A Sketchbook to Protect Our Household in Peacetime

Sam Wachman

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An excerpt from The Sunflower Boys by Sam Wachman

Tato’s package deal arrived yesterday. My birthday was two weeks in the past, but it surely doesn’t matter. A banged-up cardboard field coated in American stamps at all times arrives on the put up workplace a number of weeks after my birthday, my little brother Yuri’s birthday, and Saint Mykolai. Yuri turned eight in April. Tato despatched him a stuffed crocodile. The crocodile has huge pointy tooth, so Yuri named it Arkady Petrenko, after our dentist. Arkady got here with a postcard from Florida, the place actual crocodiles reside, crocodiles with out beady eyes and olive-green fuzz and tags that learn “wash with like colours.”

I ponder if Arkady will likely be chilly when winter comes right here in Ukraine.

For my birthday, Tato despatched artwork provides. He despatched coloured and graphite pencils, pastels, conté sticks. All of them got here in their very own wood field with a latch that makes it appear to be one thing a pirate would possibly bury on a desert island. He despatched tortillons for mixing and smudging strains, and sticks of charcoal fabricated from the world’s blackest black.

Better of all, he despatched a sketchbook. It’s leather-bound with a strap and a buckle and 100 thick, deckle-edged pages. It’s heavy and feels historical in my arms, like some sacred relic unearthed from the ruins of an historical metropolis. The duvet is adorned with the silhouettes of skyscrapers, the skyline of town the place Tato lives. He inscribed the within cowl in his messy handwriting: Now you may draw right here as a substitute of your math homework. Don’t neglect—I really like you!

Nothing I can draw may probably match the sketchbook’s grandeur. However I can’t simply go away the pages clean both. So I resolve to attract solely a very powerful issues within the sketchbook—100 vital issues.

Tato is aware of that I really like to attract. I’m good at it, and I’m proud to be good at one thing. My artwork trainer, Lyudmila Mikhailivna, compliments me after each lesson. Artwork is the one class the place I earn good grades—tens and elevens. My Ukrainian grades aren’t horrible, sixes and sevens, however I don’t take care of something we learn, all of the previous useless poets, and once I don’t take care of one thing I can’t concentrate. In historical past and geography, I’m at all times searching the window or sketching one thing inside my textbooks. Our class trainer, Antonina Romanivna, scolds me, and I earn fives, fours, even threes.

I sit in the back of class 6B by the window and share a desk with my greatest pal, Viktor, whose grades are even worse than mine. We distract one another continuously, whispering till Antonina Romanivna shouts us again into silence. And when we now have to maintain our mouths shut, I draw—on the backs of corrected worksheets, on the desk and on my left arm. I carry my drawings house to Mama, and I slip no less than one in each package deal we ship to Tato in America.

Now, in our condominium, I stare down the sketchbook’s first clean web page. Its excellent snowy whiteness challenges me, taunts me. Whereas Mama is at work, there isn’t a lot in our condominium to attract—simply our bed room and our fats previous calico cat, Monya, who spends her days in a pool of daylight beneath the kitchen window, curled up in a lumpy ball of fur and flab. I’ve already drawn her time and again. So my brother Yuri and I’m going for a stroll in quest of one thing vital to attract.

We cross Varvara Tykhonivna and Oksana Ivanivna, the 2 babusi who spend every single day on the identical bench within the courtyard—even scorching August days like right this moment, and even within the winter snow—gossiping about all the things that goes on in our nook of Chernihiv.

“You might draw them,” Yuri suggests. I take into account it for a second, then shake my head. They might by no means pose for me. I don’t suppose they like me. I hang around with Viktor and I do know they don’t like Viktor, as a result of he’s a troublemaker, and everybody is aware of it.

We stroll additional down Nestayko Avenue. We reside at quantity thirty-six and Viktor lives at quantity thirty-eight. Our condominium constructing is the one with the large chestnut tree in entrance of it, and Viktor’s is throughout the courtyard from ours. Viktor and I as soon as tried to carry a dialog by shouting to one another from our bed room home windows, and it labored till some killjoy opened his personal window and yelled throughout the courtyard that it’s two within the morning, go the hell to sleep.

