American Ending by Mary Kay Zuravleff

Author:Mary Kay Zuravleff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blair

19

BECAUSE EVA HADN’T BEEN baptized, Father Dmitri would not bury her in the sanctified hillside of the cemetery. Sonya had been waiting for spring to baptize her, so that Eva wouldn’t come out of the copper belea into the unheated church. Now it was too late.

Lethia begged Father Dmitri, her own father-in-law, who’d buried all the miners up top whether or not they’d been to confession. But he wouldn’t budge, because those miners had been baptized. Sergei defended his stepfather, and Sonya swore she’d never enter a room with Sergei in it other than church.

I’d been listening to Father Dmitri say all my life that we come into this world with the stain of Adam’s sin, yet I did not believe that he could open his mouth and say that Eva was born a sinner, that Eva was not going to heaven to be with Jesus. Eva could only be buried in the swamp, alongside sinners who hadn’t gone to confession and Zlata Slivinsky, who’d swallowed lye on purpose.

On the first day after Eva died, Pa made her coffin and asked me to sand it. I gave that coffin what for, working off my rage at Sonya and her drunken bully of a husband, at a God who would let Eva die and a merciless church that would condemn her, and at this horrible, horrible town, where the men go down to hell every day and then drown their sorrows every night.

On the second day, Pa came home late, and he hadn’t been drinking. He’d asked Mr. G for a ride out to the cemetery after work, and he’d dug her muddy grave with his own pick and shovel. “How could you?” I sobbed, not caring if he smacked me across the face, but he put a hand on my shoulder and said, “My poor dochenka, we’ll bury her under the willow tree.”

On the third day, Pa and Harry carried the tiny coffin all the way to the cemetery, which was quite a ways, and we followed behind. Mud sucked at our shoes in the swamp, and I thought of Eva’s gummy, crusty nose as they lowered her into the hole. We left her there not only dead but also condemned and alone. I cried until my throat nearly closed shut.

I felt nothing for Penya, except for wanting him to be dead. If he went into the mine shaft tomorrow and a pile of rocks buried him, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help. But my rage at Sonya sat like a hot coal in my stomach, though Ma said Sonya was suffering enough.

I remembered Father Dmitri telling us that Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come to me,” and that “suffer” meant “permit,” which wasn’t how Russians used the word. Part of me wanted to have nothing to do with Sonya, who couldn’t be bothered to mother her own children. Another part of me wanted to take Alexei from her to keep him safe and to teach him what she wouldn’t.

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