Paper Chains

by Elaine Vickers

  Katie’s mom smoothed the hair from her face.

  “Oh, Katie,” she said with a tearful smile. “I’m thankful for your birth parents every day.”

  A warm wave of relief washed over Katie. “Really?” she asked.

  “Really,” her parents said together.

  “Could we talk about them sometimes?” she asked. “Would that be okay? Even if we don’t really know anything?”

  “Of course,” said her mom, pulling her closer.

  “Of course,” said her dad. “But I think we can do even better than that.” He flashed Katie a wink. “I think this might be a good moment to open a present or two.”

  Each of Katie’s parents chose a present from under the tree and sat next to her on the couch. Her dad handed Katie his gift first, square but not too heavy, wrapped in shiny red.

  “Go ahead,” he urged.

  Katie carefully slid her finger under each piece of tape and unfolded the wrapping. Once the paper was gone, she knew the box, and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized it before, even under the wrapping paper. With trembling hands, she pulled away the crackly old packing tape and opened the flaps to see the attic treasures she’d thought were gone for good.

  Katie’s gaze and her fingers floated from one to the next—the candlesticks, the nutcracker, the nesting dolls. They were all there.

  “I thought I’d be surprising you with those,” said her dad. “But your mother tells me you found them already. She said you noticed they were gone, and she set my mind at ease about the missing pocket watch.”

  Katie nodded, but she couldn’t make herself look away.

  “Remember the story I told you of when we met?” her dad asked. “Well, I bought an extra suitcase so I could bring things back for you. There were women at a market in the square, right next to the orphanage. They had little stands where they sold such beautiful things, so I bought one from each of them.”

  Katie thought she saw the women then—faint, flickering pictures at the edges of her memory. They spread their brightly colored treasures under a blue Russian sky, and her birth mother sang as she set out her own stand. They bought small red apples and sat at the edge of the market so her mother could carve long curves of apple skin for her to gnaw on.

  The picture changed as Katie imagined her dad there, younger and smiling, trying to speak the few Russian words he knew. She imagined the women laughing and correcting him in voices that were almost like Babushka’s. But now when she pictured their faces, she realized they looked a little like her own.

  “One from each of them?” Katie wondered if one of those women really could have been her birth mother. If maybe she had sold things at the market too.

  “That’s right,” said her father. And the way he looked at her, she knew he had wondered the same thing. “We can get you a chain for that watch, if you want, so you can wear it around your neck.”

  Katie could almost see it then: playing with her mother’s braid long ago, but also something smaller when she leaned forward. Had her mother worn a watch around her neck? It might be a memory. Another new first memory, hazy and distant, but real all the same.

  Katie’s mom knelt beside her and handed her the second package, longer and thinner and even lighter. Once again, Katie blinked in surprise after she’d peeled back the wrapping and lifted the lid.

  Instead of the fluffy, fuzzy Christmas pajamas she’d expected, the box held a linen nightdress. The soft white fabric was embroidered at the collar and hem with delicate swirls and snowflakes, but still, it reminded Katie of the pattern on the pocket watch.

  “I’ve spent the last week learning to do this for you,” said her mom.

  Katie looked up. “Who taught you?”

  “Ana’s grandmother.” Katie’s mom smiled. “Babushka. As soon as you said that name, I went right over. She’s been helping me while you’ve been at school.”

  When Katie held the nightdress to her chest, she saw what had been hidden underneath the fabric: a journal with a red leather cover and two words embossed on the front:

  My Story.

  Katie opened the cover to find thick, creamy paper. Her baby picture—the only one she had—was there on the first page. She started to turn the page, but her dad reached for the picture first and pulled it from the four black corners that held it in place. “It was always stuck inside that frame before,” he said. “Did you ever see the other side?”

  Katie turned the photo over and there, below a line of Russian lettering in faded pencil, were the same swirled initials from the bottom of the matryoshka dolls.