Yuri and I reduce by means of the Chernihiv Metropolis Backyard, previous the Ferris wheel, the statues of dinosaurs and squirrels, the carnival video games the place you may win a stuffed animal for those who shoot shut sufficient to the goal.

“I wish to play,” he says.

“I don’t have any pocket cash,” I inform him. “We’ll come again tomorrow.”

We flip left onto Shevchenko Avenue and cross the Crimson Bridge over the Stryzhen, the creek that slices town of Chernihiv in two. Once we have been little, Mama used to carry us right here to feed the geese. We cross the sushi restaurant the place we have a good time the final day of college yearly. We stroll alongside the traditional ramparts of town.

“One, two, three, 4 . . .” Yuri counts aloud as we cross the twelve cannons, their shining black barrels pointed towards long-dead invaders. Mama as soon as instructed me that when she was younger, earlier than she met and married Tato, she rejected males who requested her on dates by providing to satisfy them on the thirteenth cannon.

“You don’t wish to draw any of this?” Yuri asks as we cross Saint Catherine’s Cathedral, its 5 golden cupolas shimmering in the summertime daylight.

I shake my head. It’s all stunning, and it’s all house, but it surely doesn’t really feel vital sufficient to take up area in my new sketchbook. The sketchbook is now essentially the most treasured factor I personal. It got here from Tato. His handwriting continues to be heat.

Yuri rolls his eyes. “Are you positive you want to attract in any respect?”

For weeks, I go away the sketchbook clean. Throughout our math lesson, I hand the sketchbook to Viktor, open to the primary web page.

“Simply draw one thing,” I inform him. “I can’t take the stress.”

“Artem, chel,” Viktor whispers, sliding the sketchbook again throughout our desk to me, “you understand I can’t draw.”

“Vovchenko, Haidenko!” shouts our trainer, Antonina Romanivna. “No facet conversations!”

“It is best to draw Antonina Romanivna,” Viktor whispers. “Make sure that to get all her chin hairs.”

Once we make a journey to the village, Vasyukivka, to go to our grandfather, Did Pasha, he means that I draw a few of his animals. He has a sow named Manuna that screeches while you get too near her pen, and a billy goat named Zhora who likes to be scratched between the stubs of his horns. Once I open the sketchbook, Zhora pokes his snout over the fence and tries to eat the paper. I yank it away from his fuzzy lips and scold him, however he retains on smiling.

The August warmth sticks round late into September, and each window in Chernihiv gapes huge open, begging for a breeze. Mama takes me and Yuri for one final swim within the River Desna earlier than the tip of summer season.

Yuri and I race one another up and down the trail by means of the woods to Golden Financial institution Seaside, our sandals slapping the soles of our ft. Mama lags behind and occasions us.

“Who received?” Yuri asks after we come panting again to her.

“Artem,” Mama says, “however simply by a hair.”

I stick my tongue out at Yuri.

“Simply by a hair,” Yuri jogs my memory.

On the seaside, grandmas promote cups of recent strawberries and raspberries. Males drink beer and chunk off robust, salty chunks of dried fish. Mama finds a spot to unfold the blue blanket she at all times brings from house, the one one which’s allowed to get sandy. A spot for us to eat sandwiches and dry within the solar after we’re achieved swimming. Yuri and I pinch our noses and squeeze our eyes shut as Mama sprays us with sunblock. We rub it into our chests and calves, the information of our ears and the bridges of our noses.

Even in September, the River Desna nonetheless carries the recollections of final winter. The coolness of the river gives a candy respite from the warmth. Yuri and I wade as much as our bathing fits, chests, shoulders, shrieking in delighted agony when the chilly water laps up onto our scorching pores and skin. We snatch in useless at darting minnows. We sink all the way down to the underside of the river, kneel on its silty stomach. Underwater, Yuri smiles at me, stands proud his tongue. I make a face like a monkey, and he laughs a cloud of bubbles round each of our faces. Down right here, the entire world disappears. It’s solely me and him. The solar filters by means of the floor of the water and paints us with spiderwebs of sunshine.

