Shelly Sanders: Rachel's Secret

Mikhail curled up into a ball and tried to scream when he felt the knife cutting his back, arms, and legs, but no sound came out. A scorching sensation ran down his spine. Blood filled his mouth making it difficult to breathe. Mikhail closed his eyes, clutching the silver icon that hung from a chain around his neck. He pictured his grandmother waiting for him to come home, her face pinched with worry, and his grandfather’s eyes, clouded over from the horrible things Mikhail had said to him in the heat of the moment, words he would never be able to take back, words that would darken the remainder of his grandfather’s days.

Remorse crushed Mikhail’s heart, drained it of hope and life until his grandparents’ faces became blurry, then disappeared. Mikhail felt himself gliding forward to a shadowy abyss, and then his pain was gone.

“Oh no! I don’t have my shawl,” Rachel cried to Nucia when they were halfway home. “I must have dropped it somewhere.” Rachel stopped and stared at her sister.

“Your new red shawl, the one Mother knitted for your birthday?”

Rachel gulped. “Yes.”

Nucia shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. “You must go back for it. Mother will be very angry if you lose it. She spent hours working on it.”

Just once, Rachel thought, couldn’t Nucia be the one to forget something? “But it’s going to be dark soon.”

“Then you had better run,” Nucia said.

Rachel turned and fled back toward the river, the cold air drying her throat, making it hard to catch her breath. She saw her shawl not far from the bench, on the ground behind a dense stand of fir trees. As she bent down to pick it up, Rachel heard a familiar voice crying out for help. She froze. Another voice, deep and muffled, was speaking, but she couldn’t make out what was being said. She crept toward a small opening in the trees, peered through the prickly branches, and gasped. Mikhail was lying on the ice underneath two other people, heavy-set men she did not recognize. The bigger man, wearing a sheepskin coat and a policeman’s distinctive cap, held a long knife.

“Uncle, please don’t do this,” cried Mikhail. “Philip, help me.”

Rachel clamped her hands over her mouth. His uncle? How could that be? She watched the policeman bend down, lift Mikhail as easily as a rag doll, and plunge the knife into his chest in one quick movement. Mikhail clutched his abdomen and barely whimpered when the knife cut into his back again and again.

Rachel turned and ran, shawl in hand. Her feet smashed down on the snow and she flinched as she heard the crunch of dead branches and leaves under her feet. She tripped over a tree root and fell on her face.

“Who’s there?”

Her insides twisted into a knot as the threatening voice came closer and closer. Mikhail’s uncle knew someone had witnessed the stabbing. Without stopping to wipe the muddy snow from her skirt and legs, Rachel scrambled to her feet and ran. She could hear footsteps behind her, but raced ahead without looking back until the footsteps grew fainter and receded into the distance. Her face was wet with perspiration and tears. Only when she saw the peeling walls that surrounded her house did Rachel slow down to catch her breath.

Once she’d entered the gate and was safely in her courtyard, Rachel was relieved to find that everyone, including old Mr. Gervitz, who sat outside regularly since losing his job, had gone inside. She rushed to one of the outhouses in the corner of the courtyard where she could be alone. “Mikhail, oh Mikhail,” she whispered, shutting the rickety door behind her. Tears fell onto her dirty skirt and guilt turned her heart inside out as she recalled kissing him. Rachel feared that Mikhail’s uncle had seen them together, that maybe she was partly to blame for the stabbing.

She wiped her eyes and tried to quiet her breathing, as if she could will away the horror. But the sound of Mikhail’s screams and the sight of his uncle looming over him with a knife were seared into her brain.

Rachel fervently regretted her anger toward Mikhail when they had parted. If only Mikhail hadn’t kissed her, then she wouldn’t have been mad and he might still be alive. Now he was dead, and she couldn’t even go to the police to seek justice… because the murderer was a policeman! A sense of doom and profound despair settled in her chest.

Rachel tried to tidy her hair and skirt and opened the door of the outhouse. It was a cold, still night, a perfect night for sitting by the fire and playing chess with her father; a perfect night for wrapping herself in a warm blanket and listening to her father play his violin. But the peacefulness was deceiving, thought Rachel as she traipsed to the door. Beneath the silence was a nightmare so real, it chilled her to the core. She didn’t think she would ever feel warm again, or safe, or content.

“Look at you!” cried her mother, dropping the spoon she was holding when Rachel entered. She wiped her pale hands on her apron and bent down to pick up the spoon. “I thought you were going to fetch your shawl, yes?”

Rachel glanced down at her empty hands and realized she must have dropped the shawl when she was running away from the river. She began twirling her braid nervously and looked away from her mother to the steaming samovar on the stove.

“And your skirt? Do you know how much work it is to wash your clothes?”

“I’m sorry, Mother, I… fell,” said Rachel, casting her gaze at the floor. The smell of cabbage soup was making her nauseous.

“Why can’t you take care of your things, like your sister?”

Nucia, who was getting bowls out of the cupboard, smirked at Rachel. Ordinarily, Rachel would have glared at her sister, but now she ignored her, giving her mother a vague shrug.

“Let her catch her breath.” Her father stood by their only window, overlooking the courtyard, holding a glass of tea. “Are you all right, Rachel?”

“Yes… I just… well… I never made it to the river.” Her swollen eyes darted from her father to her mother.

“Where were you then?” asked her mother.

“I was… running… so I could get my shawl and come home, but I… I tripped over a tree root and fell down a hill, which is why I’m so dirty.” She paused to think up the next part of her lie. “The sky was getting dark and the… the trees started to look like skeletons, and the wind was howling so loudly, making sounds I’d never heard before and… I think a brown bear was nearby… I was frightened and ran home before I could find my shawl.”

“Ech,” said her mother, shaking her head and mumbling to herself. “This girl… she doesn’t appreciate what I do for her. After long days of cooking and cleaning, I knit her a beautiful red shawl. And what does she do? She loses it.”

“Ita, stop. Leave the girl alone,” said Rachel’s father. He turned toward Rachel, his face dark with concern. “I’ve told you many times that bears only come out in the middle of the night, when we’re sleeping, Rachel. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them. Now go and change your clothes and come for supper.”

She nodded at her father and slipped behind the muslin curtain in the corner of the room where she and Nucia slept on a wooden bench. Away from the questioning looks of her family, she let the tears she’d been fighting flow down her face. She fell onto her stomach and cried silently into her feather pillow until she was limp, a dry rag, with every tear wrung out of her.

“Rachel skated with that boy again today,” said Nucia, when they sat down to dinner. “Mikhail.”

Rachel’s heart fluttered, as if it were broken into a hundred little pieces. She moved her spoon listlessly around in her soup.