The Last Green Valley - Mark Sullivan (black female authors .txt) 📗

horses. “I’m sorry, boys, but it was life or death. Our lives and yours.”

She took off her boots and stockings and put them at her feet before sliding in beside Walt, who’d been very quiet much of the rest of the day.

Emil climbed in with the lantern.

“Mama, I wish God’s ‘soon’ was tomorrow,” Walt said.

Adeline hugged him tight, said, “I do, too.”

Emil blew out the lantern as the wind shifted southwest. Temperatures began to rise.

“Day two,” he said. “We made it.”

“Together,” Adeline said, and smiled sleepily in the dark.

They had made it, just as they had time and again throughout their marriage, and just as she had before she met Emil. Emotionally and physically drained by the past thirty-six hours, Adeline nevertheless prayed and gave thanks for her family’s miraculous journey so far before plunging into deep dark sleep. When she finally dreamed, it was as if time had been hit by one of the tank rounds and more than a decade had vanished altogether.

October 1933

Birsula, Ukraine

Eighteen-year-old Adeline stood on her tiptoes in a kosher butcher shop in the little town, watching in wonder as the butcher wrapped a whole fresh chicken in paper. Fresh chicken. When was the last time she’d seen or even allowed herself the thought of something like that?

And she was sure she was going to taste it. Well, of course. She was going to cook it, wasn’t she?

Adeline could not have wiped the grin off her face if she’d tried. Roasting a fresh chicken. Eating a fresh chicken when only months before . . . And now, here she was, living the high life!

The butcher put the package on the counter. “Tell Mrs. Kantor she is a blessed woman. The first chicken I’ve been able to offer in months. A miracle you walked in when you did.”

“Thank you, Mr. Berman,” Adeline said, smiling and putting the chicken into a sack slung over her shoulder.

She hurried outside, excited. A chill breeze hit her in the face, reminded her that winter was not far off, though the thought did not concern her as much as it might have a year ago, or the year before that.

After Adeline and her mother and sister were thrown off the family farm, she was sent to work on a collective farm in the rolling hills outside Birsula, a small town roughly two hundred kilometers north of Odessa. For months, in stifling heat and biting cold, she’d gone shoeless into vats of mud and straw, mixing them for bricks with her bare feet. There were times she thought her legs were going to snap off like icicles beneath a winter eave, and other times when she’d grown so despondent, she’d wondered if she’d ever have even a glimpse of a better lot in life. Then to add to her misery, Stalin had cut off the food in the fall of 1932.

As Adeline left the butcher shop with the chicken, she could remember being so hungry during the Holodomor, she’d hallucinated chicken, swore she saw steaming plates of her mother’s egg noodles and carved roast fowl appear in the air right before her eyes. Later, she’d been so weak, she collapsed in the mud vats on a frigid day, contracted pneumonia, and barely survived.

As bad as the months of starvation had been to her, and as sure as she’d been that no better life would ever find her way again, late in her recovery from pneumonia, Malia heard about a job in town, a job indoors. Adeline got the job, and in what felt like a snap of the fingers, her circumstances had changed for the better.

Almost six months now, she thought, carrying the chicken as she ducked into a wide alleyway, passed the rear entrance to a bakery already closed for the day, and walked along the back fences of a row of large homes. She went through the gate of the third one and up the steps to a back door.

Inside, she kicked off her boots, put on the slippers she was supposed to wear indoors, and brought the grocery sack into the kitchen. She’d no sooner set the sack down than a woman’s cheerful voice called out in Russian from another room, “Adelka, is that you back so soon?”

“Yes, Mrs. Kantor,” Adeline said, pulling on her apron and going into the front room where an old woman sat by the window with a blanket across her lap and a black sweater about her shoulders.

A teapot and simple service were on the table in front of Mrs. Kantor. A woman in her late twenties was sitting opposite Adeline’s employer. She wore a plain brown dress, shawl, and scarf. A large book lay on the floor beside her.

“Esther, this is my secret treasure,” Mrs. Kantor said. “Her name is Adeline. I call her Adelka. The things she does in the kitchen are wizardry!”

Esther laughed. “You mean witchery?” When Adeline frowned at that, Esther waved her hands. “No, no. I’m not suggesting . . . Oh, never mind. What are you cooking today, Adeline?”

“Whatever she found out on her daily tramp,” Mrs. Kantor said before Adeline could answer. “She finds what’s available, and then I don’t know what she does back there in the kitchen, but it’s magic.”

Adeline bowed her head, smiling. “Thank you, ma’am. I love cooking.”

“It shows.”

“So?” Esther said. “What did you find today?”

Adeline picked her head up, looked from Esther to Mrs. Kantor, and swelled with excitement. “A whole fresh chicken!”

Esther gasped. Mrs. Kantor clapped her hands against her thighs. “No! Where?”

“Mr. Berman’s shop. I happened to walk in just after the chicken was killed!”

“Kosher?” Esther said.

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, I guess so. From Mr. Berman?”

Mrs. Kantor made a whooping noise and shook her bony fists overhead. “I am going to invite my son and his family! This is a cause for celebration!”

To Adeline’s surprise, Esther did not share her employer’s enthusiasm. “Are you sure, Mrs. Kantor? When so many are still going hungry?”

The old woman sobered, but then nodded. “I know people are still hungry, dear, but I am also sure