Irene Zabytko: The Sky Unwashed

Next she would wash her grandchildren’s things—little Katia’s socks with the pink lace on the cuffs that came from Czechoslovakia, and Tarasyk’s cloth diapers. He was still in diapers at three, but Marusia didn’t mind. He was a happy child who hummed to himself though he hardly ever spoke because, Marusia thought, his parents argued constantly and muted the stuttering sounds of his sweet baby voice.

On the nights when she wasn’t too angry at her daughter-in-law, she would also wash Zosia’s laundry, although Zosia seemed to expect it rather than be grateful. Lately, Zosia appeared more impudent than usual, stomping around in her new red and yellow vinyl-strapped high heels. Unlike many of the Slavic girls in the village, Zosia’s calves and thighs were straight and narrow and not thick and solid like tree stumps. “Those must be new shoes, they look so modern,” Marusia said to her the first time Zosia wriggled her feet into them. Zosia mumbled offhandedly that her mother had sent the shoes to her as a gift all the way from Siberia where she lived. Marusia clamped shut her mouth, even though she assumed that the shoes were a gift from one of the men friends Zosia whored around with.

Marusia never openly accused Zosia of being unfaithful to Yurko; there was no point in provoking Zosia’s bad temper. Above all, the children had to be protected from their parents’ silly problems. It’ll work itself out, she hoped, pursing her lips as she threw the heavy, wet clothes around in the sink. “ Bozhe , what a hom ,” she said to herself. “For a pair of shoes that one would spread her legs for the devil.”

On this particular evening, Marusia listened to the television on in the next room as she washed. An announcer was narrating a travelogue on Tbilisi in the Russian language. Marusia had never been to any large Soviet city. Anything she learned about the Soviet Union or the world came from watching the television. She avoided the talk programs (too political for her tastes), but she loved to watch the travelogues. Once she neglected making dinner because she was enraptured by a documentary on the alligators in America, in a place called Floridoo . “Teeth the size of a horseradish root,” she’d tell anyone who would listen. “And a tail that could knock you off your feet in a second,” she’d say proudly, as if the alligators belonged to her.

Marusia went into the living room to watch the end of the program on Tbilisi. She wanted to ask Yurko a question about Georgia, where people lived to be over a hundred years old God bless them, and to ask him was it true that the dark Georgian men, who drank so much wine, were good to their wives and to old people. She had heard rumors that they were not wife beaters, but the television programs would never report about things like that. Yurko, however, was sprawled out on the divan, snoring, a half-empty glass of warm brown beer on the floor near his stockinged feet. She gently kissed his head, which rested on one of her own pillows that she had elaborately cross-stitched in red and black poppies. At first, she wanted to take it from beneath his greasy hair—such little wisps of thin brown threads that hardly covered his premature baldness. But she felt sorry for him and decided to let him sleep.

He works so hard, she thought to herself. Lately, he had been logging overtime hours at the Chornobyl plant, where he did something with electricity—what, she wasn’t sure, since he hardly ever talked to her about his work—it all seemed so mysterious and so important. He did explain that he wanted to put in more time, so that he would be considered for a promotion and sent to a special school where the plant’s engineers were trained.

Marusia noticed that his undershirt was stained with sweat, and she wished she had asked for it before he fell asleep.

She stooped to stroke her son’s hair, but Bosyi, the German shepherd asleep on the floor, awoke and growled.

“Sh, I won’t wake him,” she said with a smile. Bosyi thumped his tail and whined as though he were apologizing in advance for intervening in case she bothered his master. “See, I’m going,” she whispered, and returned to the kitchen to resume her washing.

The water had turned blue from the cheap dye of the socks. She opened the drain stopper and watched the water gurgle slowly down the drain before she twisted and rinsed out the wet bundles. Marusia hung the clothing on the pegs fastened to the ceiling beams directly above the large tiled cookstove, where the dripping water caused a steady hissing on the cast-iron lids.

As Marusia was hanging up the clothes, Zosia came into the kitchen in her thin cotton robe which only half concealed her lacy black bra and slip. She drank milk straight out of the glass bottle and ignored Myrrko, the gray cat, who appeared out of the shadows to rub herself against Zosia’s firm legs.

“ Bozhe ,” Marusia whispered, eyeing her. “You’re going to have another?”

Zosia quickly wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “What about it?” she said defiantly. “Anyway, I’m not sure I want it.” She poured the milk into a dish for the cat. “Here sweetie, have the rest.”

Zosia was still a good-looking woman at twenty-eight, with classic high cheekbones that sculpted the otherwise flat planes of her face. She was shapely and slender, with a matronly softness settling into her hips and waist. Her dark blue eyes were duller than the turquoise luster they’d had when she was a girl, but could still radiate great warmth whenever she smiled, which wasn’t often. She would have been prettier without the stiff blond hair that she kept teased up into an unflattering beehive with the tattered ends tucked severely behind her ears. Her natural color was a softer, quieter chestnut, but she chose a shade of blond that became more brittle with each monthly dye treatment she received at the beauty shop near the Chornobyl plant.

Zosia pulled her robe around her stomach. “Don’t worry—it’s easier for me to keep this one than to get rid of it.” Because abortion was the only available birth control in the Soviet Union, Zosia had not mourned her four past abortions. She knew women who had had twelve or fifteen, and she expected as many for herself if she kept up her sexual lifestyle. Unfortunately, the last time she was at the abortion clinic, the anesthetic failed her, and she had screamed from the pain when they suctioned the tissue out of her. The nurses in their starched white coned hats and shifts had held her down and yelled at her to shut up, it was nothing, what a fuss she was making! Zosia had thought she was going to die.

She felt nauseated from the memory and blamed it on the rich creamy milk. “I’ll probably keep this one, Mamo ,” she said.

“Thank God,” sighed Marusia, who had herself miscarried three babies before Yurko was born. Marusia cleared her throat but would not ask if this child was really Yurko’s. It doesn’t matter, she sternly told herself. It was Yurko’s as long as he was married to Zosia. That’s how it had to be. She would coddle it and love it and teach it lessons, the sort that Yurko and Zosia did not approve of, like the chants for the Mass and knowing whether or not to fast before certain holy days.

“Don’t tell him about it, not yet,” Zosia said, nodding her head toward the other room. “I’ll tell him later. When things are better.” She clopped out of the kitchen to watch television. Marusia heard her changing the channels and turning the volume on louder, and then she heard the dog barking and Yurko’s hoarse voice telling Zosia to turn it off and leave him alone.

“When will things get better?” the old woman asked the cat, who sat staring at her empty bowl, expecting more milk. “I haven’t seen them get along for one complete day since they were married.” She ran fresh water into the sink for the next load, turning the water taps on full blast so as to drown out Zosia’s voice calling out to her son.