After which it hits me. I do know what Tato would need me to attract in his sketchbook. I do know what’s vital sufficient for the primary web page.

Simply earlier than bedtime, Yuri and I sit collectively on the windowsill in our bed room. He sits nonetheless, and I stare at his face.

“Flip a bit of to the appropriate,” I inform him.

He fidgets as he waits, bouncing his proper leg. Solely the scratch of my pencil breaks the silence; solely the occasional scrub of the eraser, the brushing away of mud.

We used to suit collectively on this windowsill comfortably, however we’ve each grown, and now we now have to fold ourselves as much as make room for one another, our knees by our chins.

It’s raining, however we maintain the window cracked open. Our condominium is at all times a bit of too heat, even within the winter. Every time Mama notices that we’ve opened the window, she shuts it and tells us, “Higher too heat than too chilly.” She’s afraid that we’ll catch colds from the draft.

She likes to remind us that she grew up within the village, in Vasyukivka, in a home that Did Pasha warmed with a wood-fired furnace, and he or she didn’t know the feeling of heat toes till she was a grown-up dwelling right here in Chernihiv. I at all times inform her that she doesn’t need to sleep beside Yuri, whose physique may warmth your entire metropolis by means of a blizzard. Typically once I get up within the morning the sheets cling to my sweaty pores and skin.

Yuri stays nonetheless for me. I attain previous him and change on our desk lamp. The sunshine illuminates his stack of comics and books about Greek myths. It illuminates the row of toys that he has amassed through the years, the toys the cashiers hand out at Silpo with each ninety-nine hryvnia you spend on groceries. Beside the toys, there’s a Zhivchik soda bottle full of cash we’ve picked up from the sidewalk, and there’s Yuri’s geode—one other memento Tato despatched from America. A dun and dusty rock, break up in half to disclose a secret, gleaming crystal coronary heart.

With the lamp on, I can see Yuri’s face correctly. The facet of my left hand is gray-black now, my fingers smeared with graphite. I make mild, noncommittal strokes with my pencil, ready for my brother to burst into readability on the paper. His fidgeting proper foot jostles my sketchbook, and the road I’m drawing veers off to the left.

“Oi, lokh.” I seize his ankle and maintain his foot in place like an animal I’ve trapped. “Maintain nonetheless.”

He wiggles his toes, attempting to flee. I seize his foot with each of my arms.

“I’m working in your nostril proper now,” I inform him. “Need an elephant trunk as a substitute?”

He sighs, rolls his eyes. “Superb.”

Rain falls, and the chestnut tree outdoors our window rustles within the wind. That tree is older than we’re, older than Mama, older than the condominium blocks that encompass it. Yuri and Viktor and I as soon as climbed it to see if we may attain our bed room window from the courtyard. Viktor and I have been too heavy for the weaker branches, however Yuri was small and fearless. He nearly made all of it the best way to the highest; he solely got here down when Mama observed and yelled in any respect three of us. She yelled at him for climbing too excessive, and he or she yelled at me and Viktor for letting him.

Beside the chestnut tree stands a phone pole, and atop the phone pole sits a stork nest, two meters tall and formed like an previous chimney. Once we have been little, Mama instructed us that our individuals had at all times cherished storks, and storks had at all times cherished us again. She instructed us that, within the winter, the storks and all the opposite birds and bugs fly south to Vyriy, the land of everlasting summer season and large ferns and heat wells that bubble with therapeutic water. She at all times watches for the return of these white feathers and sharp orange beaks, legs as skinny and gangly because the twigs from which they construct their nests.

Once I end, I flip my sketchbook round to indicate Yuri. He takes it and examines it carefully, his forehead furrowed. The highest half of his face was the simple half. The darkish and unruly locks of hair that cowl his brow, his eyes that disappear into his smile, his ears that have a tendency to stay out of winter hats.

“It’s good,” he says. “However my mouth isn’t proper.”

“Since you’re at all times speaking,” I inform him, turning the sketchbook again round. “Or consuming.”

