The Sky Unwashed

by Irene Zabytko

  Not good enough, Zosia thought to herself. She fiercely whittled the point of her old dark brown eyebrow pencil with a sharp kitchen knife. Just like him to ignore me now, the bastard. She outlined the fine brown hairs of her eyebrows into severe arches. Yurko’s pitiful face stared at her in the mirror, and she wished it were another man’s reflection.

  “Yurchyk,” she said tenderly, turning to him, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Your mother will take care of you.” She came near enough to kiss the damp towel that lay askew on his forehead. He shut his eyes and said nothing. She listened to his shallow breathing for a minute before she left him.

  Zosia hurried into the kitchen, where she tugged on her boots. She looked into the refrigerator and almost grabbed her lunch of cucumbers and the fresh farmer cheese that Marusia had earlier made. No, she thought, and slammed the refrigerator door. “I’ll catch him right before the break and make him take me to eat in the chiefs’ dining room. If he’s going to leave me, then I should at least get a good dinner out of it. And he’s going to pay for a lot more.”

  She thought hard about how she would meet him face-to-face, what his expression would be and what she was going to say. She thought about these things during the short walk down the dirt path that led to the village center. Her thoughts were interrupted by the stronger taste of the metallic air that bit her tongue and lips. Further down the path and all along the road, Zosia encountered clumps of sticky white foam that had settled on the grass and bushes. She tried to wipe some of it off her boots against the curb near the bus stand where she and several workers going to Chornobyl waited for the shuttle.

  She had to step aside from the cow herd that was on its way to the dairy at the collective farm. Twice a day, the cows walked past Zosia’s home.

  “Dobryi den’,” a woman with a stick called out to Zosia. “Stinks, doesn’t it. Even the cows noticed. Not much milk today.” Before Zosia could reply, the woman poked a couple of the cows away from the foam. “Hey, don’t eat that! That’s from somebody’s laundry.”

  Zosia waited until the herd passed her by. A few of the animals nudged her in greeting, and she patted their rumps and muttered compliments to them as they passed.

  The bus did not come. Zosia stood with a group she knew casually. Like Zosia, they were also dressed in blue fatigues and rubber boots, and they all smoked the heavy Soviet cigarettes that burned up too quickly to truly satisfy anyone’s craving.

  “The bus is never late,” said Lesia Narzokina, a woman Zosia admired for her orange lipstick and stylish short red hair.

  “It didn’t come last night either,” said a young man with a blond crew cut and a day’s stubble on his chin.

  The workers moved away from the curb as two men hosing down the street passed the bus stop. “Why are they doing that?” Zosia demanded.

  “They do it on hot days, because the sidewalks get so heated,” said the crew cut man, as though he had some authority and knew about such official things.

  “But it’s not summer,” said Zosia. “My husband told me there was a fire at the plant.”

  “It must have been really something because I heard an explosion like a sonic boom a few nights ago,” Lesia added.

  “Graphite fires,” said the crew cut. “That happens at a nuclear plant. Standard procedure. Nothing to worry about.”

  “But why doesn’t the bus come?” asked Zosia.

  Nobody answered. They were too distracted by the sight of Paraskevia Volodymyrivna, who had a large green and orange babushka wrapped around her tiny monkey face, her thin legs encased in heavy woolen stockings and boots, and her body lost in a long black fake lamb’s fur coat. The outfit was especially out of place in the warm weather. “You won’t have enough water to wash away this sin!” she screamed at the men hosing the streets. The men turned off their hoses for a minute and laughed, then turned their backs toward her and restarted the hoses. Paraskevia was about to strike one of the men but slipped and fell against a gutter, knocking her head on the concrete.

  “Look out!” Zosia yelled. She threw her cigarette down and hurried to where the old lady had fallen. Puddles of foam eddied around Paraskevia’s small frame.

