“Everything will be safe until you get back,” the man said quickly.
“But who will take care of our animals?” my mother asked.
The man hesitated, then blurted, “Don’t worry about them. Your lives are at stake.”
“Our lives?” Mama asked. Her voice trembled, and she shot a worried glance at me.
The young man looked down at his shoes, but his voice rose in impatience. “Just turn off your gas and your electricity. I’ll wait for you outside.”
“What is going on here? How will my husband find us?” Mama protested. “Please explain this, this…”
“Leave him a note,” interrupted the man. He spun on his heels.
I chased after him and tugged on his shirtsleeve. “Can I bring my dog?” I asked.
“No pets!” the man snapped.
As if on cue, Noisy slipped through the man’s khaki- and green-colored pant legs, ran across the room and jumped onto Papa’s chair. The dog knew that he wasn’t supposed to be inside, but he curled up in the chair as if he slept on its soft cushions every night. In Papa’s favorite spot, he looked like a king of the doggy world.
“Katya, take your dog out,” Mama said. I could hear the relief in her voice. Dealing with Noisy was a situation she knew how to handle.
As the man strode away, he called over his shoulder, “Hurry! I have to visit many more houses.”
“Katya, leave some food for Noisy,” Mama said.
I grabbed stew bones from the bowl in the refrigerator and went outside. The man was smoking underneath our big oak. As if he were punishing the cigarette, he took one puff after another, smoking it furiously. I was heading to Noisy’s bowls, when the man spotted me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Feeding the dog,” I said.
“I told you. Someone will feed your animals.”
I didn’t remember this promise.
The man pointed at our cottage. “Go pack. Now.”
I put the bones down and glanced at the bowl for water. I was glad that it was almost full, because under the man’s watchful gaze, I didn’t dare fill it to the brim.
When I returned to the cottage, Granny Vera’s cuckoo slipped out of its house and chirped eleven times, eleven o’clock in the morning. From my room, I could hear my mother shouting out the window at Inna Boiko next door. “A man is here at our door demanding that we evacuate. The station doesn’t answer.”
Despite my worries, I felt my excitement growing. I pulled out my battered suitcase and opened it on my bed. What do you take for an evacuation? I had no idea. I spied the motorcycle poster that Boris had given me for my birthday. I hadn’t yet had a chance to hang it on my wall. On a whim, I put the cylinder inside my suitcase.
After I had packed a change of clothes, my brush, a few pencils and a notepad, I took another quick glance around the room and noticed the mirror carved with the little domovyk. I would have liked to take him with me, but the frame was too big. I remembered Granny Vera had told me when families wanted to take a domovyk with them on a move or a trip, they carried an empty box and invited the house elf to jump in.
I went to the trashcan and pulled out the box that had held my matryoshka. On its bright label, a blue matryoshka, not as pretty as mine, was cracked open revealing the smaller doll inside. I thought briefly about taking my own beautiful redheaded matryoshka until I remembered I had left her baby with that Vasyl. He was ruining everything. When I came back, I would have to deal with him.
I considered my other gifts, and what I should take, but I couldn’t decide which would fit in my suitcase. Reminding myself that I would be away for only three days, I decided they could wait for me.
I stuck the empty blue box in my suitcase and said out loud, “Come with us, domovyk.”
Nothing happened, but then, I was too nervous to wait more than a few seconds. I snapped the suitcase shut and went out to see if Mama had finished packing
She was picking up her ashtrays, potted plants and knickknacks and then setting them back down. I could see that she was more confused over what to take than I was and had made even less progress. Sweat circled the armpits of her casual white blouse.
A banging on the door startled us. “Let’s go!” The man’s voice was insistent.
I grabbed her hand. “Come on, Mama. We’re coming back,” I pleaded with her.
“Let me go, Katya. Right now!” she snapped.
Feeling hurt, I dropped her hand and sat down in a chair by the breakfast table.
Mama rushed into her bedroom. Through the open door, I could see my mother, who was normally so careful in her movements, throwing an armful of papers and her pajamas into a small suitcase. She put her piggy bank on top and clicked it closed.
When she came back in the room, I expected her to apologize. Instead, she didn’t even seem to notice me. She hurried over to the drawer in the kitchen and scrawled a note on a piece of paper.
I decided to stop pouting and find out what she was writing to Papa.
But by the time I had reached the counter, she had the note in her hand. “Let’s go, Katya,” she said irritably. She stopped at the door to put her garden hat on her head and straighten her skirt.
Together, we walked outside into the bright sunshine. The man was waiting for us. He was smoking another cigarette and tapping his foot impatiently.
“We’ll walk to Pripyat,” Mama told the man as she carefully locked the front door. “It is only a half mile from here.”
The man shrugged as he started for his car. “Suit yourself.”
“But why, Mama?” I tugged at her dark skirt.
“We’ll go look for the Kaletniks. Victor Kaletnik can tell me what we should do,” she explained. “Katya, get me a rock.”
Eager to be of use, I scouted around under the large oak tree until I found one. I rushed back to the stoop.
Before weighing the note down, I read it. In place of the usual flowing Cyrillic letters of Mama’s handwriting, the note scrawled across the piece of torn paper: “Papa, we have gone to Pripyat to catch a bus. I trust that we will find you somehow. Love, Your family.”
We had started out the gate when I noticed Noisy. On a whim, I ran back and released him from his chain. There was a chance he might dig under the fence and escape into the forest, but he never wandered far. I trusted I could find him when we returned. I hated the thought of Noisy tied up for three days.
I closed the gate. My suitcase banging at my side, I followed Mama down the dusty lane. Every few steps, I looked back at my cottage.
Noisy was jumping against the fence and barking as if his heart might break. I knew he didn’t understand that we would be back. He was just a dog. He thought we were leaving him forever.
Chapter Eleven
PRIPYAT’S SIDEWALKS WERE PACKED WITH PEOPLE, and passenger buses with either red, yellow or green stripes lined the streets. I overheard one man say that the line of 1,100 buses stretched for some twelve miles.
My mother gave a little gasp when she saw the panicked scene, but I had a strange feeling that I had witnessed all this before. Staring into Vasyl’s fire, in the heat of the dream—or whatever the horrible things I had imagined were—I had envisioned crowds of frightened people and lines of metal buses driving off into the darkness.
Although a few people were chattering and laughing as if they were celebrating an early May Day, just as many people were crying. Soldiers stood on corners and leaned against buildings. Some were wearing ugly gas masks. They all held their guns as if they expected to use them. One babushka, dressed all in black, held up an icon and was mumbling, “Save us.”