Irene Zabytko: The Sky Unwashed

Yurko got up and went grudgingly into the larder. “Beautiful, Mamo! ” he echoed.

“It looks just like a soft cloud,” said Katia.

IN APRIL OF that particular year, the days were unseasonably warm and mild. The dirt roads leading around the village were muddy because the ground had thawed too quickly from the recent hard frosts.

The morning of Hanna’s wedding was especially tranquil except for a few billowing clouds that had at first threatened rain, but released only a quick, clean shower before the sun reappeared in all its warm brilliance. Marusia made her way to Evdokia’s home, where a large group of villagers was waiting outside in the garden for Hanna and her groom to arrive. These older villagers and some of Hanna’s friends had gathered to see the blahoslovennia , the traditional blessings given by the elders in the bride’s family on her wedding day. Evdokia Zenoviivna and her husband, Oleh the beekeeper, sat stoically on wooden slat chairs in front of their tidy white-washed house. They wore traditional Ukrainian folk costumes: Evdokia in her long red skirt, embroidered sash and blouse; her husband in his own embroidered shirt and long red sash that wound several times around his narrow waist, and which also held up a pair of satin blue sharavary , the balloon-wide pants that had fit him more snugly in his younger days.

“We’re taking bets to see if Hanna and the drunk she’s marrying will show up,” Marusia overheard the man in front of her say.

“Oh, she’ll come all right,” said the stout woman next to him. “The grandparents promised Hanna her ruby necklaces and a wad of money Evdokia got from selling her cow. That’ll help her get through the next winter, for sure, and now with a new little soul on the way…”

The crowd hushed one another and nodded their heads in the direction of a short woman, dressed in a long white wedding dress and veil, slowly making her way on the muddy road toward the crowd. The hem of her dress was dotted with wet mud, and her long veil dragged over the ground. She held a fading bouquet of pansies and tulips and hesitated each time her spiked heels caught in the mud. “ Do bisa! ” she cursed loudly when she nearly slipped and fell. She regained her balance and continued.

“Pick up the train of your dress,” a woman in lavender lace shouted. “Or it will get dirty!”

“It’s too late for that, Mama!” shouted the bride.

“Where’s the groom?” someone snickered.

A robust young man, blond with watery blue eyes, and in workclothes from the Chornobyl plant, put down his lunch pail and ran toward the bride. He picked her up and carried her the rest of the way to the grandparents.

The crowd applauded. “Well done, Maksym,” shouted the bride’s father dressed in a blue pin-striped suit with a pink boutonniere.

“Maksym, you should marry her yourself,” someone in the crowd shouted.

“And make my wife mad? No thank you!” Maksym said. The crowd laughed at the blushing man. Everyone knew what a bad-tempered woman he was married to.

“Good people, this is a solemn occasion,” shouted the bride’s mother. “Hanna go ahead.” She gently pushed her daughter toward a tiny fringed rug beneath the grandparents’ feet. Hanna knelt before them and grabbed their withered hands into her own. “Bless me Babo and Didy . I am about to leave my home and become a bride.”

Some of the younger people were snickering. Hanna immediately recognized them as her friends from her job at the plant. “Hey Hanna, where’s the groom? Maybe he went to the wrong wedding,” yelled out a brassy-haired young woman with the same shade of lipstick as Hanna’s.

Hanna stood up and turned around, shaking her bouquet at them. “You all just shut up or don’t bother coming to the party later on!”

“Hanna, you shut up,” her mother said. “Don’t disrespect your grandparents. Tatu , wake up.” She gently nudged her old father’s shoulder.

“Oleh, wake up and speak to her,” said Evdokia.

The old man looked up. His mustache was long and white, with dabs of beeswax turning up the corners, and he pulled on it as he spoke. “Well, nice to see everyone. Let’s go to the church now. Come on. It won’t kill you.” He stood up and would have left, but his daughter grabbed him and firmly pressed his shoulders, leveling him back into his chair.

“Sit down, crazy fool,” Evdokia whispered. “We can’t go anywhere without the groom.” She sighed. “Get up Hanna, no use waiting for your husband like that. You’ll be on your knees long enough, you’ll see, either praying over or cleaning up after that… that bad one.” She shook her head. “You’ll see.”

“Hanna! Hanna!” A young man standing in a cart pulled by a white horse shouted in the distance. His light brown hair was darkened by hair cream, and he was dressed in a suit and a wide crimson tie that could have flagged any bull in a field. It was Ihor, Hanna’s groom. He waved his hand, and a long, scandalous purple and green Italian silk scarf tied to his wrist flapped in the breeze. The three other men in the cart with him had similar scarves tied to their wrists rather than the traditional embroidered ones. One man quickly passed a bottle to the others, and each took a hefty swig before they came nearer to the old people’s house. “Please, good people of God,” the groom mumbled with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his full mouth. “Please, good people of God… please come to the wedding.”

“Yes, come to the wedding,” chortled his friends in the cart, waving to the crowd.

The white horse was old and having difficulty because the men kept taking turns at the reins. The crowd quickly separated when the squeaky wooden cart approached. Several men in the crowd had to hold the horse and calm it because it did not want to stop.

“Look out! Even the horse is drunk,” a man shouted, and everyone laughed.

“Hanna, beloved, I came. See, I didn’t forget,” said Ihor.

Hanna placed her hand on her hip. “Fine, fine. I guess I should count myself very lucky. But as you probably don’t know, it is our tradition to have the reception after the wedding.”

“And the honeymoon after the wedding too,” one of Hanna’s girlfriends shouted. The crowd laughed. Hanna turned and stared into the group until she recognized the traitor. “You shut up, Masha. Just because you can’t hold on to a man…”

Evdokia’s short, stocky body appeared at her granddaughter’s side. The old woman’s apple cheeks were ruddier than usual, and her pug nose twitched like a rabbit’s. “Stop it. You can’t fight now, not in that dress or in your condition. Get on with the ceremony. You there, Ihor. Help her into the cart!”

Ihor hopped out unsteadily. He grabbed Evdokia’s hand and kissed it. “Bless me, Babo ….”

Evdokia wrung her hand away from his grasp. “Stop that, you idiot! Get Hanna in the cart. The priest is waiting.”

“You couldn’t wait until later to get drunk?” Hanna hissed at Ihor as he and his friends strained to lift her in.

“Look, I might have changed my mind….”

“You do, and I’ll see that you never drink another thing in your life again because you’ll be dead!”

“Oh my little Hanna, so heavy,” Ihor said, dragging her up.

“Thanks to you!”

The men in the cart laughed and handed her the bottle.

“Go to hell,” she whispered to them. Then she smiled at Ihor and pulled some hay from his hair. “What’s this? Where did you sleep last night?”

“Your grandmother made me sleep in the barn—with the stinky pigs. They wanted to keep you pure. Of course, as a gentleman, I had to oblige….”