  Zosia ran up to the men with the hoses. She waved her arms in front of them to stop. When they shut off their hoses, Zosia returned to Paraskevia, knelt down and gently lifted the wizened head and loosened her dripping babushka. Her short gray hair felt like the gossamer wool Zosia used to bundle when she was a young schoolgirl working at a collective farm on her summer vacations.

  She felt a bump, but no blood, and the old woman’s skull between her thin hairs was as tender as a newborn’s.

  “I’m all right,” the older woman said. “Save yourselves.” Zosia helped her to stand up and steadied her by holding her bony elbows. “I’m going back to my house,” Paraskevia announced. She tied her wet babushka back under her chin.

  Zosia gently maneuvered Paraskevia toward the sidewalk and was glad when she didn’t cause a fuss. “If you don’t mind, I’ll walk with you a little bit,” Zosia said. “Let me carry your coat.” The old lady obliged and allowed Zosia to help her slip out of the sodden, shabby coat. Zosia was surprised at its heaviness.

  Paraskevia studied Zosia’s face intently with her deep black eyes. “Bless you. You’re a good girl after all,” she declared.

  They walked in silence all the way to the old woman’s house. “Will you be all right?” Zosia blurted out once they had reached her gate. “Can I help you bring this coat in? Or is there anything else I can do to help? If you want me to, I mean…”

  Paraskevia laughed and allowed Zosia to place the dripping coat over her outstretched arms. “I’ve been taking care of myself for a hundred years. But it’s your generation that should get down on your hands and knees and pray that we all come out of this alive.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Smell the air!”

  “Oh, yes. That’s the fire. My husband was there and told me about a fire at the plant.”

  “Why does the air smell like this? You tell me.”

  “They’re putting out the fire.”

  Paraskevia shook her head. “Fire from hell.”

  A car horn beeped and a blue car pulled up to them. It belonged to one of Zosia’s neighbors who also worked at the plant. A stout man with a mustache rolled down the window from the passenger side of the front seat, and Zosia recognized Maksym, the man who had carried Hanna over the muddy road on her wedding day. “Come on, we’ve got a ride,” he shouted over the loud muffler. “We can still make our shift.”

  Zosia turned to the old woman. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Paraskevia wiped her eyes. “You should ask yourself that question.” She made the sign of the cross over Zosia. “God grant you peace and protect you.” She freed her small right hand from the coat, firmly grabbed one of Zosia’s wrists to make her lean toward her and kissed her. “My life is over.” Paraskevia then quickly made the sign of the cross again, spat three times on the ground and went through her front gate where two skinny goats greeted her and followed her into her house.

  “Better come now if you’re coming,” Maksym shouted. Zosia pushed her way into the backseat of the car with two other workers. “You can sit on my lap,” joked a man Zosia didn’t know.

  “Never mind, just move over,” she said. She still felt the soft pressure of the old woman’s lips on her forehead.

  They passed the bus stop and more of the plant workers waiting for the shuttle bus, and the car splashed down the main street where the men with hoses continued to drench the road.

  The ride to the plant was only fourteen kilometers but took more than the usual twenty minutes because the main highway leading to Chornobyl was shrouded in smoke. More cars were returning from the plant than going toward it.

  “Turn on your headlights,” Maksym said to the driver, Borys, who gripped the wheel with his small, pudgy hands. Zosia felt nauseated but rolled her window shut and tried not
to breathe. The man next to her started to cough on her face, and she shrank away from him as much as she could by pressing her head against the grimy window.

  When they arrived at the plant’s gate, they saw dense black smoke and red flames dancing high over the tall watchtowers. Crowds of people in jumpsuits and helmets with eye shields and face masks were chaotically running. A siren sang out, and fire trucks raced toward one of the reactors not far from the building where Zosia worked. Overhead, helicopters flew low over the buildings but didn’t land anywhere; they simply hovered in the black air like hornets around a nest.

  A man in a helmet pounded on the windshield of their car. Maksym rolled down his window a crack. “Go back, go back, unless you want to help,” he shouted through his thin paper mask.

