Chapter 4
Chapter 4: A Mother’s Death
Nastusia was eight years old when her mother died. She was still young enough to think that part of it must be her fault, but old enough to know that she was the only one that could continue to take care of the family when Natasha couldn’t get out of bed. They said the cancer had metastasized before they had even found it. One day everyone was commenting on how beautifully thin she’d gotten, and the next they noticed the dark circles under her eyes, her weakness. And by the time that Nastusia had started taking over the cooking and the washing, Natasha was near the end.
Natasha lay in her marriage bed, where she had given birth to her two children and had slept every night for thirteen years with her husband. Tucked under the covers with her arms folded over her boney hips, she spread her fingers out over the comforter cover, feeling the smooth old fabric. She had stopped being able to really regulate her temperature, but did not have the strength enough to pull the blankets up around her chin. The room was cold and the feel of the linens against her skin was beginning to hurt, like having the flu. She closed her eyes and listened to the noises coming into the room from around the house. The water was running in the kitchen. Nastusia cleaning up after dinner. A loud clang, as though Nastusia had dropped a pot, but no, not Nastusia, and then there was another crash, and another, and Natasha realized it was the little Alabaster banging a spoon against a pot.
Tears began to stream down Natasha’s cheeks. How was it that Nastusia could understand so much, do so much at such a young age? To take care of little Alabaster, still needing so much attention. She knew that Vladimir was beyond himself in this. He had taken to sleeping on the couch in the past few weeks. She knew he could not bear to see her this way. He was a proud man, but dependent. He did not know how to lose a wife. Nor did he understand how to ease her pain at the loss of him. He could not walk into their bedroom without feeling that loss, expecting it. And so now he did not come into the room. I said good morning from the doorway and wished her good night from there as well. She loved to see his face, then, although she could see his pain in it. She did not want to leave him, that kind face and his stoicism. She knew the feeling behind it, but understood the solid form of husband and father that he stood for. He was probably sitting on the couch, reading the newspaper.
She slept for a moment, dreaming of flight, and awoke suddenly with a cough. Nastusia lay on her stomach at the end of the bed, asleep, her face buried in a book. Natasha smiled at the little form, so strong in her waking life. Yet she was still a child, very much a child, and it showed as she slept, the tension gone from her silky forehead, the thin arms of a prepubescent girl.
“My darling,” Natasha called softly, both out of care to not wake her too forcefully, and also because her voice was weak after sickness and sleep. “Darling you cannot sleep like this. Go to bed.”
Nastusia wrinkled her mouth before opening her eyes. Sitting up, she yawned. There were smudges on her face and her hair had not been brushed. “Can I sleep here?”
“Of course, my darling.” Natasha’s eyes began to burn and water, she strained to reach her arms toward her little girl and Nastusia climbed under the covers and into them. Natasha petted her daughter with fragile hands. “Is Alabaster in bed?” she asked.
“Mmm. Already asleep,” was Nastusia’s sleepy reply.
“Did she get a bath today?”
“After dinner.”
“And… Does she like the bath, Nastusia?”
Nastusia paused. “Yeah, mama. She likes the bath. She pretends to swim in it, even though I don’t fill it too high. She stays in too long. She won’t leave until she gets cold.”
Natasha laughed with new tears. “But you don’t let her stay in too long, yes?”
“Yeah, mama. I don’t let her stay in too long.”
For a long time, Natasha and her daughter lay there, breathing softly. Intermittent sounds from the street crept into the room through the windows, but the women lay peacefully still. Natasha was sure that Nastusia must be asleep, when all of a sudden, the child said in a small voice, “Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Want to hear a story?”
Natasha smiled into the dark, and hugged her daughter close. “I would love to hear a story.”
“Once there was a family that lived almost in a forest. But one day, the mom got sick and she said, ‘This dollie will help you. All you have to do is feed it.’” Nastusia spoke softly to her mother, and though she forgot some parts and had to go back to fit them in, and although it was somewhat shorter than Natasha’s seasoned telling, it was a good story. When she got to the end, they were both exhausted. Most of the noises from the street had petered off and the two were finally left to their dreams and to sound sleep.
Nastusia dreamed of fine linens and silks. Her mother and she with their hair done up in thousands of beautiful ribbons, so many that they trailed on the floor and they both became so wobbly that they collapsed in giggles on the bed.
In Natasha’s dream, she wandered through a sparse forest of thin trees. White bark made vertical lines through the powerful greenery. Flat, circular leaves fell continuously around her as she walked slowly but purposefully forward. In her dream, she wondered briefly where her husband was and had a feeling that he was supposed to meet her with their children. She looked around, perhaps to make sure that she was headed in the right direction, but every view was the same. Tall white stalks topped with lush vermillion leaves which fell without end. Thick shiny grass, unmussed by any creature. An endless flat land of pure natural beauty as far as she could see ahead, behind, and any direction she chose to look. In a way, it was as though she was never really moving from the spot in which she stood. Though her feet moved forward, continued to pad through the carpet of life, the scene stayed exactly the same. However, she continued to walk, knowing that there was an end to it all, that there was a purpose to this journey.
In the morning, Nastusia carefully left the bed, not wanting to wake her mother from her restful repose. She walked to her mother’s dresser, tall enough to see into the mirror behind, but only enough to see her head, she grabbed her mother hair brush, with its nest of straight, cream-colored bristles, and she began to brush out her long, dark hair, holding a piece in front of her and looking down at it as the strands began to fall in line with one another. She did both sides, forgetting the back of her head, which was, of course, the most in need of smoothing. After finishing, and craning to see herself in her mother’s dresser mirror, Nastusia walked to the kitchen to put coffee grounds in the machine for her father. She made up a little song while she worked, moving a chair from the kitchen table to the counter so that she could reach the coffee-maker’s cord to put it in the wall socket. The song revolved around the coffee, the color of the wall socket and the fact that you have to be careful around electricity.
