Lara's Gift Read online

  Along with a loud wail, a strong stream of pee shot into the air when my baby brother entered the world. He was red and wrinkly with a puffy face. His arms and legs curled up like a bird’s. Papa showered kisses all over Mama’s face. She had finally given birth to a baby boy.

  The midwife would get her extra gold ruble.

  And I … I would lose the dogs.

  For a second I couldn’t breathe.

  I felt like …

  a bell-ringer turned deaf,

  a borzoi gone blind,

  a cook without a tongue,

  and a painter without hands,

  all jumbled together.

  A small part of me also felt shame not to share in the joy. For Mama’s sake I put on a cheery face. On the inside I pushed back tears.

  The midwife took the small ax out from her basket and cut the umbilical cord. She tied it off with some flax. “To ensure his health is secure.” The midwife paused. She took a deep breath and blew three times on the top of my brother’s head. She blew three more times between his shoulder blades, and again three times on the soles of his feet before swaddling him and putting him in Mama’s steady arms. Almost immediately, my brother stopped fussing and started to coo.

  Papa’s face unleashed such delight that a mighty jealousy chomped at my heart.

  “Is he healthy?” Papa kept asking.

  “He’ll grow into a strong boy,” the midwife answered each time.

  With my brother in Mama’s arms, Papa knelt down under the Mother with Child icon. “You’ve answered our prayers.”

  Papa’s words numbed me like frostbite. My brother wasn’t even an hour old and I already felt demoted from my position of firstborn in Papa’s eyes. Tired of all the attention my brother was getting, I retreated outside and was greeted by the first snowfall. Zar stood up and shook off the flakes of snow that had gathered on his white coat. He arched his back in a long stretch, and then nosed my hand. I bent down and kissed his head. “We didn’t get a little sister.”

  Zar licked my cheeks and gave my ears little bites of affection. So happy was he to see me, I didn’t tell him what having a little brother might mean. It would wrinkle his heart.

  Papa joined me outside. “Your mama’s excited to name your brother. Come inside.”

  Mama looked down into her arms at my baby brother with such fondness. “We shall name our son Bohdan. He is our gift from God.”

  Their gift from God?

  Why didn’t they name me Bohdana when I was born? I wondered.

  I glanced up at the icon. What happened to the little sister I had asked for?

  Papa put his arm around me. “Your mama will need more help now that Bohdan has come.”

  “Of course, Tyatya.”

  “There’ll be changes,” he added.

  “What kind of changes?” The firm way in which he said it alarmed me.

  “The first few months are critical for your brother. We think it best that Zar stays in the kennel,” Papa said.

  “All right,” I said. “I don’t mind sleeping in the stalls with him.”

  “Nyet,” Papa said. “You’ll need to be here to care for Bohdan.”

  “I won’t be able to watch him and make gowns for the Countess,” Mama added.

  “What about the dogs?” I asked.

  “It’s time you take on a more suitable apprenticeship—one under your mama’s guidance,” Papa said.

  Me—a dressmaker?

  “But I’m all thumbs! Mama would have better luck teaching Zar.”

  “I was, once, all thumbs, too,” Mama assured me.

  “This is the best opportunity we have to attract a suitable husband,” Papa said.

  “He’s right,” Mama added.

  My heart felt like it was being squeezed tight in both of their fists. I reached into my pocket and held Alexander’s knife, wishing I had been born a son.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Next Bride

  For three days after Bohdan’s birth the snow dropped nonstop. A white blanket covered the fields and meadows, as well as our garden. It looked peaceful, all still and dazzling white, like fresh sour cream spread over thin crepelike blini. So beautiful were the trees, cloaked in powdery white along their branches. I wanted to go outside and make snowmen with Zar like old times. How I longed to see him, Zola, and the other dogs. Instead, I had to prepare for Bohdan’s baptism and the festivities that would follow.

  With the midwife’s help we cooked suckling pig and christening pudding while Mama busied herself hanging ancient coins and multicolored scraps of fabric as offerings to the family spirit to ward off evil and protect Bohdan. In case those offerings weren’t enough, Mama placed more candles, as many as she could fit, under the family icon and lighted them.

