Chapter 2
Two hours after the distant explosions began, a text message went out to all the ballet students saying that classes had been canceled that day. That had never happened before.
“For my birthday,” Vlad said to Tatyanna when he saw her outside the school, looking at the black smoke in the distance, where the explosions were just outside the city. “Where’s Yana?” he asked, concerned.
“She took her bicycle to check on her parents,” Tatyanna answered.
“That’s a long way by bike.” He frowned. Yana’s parents lived in the suburbs of Kyiv.
“She doesn’t have a car, and if there are roadblocks, she can get past them,” she said.
“She shouldn’t take the chance,” he said.
“The explosions were strong.” The school superintendent came outside and stood with them, observing the smoke.
It was thick and black, rolling across the sky with the sound of thunder, which was the sound of bombs continuing to fall somewhere, not too far away but still outside the city.
An announcement was made on the radio and TV that morning. All able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and sixty were not to leave the country, and were to report to their reserve army units or volunteer for the special civilian military units being formed to defend the country.
“That means me now,” Vlad said proudly to Tatyanna. “I’m eighteen today.”
“Happy birthday!” she said again, and kissed him and they went back inside.
There was a faint smell of smoke in the air.
A military base not far away had been bombed during the night.
Soldiers were being mobilized all over the country, and civilian men too, after the announcements.
Vlad’s mother had called him that morning, and told him to come to Moscow immediately.
“I can’t, Mama. I’m not allowed to leave the country.”
“You’re Russian. I want you back here now. You can’t miss class anyway, and classes are continuing as normal here. You can stay at our apartment.”
“Papa is Ukrainian, Mama, and so am I. I was born here.” Vlad’s father had moved to Moscow to work at the Bolshoi with his wife.
“I have a Ukrainian passport,” he told his mother, “and if they need me, I’m staying to defend the country.
” It was the honorable thing to do, rather than use the excuse of a famous Russian mother to escape.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s some kind of special military mission that has nothing to do with you.
I want you here in Moscow with us. You’re just as Russian as you are Ukrainian,” his mother reminded him, since she was Russian.
He didn’t argue with her, but he didn’t intend to leave, nor did he want to. He wanted to stay.
As news reports came across the radio and TV that day, it was starting to sound serious. Tatyanna and he talked about it that afternoon. He was worried about her.
“People are leaving, Taty, I think you should go,” he said seriously.
“To where? My whole life is here at the school, and with you. Are you leaving?” She turned her wide blue eyes to him, and he shook his head.
“No. My mother wants me to come to Moscow. I don’t want to.
I can’t anyway. They’re not letting men leave the country.
I’m staying, and I’ll fight for my country.
” He had lived ten of his eighteen years in Ukraine, and felt more Ukrainian than Russian, like his father.
His mother was Russian, but he wasn’t. “People are crossing the border into Poland,” Vlad told Tatyanna.
“If we’re at war, I don’t think you should stay here.
It will be over soon. You can come back when it is.
It can’t last long.” He wasn’t afraid for himself, but he wanted her to be safe.
“What would I do there? I don’t know anyone in Poland.”
“They’ll set up refugee camps.” Tatyanna had a little money in the bank that she had saved from the allowance the government paid her to dance with the Kyiv Ballet and attend the school.
But the lines were miles long in front of the banks, with people panicking about their money.
People were emptying the food stores too.
Tatyanna and Vlad watched the activity swirling around them.
He was going to join a volunteer civilian unit, but he wanted to get Tatyanna settled first.
They were waiting for Yana to come back from Vorzel, the suburb where her family lived. They could hear bombs exploding in the distance all day long. The television news shows showed the buildings that had been hit. It looked bad in the suburbs, but the invading army hadn’t entered the city yet.
It was dark when Yana came back at six o’clock. She saw Vlad and Tatyanna on the steps, talking. She let her bike clatter to the ground, ran up the steps of the dormitory, and threw her arms around Tatyanna and started to sob, as Tatyanna held her and looked at Vlad.
“Were your parents okay?” Tatyanna asked her softly.
“They’re dead. They’re all dead, my mother, my father, my grandmother.
They bombed our neighborhood. All the houses are gone.
Their house was burned to the ground, there’s nothing left.
” She looked up at Tatyanna then, still in shock and deathly pale.
She looked disoriented and her hair was tangled.
Her coat was smeared with dirt and ash. “I’m an orphan like you now, Taty.
” Tatyanna held her tighter, and Vlad spoke to both of them. He was shocked by what Yana had said.
“You have to leave tomorrow, both of you. You can come back when it’s over.
There are buses and trains taking people to Poland.
There will be people there to help you.” There had been a steady mass exodus all day of women and children leaving, and the elderly, as the bombs continued to fall in the distance.
“Tomorrow, you go. I’ll take you to the bus,” Vlad said with a look of determination.
Overnight, on his birthday, he had become a man.
He sent the girls to pack some things a few minutes later, and he went to find out how they could get on one of the buses leaving for Poland, or a train.
But one thing was sure, in his mind, they had to go.
The bombs sounded closer that night, and air raid sirens sounded all night.
There was a bomb shelter underground near the school, and Vlad took the girls there and stayed with them.
Tatyanna and Yana each had a small bag packed.
Tatyanna didn’t know why, but she took her toe shoes with her and some leotards, some warm sweaters, jeans, underwear, hairbrush, a spare wool hat, and gloves.
She hadn’t bothered to pack makeup. It felt strange packing to leave.
She had packed for Yana too. Yana was too upset about her family to think.
She couldn’t get the vision of the burned-out house out of her head.
It was only rubble, still in flames when she arrived.
Her family’s bodies had been taken to a common grave.
Vlad was worried about both of the girls and eager to enlist in the civilian volunteer forces, but he wanted to get Yana and Tatyanna out of Kyiv first. He had some cash that his parents had sent him, and he divided it between the two girls.
He gave them the equivalent of two hundred dollars each, which was all he had.
And Tatyanna had about forty dollars of her own.
Yana had none. She had paid for Vlad’s birthday cake.
In the morning, people were leaving the city in droves, by car, bus, train, however they could get out.
There were long lines everywhere. People had stood in the freezing cold all night to get on buses and trains and there were miles of cars barely moving, trying to get out of the city.
The cars were packed to the gills with their owners’ belongings, usually with several children inside.
The bombs and shelling continued all through the day and night.
The threesome took refuge in a bomb shelter for a second night and left at five in the morning to get in line for a bus to the border town of Medyka in Poland, more than four hundred miles away.
It was miserable in the bomb shelter and Yana sobbed all night.
People looked terrified and children cried.
The line for the bus looked miles long when they saw it the next morning.
Some people had been there in the cold all night.
Vlad had heard that the train was no better, and he was worried that the train might get bombed.
It was a bigger target for the planes flying over them.
At noon they had been at the bus station for six hours, hungry, tired, thirsty, cold.
Tatyanna had bought a few bottles of water to put in her backpack, and turned to offer Yana a drink.
She still had a glazed look after the shocks of the day before.
Suddenly a plane swooped out of the sky shelling the crowd as people started running and screaming.
Vlad pushed Tatyanna out of the way, and reached to grab for Yana, and she wasn’t behind them.
He looked down and saw her on the ground.
She looked shocked and dazed and he grabbed her and dragged her under some trees, and Tatyanna helped him.
Yana’s chest was bleeding, and there was blood all over her coat and on her neck.
Tatyanna leaned down next to her, and Yana made a gurgling sound when she spoke.