“Who is?” I cried.
“The government hired hunters to shoot Yanov’s cows, pigs and horses,” Papa explained.
“What about the dogs?” I asked.
“Not dogs,” Mama said. She squeezed my hand hard.
Papa didn’t say anything. He just continued gazing blankly at me, and I knew the truth. In my mind, I pictured a terrier’s small body lying in front of the cottage. I had no doubt that Noisy had been so lonely that he had run out to greet the hunters. He was always eager to see me or any visitor. He would jump up, all the while barking nonstop. If I ignored him, he would run through my legs so that I couldn’t walk until I noticed him.
“That’s not the worst,” Papa said. “You must be very brave.”
My poor Noisy. How could anything be worse?
Papa took another deep breath. “Most towns like Pripyat are just going to be closed. Because of the terrible contamination, the authorities are actually going to bury Yanov.”[13]
“Bury Yanov?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
Mama let go of my hand and covered her face with her fingers.
“You remember how we buried Granny Vera?” Papa asked.
I nodded. Of course, Granny Vera lay in the cemetery in Pripyat under a big oak tree. We had tied her photo to an iron post next to her grave and decorated her headstone with tinsels and plastic flowers. Papa and I had liked to go to her graveside and read the long rambling epitaph that my grandmother had composed herself.
“Soldiers are going to dig a huge grave and push the house inside it. Then, they are going to cover the hole with dirt,” Papa explained.
“But why?” I asked.
“Because our home, our possessions, everything we own is radioactive,” Papa said.
“Can’t we at least retrieve our photographs?” Mama asked through the mask of her fingers.
Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that we would never go back. In my worst dreams, I thought it might be a year or two before I got to unfold my divan into a bed and have Angelika to sleep over; before I got to visit my woods, my boulder and my stream again. The total loss of my beloved home was too enormous to comprehend. My thoughts turned to my birthday presents. My divan was too large and bulky for Papa to carry. Although I was getting too old to play with dolls, my matryoshka and my Barbie would fit in Papa’s pocket.
“How about my dolls?” I asked.
“I will bring back our papers, but saving anything else is too dangerous,” Papa answered.
My dolls were dangerous? I didn’t understand.
Papa shook his head. “I think I forgot to tell you, Natasha. Our whole area—Yanov, Chernobyl, Pripyat—has a new name.”
“But Chernobyl has had the same name for thousands of years,” Mama protested.
“They’re calling it the Dead Zone,” Papa said.
I stood up from the table. The new name told me so much. Granny Vera was dead, and I couldn’t see or touch her. I started for the room that I shared with my young cousins.
“Katya,” my mother called.
“I have to do my homework,” I lied.
“Katya,” she repeated.
“Let the poor girl go,” Papa said.
I threw myself on my bed. Although I tried to wipe out all the thoughts that exploded in my mind, they came screaming back. I recalled every single fun time Noisy and I had ever had together. I thought about our visits to the woods. I relived the time that Noisy led me to the nest of baby squirrels. Noisy had liked to amuse himself by running back and forth on the stream bank barking at the minnows, while I picnicked with my forest creatures. Once Mama forgot to hook Noisy’s collar to the chain, and he slept in bed with me. Now I wept for my little dog.
Suddenly, I felt the bed jolt. Yuri had jumped up next to me. He grabbed my pillow, exposing my tears, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Come play hide-and-go-seek, Katya.”
I didn’t answer. He bounced up and down until Aunt Olga walked into the room.
“Stop it, Yuri,” she scolded him.
“Mother, Katya’s lazy. She won’t get up.”
I pulled the pillow over my head.
“Katya’s asleep,” Aunt Olga said.
I don’t know if you could say that I slept. But I had many dreams of this new Dead Zone that used to be my home. I saw Vasyl’s blue eyes, and the fire that he had started. The fire grew and grew until it reached the heavens. I imagined worms burrowing in the earth by our cottage, so radioactive they glowed. What were the hunters going to do with the insects? Kill every mosquito, every dragonfly? I imagined a new breed of dog created by a few that had escaped the hunter’s guns. Like wolves, they were so fierce and wild the hunters couldn’t shoot them. I imagined real wildflowers sprouting out of the cushions of my new divan.
Why had Vasyl picked me to share news of the accident? He must have sensed that I was different from everybody else. Something must be wrong with me. If only Vasyl hadn’t chosen me to talk to. If only he hadn’t made me somehow responsible for this horror.
“Katya, dinner,” my mother called.
“No,” I moaned, and jammed the pillow over my ears.
My mother came into the room and stood over me. “Look at me.”
I rolled over. I felt her cool hand seek out my forehead to check my temperature.
“She doesn’t have a fever,” she reassured my father.
I flopped back over on my stomach and pulled the pillow on top of my head again.
“Let’s leave her alone,” Papa said.
The laughs, howls and arguments of my cousins drove me further inside myself until, gradually, the apartment grew quiet.
I didn’t move until after I was sure that Yuri and the cousins were asleep. For a while, I had been listening to the murmur of adult voices coming from the living room. Now, I got on my knees and crawled to the cracked door. I lay down in front of it.
“If a woman milks her cow, the soldiers must stand nearby and make sure that when she’s done, she pours the milk on the ground,”[14] Papa said.
“But that’s terrible.” I recognized Aunt Olga Pushko’s voice.
“I’ve seen pools and pools of white milk on the grass,” Papa said.
I heard some quiet sobs. I guessed they were my mother’s.
“The farmers dig up their potatoes, but—can you imagine?—the soldiers force them to rebury them.”[15] Papa sighed.
I closed my eyes.
“Night is the best time,” Papa said. “We sit next to campfires. The Ukraine is still so beautiful.”
I felt myself drifting off to sleep.
“I drove a group of soldiers to Yanov and saw Inna Boiko there.”
“I thought civilians weren’t allowed to return,” Mama protested.
“Inna Boiko snuck in. She wanted to check on her garden. Even the death of her own son hasn’t shaken her faith in the land.”
I sat bolt upright.
Even the death of her own son…. Boris was dead.
Unable to listen any longer, I managed to crawl back to my closet where I had stored the suitcase I brought from Yanov.
I pulled out the suitcase and opened it. Because of the radioactivity, Mama had made me throw my clothes away, but I had kept the poster Boris had given me for my birthday. With the moon as my only light, carefully I unrolled the poster.
The poster showed a shiny red Yava, parked in front of an apartment complex.
I hadn’t noticed before, but the motorcycle was riderless.
