1
I dig my mama’s grave at dawn.
Drops of perspiration trickle down my spine as the air shifts. The cemetery smells of newly turned dirt, fresh grass, and rot.
The whole city smells of rot.
I pause to wipe the beads of sweat pooling between my brows and steal a glance at Mama’s ashen face. Her body lies on a muddy sheet that used to be white. In death, my mother looks healthier, even younger. She’s still worn out, battered by exhaustion and constant hunger, but her face has smoothed.
She won’t ever look at me again or stroke my hair or call me by my name. The realization of loss is so deep, so sudden, it hits me like a shovel to my chest.
Liza, keep on digging, my mother’s voice orders.
A strong gust of wind whips my reddish-brown hair across my face, and I groan. My legs are already shaking, and I can’t feel my arms anymore. Our last meal was two days ago—an allotted piece of bread, washed down with some water. Generous in the beginning of the war, the allotment of bread dwindled with time. The initial rationing was 400 grams for children and 600 grams for most of the adults. By November, the rations were cut repeatedly. Now all we get is a thin slice of bread of 125 grams, carefully measured on scales.
In the winter months, grain was delivered by the Red Army trucks across the frozen Lake Ladoga. Leningrad’s bakeries, using sawdust and bran as fillers, baked loaves of bread overnight. The food lines were long. People were angry and desperate. Many died of starvation in those lines. Many were robbed and killed on their way home.
I remember the first time we got our new reduced allotment. Mama, her bony hands shaking as she broke her slice in half, chewed on it slowly. As if she was savoring the taste of sawdust. Her voice was furious when she asked, “Liza, how long do you think people will last eating like this?”
As the winter proved, not long.
The ice on the lake melted in April. But by then, the position of the Red Army was improved, and food deliveries were more consistent, bags of supplies dropped off the planes. At least temporarily. Until the summer months came and the Red Army fell back and the Fascists moved closer to the city, closing the circle. Boats and barges carrying supplies still cross the lake, but we never know when the next delivery will happen.
Last night Mama gave me her half of the bread, and I ate it. I didn’t know she was about to die.
I swallow a sharp lump in my throat and try to inhale deeply, but the stench of death makes me gag. I should be used to it by now—in the heat of summer, the breeze from the Neva River does little to conceal the reek.
I have to hurry; the city is waking up, but my strength is diminishing with every breath I take.
I pull the hair away from my face, tie it into a loose bun, and jab again into the solid ground with the shovel.
“I’m going to dig for some roots. Maybe cook a soup later.” I’d concocted that lie last night after Mama took her last breath. It slipped easily off my tongue when I asked my elderly housemate to borrow a shovel.
Yelena’s faded gray eyes pinned me to the floor, and her old mouth twitched. I knew she didn’t believe me, but she gave it to me anyway. Did she guess Mama was dead?
Now my legs are so weak I must lean on the shovel. What if Yelena turns me in? I’m committing treason by not reporting Mama’s death to the regional bureau of food and hanging on to her ration card until it expires at the end of the month.
I can’t think about that now.
When the Nazi siege started last September, my mother declared, “It won’t last long. The Red Army will come soon. We just need to last a couple of months.” Her brown eyes gleamed when she talked, and her jaw was set. Most of us—there were quite a few neighbors alive then, ten months ago—felt the same way.
The man I call Kaganov, the only other person besides Yelena now left in our communal apartment, called my mother’s unfaltering belief in the Red Army naive.
“I’m not naive,” she told him with a small shake of her head. “I’m optimistic.”
Look where that optimism brought you, Mama.
I wipe more sweat off my face. Or is it tears? Then I dig.
The Germans cut us off from the world. They bomb us from the air and shell us from the ground. But mainly they just strangle us from all sides. Starvation, the deadliest of soldiers, has invaded the city.
I sit down and close my eyes. Let myself breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Listen for a distant roar of Fascist planes and blaring sirens signaling an upcoming air raid. Wait for the post-explosion ashes to fall on my face. Nothing.
Maybe I made a mistake coming here by myself. I’m too weak for this. Maybe I should’ve asked Kaganov for help. But how could I? After what he asked Mama to do?
Don’t think. Don’t talk about it.
It’s too much to remember. My focus should be about survival now. The war has taken everything from us—our decency, our bodies, our minds—and left us drained and withering. We’ve turned into ghosts—silent and dangerous. It destroyed my father, and now it’s killed my mother.
My lips tremble. I press them together, try to empty my churning mind and direct my attention to my body’s movements. My breathing. Anything but the black void of loss. It seems like everyone I know is either dead or about to die.
Far away, the cemetery gates creak. Someone else will be digging a grave today. People don’t leave their dead to decay in the summer heat. During the winter months, people stopped taking the deceased to the cemetery. It took too much. Energy became a precious commodity. Bodies of men, women, and children littered the streets.
The Communist Party Committee had to convert the Church of the Savior on Blood into a morgue to have somewhere to put them all. The glorious building towering proudly over the river with gilded, bright domes used to remind me of a colorful folk costume. Now I just think about the dead rotting inside.
Don’t look and don’t think. Always keep on moving. My mama trained me to just walk on by.
I listen intently but hear nothing. No one else is nearby. I take two deep breaths before I tell myself it’s time to move. One more minute of rest and I get up.
A bird croaks loudly over my head. A crow?
When was the last time I saw a bird? I’m hallucinating. I’m getting sick like my mama. The birds left the city last fall. Aka’s grandfather said they took their wings to the German lines where food was in abundance. Lucky birds. At least they were able to flee the death and hunger of the city.
I inhale. There is no bird. There is no bird.
Indeed, there is no bird.
Exhale.
I take a swig of water from an old flask and check my watch. I’ve been at it for an hour. An hour? My muscles tell me it’s been ten years.
