Space Dogs and Cabbages

Our car pulled into Aunt Juno's road. Dad tutted and grumbled under his breath.

Mum turned round to me and the baby. "Now kids, we won't be too long, okay? You just behave yourself and I'm sure you'll have a great time with Juno"

Dad grimaced.

We got out of the car. I made sure I remembered my bag which had all my essential items in it. We followed Mum up the little path to the door of the house, and I hid behind her skirt as she rang the doorbell. The door was flung open immediately and there stood the massive Juno, taller than my Dad, wearing brown slacks and a green hand knitted jumper. Strapped to her waist was a brown box with a black wire coming out of it, attached to a handle which she held in her hand. She waved it around in front of us. The box made strange clicking noises. Her face was stern and I shrunk back from her in fear as she probed me with the strange object.  

"Oh come on, Juno. You know no one has radiation poisoning here" Dad scoffed. Juno looked up from studying the box with one eyebrow raised.

"Luckily for you they haven't" she hooked the handle into the belt around her waist. Then her face broke into a massive beam.

"Babies, babushkas" she pinched the baby's cheek and then grabbed me, pressing my face into her scratchy jumper.

"Please, come in, babies" she cried at us. She had a strange accent. She gestured to the hallway and Dad gave me a gentle push forwards. The smell of boiled cabbage and musty books hit my nose.

"Here, in here please" Juno ushered us into a small room which was full of books and papers. Mum put the baby down on the carpet and she instantly started to cry.

"Don't worry" Juno smiled at Mum "Babushka will be happy-happy soon" and she grabbed the baby up onto her hip and started to jiggle her about. The baby stopped crying, finding the leathery lid of the box around Juno's waist and flapping it open and shut.

"Go, go, don't worry"

Mum did look worried. But she bent down, kissed my forehead, and then left the room. I peered towards the window to see my parents disappearing down the road.

"Come now, big one" Juno said with her hand outstretched. "Come and we will see what has to be done today."

I followed through a doorway into the kitchen. The smell of boiled cabbage was overwhelming. The cupboards were old and dusty and it felt like they were closing in around me. I put my shoulder bag on the table. 

"Ah, what is in your lovely bag, dear girl?"

I took out my i-pad and some chocolate cereal bars. Juno sucked in her breath and tutted loudly.

"No no." She picked up the i-pad and waved it in the air "This is a mechanism for the transmitting of bourgeois propaganda. And this (picking up the coco-pops bar) is decadent rubbish, made to make you fat, fat. "

The baby looked up from playing with the box lid and grabbed at the cereal bar.

Juno picked up a stick which was on the table and pointed it to a piece of paper on the wall. It said:

Daily work 14.08.2018

09.00 - communal exercises

10.00 - nuclear bomb drill

11.00 - gathering of supplies

12.00 - lunch

13.00 - junior astronaut training

15.00 - car mechanics

"So" she eyed me carefully and pointed the stick at my i-pad. "You have a choice. You can sit all day like a bourgeois slug looking at your screen and stuffing yourself with coco-pops rubbish, or we can have a day of learning important lessons for the advancement of humanity. What do you say?"

I was quite surprised and a bit unsure about what it all meant. I liked the idea of the astronaut training. Juno was looking at me very seriously and I felt the gravity of the decision. I chewed my lip. I had the rest of my life to play on my i-pad.

"Let's do the stuff."

She looked overjoyed.

"Excellent. I must let Liaka out then, he will have to come for exercises. Come, come"

I followed her back into the room full of books where she put the baby down on the floor. A tiny dog came bounding into the room. It nuzzled into the baby's arm pit and she started to giggle and grab at his scraggy fur.

Juno bent over, picked the dog up and held him high above her head.

"Very special doggie" she announced "Liaka has been into space. When you have been into space you have to do your daily exercises or you will become slack and depressed" The dog barked proudly from his vantage point above her head and she spun him though the air as if he was flying.

The baby was reaching up for the dog and started to cry, her hands closing and opening in a demanding motion. Juno laughed.