I do know he’s proper. The underside half of his face continues to be underneath development, coated within the faint ghosts of strains that I drew, thought higher of, and erased. Yuri has buck tooth that Mama calls “charming” and Arkady Petrenko—the dentist, not the crocodile—calls a “extreme overbite.” I can’t draw his mouth proper, not with out making him look ridiculous, like a caricature of himself. Sometime, possibly quickly, Yuri will want braces. I can’t think about him with neat, orderly tooth. Braces would change his whole face.

There’s a knock on our bed room door. Mama steps in with out ready for a solution.

“Bedtime, boys,” she says. Her hair—wavy and so black it shimmers blue within the solar, identical to Yuri’s, identical to mine—is tied up in preparation for sleep. “Yuri, go brush your tooth.”

“5 extra minutes?” Yuri asks, which by no means works.

“It’s late,” Mama says. “Go. Fast like a bunny.”

Yuri rolls his eyes. From our bed room, I hear the acquainted, irritating noises of Yuri preparing for mattress—spitting his toothpaste theatrically into the sink, the clink-clank of the bathroom lid and seat hitting the tank, pee hitting bathroom water, the sounds that accompany the humorous faces he makes within the mirror.

Mama sits down subsequent to me on the windowsill. “What did you lastly resolve to attract?”

I present her my sketchbook. She leans in shut. On her breath, I can odor the lemon tea she drinks all through the day.

“It’s not achieved but,” I inform her when she doesn’t say something.

“You’re headed in the appropriate course,” she says. “Work on that shadow there, subsequent to his nostril.”

Mama has at all times been one of the best artist within the household. Once I was little and I wished to study to attract actual individuals, not simply stick figures, she taught me tips on how to make heads look extra like heads and fewer like eggs with ears. Once I mastered that, she confirmed me tips on how to shade with the facet of my pencil, to crosshatch, to convey gentle on a web page. The shapes and shadows all come to her effortlessly. They arrive in her head prearranged into pencil strokes. She is aware of precisely which line ought to go the place, how laborious she ought to bear down on the pencil. I used to beg her to erase the unhealthy components of my drawings and redraw them herself, however she at all times refused. She says that she would by no means erase my work, that I simply need to maintain drawing till I’m even higher than her. As if that’s inevitable.

Yuri returns to our bed room at a dash in his underwear and belly-flops onto our mattress. I undress and brush my tooth. I hate sharing a bedtime with Yuri. Viktor is an solely baby and will get to remain up two hours later than I do. Typically he sends me texts late at evening and I don’t discover them till morning.

Mama kisses Yuri’s brow, then mine.

“Good evening,” she tells every of us. “I really like you.” And we reply: “I really like you.” She turns the lights out, and our door creaks shut. The day is over. Our bed room is darkish aside from a skinny sliver of sunshine from the hallway. I pull the comforter as much as my shoulders, shut my eyes, and lie on my facet going through away from Yuri. We at all times go to sleep like this, with me on the left fringe of the mattress and Yuri on the proper, separated by a heat impartial zone of mattress and cover. However often I get up within the morning with Yuri near me, his arm draped throughout my chest.

“Tyoma,” he whispers, a nickname solely he’s allowed to make use of. He bumps my leg along with his foot. His toes are chilly on the pores and skin of my calf. I hand over and roll over to face him. When he breathes, I odor the blue mint of his toothpaste. He’s holding Arkady the crocodile towards his chest. “Inform me a narrative.”

“Not now. It’s late.”

“I’m not drained.” He bumps me along with his foot once more. I do know I’m not going to win this argument. So I inform him the story Tato at all times tells. I cease the story midway by means of, once I’m positive he’s asleep. I do know when he’s pretending and when he’s actually asleep as a result of he at all times jerks as soon as as he drifts off, as if he’s driving in his dream and he simply hit a pace bump. Then his complete physique flares with warmth.

Typically Yuri continues to be small, and an eternity lies within the three years that separate us. Nonetheless the squirmy bundle Tato launched me to on the very starting of my life, the primary pinprick of sunshine within the murkiest depths of my reminiscence. I keep in mind Mama mendacity within the hospital mattress with messy hair and a shiny face, Tato holding Yuri to his naked chest. Tato beamed at me, mentioned: “Look—your little brother.” I watched Yuri wriggle and cry and thought: this factor can’t probably develop into an individual.

