Shandi Mitchell - Under This Unbroken Sky

“It’s not the best I’ve seen,” he mulls. “The tomatoes are small and the radishes have worm holes. I’m not interested in beans, I can’t give them away. And the carrots, well, carrots are a dime a dozen.” Dania translates for her mother.

Lesya had packed the radishes herself and knows that not a single worm had got past her. Her ears blush pink with anger at the slight against her work and the fear that Maria will think she is incompetent.

“My mother wants to sell it all,” Dania responds. Maria stares hard at the shopkeeper, daring him to insult her. Mr. Hardy isn’t a bad man, he gave her credit last winter for flour; of course it cost her five times the asking price, but he also gave Ivan a penny candy for free.

“I can give you seventy-five cents,” he offers magnanimously.

“For each basket?” inquires Dania.

“For the lot.” He holds Maria’s eyes as Dania translates. The corners of Maria’s eyes twitch ever so slightly. She holds her gaze on him as she replies.

“She wants four dollars for the lot.”

Hardy laughs, outraged. “Four dollars! I might as well plant it myself for that and cook it up too.” The back of his head recalculates the profit margin. “I’ll give you a dollar fifty.” Maria looks to the girls and gives them an order. Hardy reaches in his pocket to count out the change.

“You can take them inside, set them by the counter.” Hardy pats himself on the back.

Dania and Lesya cover the baskets with the linen and hoist them up on the crooks of their arms.

“They’re not for sale,” says Dania. “Mama says we’re going to La Corey. They pay a good price there.”

“That’s ten miles away,” Hardy sputters, watching his profit preparing to leave. Lesya makes a big show of draping her cloth over the radishes. They had looked in Hardy’s front window when they arrived in town. Jostled between the brooms and advertising signs for Gillette razors was a motley display of limp, dried-up carrots, overripe tomatoes, and generally paltry produce.

“She says, You’re right. Ten miles is too far to go. We’ll go to the hotel, sell directly to the restaurant. She says to thank you for the good idea, Mr. Hardy.”

And with that Maria makes three dollars and fifty cents for her wares.

MARIA SPENDS THE FIRST DOLLAR AND TWENTY CENTS on chicks. She lets Lesya help choose them. Shows her how to check their wings, feel their weight, see how attentive they are, and rejects the ones that are too listless or too aggressive, have weak chests or other abnormalities. One of the more obvious rejects is a chick whose foot is bent completely backward. It hobbles lopsided to the water dish. The other chicks crowd it from drinking, but it pushes its way through. As if to compensate for its physical inadequacy, this chick has been endowed with girth and size; it is even larger than the young rooster Maria selected. And it is fearless. It limps directly up to Maria and Lesya, dragging its foot behind, leaving a claw-mark trail in the sawdust, and pecks their toes.

Maria ignores it, but Lesya surreptitiously slips her deformed foot forward to kick it away, and the chick jumps onto her shoe. Lesya pulls her foot back; the chick wobbles but holds its balance and surveys the world from its new perch. It looks up at Lesya, as if pondering, before sliding off. It looks up at her again, questioning or challenging. Lesya walks away. The chick follows, staying close to the left of her twisted foot. Lesya picks up her pace and so does the chick.

Maria plops the last of the chicks into the cardboard box and is about to tell the girls it is time to leave when she notices her niece. Lesya has squatted down in the dust and is holding the chick in the palm of her hand, stroking its head. The bird clucks and coos, bobbing its head back and forth, as if conversing. Lesya sets it on the ground and the chick jumps on her shoe again. “Do you think it’s a good one?” Maria asks.

Lesya knows it doesn’t have much of a chance. It can’t run from a predator; the other birds will ignore it or, worse, attack it; it will have to fight for food; it’s no good as breed stock; it isn’t even pretty. “It’s big and strong, it might make a good brood hen.” Knowing that answer isn’t satisfactory, she adds, “It hasn’t given up.” And with that it is added to the cardboard box, for the reduced price of a nickel.

Whenever Lesya opens the cardboard flap, it is always her chick on top, stepping on the heads of the others, as dependable as a jack-in-the-box, and this pleases her. She opens it again, peek-a-bird , out pops its head. She taps it lightly on the beak and gently closes the top.

They return to Hardy’s after making rounds to Lively’s Feed Shop and the Willow Creek Post Office/Drugstore. As usual, there isn’t any mail, but that doesn’t deter Maria from buying a three-cent stamp, an envelope, and a sheet of paper, and sending yet another letter to Ukraïna: an update about the children, the farm, the weather… nothing that could be construed as political. We are well. The same letter she has always written, regardless of their circumstances. Hope you are too. She sends it, not knowing if it will ever get through or if there is anyone left to receive it.

As they continue down Main Street, the town’s only street, Maria admires the colorful false storefronts masking squat square buildings : MERVIN BOARDING HOUSE—MEALS ALL HOURS, AP MACLEOD-SADDLER, MILBURN AND MILBURN FURNITURE. She crosses herself as they pass the church and stops to marvel at the new plank-wood house, two stories high, with a dozen windows, and wonders how many families are going to live in it. They hurry past the hotel and the ladies perched on the balcony railings lazily waving to the men passing by on horseback. When the train whistle blows heralding its imminent arrival, the ladies scurry back inside, straightening their dresses and preening their hair.

This time, when they reach Hardy’s General Shop, Maria walks through the front door with her money in hand. She picks up an English newspaper for Teodor and a Ukrainian one for her. Mr. Hardy greets her as if he hasn’t seen her in months and directs her and Dania to the new fabric arrivals from Edmonton. Maria takes note of her carrots neatly stacked in the front window and notices that the price has gone up.

Lesya chooses to wait outside. She peers into the cardboard box resting at her feet. The cheeps and chirps emanating from the dark confines make her smile. She opens the flap and ten chicks and the cockerel, still with patches of downy yellow amid the mottled brown feathers, gape up at her with beady eyes. Their stumpy, undeveloped wings flap and their awkward lanky legs scramble on top of one another to reach the light. Lesya quickly shuts the flap and feels their little heads bopbop against the cardboard.

“What’s in the box?”

She sees his boots first. Polished to a shine, masking the cracks and scuffs. The flap of the sole has come undone at the toe. She looks up the frayed hems to the wrinkled but clean pants, follows the soiled cuffs along the too-short dress coat past the graying shirt to her father’s face.

“Hi, Lesya.” Stefan smiles widely, too widely, and she can smell alcohol and cigar smoke. Protectively, she puts her arms around the box and pulls it tighter to her legs.

“Is your mama here?” He looks nervously to the door. Lesya shakes her head no.

“Look how long your hair is.” And he runs his fingers through a strand, pulling the tangled ends. Lesya lowers her head and tries to disappear inside the cardboard box with her chick.

“Cat still got your tongue?” He grins, his teeth are stained yellow. “Don’t you wanna know how your ol’ man’s doing? I gotta job in the hotel. Gotta room. Got lots of money to spend. Food and drink when I want it.” He puffs out his chest. “I’m working on a land deal.” He leans in close as if someone might overhear. “I’m gonna be ready when the spur line comes.” He swings his arm toward the elevator and the train station, which throws him off balance. “I’m gonna own that land and then I’m gonna own the town at the end of it, you wait and see, Lesya. Your tato’s gonna be a big man here.”