“We must prepare,” said Mother. “The winter will be beyond anything we’ve experienced. Temperatures will be below freezing. There will be no food.”
“Winter?” I said, leaning back on my heels. “Are you joking? You think we’ll still be here when winter comes? Mother, no!” Winter was months away. I couldn’t bear the thought of living in that shack, digging holes for months, and trying to avoid the commander. I glanced over to the blond guard. He was looking at my drawing in the dirt.
“I hope not,” said Mother, lowering her voice. “But what if we are? If we’re not prepared, we’ll surely freeze or starve.” Mother had the grouchy woman’s attention.
“The snowstorms in Siberia are treacherous,” said Mrs. Rimas, nodding.
“I don’t know how the shacks withstand it,” said Mother.
“Why don’t we build our own building?” I asked. “We can build a log house like the kolkhoz office, with a chimney and a stove. We can all live together.”
“Stupid girl. They’ll never give us time to build something of our own, and if we did build something, they’d take it for themselves,” said the grouchy woman. “Keep digging.”
It began to rain. Water plopped on our heads and shoulders. We opened our mouths to drink.
“This is insanity,” said Mrs. Rimas.
Mother shouted over to the blond guard. The butt of his cigarette glowed under the shelter of the tree branches.
“He says we must dig faster,” said Mother, raising her voice as the rain poured down in sheets. “That the soil will be soft now.”
“Bastard,” said Mrs. Rimas.
I looked over and saw our house melting in the dirt. My drawing stick rolled away, propelled by the wind and rain.
I put my head down and dug. I jabbed the small shovel into the earth, harder and harder, pretending the soil was the commander. My fingers cramped and my arms shook with exhaustion. The hem of my dress was ripped, and my face and neck were sunburned from the morning sun.
When the rain stopped, we marched back to the camp, covered in mud up to our waists. My stomach convulsed with hunger. Mrs. Rimas slung the canvas over her shoulder and we dragged along, our hands cramped, still locked on to the shovel blades we had gripped for nearly twelve hours.
We entered the camp near the back. I recognized the bald man’s shack with its brown door and was able to direct Mother toward ours. Jonas was inside waiting for us. Every pot was brimming with water.
“You’re back!” he shouted. “I was worried you wouldn’t find the hut.”
Mother wrapped her arms around Jonas, kissing his hair.
“It was still raining when I got back,” explained Jonas. “I dragged the pots outside so we could have water.”
“Very smart, love. Have you had some to drink?” asked Mother.
“Plenty,” he said, looking at me in my bedraggled state. “You can have a nice bath.”
We drank from a large pot before washing our legs off. Mother insisted I drink more, even when I felt I couldn’t.
Jonas sat cross-legged on the boards. One of Mother’s scarves was spread out in front of him. In the center was a lonely piece of bread, with a small flower next to it.
Mother looked down at the bread and the wilted flower. “What sort of banquet do we have here?” she said.
“I received a ration coupon for my work today. I worked with two ladies making shoes,” said Jonas, smiling. “Are you hungry? You look tired.”
“I’m so hungry,” I said, staring at the solitary piece of bread. If Jonas received bread for working indoors on shoes, we must certainly be getting an entire turkey, I thought.
“We are each entitled to three hundred grams of bread for our work,” explained Jonas. “You have to collect your ration coupon at the kolkhoz office.”
“That’s ... that’s all?” asked Mother.
Jonas nodded.
Three hundred grams of dry bread. I couldn’t believe it. That’s all we got after digging for hours. They were starving us and would probably dump us into the holes we dug. “It’s not enough,” I said.
“We’ll find something more,” said Mother.
Fortunately, the commander wasn’t at the log building when we arrived. We were given our coupons without having to beg or dance. We followed the other workers into a nearby building. The bread was weighed and distributed to us. I could almost close my palm around the entire ration. On the way back, we saw Miss Grybas in back of her shack. She waved us over. Her arms and dress were filthy. She had been working in the beet fields all day. Her face twisted with revulsion when she saw us. “What are they doing to you?”
“Making us dig,” said Mother, pushing her mudencrusted hair away from her face. “In the rain.”
“Quickly!” she said, pulling us toward her. Her hands trembled. “I could be in awful trouble taking risks like this for you. I hope you know that.” She reached into her brassiere and pulled out a few small beets and passed them quickly to Mother. She then raised her dress and took two more from her underwear. “Now hurry, go!” she said. I heard the bald man yelling in the shack behind us.
We scurried back to our hut to begin our feast. I was too hungry to care that I hated beets. I didn’t even care that they had been transported in someone’s sweaty underwear.
35
“LINA, PUT THIS in your pocket and take it to Mr. Stalas,” said Mother, handing me a beet.
The bald man. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it. “Mother, I’m too tired.” I lay on the planks, my cheek flush to the wood.
“I brought some straw for us to sleep on,” announced Jonas. “The women told me where I could find it. I’ll bring more tomorrow,” he said.
“Lina, hurry, before it gets too dark. Take it to Mr. Stalas,” said Mother, organizing the straw with Jonas.
I walked into the bald man’s shack. A woman and two wailing babies took up most of the gray space. Mr. Stalas was cramped in the corner, his broken leg splinted with a board.
“What took you so long?” he said. “Are you trying to starve me? Are you in cahoots with them? What torture. Crying day and night. I’d trade the rotting baby for this rubbish.”
I dropped the beet onto his lap and turned to leave.
“What happened to your hands?” he said. “They’re disgusting.”
“I’ve been working all day,” I snapped. “Unlike you.”
“What do they have you doing?” he asked.
“Digging holes,” I said.
“Digging, eh?” he mumbled. “Interesting, I thought they’d have pulled your mother.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your mother is a smart woman. She studied in Moscow. The damn Soviets know everything about us. They know about our families. Don’t think they won’t take advantage of that.”
I thought about Papa. “I need to get word to my father so he can find us.”
“Find you? Don’t be stupid,” he scoffed.
“He will. He’ll know how to find us. You don’t know my father,” I said.
The bald man looked down.
“Do you?”
“Have those guards gotten to you and your mother yet?” he asked. I looked at him. “Between your legs, have they gotten to you yet?”
I huffed in disgust. I couldn’t take it anymore. I left him and walked out of the hut.
“Hey.”
I turned toward the voice. Andrius was leaning up against the shack.
“Hi,” I said, looking over to him.
“You look horrible,” he said.
I was too exhausted to muster a clever reply. I nodded.
“What are they having you do?”
“We’re digging holes,” I said. “Jonas made shoes all day.”
“I cut trees in the forest,” he said. Andrius looked dirty, but untouched by the guards. His face and arms were tan, making his eyes appear very blue. I pulled a clump of dirt from my hair.
“Which shack are you in?” I asked.
“Somewhere over there,” he said, without motioning in any particular direction. “Are you digging with that blond NKVD?”
“With him? That’s a joke. He’s not digging,” I said. “He just stands around smoking and yelling at us.”
“His name is Kretzsky,” said Andrius. “The commander, he’s Komorov. I’m trying to find out more.”