The Sky Unwashed (11 page)

She felt guilt that stopped her short when she realized that Yurko was not included in her plans.

The corridors leading to Yurko’s room were filthy even after the
babysi
slopped the floors with their bottomless buckets of dirty water and chlorine that was supposed to provide a veneer of sanitation. Zosia hated the sounds the women made when they sloshed their dark mops around the legs of Yurko’s hospital bed. It was always the same. No change in his condition. No change in the smells of his room. No change in her sad life.

Zosia had trouble breathing. Her head ached more
than usual, and her throat was sore. She needed air. Yurko wouldn’t notice. He was either asleep or completely listless whenever she came to see him. She’d see him later, when she came back.

The evacuees had been given strict orders never to go outside, because, as she overheard one disgruntled man repeat, they would “infect the city.” Her anguish festered deep within her claustrophobia, until one afternoon she simply walked out the front doors with the authority of a regular city dweller in Kyiv—a doctor or nurse just off duty, ready to start her holiday, certainly not an evacuee. She pranced down the steps and into the street. At first her eyes smarted from the bright sunlight, but then they fixed hungrily on the fresh blooms of tulips and chestnut trees that brightened the dingy gray of the bulky concrete buildings.

Zosia knew Kyiv well. When she was a younger woman she had spent many weekends there in the company of small-time party officials who bribed her to come with them for a good time. She had been promised important jobs that turned out to be inconsequential, until she was transferred to Chornobyl. And what the hell good was that, she wondered. If I had been a
Kyivlianka
back then—in a real city where there were opportunities and people who liked me—I wouldn’t be here now, like this, a hooligan and with a half-dead husband. . . .

She thought about her last lover at Chornobyl. Maybe he was also in Kyiv, forced to be just another
refugee like her. Was he thinking of her? Was he sorry for the way he had treated her the last few times?

Hell no, she thought. He never wanted me, really. Now Yurko will be gone, too. . . . She cried openly for the first time since she’d left the village. It was refreshing to feel the soft spring breezes dry her wet cheeks.

Down the Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main street, she paused in front of a large store window. On display was a female mannequin wearing a pink and green mohair skirt and matching jacket with a large red cloth string bag dangling from its upturned wrist. The dummy’s blond wig was askew, and its high arched feet were shoeless. Zosia laughed.

“How are you, my friend?” she said softly. Back in the days when she was new to Kyiv, she used to stare at this very same dummy and admire some other ill-fitting outfit that it wore. “Stuck here too, darling,” she said. “Girls like us never get anywhere.”

She caught her own reflection in the window and decided she liked the way she looked; like Cleopatra, she thought.

She walked further down the street and saw how crowded the sidewalks suddenly were. Outdoor kiosks were open for business. She carefully counted out enough of her evacuation money to buy Marusia a plastic hair comb, since the old woman had complained only that morning about how snarly her hair had become. For the children she bought a bag of candy, the kind with sweet apple and cherry jam fillings. For her husband she
bought a small bouquet of red and yellow tulips, though it seemed to her to be a stupid thing to get for someone who had never had much interest in such things.

More people positioned themselves on the sidewalk. Old women were eagerly sweeping the wide street, and Zosia heard the faint trumpet blasts of a band. She poked her head between the bystanders and realized that a parade was about to come down the street.

The music grew louder and more familiar. She saw an orderly group of young children in white shirts with red neckerchiefs marching together—Young Pioneers, whose scrubbed little faces looked too serious to be children’s. Two of them were holding a large banner with the words:
SLAVA
—
GLORY
and
MAY DAY
—
MAY
, 1986. The people on the sidewalks cheered and kept their applause steady when the Ukrainian troops of the Soviet Red Army marched ahead of the tanks and military warheads mounted on flatbed tractors. Another float carried a floral copy of the Monument of the Motherland, better known as the Iron Maiden. Zosia had seen the original many times, a white metal monstrosity that stood high and ugly over the polluted Dnipro River. It was taller than the golden domes of St. Sofia, so that it would be—as someone once explained to Zosia a long time ago—more important than religion. Like the original, the floral statue wore a long Grecian toga, very like America’s Statue of Liberty, except that the Iron Maiden held a sword and shield up to the sky, as though challenging God to a duel.