As the coffee began to brew, Nastusia went to her own room, which she shared with her little sister, and informed her that it was time to get up. She helped her choose her day’s clothes and made sure that she did not put her underwear on backwards. Then she sat her in a chair in the kitchen and brushed her hair out smooth, putting it in two braids and tying each with a green ribbon.
Nastusia’s father wandered into the room at the smell of coffee. He smiled at both of the girls and put a hand on his eldest daughter’s head as he went to the counter to pour himself a mug. Nastusia contented herself with this brief show of affection from her father. She knew that if someone needed taking care of right now that it was he. She was aware that she was the one that would hold this house together after. Well, now that her mom couldn’t. That thought of her mother in better times made Nastusia wonder if she was awake yet, if she needed anything.
“Come say good morning to Mama,” she told her sister, taking the young girl’s hand. Alabaster wasn’t old enough to understand what was happening in their house. She looked up to her older sister for everything, but did not like to see their mother. Without knowing what, she knew that something was very wrong and that everything was changing, and she knew that it had something to do with her mother being in bed all the time. She wanted to know why they didn’t just ask Mama to get up so that everything would be ok again. Nastusia felt her sister resist the little tug on her arm and turned to see her eyes wide with a mixture of anger and fear. Nastusia didn’t like to see her sister this way, but she knew also that her mother needed them both to be strong, that their father needed it also. So she smiled a little, but also sternly, and tugged again on Alabaster’s arm. Alabaster stood, then, slumping down out of the chair and walking with her head bowed, holding tightly to her sister’s hand.
They entered their mother’s small bedroom pressed together at the hip. Alabaster squeezed her sister’s hand and tried to be unafraid of the sick woman in the wood-frame bed, thin and small and not very motherly at all. They walked together toward the woman who was their mother still, though her hair was thin and her skin somewhat gray. Her face was pointed away from them and neither was sure if she was even awake, but as they walked to the edge of the bed, Natasha turned and smiled at them both, tired, but energized by the faces of her young girls. Alabaster was eased somewhat by the familiarity of that smile, even coming from this woman’s boney face. “Hi, mama,” said the youngest as her older sister lifted her up onto the mattress next to her mother and then climbed up after her.
Natasha held hands with both of her daughters, feeling the smallness of them and the smoothness of their skin. She felt Nastusia squeeze back, hold onto her mother. Alabaster’s small hand was tense. She was only five and Natasha felt angry that this beautiful little girl was forced to see the face of death at such a young age. She wanted her more for her daughters than this.
Vladimir stood in the doorway for a moment before anyone else noticed his presence. He watched the family as it was slowly falling apart from his wife’s illness. He leaned against the doorway feeling small and removed, not knowing how to join them or if he even could. A house growing more full of women had never bothered him. He loved to see his little girls pampered by their mother and was happy in the roll as provider for the family, making sure that his daughters had beautiful clothing to wear and that his wife was given the things she liked. And yet. He did not know how to be with them.
Vladimir was, by far, a man of deeds. He spoke softly, if at all and although it could not be said that he chose his words carefully, he was particularly careful to use as few as possible when the situation necessitated that he speak. He was a short man, but wide and strong and he interacted with the world based on size. Small things worried him. He became concerned, when in close proximity to them, that they would break due to some fault of his, some act of clumsiness. And so, although he loved his children dearly, and his wife more than he could bear to truly feel, he stayed in the doorway, a body’s length from the small girls and the frail woman, until someone noticed.
Natasha was the first to realize that her husband was present in the room, or hovering on the brink of what could be considered in the room. But she did not respond with more than a small bend of the head, a slight tilt to her mouth. Alabaster, however, leapt off the bed and rushed toward her father. She was still too young to realize the slight discomfort that came with the joy of hugging his daughter. Her tiny body in his arms agitated him and he became still to avoid any accidental hurt. Nastusia felt the tension and disliked it, both for him and for her, and avoided these stronger gestures, but Alabaster ran to him, as she did from time to time, partly for her father, and partly to have some excuse to let go of her mother’s cold, thin hand, which scared her.
When Alabaster had let go of him, Vladimir straightened and mumbled something about the morning, which Nastusia took as, “Thank you for the coffee,” and Natasha heard as, “I love you.” His duty done, he wandered out of the room and left the house for work. They heard the front door open and close on the other side of the house. Nastusia kept her mother’s hand held tight in her own while her father stood at the door, but now she drew it away in order to help her sister back up onto the bed. She climbed down in order to lift her up without fear of falling off the bed herself, and once her sister was safely atop the mattress and covers, Nastusia made her way back to the dresser before which she had stood that morning. She pulled the brush back off the top of the dresser and smiled at her mother.
Natasha’s hair was much longer than her daughter’s, and Nastusia was in awe as she brushed out the long strands. “Go find some pretty ribbon,” she said to Alabaster. The youngest girl’s eyes brightened and she bounded out of the room, excited for a task. Natasha shifted, trying to pull her body up to a sitting position, where she could lean against the headboard. She cringed and Nastusia stopped her brushing, a consternated look forming on her own face while he mother strained to reposition herself.
Natasha smiled sadly at her two beautiful daughters, their wide pointed eyes and long noses. She saw herself in them and her mother and it saddened her to think that they would be growing up without one.
“Darlings,” she said, “you are my most prized things. I love you very much. You know I am sick.” She looked specifically at her youngest daughter then, asking with her eyes how much she knew of what was going on. Alabaster lowered her gaze, avoiding her mother’s sad, sleepy eyes. But she moved her hand closer to her mother’s, brushing the skin of her own volition. Nastusia waited for her mother to say something else. She held the brush in her hands expectantly, wondering if there was something she should be doing.