  “What can we do?” Maksym asked.

  “We need men to collect sand to douse the fires,” said the man. “Hurry up, or leave.” Then he ran to where another car pulled up.

  “I’ve got to go,” Maksym said. “Tell my wife what happened.” Zosia and the others in the car watched his huge muscular body pile out of the car, run out and disappear into the dense smoke.

  “I’m going too,” the man next to Zosia said.

  “Me too,” said another voice, a large woman Zosia had hardly noticed. “I can’t get out on my side. The door’s stuck,” she yelled, trying to push it open. “You, let us out,” she barked at Zosia.

  Zosia had to leave the car to let them out, and she coughed violently during the few seconds that she stood in the din.

  The woman slammed the door so violently Zosia was unable to open it. In a panic, she tried the passenger side, forced it open and collapsed onto the front seat next to the driver, Borys.

  “Listen,” Borys said, worried. “You want to go to a hospital or something?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Well, I’m going back home.” He reversed the car and rammed the gate, throwing Zosia’s forehead against the dashboard. Her eyes and throat burned, but she felt better with her forehead resting against the soft black vinyl of the glove compartment.

  “Hold on,” the driver said. Zosia coughed little then, but her breath wheezed and she felt her chest bellow in and out as though a stone on fire were lodged behind her throat.

  At last the car pulled up in front of her home. The driver nudged her with his elbow. “Can you make it in by yourself?” he asked. She looked up and saw fear etched in the red crisscrossed lines of his huge round eyes.

  She nodded, got out of the car, and then managed to stagger to the front door. She was winded, and her throat was scratchy, but she found she could breathe a little easier. The coughing aggravated her nausea, and she waited a few more seconds until the car screeched away before vomiting into a patch of wild raspberries.

  Inside, she realized the metallic smell and a hint of smoke had leaked inside the house. Her knees shook, and she nearly collapsed while shutting the two open windows in the front room.

  It was quiet. “Mamo?” she called out feebly, starting another coughing fit. There was no answer, only the placid, familiar rhythm of the pink clock ticking on top of the television. It was too early for the children to be home from school. She stumbled to her bedroom, where Yurko still slept and Bosyi still lay on the little lambskin rug by the bed. Zosia was light-headed and shaky from exhaustion, but she managed to pull off her sweaty boots and uniform. She stopped to listen to Yurko’s short, rasping breaths coming from deep within his chest before propping one uncertain knee on the bed.

  “Stay,” she said to the dog, who started to whimper and lick her foot. “You can stay.” She briefly touched its head and gently eased herself into the bed next to her husband. She covered both of them with his thin flannel blanket and lifted his head near her shoulder. Her spine tingled a bit each time she felt his shallow breath puff gently on her neck.

  Chapter 6

  ZOSIA WAS FLYING sky high, deep into the black clouds. Her lightweight body was hurled over a granite wall, but she landed upright on her feet, like a cat. The chort stood tall, towering over her. He wore a black robe with a hood like the medieval Western monks she once saw on a television program. The chort asked her in a baritone’s voice, “If you are to be saved, then what good is the world?”

  And Zosia was six years old again. Her hair was in ringlets, and she wore a big white bow pinned to her head exactly like the one her own daughter wore now. She started to cry and pointed to the wall behind her, at the inscriptions from the beatitudes etched in the stone, written in an alphabet she had never seen before, although she was able to read each sentence out loud:

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied….”

  The demon disappeared into a black smoke, and Zosia heard the church bells; not the shallow clanging ones from the village church in Starylis, but the big, resonant bells she remembered from the golden domed church she attended when she was the child of political exiles in Siberia; from the time when she memorized her catechism as though it were her life’s calling.

  Zosia awoke and remembered her dream. Her arms were still wrapped around her sleeping husband, and they were both wet with sweat. She strained her ears. She heard bells after all, but the sound came from the cowbells Marusia had hung outside their front door because they didn’t have a real doorbell.

