“What is the difference?”
“Which sister, Dad?”
The Old Man and my father were practically twins except that my father’s hair was still black. Around my father’s eyes, there were wrinkles like pin scratches. The Old Man was seasoned—what I expected. His face was windburned, the lines around his mouth and eyes dug like ravines. When my Oma got closer, she began to cry, just a little, enough to use the handkerchief stuffed in the pocket of the jacket she wore despite the ninety-degree weather. She saw no resemblance to her own mother in me, which she’d hoped for, but that didn’t matter. She saw her granddaughter for the first time. We embraced. For so long, she’d wanted to know me. Her face was round like a pie. Her eyes were brown moons. Around her chipped tooth, her skin was soft and loose. In the corners of her mouth, the pink lipstick, the same shade as her pink head scarf, bled. Even though it would take years to understand her, right away I loved her. She took my hand in hers, still holding on to me, and I remembered that Wheaton was there somewhere. I hadn’t introduced him. I forgot.
Veronica finally came out wearing her apron. To Freddie, she said, “Well, just look at you! Long time, no see.” It was ridiculously clichéd, but what else was she going to say to him and the in-laws who hadn’t wanted to know her? Freddie nodded and she laughed, hugging him. I rarely know what my mother will do or say, but on this particular day, when her insecurity was palpable, she was quite easy to peg. She smiled awkwardly, her hands behind her back, waiting for someone else to say something else. I imagine that she didn’t think anyone cared that she was there, and maybe the Old Man didn’t, not right then, but my Oma certainly cared. She was a mother. Freddie was her son. She let go of me and told Veronica, “Thank you for allowing us to come.” She knew that being someone’s mother and someone’s wife was very important.
The Old Man asked Veronica, “Where are you from?”
“Troutville.”
“You are from a fishing village?”
Veronica wasn’t sure how to answer. “Not exactly.”
“Where is your family from?”
My Oma seemed to be worried about Wheaton, who stood there counting out the syllables of multiple conversations, none of them ending on the pinky. She reached out and patted his hand. Freddie interrupted the Old Man’s interrogation of Veronica and said, “Dad, I used to call Prudence ‘little bird.’ That’s what you called your sister?”
“Daina,” the Old Man said.
I said to my Oma, “This is my friend Wheaton.” When I think back, the six of us were standing in a circle, like a constellation. Connect the dots, me to Wheaton, the Old Man to Ingeburg, and Freddie to Veronica. Veronica slipped a pack of cigarettes from her apron pocket. She was better at selling real estate than selling a Betty Crocker image to her in-laws. “My sister Daina had wings,” the Old Man said. I honestly think that I shook my head before blurting, “I was born with wings.”
Wheaton said, “I can see them.”
My Oma said, “What is it that you see, young man?”
Veronica said, “They weren’t exactly wings, Prudence. That makes you sound crazy.” She took a drag off her cigarette. “The doctor called them bifurcated protrusions.”
Freddie said, “They looked like wings, Veronica. She was a little bird.”
My dad is just like that. Sometimes I want to kill him, and then, with one or two sentences, he’s Superman.
The Old Man dropped his cigar. “What are you saying?”
He opened his mouth to speak, to answer his own question, but no words came. He pressed his right palm to his forehead.
“Is he all right?” I asked my Oma. She stared hard at me like I wasn’t real, more apparition than girl. “Daina?” she queried.
The Old Man looked at me the same way. With his mouth forming an O, he seemed incapable of speech. It hadn’t fully registered with me that his sister Daina had been born with both orange starburst eyes and wings.
“Frederick?” my Oma said.
His cigar burned in the scrub. I bent down to pick it up. Wheaton said, “God, the ghost of the girl. It’s his sister. That’s who it is.”
At first, I didn’t understand. It was unimaginable. His sister? The ghostly girl? My wings? I grabbed hold of the Old Man’s elbow. He dropped his hand from his forehead and, bending slightly forward, nuzzled his beard between my neck and shoulder. I felt hot tears on my back where my T-shirt was torn.
No one said anything. We stayed that way for a good while. Wheaton’s fingers were quiet. While his world made no sense, mine was coming together. I was the first to speak. “I was born with wings,” I repeated.
