Shandi Mitchell - Under This Unbroken Sky

PAPA.

Teodor hears the word from inside a deep darkness. It echoes, then flits away like a whisper or a shadow.

Papa.

A child’s voice. Desperate, urgent. Teodor pushes against the blackness. His heart quickens. He can see himself as if watching from a distance. There is nothing above him, nothing below. Just black.

Tato.

This time he understands the word, he feels a small hand around his arm, the fingers squeezed tight, shaking him awake. Teodor opens his eyes. Ivan stands inches from his face.

“I have to pee,” he whispers and dances from foot to foot. Maria lifts her head from her pillow and peers over Teodor. “Use the pot.”

“I can’t find it,” Ivan whines, the pressure building. He doesn’t want to wet himself in front of his father. He says the only thing he can, “I have to pee,” knowing that using any more words might squeeze it out of him.

“I’ll take him,” Teodor tells Maria. “Go back to sleep.” He slips out from under the warmth of the feather quilt, his skin involuntarily erupting in goose bumps. The fire is out. His feet retreat from the cold ground. The room is dark, lit only by the moon hiding in corners.

“I gotta go now .” Ivan urgently pulls on his hand and Teodor stumbles after him out the door into the crisp spring night. Ivan pulls him toward the back of the house, a quick walk impeded by his knees knocking together as he struggles to keep his thighs pressed tight.

Ordinarily, if it was daylight, Ivan could go to the outhouse by himself. It was only a few hundred feet away at the back of the lot. But nighttime is different. Everything changes in the moon’s shadows. Fence poles can be headless bodies. A horse can be a dragon. Bushes can be snakes. In this world that belongs to witches, ghosts, and demons, there are any number of creatures that will eat a small boy. Even the rustling wind can call his name and lure him into the woods, where he will be lost forever.

Ivan tightens his grip on his father’s hand and presses closer to his leg. Another hundred feet and they’ll be there. He can see the outhouse’s faint outline silhouetted by the moon. It leans slightly to one side, tall and narrow, a coffin standing on end. Inside are two holes, a double-seater. Sometimes he and Petro look down the holes, daring each other to find the most disgusting sight. They hold pissing contests for accuracy, duration, and distance. They jump over the holes in death-defying hopscotch. It’s easy to be brave when you aren’t sitting on the hole.

Ivan hates having to poop. It means having to go alone. The hole is much bigger than he is. He has to lower his pants and back up to the seat, not looking in, then pull himself up, his feet no longer touching the ground, and slide carefully back, while he clings to the side of the wall closest to him, and grips the ledge with his other hand, as he strains to hurry it up. Once he slipped, skinning his back, and was forced to grab the ledge of the other hole to pull himself up. As soon as he’s finished, he jumps down and backs away from its gaping mouth and spits once for good measure.

At dusk, it’s his older sisters’ job to take him to the outhouse for his last business of the day. All is fine if it’s Dania; sometimes she even comes in with him and lets him hold on to her arm while she turns her back to give him privacy. But he hates going with Sofia. Once he’s inside, she scratches at the walls and whispers his name. Ivan, Ivan… She tells him that monsters are going to reach up and grab him and suck him down and he’ll never be seen again. He’ll be just one more turd in a pile of turds. She cackles and pounds on the walls.

Sometimes she leans against the door as he throws himself desperately against it, kicking and clawing to get out before the night shadows take away all the light. She races away before he can pull his pants up, leaving him to struggle with the latch, until the heavy door swings open and he trips over his pant legs and Sofia makes fun of him for letting it dangle out.

Ivan abruptly stops a hundred feet from the looming outhouse, unable to go any farther, his hand clutched between his legs. Teodor looks down and sees the fear in his son’s eyes. “We can go here,” he says.

Side by side, father and son aim their penises and stare straight ahead into the night. For a moment, neither can go. Both are too conscious of the other. They stand still, listening to the frogs, the hoot of an owl. Both are acutely aware that the moon is much brighter than they first thought. They can see their shadows on the ground. See each other clearly lit, exposed beneath a canopy of stars. They wait.

Finally, Ivan lets go. It is a steady, relentless pishhhh that hits the ground and erupts into steam. He exhales deeply, his shoulders drop. And Teodor begins. They pee and pee and pee. It feels good to be breathing the night air, looking up at the stars, relieving themselves, knowing that soon they’ll be back in bed. Finally, it slows to a trickle, a few more spurts, a drop, a shake, and done. Teodor slips his penis back in his pants. Ivan tries to imitate his father’s action and slips his own in sideways under his nightshirt. “Back to sleep,” and they head toward the shack walking taller and lighter.

Now that his eyes have adjusted to the night, Ivan can see the house, the fence posts, and the horse shining in the moonlight and is embarrassed that he was ever afraid. A coyote howls. Ivan looks over his shoulder and quickens his pace. The coyote calls again and this time is answered. Three short yelps followed by a long steady wail. The cries ricochet across the prairie seemingly from all directions. Ivan sidles against Teodor.

“They’re just hungry for spring,” Teodor reassures him. “It’s probably a male and a female. They don’t like people, they’ll keep their distance.”

Ivan wants to believe him, but he’s seen a carcass torn apart by coyotes. He and Petro found the dog in the middle of winter. Its belly and throat were ripped open, guts yanked out, mouth gaping, glossy eyes staring up at the sky. Red blood on white snow. Mama said the dog had gone into the coyote’s territory. But Ivan knew better, the dog was on their side of the property line. It was a lot smaller than a coyote, a mutt, all white with a brown patch over its left eye. It used to spin around and around in circles to get a pat on its chest. Ivan loved that dog, even though he wasn’t supposed to love him.

Animals were to be respected. Not mice and gophers and magpies. They were different. They were thieves. But farm animals had a job: to help humans survive, to work in the fields, to be food, to provide clothing, to be bred. But Ivan wasn’t sure the animals were only meant to belong to humans. He knew they could think and feel, too. Ivan spent countless hours staring into the eye of their cow, regaling her with stories and questions, looking for a response, a blink, a tear, a flicker of understanding. He knew she was listening by the way she hung her head and nuzzled against him. He could tell whether she was happy, hungry, had an itch, or was lonely. He knew she was afraid when Josyp Petrenko’s bull got loose. He knew she was sad when she lost her calf.

That was last spring. The calf’s hind feet came out first, which was bad. Mama delivered it. Ivan was supposed to go inside the house, but with Dania running back and forth to the well for water and Myron trying to hold the cow’s thrashing head, they forgot about him. Mama had to get the calf out before the umbilical cord broke and it tried to breathe. She wrapped ropes around the scrawny legs and pulled with all her weight. The cow bawled and writhed, slamming Myron against the stall. Its eyes rolled back in its head and the calf slipped out in a rush of blood and mucus. Splayed rigid and blue, its tongue hanging out. Maria hoisted the calf upside down to drain the fluids from its mouth and nose. After a long time, she cut the mangled cord and carried away the bundle in a bloodied burlap bag.