Shandi Mitchell Read online

  The family becomes ghosts. They use sign language, hush one another, and tiptoe in socked feet. They are ever vigilant to catch a log before it crashes to the floor; carry the dishes one at a time so they don’t clatter; wave away chattering magpies; stifle laughs and coughs; shoo the cats, moaning in heat, from the doorway. They take their food outside to eat. The smaller children—Ivan, Katya, Lesya, and Petro—head across the field, down the hill to the slough to discuss the stranger in the bed. Myron goes to the barn and oils all the machinery, cleans the tack and harnesses, and sharpens the plow. Sofia goes to school earlier and stays later, telling everyone she has a new English friend named Ruth. Dania scrubs and scrubs her father’s filthy pants and mends the shirt he wore home.

  Maria rubs balm on Teodor’s feet, sponges him, burns sage around his head, covers him with a sheet through the warmth of the day, and pulls the quilt over him in the chill of night. She keeps the fire stoked, burning dead twigs that Ivan and Petro drag home in burlap bags. She takes count of all their stores, itemizes their belongings, sorts them for her trip to town. Once, she drops a spoon. Her fingers claw air, chasing, grabbing for its spinning handle—it lands with a thud. She and Dania stand still, not daring to breathe.

  But Teodor doesn’t twitch. He can’t hear them. He is dreaming deep inside a dark abyss where even he does not exist.

  WHEN TEODOR WAKES, the shed is empty. A low fire burns in the stove. He smells soup simmering. Clean clothes are laid out on the chair beside him. Two neatly rolled cigarettes sit atop perfectly folded pants. Tentatively, he sits up. His insides drop, his head seems to float away; for a moment his vision blackens and then the room returns. A table, four mismatched chairs, two benches, an oil lamp, a wood stove, two beds, a curtain of feed bags acting as a divider, a crate with a wash basin, a shaving mirror, two shelves with dry goods, preserves, and dishes, and a framed picture of the Virgin Mary. Four walls confining a space not much larger than his prison cell.

  He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, looks down at the feet dangling beneath him. They are scrubbed clean, pale white. The sores are drying up. He wraps the blanket around him. He touches his toes to the cool dirt floor and stands unsteadily. Using the wall for support, he sets one foot ahead of the other. Heel to toe, finding his balance, he opens the door of the shack.

  Brilliant light pours in, illuminating sparkling specks of dust drifting in the air. Teodor smells cut grass, sweet alyssum, warm hay, and rotting wood. The sun washes over him. He closes his eyes and raises his face. Pulsing red orbs push through his eyelids. When he opens them again, sun halos are etched into his retinas. They dance between him and the unending fields speckled with tender green shoots. When he looks up into the blueness of sky, the sun halos float among the clouds. And when he looks down, they touch his bare feet before fading away.

  The yellow cat lolling on the stoop stretches on its side and decadently tips its head back to chew on a long blade of sweet grass dangling over its ear. A few feet away flies buzz over the desiccated remains of a mouse.

  Teodor puts on the man’s clothes. He opens the crisply starched cloth arms and slips his own inside. The shirt smells of lye and wind. He fumbles with the small buttons, fastening them one by one. He buttons the cuffs, which are slightly frayed. He pulls on the pants. The clothes, three sizes too large, hang loose on his thin body. He tightens the belt five extra notches. He looks at the arms, chest, stomach, and legs now clothed. He holds his arms slightly away from his body. His feet a few inches apart. He doesn’t want to wrinkle this man.

  He goes to the small mirror but doesn’t approach directly. He steps sideways, peeking in. The man staring back at him has straggly, salt-and-pepper hair that hangs past his shoulders, a grizzled beard, cracked lips, and sunken grey eyes. He fills the basin with warm water and lathers up the soap. He runs his fingers along the razor blade, hanging from a nail beside the mirror. It is still sharp, untouched. He draws the blade across his neck. Globs of soap and whiskers fall.

