She danced

 As published in Seaside

Through the window, across the street, beyond the white fence and raspberry bushes, the old woman shuffled through her garden, adding vegetables to the bucket on her arm. A patchwork skirt brushed her ankles and the silver braid that cascaded from her babushka swayed at her hips. 

“Ready?” 

Kate nodded to Lucas who had just walked into his grandmother’s kitchen. Hand-in-hand, they stepped outside where the world smelled of canola. As the couple crossed the gravel road separating Lucas’s grandmother’s house from his great-grandmother’s, Kate searched the garden, but the woman was gone.

“How do we visit if she doesn’t speak English?” Kate asked as they followed the broken path around the garden and up the wooden steps. 

“We wing it.” Lucas rapped on the storm door and pulled it open. “Babunya!” he called. “It’s Lucas.”

Fried onions and musty wood hung in the air. Kate followed Lucas past black-and-white photographs of families standing stoic, and into a tiny kitchen where saltshaker cats, flower-painted teacups, and dozens of Ukrainian easter eggs—pysanky, as Lucas called them—filled shelves. 

“Babunya, we’re here!” 

A shadow crossed the wall and then the woman from the garden hobbled into the kitchen. Her slippered feet swished across the floor as she shuffled towards Kate. Her mouth had fallen in like a sinkhole and her face was lined as though time had etched crevasses through her skin, but her eyes, despite their milky film, sparkled like a schoolgirl in love. Gibberish poured from her as her knobby fingers pulled Kate’s face within inches of her crooked nose. 

“She likes you,” Lucas said as the woman released Kate. 

“What was she saying?”

“Not sure. My Ukrainian is super rusty.”

Clumps of soil fell to the counter as Babunya pushed aside the bucket of beets and peas. She retrieved a handful of cookies from a jar and spiraled them on a plate. “Yeest-y.” The plate trembled as Babunya held it out. 

“She wants you to have one.”

Kate glanced at Babunya and took a cookie, deep brown and plain. “Thank you.” 

“Yeest-y.”

Kate fingered the cookie while Lucas nodded and Babunya hovered. She nibbled it and rather than the brick she expected, it was soft and spongy, and her tastebuds were hit with subtle sweetness, hints of cinnamon, and a tinge of maple. “Oh my.” 

“I know, right? Babunya’s molasses cookies are unreal.”

Babunya smiled her witchy smile and tottered out of the room.

As Kate reached for another cookie, a collection of tattered notebooks on a shelf caught her eye. “What are those?”

“Check this out.” Lucas snagged a journal and flipped it open. Handwritten Cyrillic covered the page, and 27 Something 1936 was written above.

Kate’s eyes went wide. “Was this written in 1936?”

“The event is from 1936. Babunya writes our family’s history. She has boxes of journals.”

“What’s she planning to do with them?”

“I don’t think she has a plan. My dad talks about having them translated and published but it’s a big job.”

Kate ran her hand down the page as though she could collect memories simply from touch. “This is incredible.”

“Babunya lived an incredible life. The story of her peeling potatoes on a steamship when her family immigrated is unbelievable.”

Babunya shuffled back into the room, a shoebox in her grasp. Her sparkling eyes and excited grin overshadowed her grooved skin as she pushed the box into Kate’s hands. “Dlya vas.” 

“She said it’s for you.”

“Me?”

Babunya rested her hands of veins and knuckles atop Kate’s smooth fingers. “Dlya vas.” 

Kate eased open the box. Nestled in tissue paper lay a simple crown of white silk flowers and a lace veil. Babunya trilled out another rhythm of words, but slower, pressing each sound into Lucas. 

“It’s so you can…” Lucas paused to listen. “She wants to dance at our wedding...?” He turned to Kate and shrugged.

“Can she make the journey?”

“She’s never stepped fifty kilometers beyond this town. Not since her family arrived ninety years ago.” 

Lucas focused on Babunya’s words until his furrowed brow smoothed and a smile lit his face. “Kate,” he said, “Babunya wants to be at our wedding, and this is how. She wants you to wear her wedding veil.”

                                                                                                            *

As the couple crossed the road, Kate hugged the box and looked back at the house of the old woman. Beyond the white fence, through the raspberry bushes, and past the window, Babunya, in her babushka, lines, gums, and smile, danced.