There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (8 page)

The summer was beautiful. Everything was blossoming, flowering. Our Lena began to talk. She’d run after us into the forest, not to pick mushrooms but to follow my mother like she was tied to her, as if it were the main task of her young life.
I taught her how to recognize edible mushrooms and berries, but it was useless—a little creature in that situation can’t possibly tear herself away from grown-ups. She is saving her skin every minute of the day, and so she ran after my mother everywhere, on her short little legs, with her puffed-out stomach. She called my mother “Nanny”—where she picked up that word we had no idea; we’d never taught it to her—and she called me that, too, which was very clever, actually.

One night we heard a noise outside our door like a cat meowing and went outside to find a newborn baby wrapped in an old, greasy coat. My father, who’d grown used to Lena and sometimes even came during the day to help around the house, now simply deflated. My mother didn’t like it either and immediately went over to Anisya to demand who could have done this—with the child, at night, accompanied by the quiet Lena, we marched over to Anisya’s. Anisya wasn’t sleeping; she had also heard the child’s cries and was very worried. She said that the first refugees had already arrived in Tarutino, and that soon they’d be coming to our village too, so we should expect more guests from here on out. The infant was squealing shrilly and without interruption; he had a hard, puffed-out stomach. We invited Tanya over in the morning to have a look, and without even touching him she said he wasn’t going to survive—he had the infant’s disease. The child suffered, yelled, and we didn’t even have a nipple for the bottle, much less any food for him. My mother dripped some water into his dried-out mouth, and he nearly choked on it. He looked like he was about four months old. My mother ran at a good clip to Tarutino, traded a precious
bit of salt for a nipple, and returned full of energy, and the child drank a little bit of water from the bottle. My mother induced stool with some softening chamomile brew, and we all, including my father, darted around as fast as we could, heating the water, giving the child a warm compress. It was clear to everyone that we needed to leave the house, the plot, our whole functioning household, or else we’d be destroyed. But leaving the plot meant starving to death. At the family conference my father announced that we’d be moving to the house in the woods and that he’d stay behind for now with a rifle and the dog in the shack next door.

That night we set off with the first installment of things. The boy, whose name was now Nayden, rode atop the cart. To everyone’s surprise he’d recovered, then began sucking on the goat’s milk, and now rode wrapped in a sheepskin. Lena walked alongside the cart, holding onto the ropes.

At dawn we reached our new home, at which point my father immediately made a second run and then a third. He was like a cat carrying more and more of his litter in his teeth, which is to say all the many possessions he’d acquired, and now the little hut was smothered in things. That day, when all of us collapsed from exhaustion, my father set off for guard duty. At night, on his wheelbarrow, he brought back some early vegetables from the garden—potatoes, carrots, beets, and little onions. We laid this all out in the underground storage he’d created. The same night he set off again, but limped back almost immediately with an empty wheelbarrow. Gloomily he announced: “That’s it!” He’d brought a can of milk for the boy. It turned out our house had been claimed
by some kind of squad. They’d already posted a guard at the plot, and taken Anisya’s goat. Anisya had lain in wait for my father on his escape path with that can of milk. My father was sad, but also he was pleased, since he’d once again managed to escape, and to escape with his whole family.

Now our only hope lay in my father’s little plot and in the mushrooms we could find in the forest. Lena stayed in the house with the boy—we didn’t take her with us to the forest now but locked her in the house to keep her out of the way. Strangely enough she sat quietly with the boy and didn’t beat her fists against the door. Nayden greedily drank the potato broth, while my mother and I scoured the woods with our bags and backpacks. We no longer pickled the mushrooms but just dried them—there was hardly any salt left now. My father began digging a well, as the nearest stream was very far.

On the fifth day of our immigration we were joined by Baba Anisya. She came to us with empty hands, with just a cat on her shoulder. Her eyes looked strange. She sat for a while on the porch, holding the frightened cat on her lap, then gathered herself and went off into the woods. The cat hid under the porch. Soon Anisya came back with a whole apron’s worth of mushrooms, though among them was a bright-red poisonous one. She remained sitting on the porch and didn’t go into the house; we brought her out a portion of our poor mushroom soup in a can from the milk she used to give us. That evening my father took Anisya into the basement, where he’d built our third refuge, and she lay down and rested and the next day began actively scouring the forest
for mushrooms. I’d go through the mushrooms she brought back, so she wouldn’t poison herself. We’d dry some of them, and some we’d throw out. One time, coming home from the woods, we found all our refugees together on the porch. Anisya was rocking Nayden in her arms and telling Lena, choking on her words: “They went through everything, took everything . . . They didn’t even look in on Marfutka, but they took everything of mine. They dragged the goat away by her rope.” Anisya remained useful for a long time to come, took our goats out for walks, sat with Nayden and Lena until the frosts came. Then one day she lay down with the kids in the warmest place in the house, on the bunk above the stove, and from then on got up only to use the outhouse.

The winter came and covered up all the paths that might have led to us. We had mushrooms, berries (dried and boiled), potatoes from my father’s plot, a whole attic filled with hay, pickled apples from abandoned gardens in the forest, even a few cans of pickled cucumbers and tomatoes. On the little field, under the snow, grew our winter crop of bread. We had our goats. We had a boy and a girl, for the continuation of the race, and a cat, who brought us mice from the forest, and a dog, Red, who didn’t want to eat these mice, but whom my father would soon count on for hunting rabbits. My father was afraid to hunt with his rifle. He was even afraid to chop wood because someone might hear us. He chopped wood only during the howling snowstorms. We had a grandmother—the storehouse of the people’s wisdom and knowledge.