Riding along with the floral Iron Maiden was a robust blond woman surrounded by her fourteen children. She had several medals pinned prominently on her huge chest. She stood as though at attention, never waving to the crowds. Her children stood silently by her, observing the people in mute contempt.

More bands played on, more young girls in colorful Ukrainian costumes marched to the music. They smiled and waved, and the red and yellow ribbons from the flower wreaths on their heads whipped high in the air behind them.

The old veterans marched next. Many were obviously sucking in their guts because their old war uniforms were stretched to the seams. Others marched in their best shiny blue suits, wearing all of their war medals on their lapels. Some of the old men were in wheelchairs, and many hobbled and staggered behind the rest. These were the war heroes who had saved the Motherland from fascism, and they received the loudest cheers and applause from the crowd.

Zosia felt dizzy and clammy. She accidentally bumped into a television cameraman, who yelled at her to stay behind the rope barrier.

She wanted desperately to get away from the crowds. She pushed her way out of the tight clusters of parade watchers and walked up the Khreshchatyk, then away from the main street, turning at a corner she vaguely remembered, near the Kyiv State University. She sat on a bench in the park across the street from the red
university building. There she dropped her heavy head between her legs and waited for the nausea to pass. After a bit, the breeze kicked up the fragrance of roses and revived her.

Too bad the children didn’t see the parade, she thought. They would have liked it. They would have liked this park, too. She stared at a woman selling ice cream.

She sucked on one of the overly sweet hard candies she had bought and felt better. Then she spotted the glass display cases where copies of the daily paper,
Pravda
, were hung for anyone to read. She went over to the glass plates that protected the pages and searched for anything about Chornobyl—perhaps things were back to normal there and they could return. But all she found was a tiny paragraph on one of the last pages that simply stated there had been a small radiation “eruption” at the nuclear power plant, and that the good citizens had nothing to worry about.

Well then, she thought. If there was nothing to worry about, and if the city’s children were marching in the May Day parade, and the people of Kyiv were not in the least bit alarmed about anything, then things are fine after all. Pretty soon they’ll let us go home.

Why not now, she thought. Maybe I should just go right now to the train station, get a ticket, and get the children, maybe Yurko too, and leave. No, I’ll get Yurko later, when he’s better. I can at least get tickets for the children. Marusia, too.

Zosia felt very proud of herself for her logic. If trains were running to Chornobyl, she reasoned, then it was all right to go home. They’ll tell me for sure at the train station.

She paid her
kopiika
for the Metro and held on to the escalator that took her down the long, long descent into the cavernous subway tunnels. The children—it’s for them, she reasoned. Katia had a little diarrhea last night, and Tarasyk has that rash and probably lice in his hair, no wonder some of it is falling out. . . .

The subway wasn’t crowded. She was happy to get a seat. I can visit Yurko on the weekends—with Marusia. Or maybe we can transfer him to a hospital nearer to home . . . maybe in Prypiat’. Or if we leave him, well, it’s only a couple of hours or so by train to Kyiv. Yurko would understand. She pressed the bag filled with candy and Marusia’s comb closer to her chest, and then realized that she had dropped Yurko’s flowers behind somewhere.

At the railroad station, Zosia was unprepared to see the mobs of mostly women and children waiting in long lines.

“What’s going on here?” Zosia asked a woman in Russian. The woman was holding the hand of a little girl dressed in a frilly dress and with white ribbons in her braided hair.

“I’m trying to get my child on a train to Moscow. Or somewhere . . .”

“What for? Why?”

The woman turned her attention to her child, who was complaining that she was tired.

“Excuse me,” Zosia said, “but is it summertime vacation already?” She knew that Russians in Ukraine liked to start their vacations sooner than anyone else.

“No, of course not,” the woman said in annoyance. “Haven’t you heard anything? About the accident?”

“At Chernobyl,” the little girl cut in. “Don’t be an idiot.”

The mother ignored the child’s rudeness. “So much radiation there. It’s awful.”

Zosia was alarmed. “What do you mean, please?”

“So much radiation. An explosion . . .”

