The leaves and needles were dark red.
Had radiation done that? Was it killing the trees from within? What was it doing to her and everyone else in Pripyat?
She pictured the inside of her body, as she had seen it drawn in her schoolbooks: the white spokes of her rib cage, the pulsing mass of her heart, the twin kidney beans of her lungs. Were they changing within her? Was she going to die, like Papa?
Suddenly, she could scarcely breathe.
It was Svetlana Dmitrievna’s turn. A stern-faced soldier pointed at her cat. “You’ll have to leave your pet.”
“Why?” Svetlana Dmitrievna asked. “She’s a good cat.”
“I’m sure she is,” the soldier said, “but animals aren’t permitted to evacuate.”
“My Zhulka won’t be a nuisance, I promise,” Svetlana Dmitrievna said. “I’ll keep her on my lap for the entire drive to—well, to wherever you’re taking us.”
A doctor came over. “What’s the delay?”
“This citizen doesn’t want to leave her pet behind,” the soldier explained.
The doctor turned to Svetlana Dmitrievna. “The amount of radiation these small animals’ bodies have received has overwhelmed them. We have to contain all animals here. If they’re permitted to roam freely, they could wander huge distances and sicken people across the Soviet Union.”
Oksana’s heart beat faster. Were all of them like the animals of Pripyat—so overburdened with radiation that they had to be contained so they didn’t make others sick? Was that the real reason they were being evacuated—not so they could be saved but so they would be held somewhere and wouldn’t infect anyone else?
She crept to the doctor. “Are we contagious like the cats?”
“Get back in line!” he barked.
“I beg your pardon.” Oksana’s mother grabbed her. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t trouble you again.”
“See that she doesn’t,” the doctor snapped. “I have thirty thousand people to evacuate, and I don’t have time for one impertinent child’s questions.”
“Yes, I know. I apologize.” Gripping Oksana’s shoulder, her mother guided her into place behind Svetlana Dmitrievna. “What were you thinking?” she whispered. “You know better!”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Oksana fell silent as the doctor beckoned Svetlana Dmitrievna forward. Slowly, her teacher set the animal down. It purred, rubbing between her ankles. She held her arms out for the doctor to wave the dosimeter over her body like a wand. When she was cleared, she went into the bus the doctor indicated, leaving the cat meowing on the pavement.
It was Oksana’s turn. Obediently, she lifted her arms and waited as the doctor scanned her with the dosimeter. The device clicked loudly when it was held at her shoulder. That meant she had the poison inside her, she thought, trying to fight a rising wave of panic. It was part of her, and she couldn’t wash it away like dirt or bandage it like a cut. There was nothing she could do.
“Your level is acceptable,” the doctor said.
Oksana let out a shaky breath. She stepped aside so the doctor could wave the dosimeter over her mother’s arms. Click-click-CLICK! He frowned and made a notation on his clipboard.
“Your radiation level is too high.” He pointed to the far end of the street, where a line of ambulances waited. “You must go to a hospital immediately.”
“I can’t be sick,” Oksana’s mother gasped. “I don’t work at the power station!”
“Your radiation level is too high,” the doctor repeated, sounding annoyed. “Get in an ambulance.”
Oksana’s mother took a hesitant step forward, then stopped to look at Oksana. “Do what they tell you, and be a good girl.”
“Mama!” Oksana shouted as her mother began walking away. “No! Please don’t leave me!”
10
Valentina
FROM ACROSS THE street, Valentina heard a girl scream.
Valentina whirled around. Through the long lines of sad-faced people, she glimpsed Oksana, her arm gripped by a soldier.
“Oh no,” Valentina’s mother said. “Valyushka, stay here. I’ll find out what’s happening to the Savchenkos.”
Valentina wanted to ask her mother why she cared. Her mother knew that Oksana teased her mercilessly at school. She had always told Valentina to ignore anyone who made fun of her.
And now she was hurrying away to help that bully Oksana and her mother. Valentina would never understand grown-ups.