  It is another man who sits at the table to a white bowl full of beet-red borshch. He sits straight. His hair is short. It has been waxed and carefully combed to the contours of his head. His face is smooth. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows. He holds a spoon in his right hand. The left hand rests against the side of the bowl. He fills the spoon and lifts it to his mouth, holds it safely away so as not to stain his shirt. He blows. Brings his lips to its edge. Sips in the steaming broth. He holds it in his mouth, lets it spill against his cheeks. Cups it on his tongue. Vinegar. Beets. Cabbage. Potato. Dill. Pepper. It is the best food he has ever tasted. Teodor swallows and tears leak from his eyes.

  IT IS ALMOST SUPPER when Maria returns home. The family enters the house in the order that has become customary over the last three days. Maria gives the children a harsh signal to be quiet and they line up, smallest to biggest, to file into the shack, then move stealthily to their bed on the other side of the room. But this time, when she slowly pushes open the door, she sees a flickering oil lamp and smoke drifting from a cigarette burning low in a man’s hand. She sees a bare foot and cuffed pant and Teodor sitting at the table. He looks up and she sees the boy she married. He smiles. And she smiles back.

  Ivan, who is first in line, pushes past his mother’s skirt and sees the man who used to carry him on his shoulders and toss him in the air and never dropped him.

  The three girls see him next. Dania sees how nice the clothes look on her father. How crisp the collar is and how straight the crease in his pants.

  Sofia sees a man so handsome he could be a movie star: Clark Gable, a banker, a tycoon—a hero.

  Katya sees her daddy’s face and remembers how she used to run her hands over his whiskers and he would rub his scratchy cheek against the nape of her neck and she would laugh so hard she thought she would throw up.

  Myron sees that his father has shrunk. His shoulders are stooped, his muscles withered. He can’t imagine him working in the fields or swinging the pickaxe or moving boulders twice as heavy as himself. He can’t imagine this man knocking him to the ground for forgetting to water the horse because if anything happened to the horse then they would all die. Myron knows he can take this man with hardly any effort.

  Teodor remains seated. They face one another, waiting. Him inside the room, them frozen in the doorway. It is Ivan who takes the first step forward. This small five-year-old boy, with his tousle of sun-bleached hair, missing tooth, chewed fingernails, walks up to his father and stands bravely before him. He takes the man’s face in his hands and brings it close to his own. He stands on tiptoe and squints as he peers into the man’s eyes. He looks past the bloodshot white, past the blue and grey flecks, and looks directly into the black centre.

  “It’s him,” he decrees and throws his arms around his father’s neck as he climbs onto his lap and babbles about Petro, and the frog they found, and the cat that died, and the ice storm last year, and going to town, and Mama buying toffee, and still having some in his pocket, and his pants being too short, and the nail he stepped on, and the bird that got in the house, and can they get another dog … until Maria tells him hush.

  Teodor holds out his hand to Katya, whom Dania gently pushes forward. Katya, now six—all skin and bones, knock-kneed with too-big shoes and hair that sticks out everywhere, who bruises at the slightest touch—trips over her feet and catches herself against Teodor’s leg. She looks up at his face, disappointed that she can’t see any whiskers. She touches his cheek for confirmation. Smooth. As she contemplates this, she frowns and chews her lower lip. Teodor bites at her hand and she pulls it back, shocked, before bursting into laughter.

  He looks to Sofia next, her hair curled in tight ringlets held with a red ribbon. She wears a Sunday blouse the seams of which she has altered to give a better fit. Her skirt is hemmed just below the knee. She looks older than her eleven years. “You’ve become a young lady,” he says, which makes Sofia very happy.

  Dania, his eldest, lost in an oversized b
land dress, her hair braided and coiled, loaded down with packages, stands beside her mother, hoping to be noticed. “Aren’t you going to say hello?” he asks. She sets down her bundle and approaches with her head down. She covers her chapped, lye-burned hands. “You’re all grown up,” and takes her hand even though she tries to pull it away. She breathes in his clean soap smell and notices how her arms now reach completely around him.

  Maria places a bundle on the table in front of Teodor. “This is for you.” She hopes that she hasn’t changed that much. That she is still the woman he remembers. No more beautiful, no more common. The woman he wanted to come home to. The children huddle around for the big surprise.

