Under This Unbroken Sky

by Shandi Mitchell

  Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a star streak across the sky. But when she turns to look, it is already gone. We have to sleep, baby. It will be morning soon.

  Teodor whimpers in his sleep. Maria creeps quietly to the bed. He lies on his stomach. His right leg twitches. His face is anguished, his hair slick with sweat. She rests her hand on his feverish forehead.

  He bolts upright, grabbing her arm. His eyes seethe with hate, his teeth are clenched. His breathing labored.

  “Teodor.”

  He blinks.

  “It’s only a dream. A very bad dream.”

  He looks past her shoulder, as if searching for the voice.

  “You’re home, safe in bed.”

  He looks at her, unconvinced.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  His eyes follow the touch of her hand on his as she lifts his fingers from her arm. She guides him back to the warmth of the quilt and tucks it high around his neck. He curls tight into her pillow. He breathes, “Maria…”

  “Yes?” She leans in close, but his breath is once again soft and even.

  She rubs the bruises on her wrist and pulls down the sleeve of her nightgown.

  PETRO HAS BEEN ASLEEP FOR HOURS. HIS HAND CUPS the apple now pressed against his cheek. He had hidden it under his pillow and fell asleep breathing in its sweet scent, dreaming of its redness against his white sheet.

  Before he fell asleep, his fingers rubbed the smoothness of its skin, outlining its one soft brown spot. He poked a fingernail into its flesh, and juice squirted onto his finger. It smelled like summer. He licked its sweetness. He touched his tongue to the open wound and suckled its tartness.

  His father had given it to him. A special present that he said had grown far away in the mountains and journeyed by train, wrapped in straw. It had been polished and displayed in a window. A ruby jewel destined for him.

  He wanted to bite it. Cut into its whiteness. Devour it—seeds and core, suck up every last drop, hide it inside him. But then it would be gone.

  Lesya already told him she didn’t want any of it. But if he ate it by himself, there would be nobody to share in its memory. Nobody to remind him what the first bite tasted like or the last. So he has decided that Ivan will be his witness, so when he forgets that the juice was sticky, that a peel got stuck between his teeth, that its soft pulp lingered on his tongue, someone else will remember.

  He is dreaming. There is a big smile on his face. He sees an apple as big as a house and he is chewing his way through it bite by bite.

  Lesya promised herself that she wouldn’t fall asleep. She sang every song she knew twice in her head. When her eyes fell shut, she lifted the covers and let the cold draft freeze her toes. She imagined monsters under her bed and coyotes circling the house. She ordered herself to stay awake. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. When her breathing began to match Petro’s even inhale, exhale, she poked him in the ribs. But the bed is warm, and the blanket cocooning her head reminds her of the closeness of the chicken coop.

  Through heavy eyes she watches her mother and father at the table, silhouetted by the flickering light of the kerosene lamp. Their voices low. His voice low. A soft murmur, soothing rhythm—low bass caressing… muted light waltzing on the walls. She needs to stay awake. She needs to keep watch.

  Last time, it was her fault. She just watched when her mother looked straight at her, her eyes begging for her help. But she was too scared of his grunts and her silence. She was only ten, now she’s almost eleven. This time she won’t be afraid. This time she has a plan. This time she won’t cover her head. She’ll get out of bed, with her good foot first, and walk up behind him. She won’t be afraid. She’ll tell him stop. Stop hurting her.

  Her eyes shut again as his voice drones on, like a bedtime story. Warm and safe, drawing her in, making her forget that it isn’t a dream. Stay awake, she tells herself, as the world dims dark. Stay awake, she pleads, as she floats away on a bed of feathers.

  Stefan has been talking for hours. Explaining where he has been, what he has been doing. Anna watches him talk. His face indistinct at first. A stranger who doesn’t know it is time to leave. She doesn’t nod or encourage him, just watches, lets the words pour over her. Her fathomless blue eyes look into his. Who is this old man in front of her, with his blotchy skin and yellow teeth? His hair too long and stringy. Thinning on the top. He has been confessing his indiscretions for hours. The other women, the alcohol, the loneliness—his failings as a husband and a father. He looks familiar. Someone she once knew. Why is he telling her these things?