  Mama spent the rest of the day cleaning Bohdan from his tiny toes and fingers to his itty-bitty ears. She patted him dry with our softest cotton rags, then dressed him in a white cotton baptismal gown that she had sewn herself. For the final touch, she combed the scruff of black hair that stood straight up from his head.

  Papa summoned a priest from the village to perform the baptism. Alexander graciously accepted the honor to stand as Bohdan’s godfather and I stood alongside him as my brother’s godmother. Together Alexander and I held Bohdan while the Count’s bell-ringer rang the church bells and the priest performed the baptismal rites inside the Count’s chapel. Everyone fussed over Bohdan—touching his feet and pinching his chubby cheeks. Still, he managed to sleep through it all and hardly stirred. It was hard not to love Bohdan. Each day he cried less and less and even started to coo in my arms.

  Once the ceremony ended, Mama and I rushed home before all the others and placed a sleepy Bohdan in his cradle. Papa arrived with our friends and well-wishers not long afterward. Mama stood vigil, rocking Bohdan’s cradle, as Papa tended to each guest, offering them food and drinks. Alexei, bundled up in sheepskin, was the first to give Papa a hearty pat on the back, followed by Boris. Plump-figured Marya brought tea cakes along with some of her kitchen staff. Ruslan filed in next with an icon of the Mother with Child and placed it in Mama’s hands.

  “Your thoughtfulness humbles me,” Mama said to Ruslan. “We shall hang it over Bohdan’s cradle.”

  On behalf of the Count and his wife, who were away in Moscow, attending the Imperial Ball, Alexander greeted Papa, and then presented Mama with a bag of gold rubles for Bohdan.

  “Spasibo,” Mama said to Alexander.

  Then he turned to me. “I’ve missed you at the kennel, Larochka.”

  “Me too. How are Zola and the other dogs?” I asked. “Has Zar’s neck wound healed?”

  “The dogs are fine and so is Zar’s neck,” Alexander said. “It’s Zar’s heart I’m worried about. He really misses you.”

  “I feel the same way, Sasha.”

  “Zar doesn’t much like being cooped up in a stall,” Alexander said.

  “He’s used to sleeping at my feet,” I said. “It’s good you’ve come. I thought you’d be at the Imperial Ball with your parents.”

  “My life is here,” Alexander said.

  “To see the Tsar—and his beautiful palace—would be like a fairy tale,” I said.

  “I’d prefer to meet the Tsar in a different setting, like a hunt. I can’t be bothered with balls, not when there’s so much work needed to build this kennel. With you as my steward I will one day breed the perfect borzoi and host hunts like the ones at Perchino.”

  Hearing him talk about his goals stirred the dreams that lived inside of me. I wanted to tell Alexander that it would be Bohdan, not me, sharing in his big plans. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

  Just then, Maxim barged through the door and announced, “Are you ready for Borei?”

  Papa looked to the midwife for guidance.

  “Let me gather the single girls.” The midwife grabbed me first and stole me away from Alexander, and then she snagged the chambermaids, Darya and Tatyana, as well as the Vorontsovs�
� house servant, Olga, who had just arrived and had barely taken off her coat. The four of us had been good childhood friends and would have likely grown closer had I not chosen to work in the kennel.

  As Papa wove his hand in the air like a magic wand, the midwife handed each of us a piece of the suckling pig’s tail.

  “Good luck, girls.” Darya’s smile faded into a lemony pout. “No matter how much I scrub my hands from cleaning the chamber pots, the dogs never want the meat I’m holding.”

  “Nor mine.” Tatyana desperately smeared the piece of meat along her skirt.

  “That leaves you or me,” Olga said. “And I’m too old to lose again.”

  “If you want to win, make eye contact with Borei,” I whispered.

  “Why should I trust you?” Olga asked. “Surely, you want to win just as much as I do.”

  “I’d rather clean week-old chamber pots,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” Olga said.

  “Time to disperse, girls,” the midwife said to us.

  I hurried back to Alexander. “You’ve got to hide me from Borei. I don’t want to become the next bride.”

  “It’s just a game,” Alexander said.

  “Not for me,” I said. “The midwife is intent on marrying me off to her nephew!”

