New Decameron Ninety-Nine: Tamara Vardomskaya

Letter To My Unborn Children

By Tamara Vardomskaya

When your Russian great-grandmother knew she would have your grandfather

in Moscow

in 1944

exhausted from sieges, bombings, massacres, death camps, from millions shot, starved, burning

She must have told her image of him, in order to keep going towards V-E Day months away, a day later than the rest of Europe because they wouldn’t believe in it,

“We’ll open a better world for you.

I don’t know how, but we will.”

When your Chinese great-grandmother carried your unborn grandmother 

from Shanghai

in 1952

exhausted from the Cultural Revolution, from Red Brigades, re-education camps, millions shot, starved, exiled

She must have told her image of her, in order to keep going to the lights of Hong Kong, to another alien land and a language they only claimed was a dialect of her own for politics’ sake, 

“We’ll open a better world for you.

I don’t know how, but we will.”

When your grandparents took your mother and her uncles, her six years old

from Moscow

in 1991

And left deficits, shortages, kilometre queues, crime, an imploding empire the world had feared,

To drive a four-door sedan (it was golden-orange) across Eastern Europe with three children and three hundred dollars in cash (and gas was a dollar a litre) 

They must have told their image of us, in order to keep going to a land where swifts dived past a one-room cockroach-trodden apartment where even the neighbours’ canary hated us too,

“We’ll open a better world for you.

I don’t know how, but we will.”

The numbers of dead on the news climb 

as if someone flipped the playground slide leftward that I hope you will someday slide down

and doctors say emergencies only, and you are not an emergency

and we beg your grandparents not to go outside, so they will be there someday to tell you their stories

and I know you’re only an image

but I sing to my image of you, in Russian, English, French, German, Italian, 

and no matter what the words of the song say, they mean,

“We’ll open a better world for you.

I don’t know how, but we will.”

*********************************************************

Maya looks up. "That's so powerful. And that's now, isn't it?"

He nods. "But it's also always, like it says."

"And people can really feel like that." She looks at him. "That wasn't a question. I understand now that they can. They do."

"Yes. You've come a long way since you objected to the milking machine."

She smiles. "I'd almost forgotten the milking machine. So many great stories."

"Just one more, now. Still in that handwritten book in your hand. Keep reading and trust the story. I know we're going to be all right. I don't know how, but we will."

Maya nods at him. And for the last time, they read.