  The more she looks at him, empty and nonresponsive, the more Stefan opens his heart needing her to understand. He tells her things he’s never admitted even to himself. He tells her how afraid he is of dying poor and forgotten. He tells her how sickening it is to wait on rich English men as they discuss their next financial scheme while he holds out a pan ashtray to catch their cigar ashes and empty their spittoons.

  He tried to talk to the owners about his ideas, but they didn’t want to hear. The customers liked him because he made them feel important. They bought him drinks and let him sit in on card games. He entertained them, catered to them, stroked them. He played whatever role made them feel better about themselves. That’s how he heard about the land for sale and the railway. He just had to bring the players together. Move the money in a slow play, until the big showdown, when he’d be the one holding all the cards. Aces, king high. Then they would bring him drinks and ask his opinion and hope they would be invited to sit beside him.

  He tells her: “I’m doing this for us.”

  He tells her about the house he saw that he is going to buy for her. A beautiful two-story house, painted white, with eight rooms, a pantry, and an indoor toilet. A bedroom for each of them. At the very top a turret with a single window facing south. And electricity.

  He cries when he describes the view from the bedroom looking down on the railway tracks where he can oversee his business. He’ll check his gold pocket watch to confirm the train’s arrivals and departures. He’ll wave to the engineer and count the boxcars filled with commerce, adventure, and riches—his riches. People will tip their hats to him. Offer to light his cigar. Admire and envy him.

  He tells her there is a carriage house for a buggy or an automobile. He says the grocery is just around the corner. And the women’s auxiliary holds socials once a month where people dress in their fineries and eat finger cakes on silver plates and drink from fine china. He tells her: “This is what I want for us. This is what I’m working for.” He has tears in his eyes. He actually believes himself.

  As he talks about who he is going to become, his back straightens and his eyes light up. His hands stop shaking and command the air with authority and style. He laughs, a young man’s laugh. And for the first time, since Anna was a young girl, she sees Stefan as he was when his eyes were clear blue and his blond hair was cropped close to his ears. When he stood above everyone else. His uniform immaculate, a silk handkerchief tucked cavalierly in his belt. His boots polished black. A proud man. A man with dreams. A man who rode stallions and drank cognac, and wore a sash and a tapered sword slung low on his hip. She sees the man who walked across the dance floor, took her hand, and said, “You’re mine.”

  “Forgive me,” he says and bends low and kisses her hand as though she is a lady and he is a gentleman.

  Anna yawns, deep and long. “I’m so tired,” she says.

  SHE WAKES ONCE THROUGH THE NIGHT. SHE IS HOT and sweaty, tangled in the bedclothes. He is pressed tight against her. His whiskers scratching her shoulder. His hot breath on her neck. His arm draped around her swollen breasts. His leg entwined with hers. She puts her hand in his. A man’s hand. It has been so long since she has been touched. A quiver shudders between her legs.

  She takes his finger in her mouth; it tastes of salt and nicotine. He stirs in his sleep. She presses his hand to her breast and squeezes. His groin, already hard and swollen, pushes aga
inst her backside.

  She has been so lonely. She is thirty-eight years old. Who else will ever touch her? Who else will ever want her? She wants to be desired. She wants to be that girl again who made boys beg.

  She wants to be loved.

  The ache between her legs surges to her heart. She can forgive him. She can forget.

  “Maybe this time…” she wants to pretend.

  “Maybe this time…” as he lifts her nightgown.

  “Maybe this time…” as the darkness disguises their bloated bodies and decaying faces. He is young and she is beautiful.

  “Maybe this time…” as he lifts her nightgown and she lets him enter her from behind.

  “Maybe this time…” knowing they haven’t much time. The morning light is coming.

  PETRO BALANCES ON THE STONE WALL, WILLING IVAN TO look outside. He stomps his feet to warm his toes. His boots are wet from the trudge through the snow. His new socks, sticky with dampness, are balled around his toes. The left one, which is two sizes too large, has slipped beneath his heel, but he barely feels the cold; in his right pocket, his hand cherishes the perfect roundness of his apple.

