Flaws: Vedmykiv

[19] In the Opposite Direction

THE SUN SCREAMED, piercing my eyes like spears, forcing me to squint, yield, and accept that I had only been spared because a frail, insignificant widow said so. Because she fucking said so. Because she decided I still had more to learn or because fate wasn't done with me yet.

Birds chirped, red squirrels jumped out of the trees, people got off the train, and the wind cut my lips dry as I rushed out of the wagon. I was in the central train station, my last station. I applied the chapstick I had taken from the ruined apartment to which I could no longer return. Four months had passed since my last time in the capital. One hundred and twenty-two days, to be exact. A day ago, I was sure I would not leave this country alive. I put on my gloves.

"I know this is the way," Oxana insisted.

I didn't argue and followed her lead. We had come to Kyiv to regroup, to figure out our next move. Together or apart? That was the question mark on her face and why her coarse responses made the last twelve hours more insufferable than the first train ride. We could have traveled in a fancier wagon, one of the modern railcars, though none were any less packed: the exodus had no end in sight. I had come to realize I liked the uncomfortable. Lillian didn't respond to any of my messages, even the long ones I sent to explain the complications of the last few days. For all I knew, she was already gone.

The streets were quiet and empty. Only the sound of a few cars interrupted the early morning. Cars and Oxana. "I want to get an energy drink," she demanded. She halted as we were about to cross a street. "I must have one," she insisted. For her, coming to the capital meant indulging in pleasures she could otherwise not find in the mining town. It was six o'clock on a Saturday morning. The citizens of Kyiv were under lock and key in their gray suspended worlds, like Oxana lived for a year or so in that hole we called home. She had to report to the Corps office. So much drama landed her in hot water. She had been forced to tell them all about the overthrown iron gate and the boyfriend she imported that ultimately led her to wander empty streets with nowhere to go. Oxana and I walked through the old city for an hour, bouncing comments at one another. She couldn't accept we were lost, and I couldn't be bothered to comfort her.

We kept pushing and came out onto the main avenue, not far from where the police attacked us last time. A few men and women walked through the debris of their old identities, covering the squares, plazas, and closed-off roads. Some carried bread and eggs, and others cleared out rubble. Victory was a slow walk searching for breakfast, even an unhealthy one, and the residue of an arduous battle to reestablish who we were now and what that meant. The protest that began with a handful of students a few months ago grew to thousands. Demonstrators endured, prevailed, and who knows, maybe without cramming important documents up their bums. They kept their resolve. They barricaded themselves. They built bunkers out of wood planks I could still see lying on the road, like the makeshift shacks, the stacks of tires, sandbags, some barbed wire, and no police in sight. Dismantling what they created must have been hard. It felt safer than walking in the streets of Donetsk, but surprisingly, not Vedmykiv. There were more saboteurs in the capital city.

"I need to have it," she demanded again.

"It's going to be the death of you."

"And I'll die happy and refreshed." Like her addiction to cigarettes or energy drinks, Oxana celebrated her flaws as if she could make them disappear by exposing them. She was like a comedian, using self-deprecating humor to stand out. She bragged about her mishaps to let everyone know she was aware of them and to remind me I was no better. She was not wrong. It was frustrating. It exhausted me like the running water slapping the oil stain on my backpack that wouldn't come off. It was frustrating, like the fact that after all these, if I still couldn't marry her, I really was the asshole. Was I not?