From the Doorstep to the Train

November 20XX, 8:36 p.m.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I had sat down to read the book we were assigned for my anthropology class, right after I had come back from Church, where we had done a panahida, a remembrance mass, for those who had passed away during the Holodomor, the famine. 

Similar words I would see in my assigned readings, much to my surprise. A very curious coincidence. 

Now, all these words in italics may mean nothing to you, my dear reader, but they meant the world to me.  

When I began to read the assigned book for homework, italic words popped out at me. They were familiar, and I came to realize it was because the words were in one of my mother tongues. Each word was like a string pulling me in, offering me a cup telephone to which I pressed my ear and heard the sounds of the past. 

The book began with the story of a puppet play about a little dog named Kashtanka (chestnut). This little Kashtanka had lost her owner and ended up on a cold doorstep, all alone. The author noted that the puppeteer had said that

"If she had been human, she would have thought: 'No, it is impossible to live like this! I must shoot myself!' But she thought about nothing and only wept." 

The author was Meghanne Barker, the top of the online book said. 

"How fitting of a last name," I thought to myself. 

The story itself, as I read on, spoke of displacement, history of the Soviet's boundless cruelty, and the way that children had to suffer as a result. I will not divulge everything, for I recommend that a person should read it themselves. 

Throw Your Voice, it was called. 

Again, how fitting of a title, I thought. 

My own unused voice sat like a sleeping swallow in the nest of my throat.  

These words, in their italics, whether Russian, Kazakh, or Ukrainian, all brought back memories of my own, my mother's, my grandmother's and even my great grandmother's. 

The homework reading spoke about the famine. My great-grandmother's story of it comes to light, the story of how she bitterly recalled how her family had to steal rotten potatoes from abandoned fields.  

The homework reading spoke about the displacement. I recalled my grandmother's story about how her aunt's family were forcibly moved from their home to Kazakhstan, about the difficulty of leaving everything behind so suddenly, and about the stories she heard of how people from Kazakhstan were forced to settle or to flee to survive too.  

The homework reading, dear lord above, spoke about how much children had to suffer because of all this, about how cruelty and under-funding for children's aid lasted decades upon decades; a flowing and never-ending avalanche of an aftermath. 

With reading these words I was once again four years old, on my way to the bazaar in Ternopil with my mama--- she stops to look at a flyer I scarcely knew how to read yet, and asks me for my opinion,  

"Sonichko, should we adopt a child from the detdom?" 

I shook my head vigorously and begged her not too because we were too poor to even afford to survive ourselves in these devil-trodden lands. 

I realize now, the world needs more stories of truth--- of sweetness, and of the bitterness of it. Stories as they are, not for any ulterior gain. 

Language should inform, not manipulate--- not how they used their tunnel-visioned and oppressive stories about us, and about the others who suffered too. 

How many voices in this world had been silenced by an Empire and their narratives? 

How many different peoples had to loose things that were their own by birth right? 

I told my father about all this, and he had only one thing to say: "The hate, along with the Empire, should have been long done away with, long done away." 

I sympathized with each painful retelling in the homework reading, and retold it to my parents, who sat and nodded along, offering the stories they too have, remember, and have heard. 

I cannot claim to have had the hardships others have had, though I grew up in the post-soviet era in the early bloom of my childhood, and experienced separation and hunger and illness too.

Thankfully, despite all this, most of my childhood I remember as sweet.

I remember home-made champagne, and the smell of daffodils in my grandma's garden. I remember the rusted but fascinating playground that me and my friend made out of an abandoned factory, the forest with golden leaves, and the mashed potatoes with shkvarki that my mama would make for me as a treat.

But despite all this, Kashtanka's story resonated with me a little, as well as the stories of those who were displaced, and all they have lost. 

... 

January 15th, 20XX, 2:54 p.m. 

A little girl stands on a platform of a train-station, bundled in her red kurtka and hat. She shivers and observes her own breath become clouds in the cold air, and huddles near her fur clad grandmother, who stands like a sturdy pillar in the midst of snow, the smell of metal, and people.  

