Daughters of the Night Sky

Polina had her Andrei. I wondered if they waited a full hour to find a civil-registry bureau to have their union made official. Renata was young and would find her beau before long.

I was the one torn between the land of the living and the dead.

Mama came in on a balmy afternoon. It was just over a week since I returned home. She placed a tray with a bowl of hearty soup and a chunk of brown bread on my bedside table, sat on the edge of my bed, and brushed the hair from my forehead.

“I like your hair shorter,” she said. “It suits you.”

I smiled up at her. I knew what she was saying: I’m worried about you, but I know you need time.

“It’s better now than it was when the butcher of a barber had his way with it. I like it, too.”

Thank you for not pushing. I will try to get better.

“Will you please eat?” She took my hand in hers and squeezed gently. I can’t bear to lose you, too.

I sat up in my bed and accepted the tray from Mama. The soup was thick with savory beef, carrots, potatoes, and peas. The bread was crusty and rich—ambrosia compared to the black rocks they’d been serving us for the past four years. Grigory was doing his duty for Mama, and I was grateful to him for this. The soup tasted as palatable to me as soot, but I at least felt some of my physical discomfort ebb away. The dull ache in my head subsided, and I was able to focus more clearly.

“It’s wonderful, Mama. Thank you,” I said, placing the tray back on the table when I could no longer tolerate the food.

“You don’t need to say such things, my dear. Food tasted like dirt for weeks after your papa died. But thank you for eating all the same. You probably don’t remember your babushka feeding me like I am feeding you. I had no idea she was so sick at the time.”

I remembered Babushka Olga with fondness, but her death had barely registered with me after the loss of Papa. I’m sure it was the same for Mama, and I imagine there was some guilt in her heart some years later over not grieving as deeply for her mother as she should have done.

“I am also going to do something for you that my mama did for me.”

The image of the little cabin in Miass flashed before my eyes, and I felt my breath catch. I could not spend the rest of my life so far from the rest of the world. “Mama, I can’t go back there. Not Miass.”

“No, darling. I am not kicking you out of your home. And make no mistake, this is your home. I am, however, going to insist that you get up, bathe, get dressed, and fetch some bread from the bakery for supper.”

It was a simple request, but it seemed Herculean in scope. “Mama, maybe tomorrow?” The thought of dressing, let alone leaving the apartment, seemed more daunting than flying another mission over Germany.

“No, my darling, today. You need to move. Get some air.” Mama gripped my hand and fixed my eyes with hers.

“That won’t fix anything.” I buried my face in my hands for a moment, rubbing my eyes in defeat.

“No, but it’s a start. You must trust your old mama, Katya. I never wanted you to walk in these shoes, but I have worn them for over a decade. I will help where I can, but you have to make the first steps on your own.”

The realization that Mama had endured this same pain, and that I could only now understand it, shook me. I wondered now how she had been able to go on with her life as she had done. To give me a normal, if cheerless, childhood. I had met some brave women during the course of the war, but I now felt awed by my own mother’s strength.

“How did you manage to do this, Mama? How did you move on?”

“I’m not sure I ever moved on, Katinka. Not really. But I learned to carry my grief for your papa like the medals on your chest. Proof I had loved and been loved. I had no choice but to find a way to carry on. For you, my sweet girl.”

I did as Mama commanded. I rose from my bed and scrubbed away a week’s worth of grime and sleep. I washed the grit from my hair and let the warm water trickle down my face, where tears refused to flow.

When I returned from the washroom, I found my bed already made up with clean sheets, and a light dress of dark charcoal gray, appropriate for both the summer heat and a widow in mourning, draped like a shroud over the blue-and-white field of snowdrops.

Mama knew I couldn’t face the world in a pink frock. She knew exactly what I needed and now had the means to provide for me the way she’d longed to.

I was a woman grown. A widow. I should be beyond my mother’s care. I shook my head, remembering the strength she’d shown after Papa’s death. I shouldn’t be troubling my mother, as needy for her attentions as an infant.

And I would never have the words to tell her how grateful I was for her.