  “At least you’d be close by,” Alexander encouraged.

  “Sasha, the midwife’s nephew is afraid of dogs!”

  “That wouldn’t be a good match,” Alexander said. “Follow me!”

  We wormed a path through the guests to a crowded corner of my home where I triple-barricaded myself behind Darya, Tatyana, and Alexander. Unlike the hide-and-seek games we played as children, the outcome of this game could determine my future.

  Olga copied my actions and hid in the opposite corner.

  The midwife signaled Maxim to invite Borei. No sooner did he see Papa than he bounded over and nosed Papa’s hands for meat. When Papa showed him empty hands, Borei leaned against him and settled for a good rub. Papa showered him with praise and pats on the head.

  “Bring us the next bride,” Papa encouraged his favorite dog.

  Borei wouldn’t budge.

  Our guests booed in a friendly manner.

  “He’s a sight hound, not a tracker,” Papa said in Borei’s defense.

  The midwife whistled for Borei’s attention and purposefully threw him a piece of suckling pig that landed near my feet. “There’s more, boy. Go find it.”

  Borei trotted off in my direction.

  “That’s not fair,” Olga shouted.

  I kicked the meat away and it stopped just short of where Darya and Tatyana stood.

  “This way!” Alexander led me to the opposite corner near the stove. “Hide behind me.”

  Borei poked and sniffed around the chambermaids.

  Darya giggled with hope.

  But Tatyana sighed when Borei snatched the piece of meat off the floor and moved on.

  “That was close,” I said.

  Upon hearing my voice, Borei’s ears perked up and he began searching for me. I tried to escape and rushed behind Olga.

  “No, you don’t,” Olga said, fighting to stand behind me. “I see what you’re doing. You want to win.”

  “I’m telling you. I don’t want to win.”

  Olga refused to let me get behind her and left me exposed.

  Borei’s eyes locked on me—and when that happens, there’s no escape from a borzoi.

  “Olga’s got a much bigger piece of meat,” I whispered to Borei, who poked and prodded relentlessly at my hands. “Go to her!”

  “Looks like we have a winner,” Papa announced.

  “Give him the meat,” the midwife said to me. “He’s earned it.”

  In one quick chomp Borei snatched it from my hands and searched for more.

  I glanced over at Olga and shook my head. “It could have been you.”

  Mama was the first to clap. “Our next bride!”

  But it was the midwife who clapped loudest. She had a mouthwatery look in her eyes, the kind hungry dogs get when they see fresh meat. While she reeled Papa in and held his ear, Marya tottered over to me and squeezed me until it hurt. “Let’s hope your papa finds someone close by. You’ll be sorely missed, if not.”

  Ruslan and Boris crowded around me, too, and patted my back. The two of them looked happy for me.

  When my eyes fell on Alexander, his face was full of smiles, but his voice sounded like a rooster who had lost his crow. “Maybe you can teach the midwife’s nephew to love the dogs as you do?”

  “His fear of dogs isn’t my only problem,” I said. “Papa wants me to apprentice under Mama and become a dressmaker.”

  “Nyet,” Alexander cried. “He can’t do that!”

  “He has,” I said. “You’ve got to promise me to watch over Zola and Zar and the other dogs.”

  “I will, Larochka.”

  “I know you will,” I said.

  “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “How will the kennel manage without you?”

  “Sasha, the question is, how will I manage without the kennel?”

  Days later, after the midwife tidied up from the festivities of the baptism, she whispered something in Mama’s ear—eyeing me as she did so. Mama’s head bobbed up and down, and by the way her face glowed, she seemed to hang on every word. When the midwife finished, she nodded to Papa, bid us luck, and left. Like every morning since Bohdan’s birth, Papa kissed my baby brother on the nose and headed off to the kennel. Mama and I watched the midwife and Papa trudge through the snow in opposite directions.

  “I need to get back to work, too,” Mama said. “The Countess needs me.”

  “You should rest.” I knew Papa wouldn’t like Mama’s idea.

  “I can’t sit still forever,” Mama said. “My grandmother birthed my mama in the fields and continued working. To keep my coveted position on the estate, I mustn’t give the Countess cause to dispose of me. Sometimes your dear papa can’t see beyond his nose.”