“He solely will get one huge brother,” Tato instructed me that day, “so it’s a must to promise to be one of the best huge brother you may. Promise to like him and maintain him protected.” And I did. I promised.

When Yuri was tiny and fat-cheeked, everybody fawned on him, even strangers. Mama and Did Pasha would spend hours discussing who Yuri resembled, attributing his facial options and the expressions he made when he wanted to burp to varied relations whom I had by no means met. I discovered myself vying for consideration with somebody who couldn’t converse. A cow-eyed, drippy creature, fragile regardless of all his padding. Mama would reward my drawings briefly after which solid them apart. Typically I cherished him solely as a result of I promised Tato.

It grew to become simpler as he acquired older. Sooner or later at Golden Financial institution Seaside I taught him to face on his head. The River Desna was nonetheless dripping from our bathing fits. He toppled over each time. On his fifth strive, I watched him teeter, his naked ft skyward. Simply earlier than he fell, I grabbed him by his ankles. He laughed, screamed and squirmed, begged me—Let go! Let me fall! However I held on.

Now, Yuri is sufficiently old for Mama to slide twenty-five hryvnia in his pocket and ship him to the market on his personal to purchase her an onion. We used to learn image books collectively and I’d assist Yuri sound out phrases. Now, Yuri helps me with my math homework, which I’ll by no means admit to anyone, not even Viktor.

Yuri is rising, and so am I. Typically we develop so shortly that we don’t know tips on how to regulate to one another. Just a few weeks in the past I swung open the kitchen cupboard and the knob hit Yuri within the face. “Sorry,” I instructed him. “Your head didn’t was once that prime.”

I activate the bedside lamp, open my sketchbook and erase the evening’s sketch. It’s all flawed. I have a look at Yuri, and a weight settles in my chest.

We’ll continue to grow and rising. Sometime, with out figuring out it, we are going to sit collectively in our windowsill for the final time. We are going to develop up, and we are going to develop previous. We are going to sleep in separate beds, separate bedrooms. Perhaps separate cities. We’ll reside with the households we created, not the one we have been born into. I at all times knew this, in a method or one other, however tonight I do know it otherwise than I’ve ever identified it earlier than, as if it’s simply across the nook. Although we nonetheless have years.

I set down my sketchbook and switch the sunshine off. The load in my chest doesn’t raise till the birds chirp and the sides of the curtains glow.

Each night for years, Mama has handed me and Yuri her telephone. She whispers: “Tato.” On the display, the flesh-colored pixels of our tato shuffle round, making an attempt to rearrange themselves into facial options. Our web connection is gradual, and the image is rarely clear sufficient to make out the precise particulars of him—simply the imprecise form of his face widening right into a smile.

Our dialog often goes one thing like this: I’d say “Hello, Tato.” And he would say “Hello, zaichik.” Little hare. His voice would sound distant and tinny. “Is your brother there?” he would ask. I’d flip the telephone digicam round, and Yuri would lookup from his e book—one thing like The Legends and Myths of Heracles—and wave. “Hello, kotik,” Tato would say. Little kitty. “Good. Each of my boys are there. How are you guys? What are you doing proper now?”

Tato would at all times ask us that query. What are you doing proper now? He as soon as defined that he wished to color a picture of our lives in his thoughts, that it was as vital to know our day-to-day because it was to know our huge days, our birthdays, and first days of college.

So I’d set the scene. “We’re sitting on the windowsill,” I’d say. “I’m drawing. Yuri’s studying considered one of his Greek books.” I’d arise and swivel the telephone digicam round to indicate our room, my sketchbook splayed out on the windowsill the place we sit, open to a piece in progress. “We have been listening to music,” I’d say. I’d maintain our earbuds as much as the digicam. Yuri and I share a pair; I take the left earbud, and Yuri takes the appropriate. Then Yuri would stick out his tongue, go cross-eyed. Tato would chuckle, and his laughter would come by means of the telephone only a second late. One thing like that.