“I wish that I could give you a dollie like the one Vasilisa’s mother gave her, but I can’t. I’m very sick, and I am going to die, and I am going to miss you both very much.”
Alabaster began to cry, softly. Huge tears welled up in her eyes, making them glossy and almost cartoon-like. She didn’t blink, but her mouth got small and her chin began to wobble. Natasha saw the signs of a full-blown sob coming on, and gathered her strength to draw the little girl to her. Alabaster buried herself in her mother’s thin frame, clutching at bed-sheets and her mother’s nightgown. “I don’t want you to die,” she said into an armpit. The words were muffled by cloth and flesh, and stunted by sharp intakes of air, but the timing of the series of noises, and the lilt and cadence to the phrase was enough to convey to the others what she had meant. Natasha held her tightly in her arms. She hated seeing her daughters this way, knowing that there was nothing she could do. But at the same time, she had been getting sick for a time now, and she had had these many days and weeks alone in her bed to think about what it meant. Of course she was sad to leave her children, her husband, this life that she had spent so long living, but she also know that death was inevitable, and that she was simply among the few for whom that inevitability would come somewhat sooner than the rest. She was beginning to accept it. She held her daughter, smoothing her hair in its long braids, and breathed in the smell of the top of her head, her soap and sweat.
She looked up, then, at her elder daughter and saw that Nastusia had not moved since she had moved back from brushing her mother’s hair in order to let her shift her weight. Natasha looked to Nastusia, willing her to move at all. To put down the brush, to smile, to cry. But she did not. Nastusia was still. She thought about her mother, continuing to wonder what it was that she should be doing. She felt obliged, but toward what end, she was not sure. She wanted to help her sister, to make her feel comfortable or happy or at least to keep her from crying, but she was not sure how to accomplish any of those goals. And most of all, she wanted her mother to be better. She imagined finding some special secret herb or root that would make her mother well again. She imagined feeding Vasilisa’s dollie a bit of bread and asking her for help. The dollie would whisper to her the secret location of the place where she would find the herbs she desired, the plant that would save her mother.
She lost track of her real mother and sister, focused on her imagined family, how happy everyone would be when she returned from her quest, cured her mother and brought the family back to the way it was supposed to be. And she and her sister would go back to school, and her mother would bring home beautiful ribbons and silks from the market to give to each of them.
Vasilisa’s dollie was what she needed. They all needed it.
Nastusia found her mother’s eyes and smiled in a reassuring way to her. She could see that her mother was worried about her and she wanted Natasha to see how strong she was, how capable of caring for the family she would be when Natasha was gone. She set the brush down on the bed and crawled forward to take her mother in her arms and hold her.
That night, after she had tucked her sister into bed, had told her the story of the beautiful Vasilisa and her incredible dollie, and had waited with her mother to see that she breathed the soft, easy breath of sleep, Nastusia went to the sewing box her mother kept in the hall closet and took out scraps of the finest silks and linens and ribbons and with these she crafted a small doll, with hair of gold and a long blue dress. She didn’t notice the whole night go by and the dawn come sprinkling into the room. She sat on the floor, hunched over the pile of cloth, sewing with small stitches for hours. When she was finally done, she had been up all night.
Natasha awoke and saw her eldest daughter crouched on the floor next to the dresser. She was slumped over and clearly asleep. She looked as though she had fallen asleep in a small pile of laundry until Natasha looked closer and realized that Nastusia’s little pile was made up of the scraps of linens and silks she had brought home from the market over the years, the small bits she had managed to take home as samples for her children. She wanted to get up, to tuck Nastusia in to her bed, to clean up the mess she had made and to see why she had done it. But she could not. She could barely lift her arms to take them out from under the blankets, let alone jump out of bed to lift a sleeping eight-year-old and carry her to her room. And for a moment, Natasha was filled with a rage at her disease. She let the rage come, as it did sometimes, let it wash through her and then pass. She watched Nastusia then, just watched her as she breathed and shifted in her sleep.
She waited and watched. She dozed and dreamt until Vladimir came in, looking for his daughter. He had noticed the silence and the fact that she was not in their room. He smiled at his diseased wife and reached down for his sleeping daughter. He picked her up gently, cradling her head in one hand as though she was a newborn. He looked reassuringly at Natasha and she smiled softly back at him in a matter both grateful and a little bit mocking. “Vlad,” she said as he turned to go. Her voice was weak, but filled to the brim with tenderness. “Vlad, what was she doing?”
Vladimir looked for the first time at the mess surrounding the place where Natasha had lain. He bent down, still cradling the sleeping girl in his arms, and sifted through the mess at his feet until he found the little doll with silk ribbons for hair and a long blue dress. He picked it up and walked over to his dying wife, lying in her marriage bed, handing the little doll to her.
“Vasilisa’s doll,” Natasha whispered with a sad smile as she held it in her hands. She looked up at her husband. “Put her to bed,” she said. “She’s been up all night with this.”
He nodded to her and turned again to leave the room. Natasha watched him go, realizing that that had been the closest he had been to her since he stopped sleeping in the same bed. Perhaps he was coming to terms also. She was glad of it, if that was indeed the case.
She looked down at the little dollie in her hands, making note of the scraps Nastusia had used and the stitches. It was an erratic thing, with little symmetry, but Nastusia had taken care with it. Each stitch was as delicate as the last and had been threaded with the same care. So much was the case that as Natasha searched the face and arms and feet of it, she could not tell where Nastusia had started or when she had been close to dreaming. She marveled at her growing daughter and the energy with which she continued every day to keep the house running and everyone in it accounted for.