That dawn, that little girl had hid under the grandmother’s blanket, a heavy pyryna, refusing to face reality.

She did not want to leave her life, her home, or her blue sky for some foreign promised land--- nor her family, nor her best friend. Especially not her best friend. 

“There’s plenty of fish in the sea, you will find a new friend.” Her mother had reassured the little one as she helped her dress that morning. The girl, though young, new her mother’s words were empty. 

There was no one on bozhi zemli like her Vika--- the golden braided, gap-toothed friend with eyes that sometimes resembled the grey ice on the river, and sometimes it’s clear blue waters. 

Later that morning, she hugged her best friend for the last time, both girls holding each other in a vice-like grip. A few days ago, the other had suggested that they should run away together, or hide the other girl so that she doesn’t have to leave. 

“We can hide you somewhere in your great-grandpa's shed.” 

“There’s rats.” 

Vika giggled. “Well, what’s scarier, leaving home, or some tiny critter?” 

“Mama won’t leave until they find me, and I don’t want to cause them trouble.” 

Her friend’s smile fell into a sorrowful, wistful look. 

Then, that dawn, standing outside, the two of them had to flow with the course of the events unfolding. Both girls had to accept that they may never see one another again. 

“Write to me, please.” Vika whispered in her ear, secretly slipping a torn bit of newspaper with an address on it into the other girl’s grey glove. 

“I’ll try.” The other promised. 

And now, here she was, under her grandmother’s arm at the train station, tears long dried and pulling at the skin of her cold cheeks. She waited for her mama and tato to return with the documents and train tickets. She clenched her fist, feeling the crumpled note between her hand and the wool of her glove. It's presence gave her the faintest comfort.

Around her were many people, and many voices. 

“It’s better to leave soon-” One voice said. 

“Do you seriously believe all those rumors?” Another asked. 

The wind carried words she seldom understood, about bankruptcy, oligarchies, and the scent of war on a not-so-distant horizon. 

She did not understand the real reason that her family was leaving. She did not yet appreciate the future that her father was trying to secure for their family through his own sacrifice. Nor did she know of the terrifying separation she would have to endure from her father in just a few short hours, after which she and her mother would have to be detained at an over-seas airport surrounded by a language they do not know, in a security office, until they are saved by an elderly Polish lady who can translate, and her father’s friends who would lend them a place to stay the night. 

But even with her young, naive mind, the little girl knew that nothing will ever be the same. 

That little girl, dear reader, was me. 

... 

Years later I sit in a dimly-lit room, faced with the realities my young mind could not comprehend, and remember my father’s gentle voice, on one July evening, as we were driving to Kiev after our second visit back home. It was not a visit I particularly enjoyed, as I had been very sick in the hospital during the last half of the stay.

It had been a lonely and bitter time, where I felt as though I was dying, and no nurse or doctor around me seemed to particularly care. They were all harsh words and cold stares. 

I had asked him why things had to be this way. 

“Deteno moya, it’s how it has always been.” He explains. “This country is rotten to its core.” 

I realize then that my idealist visions and memories of my childhood were just that--- idealist and ignorant. I was too young to know how corrupted our dear land was, how poisoned it had become, due to the historical events, the soviet regime, the greed, and all else that hails from the land where the devils tread. 

My father saw the tears gather on my short dark eyelashes, and continued, his voice sounding more tired than I have had ever heard it. 

“Our homeland, you have to understand,” He begins “Is like a mother you love with all your heart who hates you in return. Our land, that we love so much, has thrown us out to fend for ourselves in this vast world. And as long as our people continue on as they do, blind from what they’ve internalized, for that long our motherland will despise us.” 

A mother hating her own child. 

What a perfect example that was. That was how I felt too, I realized. A scorned abandoned child, longing for her home and mother, for all that she had lost. 

In the end, I never did write Vika any letters.