  She put on a robe and stumbled her way to the front door. A little girl in blond braids wearing the bright red scarf and crisp white blouse of the Communist Young Pioneers greeted her. “Dobryi den’. Here, take this.” She held up a waxed paper envelope.

  “What is it?” Zosia asked.

  “Iodine pills. Because of a fire at the Chornobyl plant. Give one to each member of your family once a day.” The little girl turned to go.

  “Wait a minute,” Zosia said.

  “I have to go now,” the little girl said impatiently. “Take the pills and you’ll feel better.”

  Zosia watched her skip down the road. She felt weak and sat down outside on the blue-gray slate of the front steps. Her red eyes were heavy with sleep and grit, and she lay her head on her knees, too dizzy to make a move.

  MARUSIA FOUND HER keeled over on the steps. “Zosen’ka, wake up!”

  Zosia sat upright. Her head ached, and the hand tightly clutching the envelope the girl had given her was numb. “I’m fine.”

  She saw that Katia was staring at her. Tarasyk began to cry. “Come here, darlings.” She brought the children to her chest and hugged them hard, but only the little boy held on to her. Katia wriggled out of her mother’s grasp and ran into the house. “Go with your sister,” Zosia whispered and dully watched the little boy turn away from her.

  “Bida!” Marusia cried. “Calamity! We’re not supposed to go out of the house today. We have to shut all the windows. I saw the militsiia with guns in the village. I was in town getting the children and a militsioner yelled into that big megaphone they carry and said we all have to stay in our homes today.” Then she remembered, “You’re not working? Are you all right?”

  Zosia stood up too quickly and had to hold on to Marusia’s arm. “I’m a little groggy,” she said. “I’ve had a nap. Yurko is still asleep.”

  “Thank God for that. He was so tired, poor boy. What do you have in your hand?”

  “Oh, I got these a while ago,” Zosia said. She handed Marusia the iodine tablets. “Give one to the children and take one yourself. Iodine tablets. For protection. Give one to Yurko if he’s awake. Go on, I’ll just sit here a few minutes. Then I’ll come in.”

  “Hurry up. The air is so bad….” Marusia looked at Zosia with great concern before briefly touching the top of her head.

  Zosia waited until Marusia was out of sight before she allowed herself to succumb to her nausea. I’m going to die, she thought calmly. She was kneeling on the g
rass, hugging her waist and concentrating on a bee that was hovering in mad semicircles near her head.

  She closed her eyes, and her ears were full of the harsh sounds of birds squawking in the linden trees above her. Then she heard Myrrko the cat purr and felt it nuzzle her cheek. “My friend,” she said, hugging it close to her. The cat’s coarse tongue licked her hand. It pressed its claws into Zosia’s sleeves and did not leap out of her arms when she struggled several times to stand before finally regaining her balance. Once in the kitchen, the cat jumped to the floor, paused as though sniffing the air, and quickly darted out. “Looks like kitty isn’t hungry. That’s new,” Marusia said. She was heating a castiron pot of barley soup on the woodstove.

  A FINE RAIN fell that evening, and Yurko slept hard. Zosia was disturbed in the night by the painful lowing of their cow. Marusia spent the night in the shed, where the cow was expected to birth her calf. “She cries with big round tears in her eyes,” Marusia reported to Zosia, who came out to see what the trouble was. “But she doesn’t want to give life.”

  ZOSIA WAS MAKING a cup of instant chicory coffee early the next morning when she heard the cowbells ring again at her front door. This time a man in a blue uniform carrying a shotgun stood in the doorway. He was from the militsiia. “Tovaryshko, you know about the fire at the plant?”

  Zosia pulled the collar of her robe closer to her chin. “Not much.” She heard her mother-in-law come into the hallway behind her.

  “Nothing to worry about, nothing at all. But for your safety we will be evacuating the residents here. Be ready by five o’clock this afternoon. You’ll only be gone for a day or so. Three days at the most.”