The Lost Year: Chapters 25–36

“I hereby announce an important agenda item for the Committee of the Motherless Daughters of the Communist Party.”

Our objective is not so easily attained.

“Might I join you, Comrade, for one of your
 practices? I could weigh in on the ideological content of your 
selections—”

GG stopped periodically to look up at the sky or point at a neighbor’s tulips.

New leaves were unfurling on the trees and there were
 some bushes beginning to bloom with purple flowers.

“What are you doing?” she panted, pulling up in front of us.
I quickly cycled through my options—defiant, innocent, sassy—
and decided to go with innocent.

Mom looked from GG to me, let out an exasperated sigh.

But I don’t 
think you understand how much she’s suffered. You’ve had such a privileged life, Mila. She’s lost everything and everyone.

It reminded me of the way some people listen to music, one sense overcome by the other. There was no danger of entering into this state of bliss
 with Anna Mikhailovna’s current student, Vera, banging away.

“I figured you were younger, but I’m just taller.”
“It’s hard to grow when you have nothing to eat.”
Her rebuke stung.

I had even wondered if I should throw the game to lift
 Nadiya’s spirits and make up for my blunders.

But early on, she called
 several of my bluffs, and the ones I called on her were wrong.

It
 was a warm Friday afternoon in early May, and East New York was 
a busy hive of kids and families, babies squalling from prams, the El
 rattling over Pitkin Avenue.

It
 was a warm Friday afternoon in early May, and East New York was
 a busy hive of kids and families, babies squalling from prams, the El
 rattling over Pitkin Avenue.

Mrs. Zelenko was at least forty and
 as stout as a kulich, the round Easter cake.

Mom let go of my hands, looked down at her own calloused ones.

The stricken look on her face immediately told me she
 wanted to take it back, but it was too late.

I tensed, awaiting his anger, but his voice was soft, wistful almost.

If he was sprawled on the bed, clutching his chest, 
it was my fault—no matter what Pop had said.

She just leaned against the
 stone parapet.

They were
 capitalists, trying to exploit the poor and revive the old regime.

“You believe in God?”
I was certain she did, like Dasha, who kept an icon hidden in her room.

Over my past visits, I hadn’t pushed her to talk about what had happened back in her village. Instead, we’d read Anna Mikhailovna’s fairy-tale books and gorged ourselves on Bumble Bears.

She forged ahead with her story.

We dug up rotten potatoes and made them into pancakes and
 soup. We peeled bark off the trees and boiled it into a paste. We
foraged for mushrooms and made bread out of acorns. We caught
 frogs, mice.

But we quickly devoured the loaves she brought home, and she had nothing else to trade.

We were so hungry, Mila! We had no energy to play, to work, to do anything, even cry. Just lie there in a stupor and think about food.

We had no fire
wood—we were burning bits of furniture and thatch from the roof.

There were enough kids back in school with dental devices that made them chew all gross or who’d get food stuck in their braces. Funny
 how I could even get nostalgic about the cafeteria and its orthodontic orchestra.

The massive parade down Khreschatyk, the songs promising to defend our motherland against the 
enemy, the workers’ brigades holding up portraits of Papa Stalin and 
Lenin, the folk dancers waving sprigs of cherry blossoms, the mili
tary trucks and soldiers on horseback, the proud, wiggly Octobrists,
 and the confident Young Pioneers in their red scarfs waving at the cheering crowds.

On May 1, 1933, I still donned my Pioneer scarf.

The beds were unmade;
 papers and clothes were strewn across the floor.

I closed my eyes, squeezed them 
tight, tried to conjure my teacher beside me.

“You missed it!”
This took me aback.
“Missed what?”

“They were ignorant, backward people! They didn’t understand Lenin or the Revolution. They called me a radical, threw me out!”

“These are kulaks,” Papa said, but his voice was weary as if he no longer believed his own arguments.

My tears finally subsided, but not my anger—it spurred me to
 resolve.

My tears finally subsided, but not my anger—it spurred me to
 resolve. Papa wasn’t going to stop me; I would figure out a plan.

I mulled these 
questions in my mind until, exhausted by the shocks of the day, I
 fell into a fitful sleep.

I mulled these 
questions in my mind until, exhausted by the shocks of the day, I
 fell into a fitful sleep.