Natasha gently stroked the dollie’s hair and dress and she again became tired and ready to sleep again. As she held the doll in her hands, though, and let the weight of her eyelids bring them to a close, Vladimir sat down on the bed next to her and Natasha turned to look at him. Her face was worried. Although she had craved his presence since he had left her bed, Natasha had also grown used to it and his return now spoke something more than just the affection she had wanted. She wondered what it was.
Vladimir looked over his wife, expressing in his face the worry and discontent that he had felt for the months following her diagnosis, but had been unwilling to show or even let himself become aware of. He loved his wife deeply and, in a similar way to his daughter Nastusia, felt a keen sense of obligation towards her that now translated into a feeling that he was incapable in his role as man of the house. Natasha could see her husband’s emotions well up inside him and continue to increase well past the point at which he was usually capable of shutting them off. She became worried for him, now, knew that although it was not her fault, she was the cause of this unbridled emotion in her husband. It was for her that he longed. She wanted to reassure him that she did not blame him for being unable to make her well again, but she wasn’t sure that saying it might not just put the idea in his head and contribute to the problems. In stead, she took his warm, thick hand in hers, trying to bridge a connection that used to exist between them and perhaps still did, even after all this time of avoidance and distance. He squeezed back and her sigh alerted her to the fact that she hadn’t been breathing.
“You are dying,” Vladimir said. The words came out as an apology, as an exclamation, an accusation. The way he said it made it seem that she did not already know, or perhaps that it was the first time he had said it.
“I am,” Natasha replied in a strong, clear voice that spoke her acceptance. “I am going to die, Vlad.” And then, more softly and after a pause, she said, “Soon.”
The little strength he had been able to maintain while staring at his wife and holding her hand simply crumbled under the weight of this inevitability and this strong, stoic man began to cry. He bend his head and leaned into his wife, still holding tight to her hand, unable to think about how he might be hurting her, though he was not. She held him and stroked his hair the same way she had done for her youngest child, knowing that it was not weakness that prompted this emotional outbreak, but strength of feeling. She almost smiled thinking about how strange it was that the dying woman should comfort her loved ones at this time and not the other way around.
Vladimir did not speak after that one simple declaration of truth. He continued to cry for some time, slowly calming enough to stop shaking and eventually he was just hugging her, feeling what her body had done to her, to itself since the disease took over. Her smell hadn’t changed much. She was somewhat dirty, but not in an off-putting way. And she was sick. Very clearly sick. But had she really changed so much beyond that? He moved away in order to look at her, check her body for changes, and realized that in fact she had not changed that much, that she had become smaller, thinner, but she had not become something new, or lost anything but mass and energy. Her eyes were the same, still strong and vibrant with a coy humor. One eyebrow still cocked involuntarily, expressing a vast array of emotions.
Two days later she was dead. Vladimir had spent more time at her side in those few days than he had in months. He was the first to wake her in the morning and the last to say goodnight. He did not see it as a comfort to her, did not know that it was. To him, it was a consolation to himself to be with her and he sacrificed some small portion of his male dignity needing her, but not so much that he decided in the end that he would not do it. And so, he was the first to find her the morning that she did not wake up. He was the first to see the ashen face devoid of life where the night before there had been at least a glimmer. He was the first to feel that her usually cold fingers were connected to unusually cold wrists and that her parched lips had turned a light shade of blue. He sat with his wife for only a moment after finding her dead, looked at her to see the change and the fact that the eyes no longer held an air of mystery, that her left eyebrow no longer shifted involuntarily. Just long enough to make sure that she was gone. And then he stood up, walked to the door and closed it behind him.
He called the doctor, who told him what to do next. He made phone calls and arrangements and somehow, when Nastusia woke up, she knew before seeing the closed door that was never closed that her mother was gone. Perhaps she noticed her father’s flat voice on the phone or the strange way that he sounded muffled, as though hiding behind his hands. Maybe there was an absence in the air or a silence that she didn’t notice as much as she simply knew. Perhaps she could tell that only three heartbeats thumped in strange harmony in the house now.
But whatever it was that alerted Nastusia to the change, she was not surprised to see, as she left her room in her long knit nightgown, that the door at the end of the hall that led to her parents’ bedroom was closed tight to her. She did not bother trying the handle and checking in. She knew what she would find and, as strong as she had forced herself to become, she was not capable of seeing her mother now.
In stead, she turned around and walked back into the room that she shared with her younger sister, still asleep. She sat down on the edge of her sister’s bed, put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Alabaster,” in a quiet voice, strangely devoid of emotion. Alabaster awoke slowly, her nose crinkling before her eyes opened to the light of a new day. It took a moment for the child to adjust to a waking state, to the new light-filled room, to her sister’s unaffected face. But eventually she did. She saw that it was morning, that her sister was there with her warm hand on her shoulder in a reassuring manner and a face so close to devoid of feeling that Alabaster knew what was wrong.
“No,” she said softly. She reached out and found the little dollie her sister had made for her only a few days before. “No! No! No!” she shouted at it, shaking the cloth doll in both hands and staring furiously into the button eyes, which had been carefully sewn slightly askew.
Her sister’s fury made Nastusia’s heart ache for their loss and she reached out, engulfing both the child and her doll in a hug meant to quiet as well as reassure. They sat there in that way for longer than they knew, Nastusia rocking her little sister in her arms and saying softly, “shhh, shhh, hush now,” while Alabaster cried silently and clutched at the doll in her hands. And when their father entered the room, seeing them this way, he knew that they knew. But because he had come to say something, and did not know what to say other than the truth, he stood in the doorway for a moment until they turned to him and then he said, “Your mother’s gone.”
