Free The Sky Unwashed by Irene Zabytko Page A

back to her house and wait for her family to return in a few days. But then she thought of how they forced Paraskevia.
    Marusia searched for her bus. They all looked the same until she saw Zosia standing on the steps and blocking others from entering.
    “
Woo-uh
,” Marusia shouted, shoving her way back into the right line. “
Wooh!
Wait for me!” Zosia was arguing with a man who tried to pull her off the steps. “I’m here,” Marusia said, relieved.
    “Come on,
Mamo!
” She pushed the surly man to the side and helped the old woman on. “Good thing youcame. Otherwise I’d have to kick him where it hurts, the bastard.”
    “I’d like to see you try, you whore,” he said.
    “Why bother, there’s nothing there to kick,” Zosia retorted.
    “Oh yeah! I’ll show you what I got!” He started to unzip his pants.
    “Hey you, not here,” cried a
militsioner
. “You can’t piss in the middle of a street. Against the law!”
    “Arrest me then! To the Gulag!
Davai!
Come on.”
    “Drunk, too,” he called to another
militsioner
. They argued and shouted at one another while the others in line shoved in.
    The bus was packed with more than three times as many passengers as seats. Old people crouched in the aisles. Marusia and Zosia sat on top of their bundles with the children on their laps near the front of the bus. Yurko stood over them, holding on to one of the hanging straps, his eyes closed, struggling just to stay upright.
    The minute his own space was invaded by bobbing heads and elbows jamming into his back, the driver slammed the doors. He didn’t care that he might have cut off a part of a family, perhaps separating a parent from a child. Once he saw that his own legs might be cramped by too many bundles, he was ready to roll. Doors shut, he zoomed the bus out of town.
    Yurko appeared as lifeless as a corpse on a gallows as he swayed with each jerking motion of the vehicle.
    “Sit down,
bratiku
,” said a tired voice. A bald man with an eyepatch tapped Yurko on the shoulder. “You, please sit down.” He stood up and gave Yurko his seat.
    “Thank you,” Yurko said, embarrassed. He felt that he should offer his seat to Zosia or his mother, but he felt weak and truly wanted to sit down. “I’ve been ill,” he confided, ashamed of himself.
    “Really?” said the bald man, waiting for more. He tried to open the window behind Yurko, but all the windows were stuck shut.
    “From the plant. It’s bad. . . .” Yurko suddenly turned his head toward the window. Outside, a pack of dogs was following the bus. The dogs howled after their masters.
    “Look at that, they want to leave, too,” said the bald man.
    “It’s Bosyi, my dog,” Yurko mumbled. He wasn’t exactly sure if Bosyi was in the pack, but he liked to think he saw him one last time. He had hardly patted his head before he left, although Bosyi whined and nudged him and licked his face almost as if he was desperate. “Good-bye, my friend,” Yurko said to himself.
    “Damn, stupid animals,” the bus driver shouted, stepping on the gas. He was an ugly man in his twenties with a bad complexion who wore his black leather cap jauntily perched on the side of his head. He lit a cigarette and turned on a portable radio that was hooked up to the dashboard. Russian rock music blared over the hacking coughs and whimpering children.
    The dogs followed the bus, yelping and whining, but gave up once the vehicle picked up speed on the smoother, paved highway. Yurko sank back into the torn leather seat.
    Marusia looked over to her son but could not see him behind the crowded travelers standing over her. She glanced out the window and caught a passing glimpse of a small group of young men burying their cars and television sets deep in the ground on the town’s outskirts.
    “We should have done that,” a woman behind Marusia said.
    “What for? We’ll be back in a couple of days,” said someone else, probably her husband.
    The bus took a back road,