The Old Man straightened up, dropping his head back, the spot on his forehead as pink as the setting sun. Resting his hands on my shoulders, he said, “You have my sister’s eyes. You too have her wings. You are a little bird.”
This was one of the places and times in my life where I could exist forever. Play the record, let it skip. Play it again. Climb on and off the Ferris wheel. Pay the carny to leave me up top staring at the horizon. Let the sun set. The wheel is filled to capacity with me, Wheaton, the Old Man, Ingeburg, Freddie, Veronica, and the ghost of the girl who was a real girl named Daina. No one is getting off. We’re going round and round, and on our way down, the stomach drops, and on our way up, the heart leaps. This is the best place to be.
PART THREE
The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.
—Harold Clarke Goddard
12
On June 15, 1941, Daina used her hands, black dirt beneath her fingernails, to dig a hole beneath a tall pine. It was too shallow to be a real hole, but she pulled her dress overhead and sat in the dirt saucer, pretending to be invisible, her face hidden within a petticoat and skirt, her thighs exposed. As far as she knew, everyone was dead. She attempted to pray to Saint Casimir, Lithuania’s patron saint, but no words came.
Dropping her skirt, she pulled her brown hair over one shoulder and braided it. Despite its oiliness and the knot at the nape of her neck, she twisted three ropes together—how Mother would do. Loose hairs fell to her shoulders, and she wished for death.
Then Daina heard a noise.
A rustling. Footsteps. Maybe a bear. Maybe a boy.
She pulled her skirt back overhead. Bear or boy, she did not want to see it or him coming. Daina did not know that her grandmother Aušrinė had hidden beneath skirts in this same forest. If she had known, she might’ve had voice to pray, she might’ve felt some kindred spirit, the protection of the pines, but Daina, like her sisters, had been sheltered from horror stories, and for now, she was terrified. Hopeless. She felt the dirt, not only beneath her fingernails, but streaked along her legs and chest. It seemed to have made its way down her throat, making it hard to breathe.
This morning, her mother had been forced into a cattle car bound for Siberia. Daina had run home to tell her sisters and brother. What are we going to do? But her brother wasn’t there, and while Daina huddled in the wardrobe behind heavy furs with her two sisters, the heat unbearable, Russian soldiers entered the house. As their footsteps grew nearer to the girls’ bedroom, Danut˙e, the oldest, put her hand over Daina’s mouth, and Audra, the middle girl, grabbed hold of Daina’s forearm. Together, they moved Daina into the corner, covering her with a wool shawl. The door to the wardrobe creaked. Daina squeezed her eyes shut. Audra and Danut˙e were pulled from the wardrobe while Daina cowered beneath the shawl. From behind this flimsy screen, Daina saw the ugliest man in the world force himself on Danut˙e. Afterward, he stuck his knife in her gut. From beneath her cover, Daina convulsed, but she did not peep.
Two days earlier, Danut˙e had taught music. She’d gone to university in Vilnius. She was gifted at anything and everything with strings. Now she was dead. Her blond hair stained pink. The plank floors swallowin
g her blood. On a perfectly fine day, a sunny June afternoon, while professors in other towns drank tea, Danut˙e died, but before she died, she bled.
Daina did not make a peep. Making two fists, she dug her fingernails into her palms and while Danut˙e continued to bleed, she watched the ugliest man in the world try to force himself on Audra—the middle sister—but something was wrong, and Audra, the middle sister, the quiet one, laughed and spit in his face. His boots and the cuffs of his pants were soaked with Danut˙e’s blood. Daina bit her lip to stop from screaming. As stifling as it was in the wardrobe, she was cold now fearing for Audra’s life. The wardrobe was jostled by one of the men, his forearms, lined with coarse dark hair, his shirtsleeves creased and drab. Daina did not breathe as two fur coats were pulled from their hangers. She imagined herself smaller, a mouse. Outside the wardrobe, two men held the coats while the ugliest man in the world stabbed Audra how one would gut a pig or a deer. Daina looked with horror at the sight and at the two accomplices holding the fur coats. How could they just stand there and do nothing? One of them was no more than a boy, her age maybe, with a gash above his left eye and a cut on his left hand. While he shut his eyes, Daina did not. She watched Audra vanishing. Not a peep.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine someone has a mother. How Frederick, Daina, Audra, and Danut˙e were born into a musical family, this ugly man with dirty hands was born stabbing holes into girls. Only there was very little blood, hardly any. It was the strangest thing. Even as he stabbed and twisted the knife, Audra would not bleed. It was as if Danut˙e had bled for both sisters, for their whole family, for the town of Vilnius, for the cause of independence, for all of Lithuania.