  She held them next to each other, then looked up at her dad, who gave her a sad smile and a small shrug.

  They matched. Katie just knew it. She looked at the line of Russian words above. “Do you know what it says?”

  “Babushka read it for us. ‘Katya is a good girl,’” her dad recited, pointing at the words. “‘A happy girl.’”

  Katya. Katie had forgotten that used to be her name. She repeated the words, touching each one gently as a butterfly. Somehow, knowing that she had been happy then made it okay to be happy now, even with all the unknowns behind her and before her. She hoped her birth mom had figured out how to be happy too, but the hope was bittersweet.

  Katie turned through page after page in her parents’ handwriting. Her mom’s neat, straight letters, and her dad’s angled cursive.

  “It’s every detail we could remember about going to get you,” her dad said. “And everything we know about what might have happened before.”

  Near the back, Katie found more pages in a scratchy scrawl she didn’t recognize, and pictures sketched out in black ink.

  “Who did this part?” she asked.

  Katie’s mom smiled. “That was Babushka too. She knows the village where you were born. She wrote down everything she could remember about it, and so many more things about the country you came from.” She reached over and gave Katie’s hand a squeeze. “She can’t wait to talk to you about it.”

  Katie traced her fingers over the cobbled streets in the sketch and over the tops of the mountains. She studied the little houses and wished she could see inside their windows.

  “Could you take me there someday?”

  “Of course,” said her dad.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” said her mom. “Babushka says your favorite figure skater is from a village nearby.”

  Katie pictured Elena Korsikova doing beautiful, amazing, impossible things. They had something in common—something big. Maybe she could do beautiful, amazing, impossible things too, even if she never learned to quadruple toe loop.

  When she’d changed into the nightdress and brushed her teeth, Katie snuggled under her covers. In her window, new paper snowflakes caught the glow of the lights that framed her window and encircled her miniature tree. Beside her bed, the little nativity rested.

  Katie studied the small, wooden figures and thought of the baby born long ago in such a simple place. Maybe the story meant something different than she’d thought. Maybe people loved it so much because it didn’t matter how you started out—not really. You could be anything you wanted, even if you were born in a barn or in a hospital halfway around the world. What mattered was what you did with the rest of your life. And how you helped people.

  Katie’s gaze drifted back out the window, where small, white flakes danced past. As much as she’d always loved Christmas morning, she might like Christmas Eve even more, because so many wonderful things were waiting ahead.

  Because every story has a beginning, she remembered as she pulled the covers close around her. And the rest of my story can be whatever I want it to be.

  Ana

  Chapter 24

  ON NEW YEAR’S Day, the sun slanted through Ana’s window so bright and cheerful that she couldn’t even be mad about being woken up. She pushed back the covers and shuffled over to look out at the clear, snow-covered world below. Another perfect day for ice-skating.

 
Katie had gotten new skates for Christmas, and they’d gone every day since. They weren’t hockey skates, but Ana figured they had plenty of time to work up to that. One afternoon, they’d caught Katie’s mom watching them from the porch, but she’d only smiled and waved and let them enjoy the fresh air. Just the two of them.

  Today they’d agreed to meet at ten o’clock, which would give Ana plenty of time to get her chores done for Babushka. Ana put on her warmest sweats and two pairs of socks. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, smashed the ponytail under a beanie, and headed to check on Mikey.

  But first, Ana stopped at her mom’s room and stepped past the door that was nearly always open now.

  “Good morning,” said her mom, already showered and dressed. “Happy New Year.”

  “Happy New Year.” Ana picked up the family picture in the falling-apart frame. “I can’t believe you kept this on your nightstand,” she said. “It’s awful.”

  Her mom laughed. “You made it. How could I not love it?” She leaned against the wall to slip her shoes on. “Hey, your dad called.”

  Ana examined her dad in the picture and remembered the way he’d looked at the game. For the last nine days, there had been a new version of her dad. One who actually did call and had already sent them tickets to the next Bruins–Red Wings game.