  Mama didn’t need to explain that to me. I had my own problems with Papa.

  “We should start your apprenticeship while Bohdan’s sleeping.”

  “Must we?” I asked in a deflated voice.

  Mama put her arms around me. “I know it isn’t easy to give up the dogs. But your papa’s right that you’ll need to learn a skill that’s useful for marriage.”

  Hearing the word marriage tormented me in the same way as did watching a sick dog suffer a long and painful death.

  I put Bohdan’s soska back into his mouth to suck on, and then I checked his diaper and found a poopy mess. The smell was so dreadful I held my breath and quickly cleaned his plump bottom, wishing all the while we could hang turpentine rags above his cradle. I swaddled him in a clean cloth diaper and kissed his feet before bundling him up from head to toe.

  With Bohdan cooing, snuggled up to my chest, we kept each other warm along our journey to Mama’s sewing studio. Papa’s footsteps had helped pack down the snow, forming a path for us. My eyes wandered toward the kennel and searched for some sign of the dogs.

  “You must miss Zar,” Mama said.

  “You need me more than he does.” Even though I resented Bohdan for taking what I cherished most away from me, it was hard not to love him. He was an easy baby and the littlest things made him happy.

  Mama tenderly touched Bohdan’s capped head. “For now, that’s true.”

  The jingle of horses’ bells, hundreds of soft timbres, filled the air. Mama and I turned around to see a gilded sleigh approaching, led by a troika of the Count’s Orlov Trotters yoked together.

  “The Countess must be returning from the Imperial Ball,” Mama said.

  Boris pulled up on the reins to stop the horses and nodded to Mama and me.

  “What are you doing out in the cold and with the baby no less?” the Countess asked. She removed her hand from the inside of her muff and, in one grand sweep, she motioned for us to join her.

  �
�It’s really not necessary. We enjoy the fresh air,” Mama said. “We’ve been cooped up for days.”

  “I insist,” the Countess said. “Come join me for tea. I want to visit with your little one.”

  Once we were settled inside the sleigh, Boris clucked his tongue, and with a slight crack of his knout, he coaxed the white horses into a spirited trot. I pulled the thick bear-hide blanket over Bohdan to protect him from the brisk air. Heaven forbid he came down with a cold.

  The Countess pinched Bohdan’s cheeks. “My goodness, he’s precious. How is he faring?”

  “Bohdan’s growing every day,” Mama answered.

  “Such a lovely name,” the Countess said.

  “And he coos like a bird. Listen,” I said.

  The Countess leaned in. “Indeed, he does!”

  “Was the ball spectacular?” Mama asked.

  “It becomes grander each year, with more and more exotic foods covering the tables, more toasts, and plenty of dancing until dawn. Nobody—excluding the Tsarina—was dressed as smartly as I.”

  Mama’s face turned as red as a bowl of borscht.

  To save Mama from turning redder, I blurted, “Alexander caught one of the wolves.”

  “Really? His father will be proud!” the Countess said. “Though I’d much prefer that he give up the dogs and give me some grandchildren.”

  We entered through the grand doors of the four-story stone manor and were greeted by yips and yaps from Almaz, a fluffy white toy poodle—the one Papa thought would perform better on a hunt than Zar. The Countess picked him up to quiet him, and then excused herself to freshen up. The valet led us into the grand receiving room, where specimens from past hunts surrounded us. Covering the walls were the heads of aurochs, bear, lynx, wild boar, wolves, reindeer, stag, and heath cocks, all caught by former Counts. My favorite was a stuffed bear that Alexander had hunted, standing in the corner, holding a lamp in his raised paws.

  Olga busied herself chirping over Bohdan. As she removed my coat, she whispered, “Next time, I’ll make eye contact.”

  We both giggled, until the valet cleared his throat and glared at Olga.

  Mama and I took our seats on a plush divan covered in a rich blue silk. We sat there staring at each other in silence, as some of the kitchen staff set up the samovar and asked after Bohdan in hushed whispers. They prepared cups of tea and brought in small cakes that filled the air with the sweet smell of honey.