The Silence of Trees (25 page)

"Okay, but only if you let me fix you something to eat."

"I ate, Mama. I ate before I came."

"Coffee then."

"Okay, coffee." She sat down at the table.

Preparing the coffee, I asked her, "Well, then, what is this dream?"

"It was a dream about Mykola. He was in the war, but not in Vietnam—in Germany. I was in this house, and I could hear bullets and bombs exploding all around me. I was waiting for Mykola to come home. I was sitting in a rocking chair, embroidering a black shirt for him with brown thread.

"All of a sudden I heard shouting, so I ran outside. There was a terrible rainstorm with thunder and lightening. I could make out that the cries were Kolya’s, and I followed them to a forest where I found him buried to the waist in mud. He was so thin, and he kept asking me for water, saying that he was dying from thirst. I realized that although it was raining, it was not raining on him. I looked up to see why, and I saw you sitting in the trees, although you were much younger, and you were holding an umbrella over his head. And you were crying, Mama. Your tears were mingling with the rain. When I looked back toward the house, I saw a wolf slowly walking toward us. Then I woke up."

It was an omen dream. My Baba taught me that when you hear about a dream and it made the hair on your neck prickle and an icy breath run down your spine, then that was an omen dream. Like the dream that Uncle Vasyl had about the screeching owl sitting on a stack of books that forewarned us about my teacher Danylo being taken away.

"How did you feel during this dream, Katya?"

"In the beginning, I felt hopeful. Then, when I saw Mykola, I felt terrible sadness, and when I saw you, Mama, I was angry. And also sad. I hated to see you cry."

She had not often seen me cry.

"Your dream is telling you many things. You believe I am preventing you from achieving something important to you, something dear to your heart. There is something about an obstruction—"

The phone rang, and Katya went to answer it. I watched her face grow pale. Something was wrong. She hung up and walked over to me.

"Tato had a heart attack at Slavko’s Bar. They’ve taken him to the hospital."

My chest felt tight. "What does that mean? Is he all right? We have to go."

I didn’t want to be left all alone.

"I’ll call everyone from the car as we drive to the hospital," Katya said. "Let’s go, Mama."

I couldn’t move. I stared at the black and white picture on my kitchen wall. It was my favorite portrait of my children, taken at Mykola’s First Holy Communion. In the back stood Taras and Mark, heads shaved by Pavlo that morning. Mark was pouting, his lower lips jutting out. He held Ivanka, who refused to sit still on the floor. Taras was smiling with all of his teeth showing. In front of them, sitting on chairs, Katya and Zirka held hands, their hair pulled back in neat little braids. And standing in the very front, between the girls, Mykola held a candle in his right hand and a prayer book in his left. All of them were dressed in Ukrainian embroidered shirts and blouses that I had made for them.

After Mykola died, both Mark and Taras felt such guilt for surviving, for not being able to do anything to help their brother. My two oldest sons were always close, but Mykola’s death brought them even closer. They were lucky to have each other. It was easier in this life if you had someone to lean on. What would I do without Pavlo?

Pavlo was in surgery; we could do nothing but wait. The full moon was visible outside the window of the waiting room. It would probably have been bright enough without the overhead lamps. I wished we could have turned them off, those horrible lights that bounced off the terrible white walls. In the middle of the night, who wanted bright lights? I decided to turn them off soon. It would have been better to have candles. Candles were a soft, hopeful light. Besides, candles carried prayers up to heaven. The waiting room was heavy with prayers; it would have been good for some of them to go directly to heaven.

I couldn’t think about Pavlo this way, could not imagine him with his chest cut open. I had to think about other things. The waiting room was filled with family—my children. Mark and Christina sat with their daughters on the couch. The girls were watching television and Mark’s eyes were red. Taras had been calling the nurse’s station in the ICU every fifteen minutes to find out his father’s status, while Anna stood next to him, her arm on his elbow. Zirka leafed through a fashion magazine, and Katya sat next to her staring at the pages. Even Ivanka was here.

Tragedy has a way of bringing people together, making them forget their petty differences. I hadn’t seen Zirka and Katya sit next to each other without fighting since they were kids. And there was Ivanka. Ivanka had pulled away from the family, preferring the icy, polite company of her extremely formal in-laws to the intense, fiery tempers of her brothers and sisters. Ivanka chose to keep everything inside, instead of arguing like the rest of us. Growing up, she was almost invisible—speaking quietly, stepping softly.

Her sisters were much older and had their own interests. Katya and Zirka had made little time for their baby sister. Ivanka and Mykola were closest in age; when they were kids, she would follow him around the house, worshipping his every move. They used to play "Pretend Church." Mykola would be the priest, and Ivanka would be the person coming for communion. Sometimes I would bake special little loaves for their games.

When Mykola and Ivanka were older, Pavlo was able to spend more time at home. While I was sleeping or at work, the three of them went to the park or did some work around the house. Pavlo was closer to Mykola and Ivanka than to the others. He had to work so many odd jobs when the older kids were growing up that he never really had a chance to spend time with them. So Pavlo made an effort to be there for the two youngest, teaching them how to carve wood and fix things around the house. Eventually Mykola started spending more time with his brothers, and Ivanka alone helped Pavlo with his projects. Even then she liked to build things. Now she was an architect, building huge office buildings and hospitals. She had dreamed of building houses.

"I’m going to build a castle someday," she told me as a teenager. "It will be my dream house. And I’ll build you a dream house too."

I would have been happy just to see her more often.

After Mykola’s death, Pavlo became distant, and I think Ivanka felt betrayed. She needed her father to be there for her, but he was lost in his own grieving. That’s when she moved out of the house and distanced herself from the family.