  Up on the hill, Ivan waves as he barrels out of the house, only to be called back by Maria. Her voice reaches Petro, soft and chastising. She adjusts his cousin’s coat or maybe wraps a scarf around his neck. It’s too far away to see. They are close together and Petro pretends that he is watching himself with his mama. She is tucking in his sweater, brushing the hair out of his eyes, worrying if he will be warm enough and did he have enough for breakfast. She smells of the woodstove, fried eggs, and warm bread. She is laughing. She sends him on his way, thinking, My, he’s getting big.

  Petro sits on the wall; his bum sinks into the pillow of snow. He wiggles his toes. They feel clunky and wooden. He burrows his nose into the collar of his thin jacket. He exhales. The hot air swirls against his chest and warms his cheeks. His ears are cold. He forgot his hat… and his mittens.

  When he woke up, the fire was out. The walls of the house were coated in sparkling frost. He poked his head out from under the covers and saw his breath. Lesya was at the stove, lighting the kindling. It was just beginning to crackle. She was wearing her coat, but her bare legs shivered beneath her nightdress. Mama and Tato were still in bed, lost under a pile of quilts and blankets. His father’s snore gurgled and then hiccupped; Petro couldn’t help but laugh. Lesya glared at him. Get some wood.

  On the table were four empty jars of jam. The bread and butter had been left out. The bread was hard. The butter frozen. His father’s flask sat open next to a tin cup that was a quarter full of golden liquid. Petro’s nose crinkled at its sour smell. He ran his finger around the cup’s edge and hesitantly licked. It burned his tongue and lips. He tried to spit it out. Lesya cuffed him on the back of the head and told him never to touch it again. She hissed at him again when he left the door open too long on his way out.

  He stood before the woodpile, uncertain what to do next. Teodor hadn’t come by last night to split the wood. He had watched his uncle swing the ax, up and over, striking the heart with a solid whack driving a crack that splintered down the middle into two perfect halves. Surely he could do it.

  He brushed away the snow and selected a squat, fat length of poplar. He strained to lift it, but it barely budged. Using his feet, he pried it from the pile and rolled it to the chopping block. Teodor had left the ax embedded in the wood. He grabbed the handle and yanked back, surprised when it didn’t move. He grasped it with both hands and finally pried it loose. Grunting, he heaved the firewood up on end onto the block.

  He picked up the ax, not expecting it to be so heavy, and swung. It bounced off the side. He swung again. Thwack, it sunk an inch off-center. He pulled it out and swung again and again. He was hot in his coat, and with each swing the ax became heavier. Panting, he whacked at the log, not taking aim, his anger rising. Bark chipped off the edges. Dents gouged the wood. Twice he missed altogether. See how weak you are, the wood taunted. Petro swung with all his might, and crashed down sideways. The impact ricocheted up the handle, shuddered through his hands, and the ax head splintered from the handle.

  He hurled it across the yard and headed to the bush to gather broken branches. When he returned with an armful of sticks, the fire was almost out again. Stefan was up, growling about the cold and that breakfast wasn’t ready. Lesya shoved the kindling in the stove and snarled that the sticks were green. Stefan barked and sent him out for another armload. Anna stayed curled up warm under the covers.

  Breakfast was better. The boiled eggs and oatmeal with the last of the strawberry jam lifted everyone’s spirits. Lesya limped back and forth, filling the plates. Anna had dressed in her loosest-fitting smock, the one that best masked her girth. She had brushed her shoulder-length hair and pinned it back to softly frame her face. She laughed and conversed about the weather and made sure Lesya topped up Stefan’s cup of coffee. After his third egg, Stefan emptied his tin cup, sat back in his chair, and rubbed his belly. He spoke brusquely to Petro only once, when he told him to sit up straight and keep his elbows off the table, only farmers sit like that.

  Ivan reaches the edge of the field. Petro watches him hop through the furrows, kicking up snow. Maybe he shouldn’t tell him about the apple. Maybe he should save it for another day. Eat it all by himself. One bite a day. Keep it his secret. Maybe if he shares it, it will lose some of its magic. What if it’s sour? What if it’s rotten inside? What if Ivan wants to bet him and he loses like he always loses. Would Ivan share it with him? Would he have even told him? Or would he have wolfed it down in front of him, taunting him, keeping it just out of reach? It’s his apple. It doesn’t belong to anyone else. He doesn’t have to share.

