The Silence of Trees (11 page)

Katya was still mixing dyes in the kitchen. When she returned, she sat between us. We were three generations, a triangle of women.

She placed the three jars on a tray in the center of the table. Orange. Brown. Black. She always liked the earth tones best. I preferred the rich reds, blues, and greens that shone like jewels. Beside the jars she placed a carton of raw eggs. She then arranged it so one candle was directly in front of each of us.

"Mama, are you sure that you don’t want to paint?" she asked while handing Lesya a kistka, a little wooden tool topped with a copper cone.

"I’m sure, Katya." I scanned the cloth for my last few stitches.

"You know, Lesya, I can’t remember: have you done this before?" Katya asked, pulling blocks of beeswax out of a wooden box.

"It’s been a while. I think the last time I made pysanky was in Saturday Ukrainian school, maybe third or fourth grade. You can refresh my memory."

Katya stood up to dim the lights. In silence we watched as she lit the candles with a silver lighter engraved with her name. I was struck by the beauty of my oldest daughter. She looked a lot like her namesake. Ah, my daughter would have liked her great-aunt. But she knew nothing of her ancestor, the one with her name. I never told her.

My Baba always told me to be careful of the names I would someday choose for my children because the name invoked power from those who had the name before. Names made connections between the dead and the living. But it gave me hope to see the shades of the dead in my flesh and blood.

Katya was small-framed, compared to Lesya and me. Short with long brown hair full of red highlights. She looked so much younger than her fifty years. She always looked young for her age; but unlike some girls, she never minded. Zirka always wanted to grow up so fast. Katya savored her childhood, held on to her fairy tales and fantasies.

Katya sat back down between us and pulled an egg out of the carton.

"First, you need to choose an egg. The egg symbolizes the return of the sun, the coming of spring, the renewal of life."

She was in her "teacher mode." That’s what her brothers and sisters called it when Katya was a little girl playing "school" with her siblings. She did go on to teach. I smiled at her, but Katya was looking intently into the candle.

Lesya plucked an egg out of the carton and set it down in front of her. I heard the cuckoo clock in the kitchen. Five o’clock.

"Then you need to find a pattern," Katya continued. She pulled some books of designs out of the box and handed them to Lesya. "Here, look through these for some ideas."

"It helps to divide the egg into quadrants. It makes it easier to design the rest, Lesya," She turned toward her niece and furrowed her brow. "You need to really think about what you want this egg to mean. What story you want it to tell. You see, the patterns are ancient symbols. Even the colors have meaning. Our ancestors would carefully choose these symbols and colors because the images they chose would tell a story. The story of their past, present or future. Sometimes all three."

Katya smiled, that devilish, faraway look in her eyes. When she turned toward me, I quickly looked down at my embroidery. "The colored eggs were also used to cast spells, "she said, "fulfilling the secret wishes of their makers—"

"Aunt Katya, if you’re going to tell me that the eggs are magic, you can stop right there."

I looked up from my red cross-stitches in surprise. "This from the girl who used to tell me that she could see fairies in her bedroom?"

"I was a kid, Baba." She looked up for a moment, then back to the book. "A kid with an overactive imagination."

Back to my embroidery. I would let Katya handle this one. Khvostyk purred beside my leg.

"Well, kiddo, the eggs were believed to hold magical powers, carrying with them the energy of creation. Each painted symbol was charged with magical energy. Each animal, flower and geometric shape had layers of sacred meaning.

"Older people were given pysanky with rich designs and dark colors because their lives deserved the ornate patterns. They had lived those patterns. You’d have quite a decorative pysanka, eh, Mama?"

I ignored her and kept stitching.

"Young people’s pysanky had a lot of white and sparse designs because their lives were still new," she continued.

"Okay, no disrespect," Lesya said, "but the origin of the word pysanka is pretty ordinary. The root is pysaty, ‘to write,’ and writing seems pretty logical to me."

"Sure, but writing was once considered magical," Katya said.

I looked up and watched her hands. Tiny hands with long, strong fingers. Gentle hands. Her left one held the raw egg while her right hand gently sketched. Soft, scraping sounds.

"Is it such a stretch for you?" she asked. "Writing in so many cultures was considered magical. Think about ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics or the Hebrew Kaballah. I know you studied some of these in college."

"Stories, too," I added, lowering my eyes to my embroidery. "Stories have been considered magic."

"That’s why I study history and not mythology." Lesya said, yelping as her egg cracked. She must have pressed down too hard with her pencil. Yolk flowed over her fingers as she jumped up and ran to the kitchen.

"Lesya, you need to be gentle with the eggs," I shouted into the kitchen.

"I know, Baba," she shouted back, her voice irritated. I added a few more red crosses to the cloth.

"Maybe you can talk to her, Katya, about this boy she likes," I said quietly, glancing toward the kitchen where Lesya was wiping egg yolk from her shirt.

"Mama, she needs to live her own life, and you need to learn how to let things go."

"Let things go? Let things go?" I felt the anger rising in me, "I have been letting things go my whole life, Katya. If you only knew what I have had to let go—"

No. I decided not to do this now. She didn’t understand. How could she? What would she think? I took a few deep breaths, concentrating on my embroidery.

"Mama, I hate it when you slip into your head like that. When you censor yourself. I just know you’re having conversations with yourself; you’ve been doing that my whole life." She stretched out her hand to touch mine. "You could try talking to me."

Lesya came back from the kitchen, and Katya quickly pulled her hand away.

"Everything okay in here?" Lesya asked.

"Fine," I said.

"Fine," Katya echoed. She took a quick breath. "After you’ve done a basic sketch on the egg, you heat the wax over the candle." Katya held the kistka over the candle. The wax in the copper cone slowly melted. "Next, with the wax you cover everything that you want to be white. You need to cover up what you want to preserve."