  “Okay,” Ana said. Even if she wasn’t sure it would last and it wasn’t how she’d pictured it, for now, they did seem to be moving toward okay. “I’ll call him later.”

  Her mom grabbed her keys from the nightstand.

  “You’re going to work on New Year’s?” Ana asked. Her mom had started going into the office a couple of hours a day for the last week.

  “No,” she said. “But I am going out in a bit. You’ll have to ask Babushka where.”

  “Will you be back this afternoon?” she asked. “We need you to skate with us!”

  Ana’s mom smiled. “Yes, and yes. I’d love to. We can have hot chocolate and the rest of that challah when we come back inside.” The ladies from the synagogue had been bringing over foil-wrapped dinners every night since the accident. Every time she opened the door for them, Ana’s mom had seemed to shed the gray, sad skin she’d been wearing the last few months a little more. Now that she was almost back to normal, Ana realized how big the change had been.

  “Tell Mikey I’ll grab more comic books when I go out,” her mom said as Ana knocked on his door.

  Mikey had been a little groggy the first day after his surgery, and a little grouchy the second and third, but now that nine days had passed, he was headed back to being the smiley kid he’d been last summer.

  “Hey, buddy!” Ana said. “Welcome to three hundred sixty-five days of possibility! And look,” she told him as she opened his blinds. “It’s a perfect day to go to the pond.”

  Mikey winced as he sat up a little straighter. “I thought I couldn’t skate for three more weeks.”

  The old Ana might have ignored the doctor’s orders, but she was smarter now. “I didn’t say ‘skate.’ I said ‘go to the pond.’”

  “What am I going to do at the pond?”

  “Oh, you’ll see. Katie has a project for you. Start getting yourself dressed. I’ll come back to help you finish up.”

  Ana was so focused on getting ready fast that she forgot about talking to Babushka until she heard her voice.

  “Anastasia Ilyinichna Petrova,” she called, and now Ana liked the sound of it. Babushka beckoned her in. “You will carry this suitcase downstairs.”

  Ana looked at the suitcase, then glanced around at Babushka’s room. Babushka had kept the place spotless the whole time she’d been there, but now it was just bare. There was no little bottle of hand cream on the nightstand. No scratchy sweaters hanging in the closet. No shoes lined up neatly under the bed. (Although that last one had probably been thanks to Mikey, most of the time.)

  “You’re leaving?” Ana didn’t move to take the suitcase. She didn’t move at all.

  “You said I may stay until New Year, no longer,” said Babushka. “And New Year is not so expensive for flying.”

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Ana said. She still didn’t take the suitcase.

  “My life is in my home, your life is here. But I will always come back if you need me. If you invite me, perhaps I will come sooner.”

  Ana tried to pretend the answer was good enough, but it wasn’t.

  Babushka could tell. “Come in,” she said. “Sit down. We talk.”

  But when they were actually sitting there, facing each other on the stiff, stripped mattress, it was hard to think of the right thing to say. Finally, Ana started.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Because Thanksgiving is about family, and Hanukkah is about rebuilding,” Babushka reminded Ana. “I thought I must rebuild your family myself. Foolish old woman.”

  Ana hadn’t disagreed with Babushka for a while, but she knew she needed to on this one. “You did rebuild us. Or at least, you got us off to a good start.”

  Babushka frowned and shook her head. “In my life, I have one job to do: raise a good son. Instead, I raise a son who left his family.” Her shoulders dropped. “This is my fault. This is my job to fix.”

  “It’s not,” Ana said. “I thought it was my job, and Mikey thought it was his, and you thought it was yours. My mom thought it was hers too, I think, and it crushed her. But he was the one just standing there in the arena, not even taking off his dumb skates.”

  “He was a good boy.” Babushka looked up at Ana, like she was asking her to believe.