Even as an adult, Ivanka kept it all carefully hidden: her happiness and her sadness. I couldn’t read her emotions; my youngest living child had such defenses. It used to bother me. I would try to reach out, to break down her walls. Instead, she pulled farther away. At least Roman was a good husband.

I tried to catch her eye, but she avoided my gaze and stared instead at the muted television, her hands tightly gripping her tea. She and Roman had brought pastries and fancy coffees for everyone. I tried my first cappuccino and liked it.

I know Pavlo missed his little Ivanka. I hoped he knew that she was here, that we were all here waiting for him, praying for him.

An hour before, a doctor came out to give us an update. He looked far too young to be operating on my husband, but Taras assured me that he was only one of a team of surgeons. The doctors had to take veins from Pavlo’s legs and arm, and also repair his leaking mitral valve. The surgery was amazing, that they could get his heart beating again and fix it so this problem wouldn’t recur. I just wished they didn’t have to crack open his ribs. He was an old man—not frail, but old nevertheless. I kept imagining his ribs cracking and being pulled apart. It was a terrible sound and image.

I looked at my two sons standing by the telephone. Taras had his arm around Mark’s shoulders. They were always close, and I was glad they had each other to lean on. I didn’t think I could help anyone. I felt faint. As I watched my boys, I thought about how they were as children. In high school, the boys decided to form a Ukrainian motorcycle gang. It was Taras’ idea, but Mark was his biggest supporter.

In the early 60s, many of the area’s teenage boys belonged to a variety of neighborhood "clubs." The motorcycle gang seemed to be the toughest type, so my boys were determined to start their own.

One Friday afternoon, Mark and Taras gathered ten of their friends, calling themselves the "Ukie Dukes," a Ukrainian "motorcycle gang" of boys with names like Stash, Dirty Wally, Vasyl, and Myron. These young Ukrainian James Deans would meet in our garage, confident that their greased hair and white T-shirts with a pack of cigarettes rolled in the sleeve would make them cool and tough.

The Ukie Dukes were ready to take on the neighborhood. Unfortunately, they only had one motorcycle among the twelve of them: Stash’s Uncle Ted’s old "Zundapp" motor bike. The boys took turns riding around the block, two at a time. When it was Mark and Taras’ turn, Mark tumbled off as they went around the corner onto Western Avenue. Fortunately, all he got were minor scrapes and bruises.

At the time, I was working nights and was supposed to be home sleeping, but my gut instinct warned me that the boys were up to no good. I got up from bed to watch them from the porch window. They were all so brave back then, before Vietnam. Before Stash came back in a wheelchair, and Myron didn’t come back at all. When Mark and Taras whizzed off on the motorcycle, I went back to my room to listen to the radio.

The boys tried to be so quiet coming home, but failed miserably. I sent them to their room and spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning blood off the bathroom rug. That was the last day of their glorious gang, because when Pavlo got home he punished them with old-world discipline—not for the motorcycle ride, but for smoking at such a young age.

Both boys continued smoking until they were grown. Taras quit fifteen years ago, but Mark still smoked. I didn’t think Pavlo could ever quit. He always told me that it was one of the few pleasures he had left.

I needed to go for a walk. Katya wanted join me, but I shook my head. I needed to be by myself. I needed to have a talk with God.

The hallways were empty, except for a Latino woman watering the plants. Another woman was wiping the pictures in their frames. Both women wore neat blue and white uniforms, white kerchiefs tied around their heads. That used to be me. And Ana. I wondered how long they had been in this country. Why did they come here? What secrets had they left behind? Did they get together at the diner after their shift to talk about children and husbands and dreams left at home? I missed Ana, her advice, holding her hand.

I turned down another hall and was struck by the heavy silence—surrounded by the dead, not just the sick. How many wives had walked these halls praying for their husbands? How many had their prayers answered? Each step was like the tick of the clock when time was moving too slowly.

I had to be strong. The kids looked to me to see if everything would be all right. Of course I said yes. Pavlo was strong. He was a fighter. He would put off death this time. He had survived the war, after all.

Not like my Mykola.

"Not another one, God," I whispered. "I can’t lose someone else I love."

If Mykola had lived, I think he would have become a priest. It would have been nice having a priest in the family; nice to have connections. He would have been sincere and kind and compassionate. Katya used to call him the Wizard Monk, because he loved Bible stories and fairy tales in equal measure.

I walked into to the hospital chapel and looked around. It was so different from our elaborately painted churches, where you were never alone because of all the icons on the walls. This room was empty, simple. Just wooden pews and candles. I knew what Ana would say: It’s not about the place, it’s about the intention.

I stood by the flickering candlelight and watched the flames. How many other prayers were burning there tonight? How many would be answered?

My Baba always taught us to light each candle with a prayer. "When you light the candle, the smoke sends your prayers directly to God," she explained. "So make sure you think carefully before you light the wick."

Think carefully. But my prayer was so simple: I wanted my husband to live. I wasn’t sure how to pray this time. When I had prayed for my son’s life, it hadn’t gone very well.

"I’m not sure how to ask this," I whispered into the candlelight, "and I am afraid. I know that I’ve made bad choices, but I’ve always tried to live a good life . . ."

I felt awkward, clumsy. Afraid. I lit my candle.

"Please give Pavlo the strength to come through this operation. His family needs him. I need him."

I remembered the candle I had lit for Mykola. It seemed so long ago. I smelled a hint of oranges and leather. Mykola’s smell. It was too much to bear; my knees got weak. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall for support.

"My dear Mykola," I said. "I’m so sorry for everything. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry for all the things you never got to do. For all the things I never got to say."

I remembered how he looked in his uniform, standing at the doorway before he left for training. So handsome. So young.

"It’s not too late to change your mind," I told him. But it was. Too late. We both knew. He leaned over and kissed my cheek.