I felt her staring at me.

"But you have to trust that the truth is right there under the surface. Right, Ma? You have to trust that when you eventually burn it off, the truth will come through?"

I ignored her and kept embroidering.

"Keep in mind that white is the color of innocence," she said. "Purity. To use white is to invoke its powers. The power of cleansing, or starting fresh."

Lesya held the second egg more gently, quickly sketching a pattern. I looked over at Katya’s hands. She was covering her egg with circles and dots.

"The circle is the most powerful symbol you can put on an egg. A circle is a symbol of protection, to keep away bad thoughts or spirits. The dots possess magical powers of prediction. Together, they represent eternity. The universe."

I watched as red stitches became flowers on my cloth.

Katya’s hands moved skillfully across the egg. "So, what’s this about a new boyfriend?"

I looked up at Katya, who winked at me. Lesya cast a glaring look in my direction. I shrugged.

"Oh, just a guy I met in my ‘Leaders of the Second World War’ class. He’s gorgeous. He loves all the same things I do. He’s interested in World War II history just like me—"

At this I had to interrupt. "Yes, but his grandparents were not on the same side as we were? Stalin and Hitler! What a perfect setting for a budding romance. You are both interested in World War II. Perfect, just perfect. As if a war could keep you two together."

I felt the anger rising again, but this time I did not stifle it, "World War II separated people. It did not bring them together. What are you thinking, Lesya? I thought you were a smart girl!"

"Mama! What’s gotten into you today? Why are you so angry? Calm down, okay?" Katya put her hand on my elbow to try and calm me, but I shrugged her away. I was tired of staying calm. After fifty years, a fierce storm was building. I stared at Lesya, waiting.

"Baba, World War II brought you and Dido together. You found love during the war."

I felt my cheeks flushing, and I was grateful for the candlelight. My hands settled into fists, and I tried to calm the rage that I felt spreading out from my chest. I exhaled a long breath.

"What do you know of it? Nothing! You know nothing of what I lost. Nothing." I pounded my fist on the table. "For all your schooling, you have not learned about life. You can’t learn history from just a few books. History lives in the people who were there, not in numbers. Not in names of battles. Not in ‘Hitler and Stalin,’ but in me, in your Dido. In the people who died in nameless graves. What about their history? You meet a boy and read some books and think you know everything. You know nothing."

Lesya’s eyes squinted and her lips tightened. She had her father’s temper. My temper.

"Then tell me, Baba," she said, choosing her words carefully, "Tell me about your history instead of keeping it hidden inside your little wooden boxes."

I tried to calm myself before I said something I would regret. She was young; she didn’t understand.

"Lesya, my Mama and Tato, my sisters died in that war at the hands of German soldiers. They burned my entire village because the Russians were coming back. Can you understand that? They were killed in their home in a country that I had to leave forever. I have no cemetery where I can visit with my dead.

"I tried to honor them by teaching my children and grandchildren about their homeland. Would you disgrace your heritage? Would you throw this all away?" I motioned to my cupboards filled with framed photographs of our family, painted pysanky, Ukrainian books and records. "All I’ve worked for."

How could I convince this stubborn child? How could I show her, tell her?

"This is America, Baba. Their memories live in me, but I have to make my own future."

Oh, she loved to argue with me, this one. Lesya should have been a lawyer.

"I will teach my children our traditions, our language,"Lesya said. "I don’t need a Ukrainian husband to do that."

"You say this now. You will see that it is not so easy to do all by yourself." I stood up. "I have to feed Khvostyk."

I walked into the kitchen and poured him some cat food. Then I turned on the faucet and ran my hands under the warm water, splashing my face. I heard my own baba whisper from my memory: Anger has its place, Nadya. It’s not bad, but it is deadly, like fire. Raging out of control, it can kill and destroy. It is hard to heal a bad burn, sometimes impossible. When fire begins to grow, you can use water to control it. Same thing with anger. Turn to water to soothe you.

How was she so wise? And she was younger when she died than I was today. When I turned toward the dining room, I heard Katya steer the subject back to pysanky.

"And once you have everything covered in wax, then you need to dip the egg in the lightest color. In this case, orange. Orange is the color of endurance and strength."

"All right," Lesya said, still irritated. "I don’t need to know their ‘magical’ meanings. It’s not like you believe it anyhow. It’s interesting and all, but you can save it for your class lectures. We’ve moved beyond those supersti—"

She stopped when she saw that I had come back into the room. I quietly sat back down in my chair.

"Ma, why don’t you tell her a little about the war. Help her to understand. It’s not something you usually talk about," Katya said while staring at her egg in the orange dye. Clever woman to put me on the spot.

"No," I said avoiding both their gazes. "I will not share the history of my life with someone who does not respect me or my so-called superstitions."

I turned my attention back to my embroidery. Let them talk; I was going to embroider. Katya reached over and pulled out her egg, bright orange from the dye. Lesya placed hers in the jar.

"Now you take the wax and cover everything that you want to keep orange in whatever pattern you’ve chosen." Katya explained and then began to draw three snakes winding through the quadrants. She looked at me. "The snakes are for protection from disaster." She turned her eyes back to the egg, still talking. "Snakes are an ancient symbol of the Goddess, who was worshipped on our lands for thousands of years. The snakes are a symbol of feminine power."

Lesya played with the kistka in her hands. "Baba, don’t prejudge him. You spent time in Germany; you know that they’re not all bad people."

"Lesya, they killed my family. Who knows what else they did to them first? I’ve had fifty years to imagine all kinds of cruelty." I threaded my needle with black thread. "It’s even harder for your Dido. His experiences were more horrible than mine. Talk with him, Lesya. Hear his stories."