As I acquired older, I started to note the desperation that churned beneath the floor of Tato’s voice. At first, when Tato was working seventy hours every week on development websites, we by no means heard from him. He known as Mama late at evening, lengthy after we had fallen asleep, due to work, due to time zones. Yuri and I had extra conversations with Tato by means of postcards than over the telephone.

When he discovered a job that allow him work fewer hours for more cash, we began speaking on the telephone each night. Sooner or later, Tato determined that we must always change to video chatting as a substitute. It didn’t carry him any nearer. We will see his face now, and he can see ours, however that doesn’t imply he can reside our lives with us. Typically it appears like a chore to name him and inform him about our day. I really feel responsible admitting it. There are primary details of our lives he doesn’t perceive as a result of, as a lot as he needs to be, he isn’t right here for the little moments. We’ve grown in his absence, thought up inside jokes, cast traditions. He left a four-year-old and a toddler in Ukraine, however they’re gone. When he left, Yuri was simply beginning to crawl; now, Yuri can ice-skate for hours and by no means fall down.

Typically Tato tells us a bedtime story. He by no means reads us bedtime tales from books. He tells his personal tales, tales he makes up as he goes alongside. His tales at all times begin like this: “Lengthy, way back, within the deep, darkish woods . . .” After which his tales at all times finish: “. . . and so they lived fortunately ever after, for so long as the mist lived within the mountains and the celebrities lived within the evening sky.”

His tales happen within the Carpathians, within the west of Ukraine, the place he grew up. In his tales, Yuri and I aren’t individuals however animals. Typically we’re storks who reside in a comfy nest atop a phone pole, the place no evil spirits can discover us. Typically we’re beavers who huddle collectively within the heat darkness of a dam.

His tales contain spirits from folktales. Our favourite is the Chugaister. The Chugaister is the protector of the forest, a person who stands 5 meters tall with a beard fabricated from moss and a physique fabricated from wind. He lures those that threaten the forest into the shadows and kills them with their very own chainsaws.

“Is the Chugaister actual?” Yuri requested in the future.

“In fact,” Tato mentioned.

“Actual just like the Historical Greeks thought Zeus and Poseidon have been actual?” Yuri requested. “Or actual-real, such as you and I are actual?”

“I’ve shaken his large hand,” Tato mentioned. “I felt the hair on his knuckles.”

Typically we don’t know what to speak about; we solely perceive that we have to maintain speaking, that we have to maintain the sounds of our voices in one another’s ears.

“Isn’t it after midnight for you?” I would ask.

“So what? I can’t name my boys any time of day I need?”

“No, you may’t.” I’d smile. “It’s unlawful. You’re going to jail.”

“Properly, I hope you come and go to me in my cell,” he would say. “Carry me a few of your mama’s cherry varenyky.”

“Come get them your self,” I’d say. “When are you going to return again to go to?”

Then Tato would pause. His picture would keep nonetheless on Mama’s telephone display. I would hear him take a breath. “Perhaps not for some time, zaichik.”

He would clarify what he had already defined to me so many occasions earlier than: That he couldn’t go away America till he acquired his inexperienced card, that he’s crammed out the paperwork time and again but it surely by no means appears to make it from one finish of the system to the opposite. That the system was gradual within the first place, however the pandemic has made it ten occasions slower. That if he may select wherever on this planet to reside, it might be in Chernihiv along with his boys.

And our dialog would go on like that till we needed to go to highschool, or till Tato needed to go to work in America, or till Mama wanted her telephone again to name Titka Natasha and gossip in regards to the Honchar woman in condominium twenty-seven, who was clearly as much as one thing.

I barely keep in mind the years when Tato lived with us. Our household way back ossified round his empty area. Yuri and I are removed from the one boys at college whose tatos reside overseas; Nazar Lutsenko’s tato works in Germany, Lev Demchenko’s in Poland, Daniil Marchuk’s in Norway. But often there’s something amiss with out our tato. His absence sits on our front room sofa huge sufficient for 4 and sleeps within the unoccupied half of Mama’s mattress. It speaks within the silent moments on the dinner desk conversations, when the three of us don’t have anything to say and our dialog offers approach to the scrape of silverware on dishes.