Nastusia was eight years old when her mother died. She was still young enough to think that part of it must be her fault, but old enough to know that she was the only one that could continue to take care of the family when Natasha couldn’t get out of bed. They said the cancer had metastasized before they had even found it. One day everyone was commenting on how beautifully thin she’d gotten, and the next they noticed the dark circles under her eyes, her weakness. And by the time that Nastusia had started taking over the cooking and the washing, Natasha was near the end.
Natasha lay in her marriage bed, where she had given birth to her two children and had slept every night for thirteen years with her husband. Tucked under the covers with her arms folded over her boney hips, she spread her fingers out over the comforter cover, feeling the smooth old fabric. She had stopped being able to really regulate her temperature, but did not have the strength enough to pull the blankets up around her chin. The room was cold and the feel of the linens against her skin was beginning to hurt, like having the flu. She closed her eyes and listened to the noises coming into the room from around the house. The water was running in the kitchen. Nastusia cleaning up after dinner. A loud clang, as though Nastusia had dropped a pot, but no, not Nastusia, and then there was another crash, and another, and Natasha realized it was the little Alabaster banging a spoon against a pot.
Tears began to stream down Natasha’s cheeks. How was it that Nastusia could understand so much, do so much at such a young age? To take care of little Alabaster, still needing so much attention. She knew that Vladimir was beyond himself in this. He had taken to sleeping on the couch in the past few weeks. She knew he could not bear to see her this way. He was a proud man, but dependent. He did not know how to lose a wife. Nor did he understand how to ease her pain at the loss of him. He could not walk into their bedroom without feeling that loss, expecting it. And so now he did not come into the room. I said good morning from the doorway and wished her good night from there as well. She loved to see his face, then, although she could see his pain in it. She did not want to leave him, that kind face and his stoicism. She knew the feeling behind it, but understood the solid form of husband and father that he stood for. He was probably sitting on the couch, reading the newspaper.
She slept for a moment, dreaming of flight, and awoke suddenly with a cough. Nastusia lay on her stomach at the end of the bed, asleep, her face buried in a book. Natasha smiled at the little form, so strong in her waking life. Yet she was still a child, very much a child, and it showed as she slept, the tension gone from her silky forehead, the thin arms of a prepubescent girl.
“My darling,” Natasha called softly, both out of care to not wake her too forcefully, and also because her voice was weak after sickness and sleep. “Darling you cannot sleep like this. Go to bed.”
Nastusia wrinkled her mouth before opening her eyes. Sitting up, she yawned. There were smudges on her face and her hair had not been brushed. “Can I sleep here?”
“Of course, my darling.” Natasha’s eyes began to burn and water, she strained to reach her arms toward her little girl and Nastusia climbed under the covers and into them. Natasha petted her daughter with fragile hands. “Is Alabaster in bed?” she asked.
“Mmm. Already asleep,” was Nastusia’s sleepy reply.
“Did she get a bath today?”
“After dinner.”
“And… Does she like the bath, Nastusia?”
Nastusia paused. “Yeah, mama. She likes the bath. She pretends to swim in it, even though I don’t fill it too high. She stays in too long. She won’t leave until she gets cold.”
Natasha laughed with new tears. “But you don’t let her stay in too long, yes?”
“Yeah, mama. I don’t let her stay in too long.”
For a long time, Natasha and her daughter lay there, breathing softly. Intermittent sounds from the street crept into the room through the windows, but the women lay peacefully still. Natasha was sure that Nastusia must be asleep, when all of a sudden, the child said in a small voice, “Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Want to hear a story?”
Natasha smiled into the dark, and hugged her daughter close. “I would love to hear a story.”
“Once there was a family that lived almost in a forest. But one day, the mom got sick and she said, ‘This dollie will help you. All you have to do is feed it.’” Nastusia spoke softly to her mother, and though she forgot some parts and had to go back to fit them in, and although it was somewhat shorter than Natasha’s seasoned telling, it was a good story. When she got to the end, they were both exhausted. Most of the noises from the street had petered off and the two were finally left to their dreams and to sound sleep.
Nastusia dreamed of fine linens and silks. Her mother and she with their hair done up in thousands of beautiful ribbons, so many that they trailed on the floor and they both became so wobbly that they collapsed in giggles on the bed.
In Natasha’s dream, she wandered through a sparse forest of thin trees. White bark made vertical lines through the powerful greenery. Flat, circular leaves fell continuously around her as she walked slowly but purposefully forward. In her dream, she wondered briefly where her husband was and had a feeling that he was supposed to meet her with their children. She looked around, perhaps to make sure that she was headed in the right direction, but every view was the same. Tall white stalks topped with lush vermillion leaves which fell without end. Thick shiny grass, unmussed by any creature. An endless flat land of pure natural beauty as far as she could see ahead, behind, and any direction she chose to look. In a way, it was as though she was never really moving from the spot in which she stood. Though her feet moved forward, continued to pad through the carpet of life, the scene stayed exactly the same. However, she continued to walk, knowing that there was an end to it all, that there was a purpose to this journey.
In the morning, Nastusia carefully left the bed, not wanting to wake her mother from her restful repose. She walked to her mother’s dresser, tall enough to see into the mirror behind, but only enough to see her head, she grabbed her mother hair brush, with its nest of straight, cream-colored bristles, and she began to brush out her long, dark hair, holding a piece in front of her and looking down at it as the strands began to fall in line with one another. She did both sides, forgetting the back of her head, which was, of course, the most in need of smoothing. After finishing, and craning to see herself in her mother’s dresser mirror, Nastusia walked to the kitchen to put coffee grounds in the machine for her father. She made up a little song while she worked, moving a chair from the kitchen table to the counter so that she could reach the coffee-maker’s cord to put it in the wall socket. The song revolved around the coffee, the color of the wall socket and the fact that you have to be careful around electricity.
