Heather Buyce-Vasquez
Anya, Astrakhan, Russia, 1922
The steam cuts a swathe through crowds standing at the railway. There is excited talk and jostling of arms. The ticket is held crushed in her palm. Her sister Yula pulls her close. Her eyes are shadowed and so very tired since the day four weeks ago when she found Anya lying in a heap near their home.
Yula has spent every moment caring for her. Cleaning her wounds, cleaning her skin which is flecked with blood and dirt, washing her sad tuft of dark hair the silky curls are long gone. She wrapped her arms, sore and bruised and fed her warm broth in the night by the low fire, blackness enveloping the outside world.
Day after day, washing and sewing. Peeking out the windows at every passing noise. Every night, stoking a poor fire, drinking the broth, and listening to her sister’s anguished moans.
Anya said nothing after that first night when Yula told her that their mother and sister were dead. Gunned down in the market square the day after Anya herself disappeared. A neighbor, Josef, had come to tell her before taking his own mother and leaving for Moscow. Anya would not answer any of Yula’s questions about where she had been for so long or how she had come to be home again. She stared listlessly out the small window. Or she lay on her side on the sagging mat, her eyes closed so tightly the tears squeezed out under her lashes to make a sad trail down to her pillow.
One morning after three weeks had passed Anya was up before dawn. She dressed warmly and placed some hard bread and a few acorns in a small bag. The bread was not really bread at all but the dried bones of small animals ground up into flour and baked. Yula watched her silently.
When Anya felt ready she stood in front of her sister and held out her hand. Yula took it.
“I must go from this place сестра.” Yula nodded with red eyes. She gathered a small bundle of clothes and also a packet of letters and wrapped them in a length of ribbon.
Together they left their home and walked slowly to the square. It was the same path by the river they have walked so many times before. They would go to Astrakhan and from their take a train to Moscow. Beyond that she could not see.