“Did you come from the moon?” the child said in exasperation.

Her mother smiled. “Yes, it’s true. Radiation is polluting Kiev. We’ve known it for days. That’s why we’re sending our children to Moscow where they’ll be safer. I’ve got an official letter myself.”

Zosia felt numb and confused and not sure how much to trust this Russian woman. “But so many children were marching just now in the May Day parade.”

“Not me,” the little girl said with pride. “Just the stupid
khakhly
. Not us.”

“Yes, that’s right darling,” the woman said distantly. Then she eyed Zosia. “
Tovarishch
, where are your children?”

“Oh, back at home,” Zosia said. She moved away from them and reckoned that there were about eighty people ahead of her. “How much is a ticket?”

“Three rubles, but who knows for sure,” said another woman. “That’s high, and they keep changing the price. At least the children will be safe. Whatever it costs, we mothers will pay.”

“Why is that?” Zosia heard her voice tremble with anger.

“Because the government won’t say that there’s anything wrong.”

“That’s so we don’t panic,” piped in another woman in front of them.

The first woman Zosia had spoken to said, “I know it’s worth it for my Tamara here.” She looked down lovingly at the little girl, who ignored her and pretended to be interested in something invisible on the ground.

Zosia didn’t have enough money—she had spent it on her gifts. She was sorry she had bought the things at the kiosk—she had eaten too much of the candy, and the flowers were lost, and the stupid comb for Marusia was unnecessary because she wouldn’t use it anyway. She had forgotten all about buying herself perfume.

Zosia walked out and found the bus that would take her back to the hospital. “Bastards!” she kept murmuring under her breath. People heard her on the bus,
but they ignored her as though she were just another drunk, or worse, just another crazy, angry woman cheated by an unfaithful lover.

“W
HERE HAVE YOU
been! Why didn’t you tell me you were going?” Marusia was scolding Zosia. “
Hospody
, I thought they took you away too!”

Zosia ignored Marusia’s wails and gave the children the bag of candy. Katia was delighted and stuck several pieces in her mouth at once. Tarasyk was uninterested and silently watched his sister’s cheeks balloon with the sweets.

“
Mamo
, listen to me,” Zosia whispered. Her voice was so low the old woman had to bend down to hear her better. “I was outside in the city. We’re not safe here either. People are leaving Kyiv.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw it all. I was at the train station. Hundreds of children are getting out of here because of the radiation. It’s worse than anyone thought. We can’t stay here either. We’ll all die here just as we would back in Starylis.”

“
Maty Bozho!”
the old woman exclaimed. Then she whispered, “Where would we go?”

Zosia looked behind her and noticed that Marta Fedenko was listening to their conversation. She moved closer to her mother-in-law and whispered in her ear, “Moscow. Or maybe to Siberia, to my mother.”

“No, not there.” Marusia shook her head. She had always been afraid of Siberia because of rumors she heard of labor camps and jails filled with sinful people. “The children can’t go there.”

“It’s better there. Safer.”

Marusia firmly shook her head. “No. Not Siberia.” She had always suspected that Zosia’s family were convicts. “No. Moscow is better.”

“Only the children can go,” Zosia said. “We don’t have the money for all of us.”

Marusia pursed her lips and didn’t say anything more. She didn’t like this plan because she hated to think of Katia and Tarasyk, so little, traveling all that way like that. Who would care about them? She shook her head again. “No. They can’t go alone.”

“I can’t afford a ticket for the children and both of us,” she repeated.

“And Yurko,” Marusia said gently.

“Yes, naturally, but he’s so ill. . . . Are we going to wait until he’s better? When will that be?”

Marusia saw things clearly. She looked at Zosia’s worn, sallow face and felt sorry for her. She loved her grandchildren, but Zosia was their mother after all. And
she
was Yurko’s mother. It was very clear to her what must be done. “You go with the children,” she said. “You know how to get them around the city, and you’ll get them there safely. I’m too old and scared to go on there. You take my compensation money and use it for the trip.
I’ll stay here with Yurko. I’m already used to how things are around this place. I’ll wait until he’s well, then we’ll return back home. That’s all. It’s easy.”