As the coffee began to brew, Nastusia went to her own room, which she shared with her little sister, and informed her that it was time to get up. She helped her choose her day’s clothes and made sure that she did not put her underwear on backwards. Then she sat her in a chair in the kitchen and brushed her hair out smooth, putting it in two braids and tying each with a green ribbon.
Nastusia’s father wandered into the room at the smell of coffee. He smiled at both of the girls and put a hand on his eldest daughter’s head as he went to the counter to pour himself a mug. Nastusia contented herself with this brief show of affection from her father. She knew that if someone needed taking care of right now that it was he. She was aware that she was the one that would hold this house together after. Well, now that her mom couldn’t. That thought of her mother in better times made Nastusia wonder if she was awake yet, if she needed anything.
“Come say good morning to Mama,” she told her sister, taking the young girl’s hand. Alabaster wasn’t old enough to understand what was happening in their house. She looked up to her older sister for everything, but did not like to see their mother. Without knowing what, she knew that something was very wrong and that everything was changing, and she knew that it had something to do with her mother being in bed all the time. She wanted to know why they didn’t just ask Mama to get up so that everything would be ok again. Nastusia felt her sister resist the little tug on her arm and turned to see her eyes wide with a mixture of anger and fear. Nastusia didn’t like to see her sister this way, but she knew also that her mother needed them both to be strong, that their father needed it also. So she smiled a little, but also sternly, and tugged again on Alabaster’s arm. Alabaster stood, then, slumping down out of the chair and walking with her head bowed, holding tightly to her sister’s hand.
They entered their mother’s small bedroom pressed together at the hip. Alabaster squeezed her sister’s hand and tried to be unafraid of the sick woman in the wood-frame bed, thin and small and not very motherly at all. They walked together toward the woman who was their mother still, though her hair was thin and her skin somewhat gray. Her face was pointed away from them and neither was sure if she was even awake, but as they walked to the edge of the bed, Natasha turned and smiled at them both, tired, but energized by the faces of her young girls. Alabaster was eased somewhat by the familiarity of that smile, even coming from this woman’s boney face. “Hi, mama,” said the youngest as her older sister lifted her up onto the mattress next to her mother and then climbed up after her.
Natasha held hands with both of her daughters, feeling the smallness of them and the smoothness of their skin. She felt Nastusia squeeze back, hold onto her mother. Alabaster’s small hand was tense. She was only five and Natasha felt angry that this beautiful little girl was forced to see the face of death at such a young age. She wanted her more for her daughters than this.
Vladimir stood in the doorway for a moment before anyone else noticed his presence. He watched the family as it was slowly falling apart from his wife’s illness. He leaned against the doorway feeling small and removed, not knowing how to join them or if he even could. A house growing more full of women had never bothered him. He loved to see his little girls pampered by their mother and was happy in the roll as provider for the family, making sure that his daughters had beautiful clothing to wear and that his wife was given the things she liked. And yet. He did not know how to be with them.
Vladimir was, by far, a man of deeds. He spoke softly, if at all and although it could not be said that he chose his words carefully, he was particularly careful to use as few as possible when the situation necessitated that he speak. He was a short man, but wide and strong and he interacted with the world based on size. Small things worried him. He became concerned, when in close proximity to them, that they would break due to some fault of his, some act of clumsiness. And so, although he loved his children dearly, and his wife more than he could bear to truly feel, he stayed in the doorway, a body’s length from the small girls and the frail woman, until someone noticed.
Natasha was the first to realize that her husband was present in the room, or hovering on the brink of what could be considered in the room. But she did not respond with more than a small bend of the head, a slight tilt to her mouth. Alabaster, however, leapt off the bed and rushed toward her father. She was still too young to realize the slight discomfort that came with the joy of hugging his daughter. Her tiny body in his arms agitated him and he became still to avoid any accidental hurt. Nastusia felt the tension and disliked it, both for him and for her, and avoided these stronger gestures, but Alabaster ran to him, as she did from time to time, partly for her father, and partly to have some excuse to let go of her mother’s cold, thin hand, which scared her.
When Alabaster had let go of him, Vladimir straightened and mumbled something about the morning, which Nastusia took as, “Thank you for the coffee,” and Natasha heard as, “I love you.” His duty done, he wandered out of the room and left the house for work. They heard the front door open and close on the other side of the house. Nastusia kept her mother’s hand held tight in her own while her father stood at the door, but now she drew it away in order to help her sister back up onto the bed. She climbed down in order to lift her up without fear of falling off the bed herself, and once her sister was safely atop the mattress and covers, Nastusia made her way back to the dresser before which she had stood that morning. She pulled the brush back off the top of the dresser and smiled at her mother.
Natasha’s hair was much longer than her daughter’s, and Nastusia was in awe as she brushed out the long strands. “Go find some pretty ribbon,” she said to Alabaster. The youngest girl’s eyes brightened and she bounded out of the room, excited for a task. Natasha shifted, trying to pull her body up to a sitting position, where she could lean against the headboard. She cringed and Nastusia stopped her brushing, a consternated look forming on her own face while he mother strained to reposition herself.
Natasha smiled sadly at her two beautiful daughters, their wide pointed eyes and long noses. She saw herself in them and her mother and it saddened her to think that they would be growing up without one.
“Darlings,” she said, “you are my most prized things. I love you very much. You know I am sick.” She looked specifically at her youngest daughter then, asking with her eyes how much she knew of what was going on. Alabaster lowered her gaze, avoiding her mother’s sad, sleepy eyes. But she moved her hand closer to her mother’s, brushing the skin of her own volition. Nastusia waited for her mother to say something else. She held the brush in her hands expectantly, wondering if there was something she should be doing.