  “Open it,” they urge. And Ivan and Katya, who can’t bear the suspense, tug on the strings, while Teodor looks at his wife. She is everything that he remembers: the small childhood scar under her left eyebrow, the lines that crinkle when she smiles, her lips—the top one twitches when she’s angry, the bottom one pouts if she’s sad—her nose that sneezes whenever she smells dillweed, and her eyes. Brown eyes that he would give his life never to see cry again. Teodor unfolds the paper, revealing a brand-new pair of black leather boots with brown shoelaces.

  “How?” He breathes, not daring to touch them.

  “Mama sold her fancy sheets,” blurts Ivan. Dania cuffs the back of his head.

  Teodor stands and his children see that he is still tall. He kisses his wife. Hesitant. Their lips brush. An act of thanks. She wants to hold him and not let go, but instead she looks away. She knows the children are watching with eyes wide, mouths slightly open, imagining what such a kiss must feel like.

  “I have to get supper ready.” She brusquely reaches for her apron. “Go wash up.” She claps her hands together for emphasis. “Get some wood,” she directs Myron, who is still standing in the doorway. “Tonight we’re having meat.”

  MYRON SPLITS the few precious blocks of wood they’ve been saving. He takes one, halves it, quarters it, and tosses it onto the pile. He has enough chopped for several days, but still he lifts the axe high over his head and slams it into the eye of the wood. One clean crack and it cleaves open.

  “You have a good swing.”

  Myron looks to Teodor and sets another log on the chopping block. He lifts the axe again, stretches to show his father how tall and strong he has become. How he spreads his feet and allows the energy of his muscles to unleash through the handle into the blade like his father taught him and that the hardwood log is the size a man would split.

  Teodor goes into the barn. It is cool and musty. The mud chink has dried and separated from the slats. The wind whistles through. It smells of urine, manure, and sweet decaying hay. He lays his hand on the cow’s forelock and strokes the bridge of its nose.

  “Hello,” he whispers. The cow greets his hand with a long, sandpapery lick. Teodor checks the tack. The bits shine, the leather reins and harnesses are supple, the tools have been oiled and scoured clean. He looks over the plow, runs his thumb along the freshly sharpened blade. The cow absently chews its cud, keeping an eye on Teodor. The stalls have been mucked out. There is fresh water in the buckets. The hay is dry. Rotten boards have been replaced and the walls shored up. There is nothing for him to do here.

  Myron listens as his father inspects the barn, expecting his name to be called. He’ll put down his axe and join him, maybe share a cigarette, talk about the weather and when the best time to seed might be. If they sit long enough and silent enough, maybe they’ll talk about other things. About that night he helped fill the wagon. When he hid in the high stalks because it’s what his father told him to do. His father, face down, a boot on the back of his head, his arms behind his back. They called him a thieving, filthy bohunk. Myron will nod and keep his eyes on the dirt floor as he listens. Listens to what can’t be said anywhere else except between men.

  But Teodor doesn’t call his name. He shuts the barn door behind him and heads to the house. His boots squeak with their new stiffness. He nods to Myron as he passes.

  “Good.”

  Papa.

  Teodor hears the word from inside a deep darkness. It echoes, then flits away like a whisper or a shadow.

  Papa.

  A child’s voice. Desperate, urgent. Teodor pushes against the blackness. His heart quickens. He can see himself as if watching from a distance. There is nothing above him, nothing below. Just black.

  Tato.

  This time he understands the word, he feels a small hand around his arm, the fingers squeezed tight, shaking him awake. Teodor opens his eyes. Ivan stands inches from his face.

  “I have to pee,” he whispers and dances from foot to foot. Maria lifts her head from her pillow and peers over Teodor. “Use the pot.”

  “I can’t find it,” Ivan whines, the pressure building. He doesn’t want to wet himself in front of his father. He says the only thing he can, “I have to pee,” knowing that using any more words might squeeze it out of him.

