved to be at her gate.

  She saw that Katia was playing tag with some other children near her neighbor’s front garden. Tarasyk was playing quietly by himself with a small shovel and a mound of dirt in the garden. They didn’t seem to be bothered by the air.

  Zosia was in the kitchen busily washing Yurko’s suit jacket with the thick bar of yellow laundry soap. Her cigarette dangled from her mouth, and the ashes were scattered over her housecoat. She seemed crazed and kept striking the lump of heavy wet wool against the hard sink over and over as though she were beating a demon out of a possessed soul.

  Chapter 5

  YURKO DID NOT come home until late Monday afternoon. He acted as though his mind was caught in a daze. He ignored everyone’s anguish over his absence while he slowly and mechanically peeled off his blue overalls and work boots. He drank three glasses of tepid water and shuffled to his room, where he tumbled into bed and then cried out for more water. Marusia brought him a pitcher’s worth, which he drank until his throat convulsed. He coughed some of the liquid up over the covers. “Mamo, my throat is so dry. My eyes are burning.”

  “You need sleep,” Marusia said. She felt his hot head with her hand. “I’ll get a cool towel.”

  “At least one of us can sleep….” Zosia grumbled. She was in their room, changing into her blue work fatigues.

  “Zosia, listen to me,” Yurko said in a hoarse voice. “Don’t go. There’s been an accident at the plant.”

  “What accident?” Zosia snapped. “Nobody’s said anything.”

  “Listen to me. Something worse than a fire happened. Nobody knows… it’s the worst I’ve ever seen. Something…”

  Zosia moved over to the bed and bent down near her husband. She realized how bleary-eyed he looked. His face was ashen except for his cheeks and nostrils, which were ruddy in the way they used to get whenever he was out too long in the sun. “What do you mean?” she said more gently.

  “I don’t know. But there were fires….” Yurko coughed and fell back on the pillows, closing his eyes.

  “Easy, sonechko,” Marusia said, stroking his hair. “I myself heard about a fire when I waited in line at the coop this morning. And Father Andrei never returned home after the wedding reception. We missed him at Mass yesterday. Maybe you’ve seen him, Yurko?”

  “Don’t bother Yurko about that kind of thing, Mamo,” Zosia said, retreating to her dresser and the large gilt-framed mirror hung over it. The dresser was a clunky piece of furniture that Yurko had taken from his mother’s room when he first married Zosia and brought her to this house. Zosia had arranged her few precious cosmetics on a blue and yellow embroidered flaxen towel she had made as a child growing up in Siberia.

  Zosia frowned at the plastic tortoiseshell case that held the last few portions of crumbling face powder. “So, it’s nothing special when someone comes home late from a shift, especially if something unusual happens.” She powdered her face, then dabbed her cheeks with a sheet of blotting paper she had stolen from work. “Look, Yurko disappeared for two whole days, but he’s here. The priest is probably back now, too.”

  “There were fires,” Yurko insisted. Marusia helped him pull himself higher against the pillows behind his back. “Smoke all over. Like a war. I went to Prypiat’, to inspect an electrical station. But we all heard the explosion. The ground shook. The sky lit up. Horrible…”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” Marusia said. “I’m getting a towel for your head. Cool down, then talk.” She tried to catch her daughter-in-law’s eye before she left the bedroom, but Zosia was absorbed in dusting her eyelids with a sable artist’s brush dipped in light blue eye shadow with bits of silver sparkles in it—“like mica,” one of the engineers at the plant had joked when he first saw it shine on her eyes.

  “When did this happen?” Zosia asked after they were alone. She moved over to sit on the edge of their bed and raked her stiff, snarly hair with a brush. Her hair snapped with electricity as she tilted her head down on her chin and forced the underside of her hair up and over her face.

  “Saturday morning. After I left you at the reception. About two o’clock. I had to go and help put the fires out. Got as far as the gates, but the stink got to my chest. Knocked me out. They took me to Prypiat’. That’s where I was all this time.” He coughed again. “The medic said I was fine. To get some rest. So, I’m home.”

  “It’s still on fire?” she asked. She was concentrating on pulling off the loose strands of hair caught from the bristles of her brush and dropping them on the floor.

  He groped for her hand and pulled her closer to him. “Don’t go. Not now. Let them put it out for good.”

  Zosia pulled away from him and stood up. “But nobody has said anything official about it. Anyway, there’s always a backup system. Something goes wrong, there’s an alarm and other units kick in.”

  Marusia returned with a large pink terry washcloth and gently pressed it against Yurko’s forehead.

  “Did you hear anyone say anything official about an explosion, Mamuniu? Maybe on the radio?”

  The old woman shook her head.

  “So, things aren’t that bad. We’re safe. They have to have special backup units at a nuclear power plant.” Marusia was devoting all her attention to her son. “Mamo, did you hear what I said? There’s always a backup system.”

  “Fine then, but people still get hurt on the job,” Marusia said. “Workers get sick lifting heavy equipment, especially the women, who shouldn’t be doing such things.” She glared at Zosia.

  “Yurko is not a child, and he’s stronger than a woman. He’ll be all right.”

  “I’m tired,” Yurko moaned, and closed his eyes.

  “Well, let him sleep,” Marusia whispered, and covered Yurko with a blanket. “I’ll go and make some soup. But I need more dill. I have to ask our neighbor for some. I’ll be back.” Marusia was about to say something else, but Zosia pressed a finger to her lips and nodded toward Yurko.

  Zosia waited until the old woman left them. She heard the front door close. “Now we’ll find out what’s really going on,” Zosia joked. “She and her nosy girlfriends will get all the news before we hear it on the television.”

  Yurko threw off the blanket. “Just don’t go,” he said.

  “Of course I wouldn’t go—not if there was a real problem. But they would let us know, so there is absolutely nothing to worry about,” Zosia said firmly. She was applying the rest of her makeup and tried not to look at Yurko. She had never thought about i
t much before, but Zosia knew about the common small fires and short circuits and power blackouts that regularly occurred at the Chornobyl plant. She might have easily set something off herself with her cigarettes; everyone always smoked on the job, or drank, or stumbled around half-dead from lack of sleep because sometimes the shifts dragged on for twenty-four-hour stretches. There were too many incompetents in dangerous positions. A fire did not surprise her.

  But why did the air taste so bad? She had noticed the difference as soon as she sat outside the previous morning, waiting for Yurko to return home. Why did it have that awful metallic tinge? Maybe because the weather was so uncommonly warm for this time of year. Rotting bundles of hay and cow manure could cause a stench.

  Then she thought about the children. They went off to school this Monday morning as usual. Why weren’t they sent home if something serious was going on? Everything was always done in the best interest of the children—official Soviet policy. So, if they were allowed to be in school and play in the parks, then things couldn’t be that serious.

  “I’ll be late to work if I don’t hurry,” Zosia announced to Yurko. “With this new job, I still have a lot to learn.” Zosia had been recently transferred to the construction unit and no longer worked with Yurko at the electrical stations. She was now a cement mixer, part of the team building a new nuclear reactor addition. Her salary was almost as large as her husband’s, as her job was so physically demanding.

  At first Zosia enjoyed mastering the new tedium of running the cement mixers, a skill her latest lover had taught her. She enjoyed the closed-door sessions in this man’s office and the impressive supply of American cigarettes and Scotch he shared with her. His attention changed to coldness when Zosia told him about her pregnancy. Of course he denied being distant whenever Zosia confronted him and accused him of not liking her anymore. He was quick enough to kiss her sobbing mouth and dismiss her with a new unopened carton of Marlboros….