Daina thought that she had stopped breathing. When she did breathe, it was too noisy. The ugly man was going to find and kill her. She did not want to die. Not a peep. Not then.
If there’d been one man—just the one ugly one—Daina would’ve fought him. She would’ve burst forth from the wardrobe and wrestled the knife from him. She would’ve slit his throat. She could’ve done it, she knew, but there were three men, not one, and she was trembling. Then she yelped. She did not mean to. She covered her mouth, expecting the three men to turn toward the wardrobe, but no one had heard her. No one turned to see. The earth, vibrating on its axis, had hiccupped for Daina, tuning out her cry. She was going to be spared. Like her older brother Frederick, Daina understood that without a survivor, there’s no one to tell the story.
After the men had gone, Daina fell out of the wardrobe and crawled through Danut˙e’s blood, already cold, having turned the floorboards red. She tried to pull the two sisters together, to join their hands. Danut˙e was surprisingly light and Audra equally heavy. Daina tried to say a prayer to Saint Casimir. She tried to cover her older sisters with the shawl they’d used to hide her in the wardrobe, but it was too small. Daina attempted everything and accomplished nothing. She fled the house and ran into the pines.
There is a Lithuanian proverb that says, “If you flee from a wolf, you’ll run into a bear.” Sitting in her saucer, the sound of bear or boy approaching, Daina was ready. Come.
The rustle was not a bear. It was the boy from her bedroom, the boy with fresh wounds on his hand and above his left eye. The boy who’d shut his eyes. Daina would not fear him. She pulled down her skirt and stared at him. In her bedroom, she had wanted to survive for her sisters’ sake, but now that they were gone, she wanted to die. Her mother was on her way to an icy fate. In truth, she knew that her mother was probably dead. Aleksandra was never acquiescent. She was never one to do as she was ordered. Daina assumed her brother had died alongside her father. They were gone, all of them, everyone she loved, and now there was nothing to do but join them. Just kill me! Kill me, soldier boy. On all fours, the boy who was not a bear scuttled toward her. Pulling a hunk of bread from his pocket, he set it by her boot and backed away.
Just get it over with. Daina had already dug her own grave, at least the beginning of a grave.
The wounded boy pulled off his Soviet coat and heaved it to his right. Beneath the coat, he wore a button-down dress shirt. He smoothed the collar and bib like he’d never seen it before. Then he fell to his side, whimpering like a trapped animal. He clawed the dirt the way Daina had done. Overhead, sunlight broke through the pines, spilling onto his shirt and soaking the earth. The brown bark turned rich like good chocolate. The dull earth took on the appearance of a starry sky. This boy wasn’t going to kill her. Daina reached to feel the two stilled wings on her back. It would have been better if this boy were some bear instead of a sniveling murderous boy. He kept crying. She kicked her legs out, sprinkling dirt in his direction. It was a dare. I dare you to kill me. The boy who was not a bear sobbed. Daina kicked more dirt in his direction.
After a while, the boy got to his knees and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.
Daina stared at him. Neither of them had spoken. Then the boy, reaching into his sack, pulled out an apple. He rolled it toward Daina. It was fresh and red in the light. Daina looked from the boy to the apple. She didn’t want it. Then the boy, who was most assuredly not a bear, started talking. His name was Stasys Valetkys. He’d been kidnapped. He spoke Lithuanian and not Russian. He’d seen terrible things. What was her name? Did she have a name? “I am running,” he said, “and hiding.”
Daina could not speak, and he could not stop speaking. “I have seen the most horrendous things. I have lost my parents.”
