They made their way home, holding hands. Katya thought she might burst from both the adrenaline rush of sneaking around hiding food and the overwhelming love she felt for the man next to her.
“You are my calm in this storm.” She raised his hand up and kissed his knuckles.
They met again the next night, and the next, until they’d secreted away a lot of the extra stores of food from their households, hauling rye, millet, flour, and buckwheat to the forest and fields, hiding them in areas they had played in as children. They detailed the locations in sparsely worded notes tucked under a loose board in Katya’s barn loft so they wouldn’t forget where anything was, and then they waited.
A few weeks later, a sharp banging on the door woke her.
Tato stumbled to the door, still in his nightshirt and struggling to put his pants on as he went. Her eyes fell to the bundles of clothes and blankets that still rested next to the door—her mother refused to put them away in case they were arrested—and she shivered.
“Who’s there?” Tato called out. His tall, strong frame filled the doorway, but his white-knuckled grip gave away his fear that he could not protect his family from what lay on the other side of the door.
Katya’s heart banged so hard against her ribs she thought everyone must hear it thumping. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders as she pulled them back and stuck her chin in the air. Alina touched her hand and Katya gripped it, trying to quell her sister’s trembling.
A voice with a Russian accent bellowed, “We’ve come to collect your grain for your taxes. Open up!”
It had taken some convincing to get Mama to agree to sending things out to be buried in the fields and woods, but now, her eyes met Katya’s across the room, and gratitude shone in them. Despite the tension in the room, a small sense of victory surged through Katya.
Tato looked over at Mama. She stood up, pulled herself to her full height, and nodded her head. He opened the door and they barreled into the small home so fast that Tato barely had time to get out of the way. The door slammed into the wall, and two large men in dark overcoats began scanning the room with narrowed gazes.
Katya’s smile faded. She’d never seen the first man with the accent, a Russian with dark hair, and mustache. One of the Soviet officials brought in for collectivization, he exuded power, but he was not the muscle of the group. That role fell to the local drunkard, Prokyp. He bullied, stole, and begged when he needed to and had never done a productive thing in his life. All of the wrongs Prokyp imagined done to him were used to fuel his fire against his fellow villagers, making him the perfect pawn for the activists to employ. Everyone despised him.
The hulking frames of the men overshadowed the slight woman with them. Even bundled heavily in wraps, Katya recognized her: Irina, the wife of the village teacher. They probably made her come to lend a sense of security, as she was a local, but the look on her pinched face erased any smidgen of reassurance Katya might have felt. Irina’s pale cheeks led to nervous eyes that darted around, afraid to land on their faces and connect with them.
“Where is your grain?” Prokyp growled. “Our collective is not filling its goal.”
“We aren’t members of the collective.” Tato drew himself up and glared at Prokyp. “My grain is my own.”
Katya swelled with pride at her father’s strong words.
Prokyp chuckled, and Irina flinched as if someone had struck her. “Even better. You say you’re not members. Well, then, your tax is even higher.”
“We have nothing left.” Tato stood firm but paled. “We’ve given everything for taxes. I filled my quota.”
“The quotas have been raised,” the Russian man said. The high, nasally voice didn’t match his tall frame, and his face wore a look of disgust as he perused their home. “Search the place.” He nodded toward Prokyp.
“You can’t do this!” Katya said.
“Silence your child.” The Russian glared at Tato. “Or I will do it for you.”
Her father shot her a murderous look, and she bit her lip. Sweat popped out on her forehead as Prokyp lumbered around their home, overturning beds and blankets and pulling open cupboards. He found some butter and a small sack of flour meant for bread making the next day and passed it to Irina, who placed it in her bag without looking up.
Mama winced as they took the food, but her face remained an emotionless mask until he reached the corner of the house that held the religious icons. With undisguised glee, Prokyp swung his hand across the shelf, pushing holy water, candles, and the psalm book to the ground. He tore down the rushnyk Mama had lovingly stitched to adorn the religious icons and knocked down the pictures. They crunched under Prokyp’s feet as he reached over to take the cross off the wall and slip it into his bag.