He sends dozens of postcards through the years—huge expanses of desert, snow-capped mountains, the shimmering skylines of faraway cities. We maintain his postcards pinned to the wall subsequent to our mattress. And he sends birthday items, Saint Mykolai items. Most youngsters discover items underneath their pillows within the morning on Saint Mykolai, however ours come a number of weeks late, and so they arrive in cardboard packing containers on the Nova Poshta workplace ten minutes away. The day after Saint Mykolai, when my classmates brag in regards to the items their dad and mom gave them, I’ve to concoct tales of pretend, lavish items like large gaming computer systems whose existence I don’t need to show as a result of they’re too huge to carry to highschool. And Viktor is aware of the reality, so he stares at me whereas I lie and he tries to not chuckle.

I wonder if I or Yuri resemble Tato extra now. I do know what his face seems to be like—I see it on the telephone display every single day—however I do know that household resemblance reveals up in the best way you maintain your self, the gestures you don’t notice you make till any individual else factors it out. The telephone display can’t seize that.

Sooner or later, Tato calls Mama whereas we stand in line on the grocery retailer, Silpo. Mama drags me and Yuri there each few days. We wait round as she examines and palpates every apple and pear. In the summertime, she buys fruit and veggies from the outside market, stunning fruit and veggies borne of wealthy black Ukrainian soil—however within the winter, she buys wan carrots and mealy apples shipped from faraway lands the place it’s by no means winter. Typically after we’re at Silpo she sends me and Yuri to search out one thing, and we at all times come again with the flawed model of it, or not sufficient, or too many. Worst of all, she likes to go away us and the procuring cart within the checkout line whereas she grabs another factor she “nearly forgot.” When the road strikes, I pray for her to get again shortly as a result of she has all the cash and the babusi behind us already look indignant.

With each ninety-nine hryvnia you spend at Silpo, the cashier offers you a toy known as Stikeez. In some way, Yuri has change into obsessive about amassing all of them. The toys are collectible figurines of various characters, every with their very own names—a frog named Zhabbo, a giraffe named Zhorik, a bizarre monster named Benya who seems to be like a lime-green, floating eyeball with cat ears. They’re all sticky on the underside, and Yuri sticks them onto our mattress’s headboard—a platoon of tiny troopers retaining guard, watching over us as we sleep.

We’re within the checkout line when Mama’s telephone rings. As an alternative of simply vibrating, it performs a jazz tune, which suggests it’s Tato calling.

She picks up. “Hiya?”

I hear Tato’s voice over the grocery store music, however I can’t decipher any of the phrases. Mama breaks out right into a smile. She turns the procuring cart round and walks out of the road.

“Mama?” Yuri chases after her, and I observe. “The place are we going?”

“Watch the place you’re going!” scolds the babusya behind us.

Mama sits down beside a show of watermelons stacked on prime of one another in a pyramid. Yuri and I sit down on both facet of her. Mama activates speakerphone.

“Seryozha,” she says. “Say that once more so the boys can hear.”

The Individuals are lastly giving him his inexperienced card. That implies that he’ll be allowed to return again and go to, as soon as he has all his paperwork so as and the final coronavirus restrictions are lifted and the border opens. He’s shopping for airplane tickets now, he says. He’ll come subsequent summer season. We cheer. Yuri and I arise and knock the watermelons over. They topple one after the other and roll throughout the ground.

That evening, Yuri and I lookup how lengthy we now have to attend till Tato’s arrival at eleven o’clock on the primary of subsequent July.

“200 and eighty days!” I learn aloud to Yuri.

He friends over my shoulder. “And 13 hours, twenty-five minutes, and thirty-nine seconds. Thirty-eight, thirty-seven . . .”

I stare on the timer on my telephone in frustration. Why are the borders nonetheless closed? Why does paperwork take so lengthy? Why should I wait so lengthy?

Mama comes into our room and tells me to place away my telephone, as a result of it’s nearly time for mattress. I retrieve my sketchbook and pencils from my backpack. I draw Tato’s arrival—the 4 of us, collectively eventually. As I go to sleep, I think about myself with a time machine, turning the times to hours, the hours to seconds, bringing Tato nearer and nearer till I’m on the airport, working towards him.