Should she go, too? Her mother had said to stay, but she didn’t want to let Mama out of her sight for an instant. No matter what, they mustn’t be separated. What if they were accidentally placed on different buses?
That made her decision. She rushed after her mother. Together they reached the Savchenkos and the soldier.
Oksana’s mother had gone pale. “I can’t imagine what’s wrong with me, Khusha,” she said to her daughter, using Oksana’s nickname. “Maybe I shouldn’t have spent so much time gardening on the roof yesterday.”
“Mama, don’t leave me!” Oksana cried.
Her mother stepped away. “You’ll be fine. Your teacher can look after you.”
“Where are you taking her?” Valentina’s mother asked the soldier.
“Minsk,” he replied, stone-faced. “She received a high dose of radiation and must go to the hospital immediately. Go,” he added to Oksana’s mother, who nodded and looked at Oksana. Her face was pale and strained.
“Be a good girl, Khusha,” she said.
Oksana’s eyes filled with tears. “Please don’t leave me!”
Her mother didn’t respond. The soldier marched her to one of the waiting ambulances at the end of the street. Oksana ran after them. The ambulance stood with its back doors open. Oksana’s mother climbed inside, then turned to look at Oksana. She said something Valentina couldn’t hear.
“Poor girl,” Valentina’s mother murmured. She squeezed Valentina’s shoulder. Despite her dislike of Oksana, Valentina couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy.
Oksana tried to climb into the ambulance, too. The soldier pulled her out. She kicked and scratched at him, but he didn’t let go.
A man in a white uniform slammed the ambulance doors shut. The vehicle sped away from the curb.
Oksana slipped out from under the soldier’s arms and raced after the ambulance. It picked up speed, turning the corner and vanishing from view.
“Stop her, Valyushka,” Valentina’s mother said. “She mustn’t make trouble.”
Valentina handed her suitcase to her mother, then raced after Oksana. Around the corner, down a deserted street where white powder dusted the pavement, perhaps the remnants of yesterday’s foam. Oksana was far ahead, but Valentina quickly closed the distance between them. She yelled at Oksana: “Stop!”
“I can’t—my mother—” Oksana panted.
“You’ll never catch up,” Valentina said, running alongside Oksana.
The ambulance had already become a black speck beneath the red sky. Oksana halted, bracing her hands on her knees and gasping for breath.
“We have to go back,” Valentina said. “Now, Oksana,” she added when Oksana didn’t move.
“No.” Oksana’s eyes were wet. “I can’t go anywhere without my mother.”
“Well, she’s gone somewhere without you,” Valentina said impatiently, and tugged on Oksana’s arm. “We have to get out of here. We don’t want the buses to leave without us.”
Oksana jerked her arm out of Valentina’s grasp. Then she started walking in the direction from which they had come. Valentina walked alongside her, her shoes kicking up white powder with each step. Wasn’t that just like Oksana: no thank-you, no conversation, only a stony silence.
When they reached their street, Valentina’s mother rushed over to them. Behind her, more people inched forward in lines, holding out their arms for
the dosimeters. Everyone, even small children, spoke in hushed voices. Dogs, turned loose by their owners, ran through the street, barking.
“We must get on the bus to Kiev before it leaves,” Valentina’s mother said. “Oksana, you come with us. I have a friend in Kiev who we can stay with.”
Valentina winced. Didn’t Mama know how mean Oksana was? Besides, the Savchenkos must have dozens of friends in Pripyat who would let Oksana travel with them. This was a terrible idea.
Oksana looked panicked. “I’ll get on Svetlana Dmitrievna’s bus. She’ll help me.”
Valentina’s mother bent down, locking eyes with Oksana. “I’ve been listening to the soldiers. Your teacher’s bus is headed to temporary lodgings about twenty kilometers away. That’s not very far from the power station. Radioactive fallout will easily be carried there on the wind. And once the people on your teacher’s bus are quarantined, there’s no telling when they’ll be let out. If they’ll be let out at all.”
