“I’m going to learn how to fly a plane of my own someday, Mama. I’m going to get us out of here.” I looked down at the simmering stew and added a pinch of salt. It was not a hearty stew, or a very flavorful one. I wanted to do more for Mama.
“I don’t think they license many lady pilots,” she said, taking a seat at the wobbly kitchen table as we waited for the flavors of the stew to meld together as the chunks of tough meat—not more than a fistful—softened with the potatoes and vegetables. “You ought to consider becoming a schoolteacher. It’s regular work and decent pay.”
I blanched at the thought. Helping the village children learn to read and add their sums seemed as interesting as watching the paint dry on the neighbor’s barn. “I don’t want to teach, Mama. You said they don’t license ‘many’ lady pilots, Mama. Many doesn’t mean none. I can be one of the few.” I tried to summon the confidence of the visiting pilot. I placed her bowl in front of her and tore off a large chunk of the black bread I had made that morning and placed it by her spoon.
Mama looked up from the stew, the dark creases under her eyes so deep I was sure she’d never be completely rid of them if she slept twelve hours a day for the rest of her life. “You’re right, Katinka. If you want to fly, go earn your wings. Just don’t let them stop you. And make no mistake, they will try.”
I blinked in surprise, expecting Mama would continue to dissuade me. “I won’t give them the choice, Mama. I’ll be so good they won’t be able to turn me away.”
She smiled weakly at me and sighed as her eyes scanned, taking stock of our small cabin. It had belonged to my babushka Olga, and when she passed away it came to Mama. Which was fortunate for us, because we had no means to stay on in Moscow, which I think broke Mama’s heart almost as badly as losing Papa. Mama had told me Miass had been a nice enough place to grow up, but that she had yearned for life in the city when she was a girl. She studied dance and became skilled enough to garner the attention of the right people.
She earned her ticket to the capital when she was eighteen and then danced on the great stages of Moscow until Papa, a well-respected professor of history, coaxed her down from the limelight and into domestic life. They had lived happily together for nine years before Papa was taken by a stray bullet during one of the little uprisings against the new regime. Papa, who had done nothing to anger either side, was simply collateral damage to them. A tragic but ultimately inevitable loss in troubled times.
If Mama missed dancing, she’d never once said. The city? Yes. Papa? Like she would miss one of her lungs. Dancing, though, she rarely mentioned.
“You’ll have to work twice as hard as the boys, Katinka,” she mused as I ladled stew from the steaming pot into her bowl. She lifted her spoon and blew gently on the steaming broth. “And avoid distractions, no matter how pleasant they might be.”
I nodded solemnly, knowing that she spoke from her own experience. She had danced for five years, which was a long run according to Mama. The girls got distracted by boys, city life, or other mischief. And they were in a career deemed suitable for women. I would not have that advantage.
“If this is what you want, you will need excellent marks. Especially in science and mathematics.” Mama’s tired eyes appeared to look past me and out the window over my left shoulder as she tore the black bread into tiny morsels and popped them into her mouth.
“I don’t think Comrade Dokorov much cares for teaching the girls,” I said quietly into my bowl. “Especially ‘serious’ subjects like mathematics and philosophy.”
“And I don’t give one whit about what he ‘cares for.’ He’s paid the same to teach you as he is the boys.” Mama’s eyes flashed from cornflower to cobalt, as they tended to do when she was truly angry. It was beautiful to see when her fury wasn’t directed at me. “The party wants to see you educated. But we’ll see how serious you are in time, Katinka. There are many years yet.”
Mama, I was sure, had no particular affection for Stalin, speaking of him with more reluctance and fear than admiration, but she found no fault with his stance on women’s rights. More than once, she predicted he would declare us equal citizens to men. “Then you will see change, Katinka. Then things will start to set themselves right.”
“Talk to him, Mama. I’m sure Comrade Dokorov will listen to you,” I said, wishing the words would make it so. If Papa were alive, the grimy old man that ran the schoolhouse would have to listen. Here no one cared that she had been the wife of a celebrated professor; they only knew her as a simple laundress with an extra mouth to feed. As though the life we’d had in Moscow never existed. The voice of a washerwoman carried little weight. I could see that burden, among others, in the dark circles under her weary eyes. I cleared the table and handed her a teapot brimming with boiling water.
“Play for me, Katinka,” Mama said, adding tea leaves to the pot from her little tin. “It’s been too long.”
I went to my little room and fetched Papa’s violin, which I kept propped on the table next to my bed. It was no grand instrument. Old when it had come to him, its russet varnish was fading to a tawny yellow at the edges and the middle, and the strings were well beyond the need for replacement. I handled the instrument as though it were made of paper-thin glass and played just as gently. If a string broke, it would remain so.
I scurried back to the table and pulled my chair out to the center of the room. I placed the violin under my chin and touched the bow to the strings. I played one of the folk tunes Papa had loved. Sweet, but with a hint of melancholy, like the violin itself. Like much of our folk music.
Papa was barely proficient as a musician, but Mama and I loved to listen to him play simple tunes after dinner. He had begun to teach me before he was killed, and Mama had taught me to read music. I had no real talent, either, but my playing made Mama smile when little else did.
I used to tell Papa that Russia was too cold for too much of the year for anyone to be truly happy. “There is truth to that, my Katinka. And music, if nothing else, must be true if it is to be beautiful.”
I plagued Mama all summer until courses resumed, and in an act of utter capitulation, she spoke to Oleg Dokorov. The schoolteacher was a tall man, with a long, pointed nose. His greasy black hair and yellowed teeth repulsed me, but Mama insisted that I always treat him with the respect his position commanded. Mama addressed him firmly, but respectfully, in front of the entire class before lessons began on the first day of school. I stood a pace behind her, my clasped hands shaking behind my back. If he refused her, I would never fly. Most of my classmates were boys, as many families in the area still chose to teach their daughters at home. This largely meant the girls were taught enough reading and arithmetic to do the marketing and keep the family accounts in order, and little else. In Moscow, girls had to go to school along with the boys, but no one paid attention to us here. The presence of a handful of girls was accepted because people assumed our mothers needed a place for us to stay while they worked. It wasn’t entirely untrue.
“Comrade Dokorov, I insist you provide my daughter with the same lessons as you give the boys,” Mama said, placing my primer from the previous year with a thud on his polished desk. “I have no wish for my daughter to be reading these fairy stories when she should be learning geometry and physics.” She stood tall and wore her best dress, which was no high compliment to the worn frock.