I go back to digging the god-awful hole for my mama. If I rest any longer, I’ll fall into the grave and won’t get up.
The ground is solid and unforgiving. By the time the earth is ready to accept Mama’s body, my hands are bleeding from blisters formed and burst. I pull myself out of the hole, get on my rubbery legs, and walk over to her. I wrap her in the dirty sheet. There are big rips in the middle, and they threaten to tear it apart. I jerk and tug, pulling Mama to the hole, and roll her body over the edge.
Another hour and it’s all done. I look over the small mound of dark soil under which lies my mother—sad, starved, and stubborn. And soon rotted from inside. Should I say something? The smell of decay and loneliness seeps into my nostrils. Pressure in my chest builds, and I press a palm over my mouth to suppress a sob about to burst out. I can’t do this.
I stand in silence, my mind blank. To avoid collapsing, I turn away from the grave, pick up the shovel, and start toward home.
I don’t get far.
A dark outline moves in the corner of my eye. Then someone’s right there, on top of me. They push, and I drop my shovel and slam into the ground, landing on my back, a man’s body hard on top of mine. My lungs won’t expand under his weight. Why is he so heavy? I try to wriggle out from beneath him, but my body doesn’t listen to me anymore. I can’t fight. I have no strength.
One arm pins my chest while the other feels my pockets. I dig into his flesh with my broken fingernails, and the man gasps.
“Ration cards. Give me your ration cards and I’ll let you go.” A putrid whisper into my face.
I frantically pat the grass around me. I must get to the shovel. As if reading my mind, the man tightens his hold on my chest. My hands fly back to his arm to try to push it away. His weight is strangling me. Red and black spots dance around, cloud my vision, and turn my brain into mush. My weak muscles are strained so tightly I might snap in half at any moment.
“I don’t have cards on me.” A strangled breath is all I muster.
Everyone carries ration cards, a precious treasure to be guarded day and night. We pin them to our inside pockets or sleeves. We stash them away in our socks and shoes. We know better than to leave the cards at home. Apartments get broken into daily. People search for money, food, wood, and ration cards.
“Money, then,” he growls. The man’s dark eyes turn murderous. He’s now straddling me while his hands restlessly slide up and down my body searching for valuables he can take. My feet kick violently. My ration cards are folded inside my socks. To get to them, the man will have to remove Mama’s old boots from my feet.
That is, if he knows where to search.
He lifts his hand, curls it into a fist, and I know he’s going to hit me, shatter my bones. He’s going for a kill. His mouth opens, and the stench of excitement, the expectation of my death gusts over me. There is nothing I can do, and suddenly I don’t care. This is it, the end. My last sight will be this man’s hungry eyes and crooked yellow teeth.
A rustle. Then a thud. Something warm splashes my face, and the man rolls off me with a weak moan escaping his lips.
“Come on, get up,” a low, husky voice commands, and a skinny arm reaches out to me.
I scramble to my feet.
My best friend’s chestnut curls—almost identical to mine— spill out of the blue scarf on her head. Her eyes are wild, but the sight of her brings a slow smile to my face. The unexpected release of all tension makes me light-headed.
“Did you kill him?” I nod at my assailant, a small pool of blood beside his head. His pale skin is tight, almost translucent across his facial bones. He lies very still, except for the soft rise of his chest with each shallow breath.
“No, but he’ll probably be out for a while,” Aka says, and stumbles, dropping the shovel. “I need to rest for a minute. I’m not feeling well.” Aka’s movements are heavy and slow. She probably spent the last of her energy walking through the city to the cemetery and saving me from my attacker.
I sit down by her side and take her small hand into mine. “How did you know where to find me?”
Aka’s blue eyes brush over my face. “I came to your apartment. Yelena told me you left with a shovel to go foraging for roots. I knew your mama has been sick for a while … and I guessed.” She sighs and whispers, “I’m so sorry, Liza.”
“Do you think Yelena guessed it, too?” I ask.
Aka shrugs. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Aka knows that I’m not reporting my mother’s passing and that I’m keeping the ration cards. She and I talked about it months ago and decided that survival justifies everything. Even treason. “You did that all by yourself?” Her sharp chin points at the grave.
I nod. In the early-morning hours, while the city was asleep and the militia were too drunk to patrol the streets, I dragged my mother’s body to the cemetery. Our summer nights, White Nights, never get dark. The twilight never comes because the sun doesn’t descend below the horizon. My mama loved this time of the year, when you can barely distinguish dusk from dawn.
“I don’t understand. No help at all?” Aka narrows her eyes. “Why didn’t you ask—”
I shake my head. “I haven’t told him. I’m not going to. Don’t ask.”
Aka and I share almost everything, but I haven’t told her what happened between my mother and … and Kaganov, two weeks ago. I blink hard, trying to erase the memories.
Aka slowly shakes her head, and a dim shadow catches her familiar features: the sharp cheekbones, the pointy chin, and the gentle slope of her nose. It’s not just our appearance that makes us look like sisters. There’s something about the way we move, the way we laugh that tricks people into thinking we’re related. “Don’t worry about Yelena. She’s how old? A hundred? She doesn’t stand a chance against you.” Aka snickers. “Anyway, she won’t report you to the regional bureau. It would be cruel.”
My throat tightens at her words. Cruelty is an everyday occurrence in the city.
“Look what I’ve got.” Aka rustles in the pockets of her dress and holds up a rectangular piece of bread. “What do you think about that?”
I gasp.
The piece is thicker than our 125-gram allotted slice distributed through stores. So much thicker I might as well be dreaming. I take it into my hand and hold the crust to my nose, inhaling the scent of sawdust and mildew. Despite the smell, my mouth floods with saliva.
Copyright © 2022 by Marina Scott