Valentina sucked in a breath. What her mother had just said was dangerous—she sounded as though she were criticizing the government. Oksana could report her for this.
But Oksana didn’t run to the soldiers to tattle. Her chin quivered, as if she were trying to hold her tears inside. “Mama wouldn’t want me to go with you.”
“Your mama wants you to be safe,” Valentina’s mother said firmly. “You must forget your fears about our people. All that matters now is surviving.”
Oksana bit her lip. “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll go with you.”
Valentina didn’t understand. How could her mother be so kind to Oksana when she knew how nasty Oksana had been to her? Why did they have to be responsible for Oksana when she had plenty of friends who would take care of her instead?
“Come along, Valyushka,” Valentina’s mother said.
Reluctantly, Valentina followed her mother and Oksana to the buses at the end of the street. They went into the third bus, which smelled of wool and gasoline and metal.
People already crammed the seats. It was noisy: babies cried, children laughed and chattered, and grown-ups spoke to one another in low, worried tones.
Valentina found two empty seats in the back. She thought her mother would sit with her, but she sat down next to one of their neighbors and gestured for Oksana to sit with Valentina.
Frowning, Oksana settled down beside Valentina. She scooted over to the edge of the seat, tucking her skirt about her legs, taking care that not even their clothes touched.
Valentina’s cheeks went hot. Fine, then. If Oksana was going to go on being mean, then Valentina would ignore her.
Without speaking, they waited. Valentina held her suitcase handle tightly. She didn’t dare let go of it for an instant. Not now that it contained the only things she had in the world.
When she and her mother had heard the evacuation announcement, she had gone to the trunk that contained her bedding. Beneath the blankets was where she kept her treasures. Drawings of her inventions, a robot figurine she had molded out of clay, a dried rose preserved in a sleeve of wax paper, and—the most important—her father’s old watch. It was broken, and she was determined to fix it.
There was also an envelope full of loose snapshots, mostly of her and her parents. She had glanced at them, pausing at a photograph of an old couple. They were smiling, squinting in the sunlight. The man had gray hair and wore a dark suit; the woman was in a blue dress and had pulled her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck.
Gently, Valentina had traced their faces with one finger. Her grandparents, Mama’s mother and father. Valentina had never met them. She didn’t know why. Her grandfather had died years ago of a heart attack, but her grandmother was still alive and lived hundreds of kilometers away, in Leningrad. Once Valentina had asked her mother why they didn’t talk to or visit her grandmother. Mama had looked sad and said, “Your grandmother does dangerous things.” She wouldn’t tell Valentina more.
The bus started with a lurch. Its tires kicked up clouds of dust. Once the dust fell to the earth again, Valentina saw that Svetlana Dmitrievna’s cat stood in the street, watching them go. Its head was cocked to one side, as if it wanted to ask why it was being left behind.
A lump rose in Valentina’s throat. Poor cat. Poor everyone.
To her left, the tall apartment buildings of Pripyat speared toward the sky. Beyond them, the Communist hammer-and-sickle signs atop the buildings in the main square were lost behind a curtain of smoke. Then the bus rounded a curve in the road, and everything was hidden from Valentina’s view except for the red gleam of a sky lit by fire and a seemingly endless parade of army tanks driving past her into Pripyat.
11
KIEV, UKRAINE, SOVIET UNION
AUGUST 1941
Rifka
THE BABY WAS a boy. Of course. Rifka sighed as she went into the kitchen. Maybe someday she’d have a sister.
If the war ever ended and her father could come home.
Night had turned the window black. Hours had passed since she had fetched the midwife and her newest brother had begun his journey into the world. Little wonder she felt so tired.
But there was work still to be done. She mustn’t rest yet.
She went down the apartment stairs to check on her other brothers, who were being minded by a neighbor. Saul and Isaac were asleep, bless them, and the neighbor said it was silly to disturb them and she’d send them back in the morning.