Cold desolate space spread out around us on all sides.

One time my father turned on the radio and tried for a while to hear what was out there. Everything was silent. Either the batteries had died, or we really were the last ones left. My father’s eyes shone: He’d escaped again!

If in fact we’re not alone, then they’ll come for us. That much is clear. But, first of all, my father has a rifle, and we have skis and a smart dog. Second of all, they won’t come for a while yet. We’re living and waiting, and out there, we know, someone is also living, and waiting, until our grain grows and our bread grows, and our potatoes, and our new goats—and that’s when they’ll come. And take everything, including me. Until then they’re being fed by our plot, and Anisya’s plot, and Tanya’s household. Tanya is long gone, but Marfutka is still there. When we’re like Marfutka, they won’t touch us either.

But there’s a long way to go until then. And in the meantime, of course, we’re not just sitting here. My father and I have commenced work on our next refuge.

THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHOSE SON HANGED HIMSELF.

Which is to say, when she returned home from the night shift one morning, her boy was lying on the floor next to an overturned stool underneath a length of thin synthetic rope.

He was unconscious, but his heart still beat faintly, and so the paramedic who came with the ambulance suggested that the son wasn’t really trying to hang himself.

Even though there was a note on the table: “Mom, I’m sorry. I love you.”

And it was only when she’d returned home from the hospital, having held her son’s hand as they rode in the ambulance, and then with him into the hospital as he lay on a stretcher, right up to the doors of the intensive care unit, where she finally had to let him go—only upon returning home did she discover that the wool sock in which she kept her savings was empty.

She kept the sock at the bottom of an old suitcase. It had contained two wedding rings, all her money, and her gold earrings set with rubies.

The poor woman then saw that the tape player—the one valuable thing she’d ever bought, because it was the only way she could get her son to return to school—was also gone.

Looking around some more, she found a number of empty bottles under the bed and in the kitchen, a mound of dirty plates in the sink, and traces of vomit in the filthy bathroom.

She knew the minute she walked in the door that there had been a party—her son was being drafted into the army and had wanted to invite his friends over, but the mother kept objecting.

And yet when she stood at the entrance to their studio apartment that morning and took in the crooked lamp, the table that had been moved, the overturned stool, and, above all, the rope and the body on the floor, all her angry thoughts left her.

Only now did she move the fallen chair aside and pull the old suitcase from underneath her bed.

It wasn’t locked properly; one of the two small locks was broken.

That loose lock told her a great deal, and she opened the suitcase hopelessly, with unfeeling hands.

The wool sock was in its place, under all the clothing, but it was empty.

That sock was her last hope. She had made all sorts of plans, whether to buy a television, or to bribe someone to allow her son to take his high school exams (he’d dropped out in the middle of his senior year).

Other times she dreamed of moving to a bigger apartment, with two rooms. She’d have to scrimp and save, but she could do it, and her boy could have his own room. It wasn’t easy living with him, it was true, but he was her only remaining
family. The others had died, all her relatives—her parents, aunts, uncles, and husband had died young; an evil fate seemed to trail them all.

And now her boy wanted to leave her, too.

In truth he’d been talking about this for a long time. His army service was approaching inexorably, and he’d always been a quiet, gentle boy. He didn’t like fighting—he always said he couldn’t hurt another human being, and because of this he was often beaten up at school. There were three boys in particular who liked to pick on him. They’d laugh and say he never fought back, and they’d take everything he had in his pockets, right down to his handkerchief.

Which, incidentally, didn’t mean he was above threatening his own mother when he was drunk. In fact he’d changed a great deal since he’d started hanging out with some older kids who lived in their building.

They’d taken him under their protection. He told his mother so himself, he came home one day and said, That’s it, no one’s going to bother me anymore. And from then on he would walk around strangely exhilarated.

That was a few years ago, when he was fourteen. That’s when he began asking his mother for a tape player. The other boys would give him tapes to copy, and he couldn’t admit to them that he didn’t have a tape recorder of his own, so he just sat there miserably, staring at the tapes.

He’d bragged to his friends—apparently—about his tape player and now couldn’t take it back. He knew his mother
had some money—she was always working several jobs, saving, scrimping—but she told him pocket money would spoil him, he might even, she said, start drinking and smoking, as if they didn’t already have enough problems.

He did in fact start drinking and smoking—the older kids must have paid. He also knew his mother’s hiding places and would steal from her a little at a time. She was disorganized and never remembered exactly how much money she had in her stash.

One time he wouldn’t stop screaming about how much he needed a tape recorder. He kept at it until he actually became ill—he had a fever, and he refused medication. He said he wanted to die.

His fever grew worse, he refused all food, and finally his mother broke down—she went out and bought him a tape recorder, the cheapest one, though it still cost a fortune.

Her son woke up right away, and he looked wide-eyed at the tape recorder. The mother was crying tears of joy, seeing how shocked he was, but then just as suddenly he lay down again, turned his back to her, and said it was the wrong model. It wasn’t what he needed at all.

The next morning they crawled together to the cheap little kiosk to exchange the tape recorder for a better one. They had to pay a ton of money, again, for the upgrade—and clearly the people at the kiosk tricked them, seeing the condition the mother was in, that she was ready for anything.