The Immigrants' Reality

They Grow Up

Anna avoided looking at the boarder snoring in his bunk next to her bed.

She hastily grabbed clean clothes and shoes and stole into the kitchen.

She stripped off her soiled nightgown and dropped it in the sink.  She

stood naked and pumped the icy water onto it, scrubbed it on the

washboard with Octagon soap and wrung it out.  With a cloth remnant

from the sewing basket she washed her body; kept washing until she

was raw, the harsh soap burning her sore, torn tissues.  She could not

be cleansed of him.  Shivering, she hurriedly dressed.  She did not go

back into the bedroom, but quietly slipped out the backdoor.

Mary rose at dawn to feed her two hungry babies, Stephan shortly

after to stoke the embers and add wood to the stove.  He heard the

front door open and close.  Thinking one of the children went outside,

he looked out in time to catch a glimpse of the boarder as he skulked

off the property and turned onto the road.

“Well, our boarder is gone,” Stephan told Mary.  “We will not see him

again!  He ate our supper and stayed the night.  It was his plan all along,”

he said bitterly.

Mary, crestfallen at the failure of the idea, began to prepare breakfast

while Stephan went into the bedroom to wake the children.  He was

puzzled when he noticed Anna’s empty bed.  With the little ones in

tow, the older children following, he went into the kitchen.

“Did you see Anna get up?” he asked Mary. “She is not in her bed.”

“No, but the floor is damp by the sink; it may be her time,” she replied.

Stephan went out the backdoor to fetch her for breakfast.  Anna was in

the barn, curled up in the hay, her arms clasped around her knees.  He

spied her nightgown drying, draped over a board.  He called her name--

she didn’t answer.

“Anna…Anna, come in the house; breakfast is ready,” Stephan said.

After a pause, she said in a monotone voice, “The boarder smells.”

“He left this morning and he will not return.  Come have breakfast.”

Anna slowly rose and followed her father.  She sat silently at the table

with her family, picking at the food.  When the children asked about

the boarder’s absence, their parents said simply that he had left.

John was indignant that the boarder had deceived his parents.

That dirty man said one thing and did another!  He worried about his

father and his headaches.   Stephan was prostrate with a headache now,

and Mary sent John into town to buy more aspirin.  He was glad to be

out of the house, alone with his thoughts.  The more he thought about

the plight of his family, the more he felt he needed to do something

about it.  As he approached the drugstore, the answer came to him. 

There was a HELP WANTED sign on the window.

John came home with the aspirin and a job.  The druggist needed help

for the afternoons until closing time at nine o’clock.  John could

continue with school, and he could work all day on Saturdays.  The

owner would even let John use his bicycle to make deliveries when

they worked together.  He would receive a steady salary plus a little

extra from customers grateful for the home delivery.  If they weren’t

busy, he would be allowed to do his homework at the store.  His

parents’ reactions were a mixture of skepticism and pride.  John

was resolute; he would do this.  Mary’s eyes filled when her son

reminded her that he was almost the same age as Mary when she left

home for America.

The family was joyous and animated at supper that evening.  They

could surely make the payments to the bank now, and they would

not need to take in a boarder to do it.  Matthew and Elizabeth chirped

that they would feed the chickens, collect the eggs, tend the gardens  

and pick the ripe fruit and vegetables.  Stephan decided he would one

day qualify for a paying position by learning to read and write English.  

He would learn along with six year old Katherine.  Nobody noticed

Anna’s silence.

The Voloshins were thriving now, but their eldest daughter was

not.  Anna was present in body, but her mind seemed to be

elsewhere.  She answered when spoken to, attended school and

did the chores and duties expected of her, but she no longer played

 with her siblings.  She kept to herself, and when the children or her

parents hugged her she neither rejected them nor responded. 

Stephan and Mary were perplexed, but hoped Anna’s behavior was

merely the foibles of adolescence.

Anna awakened in the middle of the night with cramping pains.  

She felt a gushing wetness beneath her, and there was blood and

something else.  She picked it up and went to the window.  In the

moonlight, she held a tiny thing the size of her little finger.  There

was a string coming from its middle.  Attached to it was a blood

clot…but not.  Its head had two little slits, two tiny holes, and

another slit below it.

In a daze, Anna walked through the kitchen and out the backdoor. 

Like a specter, she went into the barn and found her nightgown,

still hanging there on the board.  She neatly bundled the tiny thing

that had come from her body.  It had been a part of her, sired by a beast.

With her hands she dug a hole, and buried it behind the barn.