"Don't worry, babushka will go into space one day. All Soviet babies are clever They will fly a space ship one day" She dropped the dog gently onto the floor and scooped up the baby, raising her into the air and sending her sailing up and down through the room. "Babies will fly" she laughed and the baby screamed with glee and clapped her hands. Then Juno put her down on the floor and stood up very straight.

"It is very important to exercise your body and your mind." explained Juno as we swung our arms about. I followed her movements. After about 15 minutes of exercise Juno had to sit on the floor. The dog jumped around her, licking and poking his nose into her armpits.

She picked him up in her arms.

"Before he went to space, he was homeless, living on the streets. Then the Soviet Space Exploration Team found him and trained him. He was a very brave doggie." She grabbed his face and rubbed it between her hands. "On his last expedition he was coming back to earth when the command centre lost control of his ship. His spaceship crashed back though the earth's atmosphere at greatest velocity and burned up." She was waving her hands around in the air like fire. "But he escaped in the escape pod and landed in the artic, in ten feet of snow. It took the Soviet Army two days to dig him out, but they rescued him, see, now he is here and still alive. They made a parade for him, with a big model spaceship on a truck which went through the city in a cascade of banners and streamers."

Liaka barked in agreement. I must have looked unconvinced. Juno lifted Liaka's floppy ear and whispered into it,

"Girl does not believe you could be a brave, courageous doggie"

Liaka snorted through his wet black nose. Juno pushed herself up to standing and shut the door to the room. There was a poster, colourful, with giant letters in a strange language. It showed a dog which looked just like Liaka, in a space suit, with a background of planets and stars. I breathed in astonishment. Juno let out another one of her massive laughs and slapped me on the back.

"See, see, it is space doggie" she laughed and picked up the baby. She looked at her watch and let out a whistle.

"Time for bomb drill" she said, and went over to an old record player in the corner. At first there was the sound of crackling, then a siren started to sound.

"That's the warning. We have to get to the shelter. Quick, quick!"

We rushed out of the room, leaving the siren wailing. I carried Liaka through the kitchen, out of the back door and down the garden, following Juno and the baby. We went down a slope to a door in the ground. Juno pulled me in.

"We're under attack"

She slammed the door and crouched in the corner of the tiny underground space. I couldn't really see anything, but she grabbed the arm of my dress and pulled me down to the ground. We crawled under a thin table made of metal. After a few minutes hiding Juno started to rummage around. 

"You know how to light a candle?"

She struck a match in the dark. Suddenly the space was illuminated and I looked around in awe at the stacks of tins which lined the walls and the floor. Opposite us was a small bed with a green woollen blanket on it, and on the floor underneath tins and tins of Ambroisa rice. Juno came out from under the table and put the candle in a holder. She gave me the box of matches. If my parents were here they would have a fit.

"Light" she urged me. I rubbed the match on the side of the box, copying what she had done. Nothing happened. She held onto my hand and moved it swiftly, striking the match across the box. A flame burst alive and I drew back in surprise. Juno's face was lit from below by the match and it looked goulish in the half light. She laughed, slapping her leg and then held out a candle for me to light.

"You must learn to light with a match. What will you do if electricity goes off?"

Then she went over to a long, black pipe on the wall and looked into the end of it. She gestured to me to look, and I put my eye to the end of the pipe. Amazingly, I could see outside.

"Any Imperialist lackeys out there?" she asked. I didn't know what that meant. I took a guess and shook my head.

"Good, good. We can go out now, but we have to check for radiation."

She took the pokey thing from her belt and poked it out of the door. The box made some faint clicking sounds and she studied it intently. When she was happy she opened the door.

The baby led the way out into the light, crawling across the dirt in the garden and getting grassy marks on the knees of her baby grow. Juno strode past us, waving the poker around and looking at her box.

"If there was a bomb, we would have to stay in the bunker for 6 months at least, until the radiation was gone."

Liaka had found a stick. I threw it for him, and he barked scooting up the garden. We didn't have a dog at home and I wanted to keep playing.

Juno went inside, then reappeared with some shopping bags.