  Ana thought about that. Her dad had been to lots of her hockey games. He’d taken her out for waffle fries after wins sometimes, and shown her little videos he’d taken of stuff she could work on. And stuff that had made him proud.

  “He was a pretty good dad too, for a long time. He told me a lot of your stories when I was little, like about that girl with the doll.”

  Babushka’s eyes lit up. “Ah, yes! Vasilisa! Did you read the ending?”

  Ana shook her head. She’d totally forgotten. “Was her family ever the same again? Did her parents magically come back?”

  Babushka shook her head and made a small, clucking sound. “No, child.”

  “But she was okay anyway, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Ana’s mouth snuck into a smile. “And she survived the witch?”

  Babushka cackled. “She did. And the witch survived her.” She pushed herself up from the bed with a sigh. “No more time for chitchat. Bring that downstairs,” she commanded.

  Ana struggled with the weight of the suitcase all the way downstairs and out the door, but her mom took it from her in the driveway. “Thank you,” she said. “Will you go get your brother?”

  Mikey could walk okay now, but he let Ana piggyback him down the stairs. She covered him in layers of warm, waterproof clothes and led him to the front door.

  “Wait a second,” Mikey said. “I thought we were going to the pond.”

  “We have to say good-bye to Babushka first.”

  Mikey frowned. “Really?” He studied Ana’s face. “Am I supposed to be happy?”

  Ana shook her head. “You’re supposed to feel however you feel. It’s okay if you’re sad. It’s okay if you’ll miss her.”

  “Is it okay if I like her cooking now?” he asked.

  Ana thought about that one. “It has to be, because I kind of like it too.”

  Babushka waited for them in the driveway. She reached into her handbag and took out the pocket watch.

  “For you,” she said to Ana. “I am sorry I said you stole it. It was always for you.”

  “It’s okay,” said Ana, holding the watch close to her heart. “And thank you.”

  Babushka reached into her bag again. This time, she held a little dreidel. It had been so long since they’d done anything but light the candles that Ana had almost forgotten about that part of Hanukkah.

  “For you,” she said to Mikey.

  Mike
y stared down at the toy. “Hanukkah is over.”

  Babushka grunted. “I do not give Hanukkah presents. This is New Year present.”

  Mikey tried to spin the top on his palm. “I don’t even know how to play.”

  “I do,” Ana said. “I can teach you.”

  Babushka showed Mikey the Hebrew letters on the sides of the little top. “Do you know what these letters stand for?” she asked.

  Mikey shrugged. “Happy Hanukkah?”

  Babushka shook her head. “Nes gadol haya po.” She touched one side as she said each word. “That means, ‘A great miracle happened here.’”

  Mikey’s eyes lit up. “Is it me?” he asked. “Am I the miracle?”

  “We give dreidels to children,” Babushka said, “because each child is a miracle.” She put one arm around Mikey’s shoulders and the other around Ana’s. “But especially my grandchildren.” Then she blustered away, muttering about the dirty Boston air getting something in her eyes.

  Ana stood behind Mikey and hugged across his shoulders, pulling him close enough that she could smell his coconut shampoo. She heard the sniffle first as they watched the car disappear around the corner, then felt the drop of a tear in the gap between her coat and her mittens.

  Okay, Mikey hadn’t even made it ten hours into the New Year without crying, but Ana couldn’t blame him. She might have been crying a little herself. Maybe.

  Ana cleared her throat. “Are you ready to go to the pond?”

  “I haven’t even had breakfast!” Mikey protested.

  “I know,” said Ana. “That’s part of the surprise.”

  Ana piled Mikey on the sled, then ran back to the fridge. There, on the bottom shelf, was a half-moon of candy bar pie.

  Mrs. Burton had come over the night before and taught Ana’s mom how to make it. Ana had been pretty surprised to see her mom baking, and even more surprised that it had turned out perfectly. But the most surprising thing of all was why Mrs. Burton said she’d come.