I looked up through the sea of bodies and spotted Mama. Although her face was streaked with tears, I’ve never seen her more beautiful than at that moment. At the cottage, the shock of the evacuation had been too much for her. But now, her determination to find me had lit up her features and made them glow.
Gripping my mother’s hand once again, I was eager to let the crowd push us toward the nearest bus and away from those black boots.
Chapter Twelve
THE WINDOWS ON THE CROWDED BUS were all closed, and the air was hot and stuffy. Mama and I sat down in one of the few open seats at the back, next to a peasant. He wore a crumpled dark-green cap on his head, and tobacco had outlined his teeth in black. He held a sack full of cabbages in his ample lap.
A few minutes after we sat down, the man used his speckled hands to open the window, letting in both light and air. One by one, most of the other passengers followed the man’s lead. The breeze that blew in smelled faintly of batteries again,[7] but the air was so much better than the stuffiness of the bus. When the bus lurched off, I remembered that I had no idea where we were headed. I wanted to ask Mama, but her hand was pressed to her forehead, and her eyes were closed. I could tell that she didn’t know either.
We passed the hospital and the sign advertising its familiar slogan: “The Health of the People is the Wealth of the Country.”
A woman in front of the bus was crying out the window, “Alexander!”
I leaned across the old man and stuck my head out to see a German shepherd chasing us. His dusty sides heaved from the exertion, and his pink tongue lolled out of his mouth. As I watched, the dog pulled even with the bus and began biting at its back tires.
“Good-bye, old friend. I’ll be back,” the woman called to her dog.
Gazing out the window, I saw a road sign: “Kiev, 280 kilometers” or 174 miles. So Kiev was where we were headed. I had always wanted to visit our capital city. But the bus had traveled only a few hundred yards when the bus driver slammed on his brakes, and we all flew forward.
I spotted the cause of the delay. A peasant wearing baggy black pants and a white shirt was leading his herd of brown and white-spotted cows across the road. The smell of dust and fur blew in through the open window.
The bus driver yelled at the peasant, “Why are you on the road with those cows? Why don’t you take them through the fields?”
The peasant called back, “It would be a shame to trample the rye and the grass.” He gestured around him at the shimmering new green fields. I knew soon the rye and grass would be joined by oats, wheat, corn and barley. The crops would be so plentiful that there was no way that such a small herd could do significant damage. Still, I understood why the peasant would choose to block our progress on the road to protect some grasses. All of us knew the land was important.
When the bus began moving again, I heard a clatter as glass jars banged against each other. A red-faced man in the seat in front of us yelled at his wife, “I can’t believe you are so stupid. Everyone else brought valuables, and you brought pickle bottles.”
“My mother needs them,” the wife said, clutching two bulging burlap sacks more closely than she had before.
Without warning, Mama started crying. She didn’t cry often, and until today I had never seen her cry in public. I reached out and patted her hand, but I had no idea what to say. Papa would know how to comfort her. I missed him so much that I felt like crying, too.
I would have broken down except I had a feeling that it wasn’t Katya Dubko who was riding on the bus, listening to the pickle jars rattle. This was Sunday afternoon, the real Katya was finishing planting. Right now, she was probably up to her elbows in the rich earth of our garden.
This person bouncing along in the red bus was someone else. I had no idea what her relationship to me was. And I didn’t want to find out.
No, she was someone the real Katya Dubko wouldn’t want to know.
Much later, the bus jerked to a stop. I heard people around me muttering that we were in Kiev, and I opened my eyes. When I looked out the open window, I found that it was night. Six or seven policemen waited for us. One man held a megaphone. Another a clipboard. Several carried rifles. A few had on white medical coats over their blue uniforms. All of them wore grave expressions identical to those of their counterparts in Pripyat.
One of the first to exit, an elderly woman in a black shawl, began arguing with one of the policemen. “Where are we going?” she demanded.
“To a clinic,” the policeman answered.
“We’re tired and hungry,” the woman protested.
Another policeman pointed at a short squat building across the parking lot. “It’s a short walk, Comrade. The clinic is right there.”
When Mama and I finally clambered off the bus, I looked around trying to get my first view of Kiev, but it was too dark. I hoped perhaps Mama and I could visit the Caves Monastery for which Kiev was famous. I had heard that tourists were able to see the mummified monks, but I was too exhausted to feel any excitement.
As we approached the ugly gray cement building, I wondered why we needed to go to a clinic. I didn’t feel sick. But at this point, I had so many questions that I had lost the ability to ask even a single one. Without a word, I grabbed Mama’s hand, and we followed the crowd.
A guard held the door open, and we passed into a waiting room packed with men, women and children of all ages. All the people looked healthy.
The bags, sacks and suitcases of the evacuees made it hard to navigate the floor. Mama and I were relieved when we found a spot on a bench next to an old lady. Although it was hot in the room, she was dressed in multiple layers of clothes, topped by her black winter coat. She had cherry-red cheeks and a matching nose, but the old woman didn’t move or talk. In my depressed state, I began to wonder if she was dead. My suspicion seemed confirmed when a fly landed on her head, and she didn’t knock it off. In our barn, I had seen the way flies landed on dead chickens and animals. From then on, I looked in the other direction.
I didn’t have much to look at. The view out the lone window was dark. The couple who had argued over the pickle jars on the bus were quarreling about which of them should find a phone to call their relatives. Like Mama and I, most of the other people in the room were quiet and dispirited. “Mama, I’m hungry.”
“Try to go back to sleep, Katya,” she said.
I leaned against Mama’s shoulder and did try to sleep. But I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Finally, I gave up and just leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes.
After a while, I began to imagine I really did have a fever. I nuzzled closer to Mama. When I could stand my growling stomach no longer, I complained again, louder this time, “Mama, I’m hungry.”
“It should be our turn soon,” she quieted me.
To my surprise, the old lady next to me stirred. I looked over at her. She had opened her eyes and was pawing around in her bag. Finally, she pulled out a cooked potato. I looked away again. I couldn’t bear to watch someone else eat. Mama nudged me.
The old lady with the cherry cheeks was offering the potato to me.
“Thank you.” I reached out and accepted the wizened potato. Although it was stone-cold, it tasted better than even my chocolate birthday cake.
“Comrade Dubko,” a nurse dressed all in white called from the doorway. She had on a surgical mask and a white cap on her head. I had never seen gloves so long before. They covered her elbows.
We threaded our way through the waiting area and passed into a smaller room containing only a few families. All the doctor and nurses wore white coats, pants, and caps, and the same long gloves. As the doctors examined their patients, their eyes glowed spookily above their white masks.
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