Shandi Mitchell - Under This Unbroken Sky

She made sure they didn’t hear the rumors of graves being dug up and what was cooking in other people’s soup pots. They didn’t hear the stories of neighbors stealing from and betraying one another. She kept her children safe from all of that. Teodor traveled north. He had heard stories of others crossing the Russian border and returning with rations. He had heard many more stories about those who hadn’t returned. He didn’t tell Maria those stories. She wanted him to barter their wedding bands, but he wouldn’t. He had another cache—an Austrian silver coin from the Great War and a gallon of whiskey. He came back with potatoes and beets that he buried behind the house. She didn’t ask where he got them or what he had seen. He didn’t ask where she got the bags of flour.

Soldiers came to the village and selected peasants who looked fatted. The villagers pointed to Maria, whom they suspected of hoarding food, ignoring that she was pregnant. Her neighbors hid behind their doors when the soldiers came to her house. She was given new clothes and enough food for a week. They sat with her while she ate. She refused until they let her children eat, too. She was taken to the railway tracks, ten miles away, where there were a hundred others like her. Round, fat faces. Flesh on their bones. New clothes. New tools. Even a tractor. They had one job. When the train rolled past, they had to wave and smile. She waved; she smiled. They gave her two bags of flour in case they needed her again. That flour fed her family and her parents for six months. The neighbors were right. She did hoard her food.

The day of their escape, her mother gave her the jeweled crucifix, which she had hidden inside the hollow of a tree. She told her that its power had kept their family safe and Maria wanted to believe her. She had to believe her. Otherwise she would have hated her mother for letting them starve. When Teodor was sent to prison, Maria traded the crucifix for the wagonload of grain that the police had confiscated.

She had walked into the one-room prison with its three-foot by three-foot cell in the corner, the same cell that Teodor had been held in before being transferred to the penitentiary five days earlier, and startled the town’s only officer, who was playing a game of solitaire. At the sight of a woman in the precinct, the officer hurriedly fastened his belt, tucked in his shirt, and brushed away the cards. He glanced out the window and saw a ragtag of children clustered around the cart. Their clothes were dirty and tattered. Their belongings huddled around them in gunnysacks. Stove parts and pots and pans protruded from overstuffed bags. The smallest children sat on the bags, scuffing the dirt with their bare feet. A young girl held a toddler in her arms. The oldest boy held the reins of a sickly looking horse. The officer put on his coat and made himself taller. Maria held out her family passport to prove who she was and pointed to the cart.

The grain that Teodor had cut still lay in the back. He had scythed only the heads for their seed. Confiscated property was usually sold to the highest bidder or distributed to gain other favors. In this case, there wasn’t enough grain to sell, it wasn’t worth the bother to husk, and the cart was so dilapidated no bidders had come forward. Maria pointed again to the cart and set a few kernels of wheat on the table. She pointed to herself and back to the wagon. The officer shook his head no. Maria opened the sack she was carrying and set out two jars of raspberry jam and a hand-woven tablecloth and pointed to the cart again.

The officer told her she had to leave. He could smell the garlic on her clothes. She didn’t want to beg. She refused to let him see her cry. She tried to tell him that she needed the wagon for her children. They had taken everything else: the house, the barn, the land, the wheat… all she wanted was the cart and the seed. She was willing to pay.

He didn’t understand a word she said. She was one more of a hundred like her that accosted him in the streets, fell to their knees, came begging at the door—they disgusted him. He moved to escort her from the building. Maria untied the strings around the collar of her blouse and the man’s eyes sharpened. He watched as she reached into her shirt, saw a flash of skin and the shadow of a crease.

The officer looked out the window. The children were shuffling in the dirt, picking their noses, watching a stray dog take a shit. Only the oldest boy stared straight ahead at the police station, refusing to blink. The officer looked back to Maria. She pulled the silver cross from its hiding place nestled between her breasts. It was hot in her hand. She felt his eyes on her throat. She removed the necklace and pointed to the cart.

There was nothing beautiful about the woman who stood before him. She was coarse, with heavy hands, thick fingers, stout and overweight. Her features weathered and tanned like hide, her eyes almost black, her face chiseled expressionless, fierce. But her breasts were large and inviting. She stepped toward him and laid the cross on the desk. He picked it up and examined the jewels, felt the weight of the silver, and put it in his pocket. He pointed at the wagon and then he pointed to her.

That’s when the Blessed Virgin appeared to Maria, her heart bleeding in her hands. A poor woman, in a coarse frock, her skin weathered from the fields. Maria looked into her eyes—eyes that had no color, no center—no pain. The Virgin smiled, lifted her heart to her mouth, and swallowed it whole.

Maria came out of the building, tying up her blouse with one hand and clutching the jam jars with the other. She hollered at the children to put their things in the cart and ordered Myron to hitch up the horse. The officer watched from the doorway, not bothering to buckle his pants. She threw their belongings on top of the grain. When the children didn’t climb in fast enough, she roughly lifted them in. She yelled at Myron to go, even though he hadn’t doublechecked the harness. Maria walked behind the cart, her head held high, looking straight ahead, counting her children, praying that she would make the fifty-mile trek north to Teodor’s sister’s homestead, the contours of the cross still burning in her palm.

Maria checks herself in the mirror. Her hair, smoothed back in a bun and parted in the middle, frames her round face. Small lines show at the corners of her eyes and lips. A practical face. She makes the effort to soften her worry frown. She is surprised how much younger she looks even with a slight smile. She straightens the wooden cross so it falls just past the first button of her blouse. The first night they lay beside each other, after almost two years apart, Teodor asked about the crucifix. She told him that she traded it for the cart and grain. When he reached for her hand, she pulled away. She said it had to be done. Nothing comes from looking back.

The next day, he went to the grove of white birches and selected an unblemished limb. He carved the cross following the grain, revealing a perfect whorling heart at its center. He sanded the edges round and smooth. Drilled a hole through the top and threaded a leather string. When he placed the cross over her bowed head and it touched her chest, she grabbed it away. He took her hand in his and kissed it. Gently, he placed the cross against her chest and covered it with his hand. In his eyes, she knew that her God had forgiven her.

Maria herds the children out the door. They fan across the prairies, a jumbling parade of quick steps and swinging arms, some running ahead, others lagging behind, veering to the right then to the left, before settling into a ragged line marching east into the rising sun. It is only seven. She is confident they will traverse the eight miles in time for the nine o’clock service.