Then it was upstairs again to boil more water. When the kettle whistled, she dumped the water into a wooden tub. She washed the sweat- and bloodstained sheets from her parents’ bed, stirring them with a ladle. Once they were clean, she hauled them downstairs to hang them from the laundry lines strung between the chestnut trees behind her building. She had to work by feel—she hadn’t thought to bring a candle—but her hands had performed the task so many times they knew what to do.
Up the rickety wooden stairs once more. From her mother’s bedroom, she heard the cries of her new brother. He must be hungry. Well, her mother could take care of that. Rifka could finally go to bed. She didn’t hear the midwife, which meant the lady must have left, for she had a voice like a trumpet.
Rifka started for her room, but her mother called, “Rifka, come here!”
She thought longingly of her bed. The straw mattress lay beneath the large window overlooking Dorohozhytska Street. Countless times she had sat there, doing schoolwork, playing her flute, or daydreaming about Lev, the bookseller’s son. He had brown eyes like a doe’s, Rifka had decided, although she’d never seen a deer up close and had no idea what their eyes looked like. She’d read the description in a book, though, and had liked it. Unfortunately, Lev was also three years older than she was. When he saw her in the street, he smiled and tugged her braids. As though she were a child.
“Rifka!” her mother called again.
“Coming, Mama.” Rifka trudged through the kitchen to her mother’s bedroom.
The midwife had left a candle burning on the table. By its weak light, Rifka could see her mother lying in bed, cradling her baby brother. He was asleep.
Her mother smiled at her. “Would you like to hold him?”
No. She was sick of little brothers. Calming them after temper tantrums. Cleaning their hands sticky with crumbs and milk. Playing games she had outgrown long ago. Wiping bottoms and washing clothes.
But her mother smiled at her so hopefully . . .
“Yes,” she said, holding out her arms.
Her mother handed her the baby. He was the ugliest baby she had ever seen: red-faced and wrinkled and skinny. The few dark hairs on his head went every which way. Hs mouth was screwed up in a pout, as though he didn’t like his dream. He smelled of sour milk.
He was perfect.
Something pulled at her heart. She couldn’t stop herself from grinning down at him. “What’s his name?”
“Avrum,” her mother said.
Avrum had been one of her mother’s brothers. Rifka had never met any of them, for they had been dragged away before she was born, forced to serve in the tsar’s army and never seen again. Her mother didn’t know what had happened to them.
Rifka smiled at her new brother. “He looks like an Avrum.” It was a lie, for right now he looked like every new baby—although he was the most ugly-beautiful baby ever. But she said it because she knew her mother would like hearing the words.
Her mother smiled again and reached for Avrum. Rifka gave him back.
“Sit down,” her mother said. “I have to talk to you.”
Swallowing a yawn, Rifka brought the room’s only chair to her mother’s bedside. “Yes, Mama?”
“The midwife brought news.” Her mother looked steadily at Rifka. “There are rumors the Germans will be here in a month. Maybe less. There isn’t much time left to escape.”
Rifka shifted uncomfortably. Why were they talking about this again? They already knew they had to stay; the boys were too small to travel, and her mother couldn’t in her condition. “I know.”
“The boys and I can’t go.” Her mother glanced down at Avrum, who was sleeping peacefully. Then she looked up at Rifka. “But you can.”
Go. Alone. Without her mother and brothers.
“No,” she said. “Mama, I won’t leave you—”
“You must.” Mama readjusted her hold on Avrum so she could reach for Rifka’s hand. “It’s the only way. I won’t let you stay here because of me and the boys. You have a chance to get out. You have to take it.”
“But . . . where will I go?” Panic seized hold of her. “I can’t!”
Her mother squeezed her hand. “You can, and you will. You’re a strong girl, and clever, and tough, much tougher than you realize. Yes, you are,” she insisted when Rifka opened her mouth to argue. “Could a weak girl have gotten good marks in school and helped me care for the boys and missed her father, all without complaint? No. And now I’m going to ask you to be even tougher.”
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