“I wish that I could give you a dollie like the one Vasilisa’s mother gave her, but I can’t. I’m very sick, and I am going to die, and I am going to miss you both very much.”
Alabaster began to cry, softly. Huge tears welled up in her eyes, making them glossy and almost cartoon-like. She didn’t blink, but her mouth got small and her chin began to wobble. Natasha saw the signs of a full-blown sob coming on, and gathered her strength to draw the little girl to her. Alabaster buried herself in her mother’s thin frame, clutching at bed-sheets and her mother’s nightgown. “I don’t want you to die,” she said into an armpit. The words were muffled by cloth and flesh, and stunted by sharp intakes of air, but the timing of the series of noises, and the lilt and cadence to the phrase was enough to convey to the others what she had meant. Natasha held her tightly in her arms. She hated seeing her daughters this way, knowing that there was nothing she could do. But at the same time, she had been getting sick for a time now, and she had had these many days and weeks alone in her bed to think about what it meant. Of course she was sad to leave her children, her husband, this life that she had spent so long living, but she also know that death was inevitable, and that she was simply among the few for whom that inevitability would come somewhat sooner than the rest. She was beginning to accept it. She held her daughter, smoothing her hair in its long braids, and breathed in the smell of the top of her head, her soap and sweat.
She looked up, then, at her elder daughter and saw that Nastusia had not moved since she had moved back from brushing her mother’s hair in order to let her shift her weight. Natasha looked to Nastusia, willing her to move at all. To put down the brush, to smile, to cry. But she did not. Nastusia was still. She thought about her mother, continuing to wonder what it was that she should be doing. She felt obliged, but toward what end, she was not sure. She wanted to help her sister, to make her feel comfortable or happy or at least to keep her from crying, but she was not sure how to accomplish any of those goals. And most of all, she wanted her mother to be better. She imagined finding some special secret herb or root that would make her mother well again. She imagined feeding Vasilisa’s dollie a bit of bread and asking her for help. The dollie would whisper to her the secret location of the place where she would find the herbs she desired, the plant that would save her mother.
She lost track of her real mother and sister, focused on her imagined family, how happy everyone would be when she returned from her quest, cured her mother and brought the family back to the way it was supposed to be. And she and her sister would go back to school, and her mother would bring home beautiful ribbons and silks from the market to give to each of them.
Vasilisa’s dollie was what she needed. They all needed it.
Nastusia found her mother’s eyes and smiled in a reassuring way to her. She could see that her mother was worried about her and she wanted Natasha to see how strong she was, how capable of caring for the family she would be when Natasha was gone. She set the brush down on the bed and crawled forward to take her mother in her arms and hold her.
That night, after she had tucked her sister into bed, had told her the story of the beautiful Vasilisa and her incredible dollie, and had waited with her mother to see that she breathed the soft, easy breath of sleep, Nastusia went to the sewing box her mother kept in the hall closet and took out scraps of the finest silks and linens and ribbons and with these she crafted a small doll, with hair of gold and a long blue dress. She didn’t notice the whole night go by and the dawn come sprinkling into the room. She sat on the floor, hunched over the pile of cloth, sewing with small stitches for hours. When she was finally done, she had been up all night.
Natasha awoke and saw her eldest daughter crouched on the floor next to the dresser. She was slumped over and clearly asleep. She looked as though she had fallen asleep in a small pile of laundry until Natasha looked closer and realized that Nastusia’s little pile was made up of the scraps of linens and silks she had brought home from the market over the years, the small bits she had managed to take home as samples for her children. She wanted to get up, to tuck Nastusia in to her bed, to clean up the mess she had made and to see why she had done it. But she could not. She could barely lift her arms to take them out from under the blankets, let alone jump out of bed to lift a sleeping eight-year-old and carry her to her room. And for a moment, Natasha was filled with a rage at her disease. She let the rage come, as it did sometimes, let it wash through her and then pass. She watched Nastusia then, just watched her as she breathed and shifted in her sleep.
She waited and watched. She dozed and dreamt until Vladimir came in, looking for his daughter. He had noticed the silence and the fact that she was not in their room. He smiled at his diseased wife and reached down for his sleeping daughter. He picked her up gently, cradling her head in one hand as though she was a newborn. He looked reassuringly at Natasha and she smiled softly back at him in a matter both grateful and a little bit mocking. “Vlad,” she said as he turned to go. Her voice was weak, but filled to the brim with tenderness. “Vlad, what was she doing?”
Vladimir looked for the first time at the mess surrounding the place where Natasha had lain. He bent down, still cradling the sleeping girl in his arms, and sifted through the mess at his feet until he found the little doll with silk ribbons for hair and a long blue dress. He picked it up and walked over to his dying wife, lying in her marriage bed, handing the little doll to her.
“Vasilisa’s doll,” Natasha whispered with a sad smile as she held it in her hands. She looked up at her husband. “Put her to bed,” she said. “She’s been up all night with this.”
He nodded to her and turned again to leave the room. Natasha watched him go, realizing that that had been the closest he had been to her since he stopped sleeping in the same bed. Perhaps he was coming to terms also. She was glad of it, if that was indeed the case.
She looked down at the little dollie in her hands, making note of the scraps Nastusia had used and the stitches. It was an erratic thing, with little symmetry, but Nastusia had taken care with it. Each stitch was as delicate as the last and had been threaded with the same care. So much was the case that as Natasha searched the face and arms and feet of it, she could not tell where Nastusia had started or when she had been close to dreaming. She marveled at her growing daughter and the energy with which she continued every day to keep the house running and everyone in it accounted for.