"Time to get supplies" she announced. She held out a tiny shirt with four leg holes, and the dog stood patiently while she put it on him. It looked just like the space suit the dog in the poster was wearing.

"When we go out, doggie likes to show off!" Juno laughed.

"Is that his space suit?" I asked and she nodded with pride. She put a lead on him and handed it to me.

"You must take Liaka." She picked the baby up and swung her round onto her hip again. I was very excited to hold Liaka's lead and he trotted happily beside me all the way to the shops. In the fruit shop the man behind the till said "Hello comrades" when we came in. Liaka barked. I was now sure he understood everything humans said.

Juno scanned all the fruit and veg with her prodder, the box clicking all the time. She brought the biggest cabbage I had ever seen, and we had a juicy peach. The baby had a really squidgy, messy face by the time we got back.

When we got in we went into the kitchen and put the cabbage on the table. I undid Liaka's lead, and Juno asked me to take his suit off.

"Put it on the shelf, in the book room."

I went through and Liaka followed me, barking at the shelf to show me where to put his suit. On the shelf was a toy dog, which looked just like Liaka and also had a space suit on. Liaka sniffed at it.

Juno appeared behind me.

"Ah, you have found my little babushka toy." She picked it up and brushed the dust from it's back. "This one has been with me for years. When I was five my Aunty sent it to me from Russia."

She handed it to me.

"For you" she said.

We went back to the kitchen. I sat down on a chair. Laika jumped up onto my lap and I smoothed his fur as he nuzzled into my chest. Juno cooed and said "Doggie is your friend forever now."

I was so happy to have a new friend. He was warm on my lap.

Juno started to cut up her giant cabbage. She chatted on about things I didn't really understand. She let me cut up some cabbage on a wooden chopping board.  

Just as Juno was getting out a giant pot for her giant cabbage, the door bell rang. Juno strolled off down the passage way. I heard my Mum's voice, and then she appeared at the kitchen door.

"It's time to go kids" she sang happily. I was shocked. We hadn't even got to the astronaut training yet, and Liaka was still sitting on my lap. Tears sprang up in my eyes. I blinked them away. Mum picked up the baby and wrinkled her nose when she saw how grubby she was.

"I'll put Ellie in the car" she said, and took the baby outside.

I hugged Liaka and a big tear rolled down my cheek and onto his furry head. He looked up and licked my nose.

"He will miss his new friend" Juno said, and then she saw that I was crying.

"No cry, no cry." She patted my back gently.

We went out to the car where Dad was waiting. Liaka jumped about under my feet and I gave him one last hug before I got into the car.

When we got home I went straight to my room and out the dog toy on my shelf.

I typed 'space dogs' into my i-pad. Lots of pictures came up of Liaka, looking very proud in his space suit. I sat down on my bed to read an article about him. It said he was the first dog in space. I smiled happily at the black and white photos of him sitting in the space pod. But the next sentence took my breath from me. It said that the capsule had got too hot and Liaka had died in space. Tears instantly stung my eyes. All I could think about was the dog in space, all alone and dead. I cried so loud that my Mum came up to see what was going on.

"What's wrong pickle?" she asked.

My Dad appeared behind her and scoffed, "It's probably that mad Juno telling her crazy stories. I told you we shouldn't have left them with her."

Mum shushed him.

"Is this what's making you cry?" she asked, picking up the toy dog.

I sniffled. "Liaka is dead" I managed between my sobs.

"Honey, if Liaka was alive he would be 61 years old by now." This made me howl even louder.

"Juno's dog hasn't been to space. She just likes to pretend. You like playing pretend with your friends, don't you."

I nodded.

"When Juno was little her Aunty went to work at the Soviet Space Program. She sent this toy for her. She said everybody in Russia loved the brave dogs. Juno was waiting for her Aunty to come home, but she never came back. When Juno found out that Liaka had died she promised she would got her own special doggie."

I squeezed the toy dog to my chest.

That evening I made a space ship out of a cereal box and me and Liaka flew into space, past the sun and the stars. We orbited the moon and all the people on earth celebrated how brave we were.