  Huffing and panting, Ivan plows into the stone wall. His cheeks are red, his eyes shining. A brown scarf is wrapped around his neck, hoary with frost just below his mouth. He wears oversized mittens and on his feet are two pairs of socks.

  “You wanna go to the dump?” he blurts, ready to run again.

  Petro extracts the apple from his pocket. He holds it in the palm of his hand. It is red and shiny, perfect in this white world. He sets it gingerly on the snow capping the stone wall. Ivan’s mouth drops open. Petro sits straighter, taking in this newfound awe and respect. For the first time he feels that he is older and he has won.

  “Do you want some?”

  Ivan nods, unable to speak. His tongue licks his lips.

  “We need to clear a spot,” Petro declares ceremoniously. “There.” He points.

  Tight against the stone wall, Ivan scoops out a snow bed. On his knees, he pushes the snow away in a widening circle.

  “Bigger,” Petro commands as he holds the apple to his heart, no longer able to feel his chilled fingers.

  Ivan stomps the white down, flat and smooth. Petro enters the circle. The boys squat down. Petro sets the apple reverentially in the center.

  “My tato got it for me. He went far, far away and picked it from a tree. He carried it across the ocean, through the woods. People tried to steal it from him, but he fought them off so he could bring it home to me.”

  They breathe little white clouds.

  He wasn’t planning to say it, but he did. “Whatcha got to trade?”

  Ivan looked at him, searching his mind’s pockets. A rock shaped like a heart. A shard from a busted crock. A gopher’s skull. A twig that looks like a snake. Nothing on him. Nothing good enough. Petro reads the disappointment in his eyes.

  “Your mittens look warm,” he says.

  Ivan’s hands curl into their woolen warmth. They were Myron’s. They’ve been darned a hundred times and bear the scars of blue, gray, and brown wool stitches. A loose red thread hangs from the thumb where he snagged it on a branch. At night, Maria hangs these mittens on the back of the chair beside the stove. Ivan’s favorite moment of the day is slipping his hands into their warmth. Good morning, they say.

  “Deal.” He yanks them off and hands them
over. Petro pulls them over his numb fingers and is instantly immersed in their heat. His fingers throb, the tips burn icily. He picks up the apple, two-pawed, and takes the first bite.

  The cold juice sprays his tongue, trickles down his throat. He closes his eyes and chews. He memorizes the first crunch, that cold sweet, the pulp softening to a mash, floating across his tongue. He swallows and opens his eyes. Ivan is memorizing the rapture on his face, the wetness of his lips, the radiance in his eyes. He is remembering the look of profound goodness. Petro holds out the apple, Ivan reaches.

  Petro stops him: “I’ll hold it.”

  Ivan leans forward and bites.

  They chew slowly. Matching bite for bite until the red is gone, and then the white, until all that is left are three seeds and a stem. It’s too awful to contemplate that it’s all gone. That they’ll never get it back. That they ate it and in doing so they destroyed it.

  “We should plant them,” Ivan offers. Petro nods in agreement, knowing that if he speaks, he will cry.

  “We need to plant facing south so it gets lots of sun.” Ivan clambers over the wall. “It has to be someplace we’ll remember.”

  Petro follows him, mitts clasped together carrying the precious seeds.

  “Here, where the two white rocks touch.”

  Ivan gets down on his knees and scratches at the snow with his bare hands until his fingers claw the frozen ground. He finds a stick and gouges a shallow hole.

  “Deeper,” Petro whispers.

  Ivan scrapes the dirt with his fingernails. His hands flush red from the cold. His fingertips blanch white. The nerves scream cold. He shoves his hands under his armpits.

  “Enough?”

  Petro nods his approval and crouches over the hole. He opens his hands. The seeds cling to the woolen mittens. Ivan scrapes them free. Together they cover them with the frozen dirt and pack them in. They kick at the snow with their boots, tramping down the spot. They stand back and half expect a green shoot to pop out of the ground.