  “I’ll take him,” Teodor tells Maria. “Go back to sleep.” He slips out from under the warmth of the feather quilt, his skin involuntarily erupting in goosebumps. The fire is out. His feet retreat from the cold ground. The room is dark, lit only by the moon hiding in corners.

  “I gotta go now.” Ivan urgently pulls on his hand and Teodor stumbles after him out the door into the crisp spring night. Ivan pulls him toward the back of the house, a quick walk impeded by his knees knocking together as he struggles to keep his thighs pressed tight.

  Ordinarily, if it was daylight, Ivan could go to the outhouse by himself. It was only a few hundred feet away at the back of the lot. But nighttime is different. Everything changes in the moon’s shadows. Fence poles can be headless bodies. A horse can be a dragon. Bushes can be snakes. In this world that belongs to witches, ghosts, and demons, there are any number of creatures that will eat a small boy. Even the rustling wind can call his name and lure him into the woods, where he will be lost forever.

  Ivan tightens his grip on his father’s hand and presses closer to his leg. Another hundred feet and they’ll be there. He can see the outhouse’s faint outline silhouetted by the moon. It leans slightly to one side, tall and narrow, a coffin standing on end. Inside are two holes, a double-seater. Sometimes he and Petro look down the holes, daring each other to find the most disgusting sight. They hold pissing contests for accuracy, duration, and distance. They jump over the holes in death-defying hopscotch. It’s easy to be brave when you aren’t sitting on the hole.

  Ivan hates having to poop. It means having to go alone. The hole is much bigger than he is. He has to lower his pants and back up to the seat, not looking in, then pull himself up, his feet no longer touching the ground, and slide carefully back, while he clings to the side of the wall closest to him, and grips the ledge with his other hand as he strains to hurry it up. Once he slipped, skinning his back, and was forced to grab the ledge of the other hole to pull himself up. As soon as he’s finished, he jumps down and backs away from its gaping mouth, and spits once for good measure.

  At dusk, it’s his older sisters’ job to take him to the outhouse for his last business of the day. All is fine if it’s Dania; sometimes she even comes in with him and lets him hold on to her arm while she turns her back to give him privacy. But he hates going with Sofia. Once he’s inside, she scratches at the walls and whispers his name. Ivan, Ivan … she tells him that monsters are going to reach up and grab him and suck him down and he’ll never be seen again. He’ll be just one more turd in a pile of turds. She cackles and pounds on the walls.

  Sometimes she leans against the door as he throws himself desperately against it, kicking and clawing to get out before the night shadows take away all the light. She races away before he can pull his pants up, leaving him to struggle with the latch, until the heavy door swings open and he trips over his pant legs and slams into the ground and Sofia makes fun of him for letting it dangle out.

  Ivan abruptly stops a hundred feet from the looming outhouse,
unable to go any farther, his hand clutched between his legs. Teodor looks down and sees the fear in his son’s eyes. “We can go here,” he says.

  Side by side, father and son aim their penises and stare straight ahead into the night. For a moment, neither can go. Both are too conscious of the other. They stand still listening to the frogs, the hoot of an owl. Both are acutely aware that the moon is much brighter than they first thought. They can see their shadows on the ground. See each other clearly lit, exposed beneath a canopy of stars. They wait.

  Finally, Ivan lets go. It is a steady, relentless pishhhh that hits the ground and erupts into steam. He exhales deeply, his shoulders drop. And Teodor begins. They pee and pee and pee. It feels good to be breathing the night air, looking up at the stars, relieving themselves, knowing that soon they’ll be back in bed. Finally, it slows to a trickle, a few more spurts, a drop, a shake, and done. Teodor slips his penis back in his pants. Ivan tries to imitate his father’s action and slips his own in sideways under his nightshirt. “Back to sleep,” and they head toward the shack walking taller and lighter.

  Now that his eyes have adjusted to the night, Ivan can see the house, the fence posts, and the horse shining in the moonlight and is embarrassed that he was ever afraid. A coyote howls. Ivan looks over his shoulder and quickens his pace. The coyote calls again and this time is answered. Three short yelps followed by a long steady wail. The cries ricochet across the prairie seemingly from all directions. Ivan sidles against Teodor.