Daina knew firsthand what he’d seen. He’d seen her sisters butchered, but this boy had no idea that she had been there hiding. Daina stared at the apple. It was too shiny and the sun was too bright. She shielded her eyes from the dappled light. When she was born, Daina’s mother called her wings a godsend. The midwife, wiping the wings clean, crossed herself. She thought that Daina was born from the devil. She didn’t know that the mother, Aleksandra, was wild for birds, that Daina and her wings were a miracle. Petras, Daina’s father, knew the folklore, the family history. His mother, Aušrinė, was born in Lithuania. She was born with wings. As a child, her wings had been bound, and as an old woman, they had dragged the dirt. The wings never meant that anyone could fly. Not Daina. Not Aušrinė. They were grounded birds, like ostriches and emus, long-legged, flying nowhere. Only in death did Daina imagine that she might soar high enough to see her family again.
Daina sat in her dirt saucer, staring at the boy Stasys. She was waiting to be a turnip or a bird, rooted or free. She was bothered by the sun and by Stasys. She wished he’d slit her throat or his own. The darkness came up from the ground, rising like fog. Daina bit into the bread that Stasys had offered. Why was this boy who watched her sisters die allowed to live? She knew that the boys and men in town had been rounded up and shot. Why was this one spared? Daina tried to shut Stasys out, to pray, but still no words came for Saint Casimir. Stasys said, “My father was a doctor. My mother was a teacher.” Daina did not care what his parents were. She would’ve preferred a bear.
Again, Stasys asked her name.
She refused to speak. Stasys continued, “The Russians made me go with them.”
Daina did not care. In the darkness, she grew ravenous, eating more of the bread and biting the apple without a thank-you. After some time had passed, she spoke. “Has the Red Army taken the coast?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want to go there.”
“Where?” The cut above his left eye was caked with dried blood. Instinctually, Daina wanted to clean it, but she wouldn’t.
“To the coast.”
“Do you have family there?”
“Sort of.” Her family had gone there, had been there every summer on holiday to Palanga. “Let’s go there.”
“Where?”
“To the sea.”
“But your family,” he said.
“Is gone,” she finished.
Stasys said, “I don’t know. We’ll be picked
up.”
“If I’m going to die, I want to see the water one last time.” Daina was thinking that time was short. She was thinking that on the walk there, she could recall her mother’s voice, her mother singing arias. She could remember how her wings had responded to the light. And even if she and Stasys were stopped and killed en route, she would be going somewhere, not just sitting and waiting to die.
Stasys said, “Maybe we should hide deeper in the forest or find someone to hide us.”
Daina said, “You can do that—if that’s what you want to do.”
He looked at Daina. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.” She lied.
“Me too.” He also lied. “I can’t let you walk off alone.”
“Yes, you can.” She had the spirits of her dead family to watch over her. Certainly it was a short matter of time until she joined them in the afterlife. Never in her darkest imagination, in her worst nightmare, had she conceived of anything like what had happened today. Now it seemed like there was no choice but to participate in the madness, to choose a course. Hers was Palanga. To remember birds and music. To pray for the dead. To try and pray to Saint Casimir—if words would come.
Stasys said, “I’ll go.”
“So be it.”
Under cover of darkness, they started walking west. They used the North Star to guide their course. Stasys attempted conversation. He didn’t talk about the dead. Instead, he asked for her name once more. What year of school was she in? Did she go to university? What did her parents do? In response, Daina asked him to please be quiet, and so the scarred boy who was not a bear mumbled to himself much of the time. He needed to hear a voice—even his own—to know that he was still alive.
After a few days, Daina resolved to tell Stasys her name. She would have to cooperate with him to some extent in order to get to Palanga. Some sort of story would have to be invented. The truth would not do. They agreed to tell people that they were married. If they were brother and sister, strangers might ask about their parents. It seemed easier to be married. Why were they walking? Because their grain store had been sovietized, leaving them homeless. They thought there might be work to the west. It seemed like a reasonable lie, a necessary one, but Daina and Stasys were clearly children, so their lies fooled no one. Just the same, it was 1941 and everyone told lies. No one minded that Daina and Stasys stuck to theirs.
Above Us Only Sky Page 9