Natasha gently stroked the dollie’s hair and dress and she again became tired and ready to sleep again. As she held the doll in her hands, though, and let the weight of her eyelids bring them to a close, Vladimir sat down on the bed next to her and Natasha turned to look at him. Her face was worried. Although she had craved his presence since he had left her bed, Natasha had also grown used to it and his return now spoke something more than just the affection she had wanted. She wondered what it was.
Vladimir looked over his wife, expressing in his face the worry and discontent that he had felt for the months following her diagnosis, but had been unwilling to show or even let himself become aware of. He loved his wife deeply and, in a similar way to his daughter Nastusia, felt a keen sense of obligation towards her that now translated into a feeling that he was incapable in his role as man of the house. Natasha could see her husband’s emotions well up inside him and continue to increase well past the point at which he was usually capable of shutting them off. She became worried for him, now, knew that although it was not her fault, she was the cause of this unbridled emotion in her husband. It was for her that he longed. She wanted to reassure him that she did not blame him for being unable to make her well again, but she wasn’t sure that saying it might not just put the idea in his head and contribute to the problems. In stead, she took his warm, thick hand in hers, trying to bridge a connection that used to exist between them and perhaps still did, even after all this time of avoidance and distance. He squeezed back and her sigh alerted her to the fact that she hadn’t been breathing.
“You are dying,” Vladimir said. The words came out as an apology, as an exclamation, an accusation. The way he said it made it seem that she did not already know, or perhaps that it was the first time he had said it.
“I am,” Natasha replied in a strong, clear voice that spoke her acceptance. “I am going to die, Vlad.” And then, more softly and after a pause, she said, “Soon.”
The little strength he had been able to maintain while staring at his wife and holding her hand simply crumbled under the weight of this inevitability and this strong, stoic man began to cry. He bend his head and leaned into his wife, still holding tight to her hand, unable to think about how he might be hurting her, though he was not. She held him and stroked his hair the same way she had done for her youngest child, knowing that it was not weakness that prompted this emotional outbreak, but strength of feeling. She almost smiled thinking about how strange it was that the dying woman should comfort her loved ones at this time and not the other way around.
Vladimir did not speak after that one simple declaration of truth. He continued to cry for some time, slowly calming enough to stop shaking and eventually he was just hugging her, feeling what her body had done to her, to itself since the disease took over. Her smell hadn’t changed much. She was somewhat dirty, but not in an off-putting way. And she was sick. Very clearly sick. But had she really changed so much beyond that? He moved away in order to look at her, check her body for changes, and realized that in fact she had not changed that much, that she had become smaller, thinner, but she had not become something new, or lost anything but mass and energy. Her eyes were the same, still strong and vibrant with a coy humor. One eyebrow still cocked involuntarily, expressing a vast array of emotions.
Two days later she was dead. Vladimir had spent more time at her side in those few days than he had in months. He was the first to wake her in the morning and the last to say goodnight. He did not see it as a comfort to her, did not know that it was. To him, it was a consolation to himself to be with her and he sacrificed some small portion of his male dignity needing her, but not so much that he decided in the end that he would not do it. And so, he was the first to find her the morning that she did not wake up. He was the first to see the ashen face devoid of life where the night before there had been at least a glimmer. He was the first to feel that her usually cold fingers were connected to unusually cold wrists and that her parched lips had turned a light shade of blue. He sat with his wife for only a moment after finding her dead, looked at her to see the change and the fact that the eyes no longer held an air of mystery, that her left eyebrow no longer shifted involuntarily. Just long enough to make sure that she was gone. And then he stood up, walked to the door and closed it behind him.
He called the doctor, who told him what to do next. He made phone calls and arrangements and somehow, when Nastusia woke up, she knew before seeing the closed door that was never closed that her mother was gone. Perhaps she noticed her father’s flat voice on the phone or the strange way that he sounded muffled, as though hiding behind his hands. Maybe there was an absence in the air or a silence that she didn’t notice as much as she simply knew. Perhaps she could tell that only three heartbeats thumped in strange harmony in the house now.
But whatever it was that alerted Nastusia to the change, she was not surprised to see, as she left her room in her long knit nightgown, that the door at the end of the hall that led to her parents’ bedroom was closed tight to her. She did not bother trying the handle and checking in. She knew what she would find and, as strong as she had forced herself to become, she was not capable of seeing her mother now.
In stead, she turned around and walked back into the room that she shared with her younger sister, still asleep. She sat down on the edge of her sister’s bed, put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Alabaster,” in a quiet voice, strangely devoid of emotion. Alabaster awoke slowly, her nose crinkling before her eyes opened to the light of a new day. It took a moment for the child to adjust to a waking state, to the new light-filled room, to her sister’s unaffected face. But eventually she did. She saw that it was morning, that her sister was there with her warm hand on her shoulder in a reassuring manner and a face so close to devoid of feeling that Alabaster knew what was wrong.
“No,” she said softly. She reached out and found the little dollie her sister had made for her only a few days before. “No! No! No!” she shouted at it, shaking the cloth doll in both hands and staring furiously into the button eyes, which had been carefully sewn slightly askew.
Her sister’s fury made Nastusia’s heart ache for their loss and she reached out, engulfing both the child and her doll in a hug meant to quiet as well as reassure. They sat there in that way for longer than they knew, Nastusia rocking her little sister in her arms and saying softly, “shhh, shhh, hush now,” while Alabaster cried silently and clutched at the doll in her hands. And when their father entered the room, seeing them this way, he knew that they knew. But because he had come to say something, and did not know what to say other than the truth, he stood in the doorway for a moment until they turned to him and then he said, “Your mother’s gone.”