1: Varvara
Saturday, June 6, 1903
The breeze was warm and sweet. The ever-present smell of manure was no longer offensive, but comforting in a way - the cows were already out grazing in the fields, milked while the sun was still asleep. The summer heat was already setting in, making the very air itself feel like soup. If it weren't for the occasional stirring of air from Jamaica Bay to the south of the island, it would be next to impossible to breathe by noon. As it was, at least there would be some reprieve that the air at least moved. The men gathered by the tall barn, getting their tools and carts ready for a long day at the far end of the acreage, plowing fields to ready them for fall crops.
The Egorov farm was far enough from the growing city center in a rural bubble of its own. Flatlands was an area of Brooklyn that was still home to farmhouses and acres of open land where stock was raised to feed busy Manhattanites. Industry was quickly changing the face of New York and the city sprawled further and further out, swallowing up the natural makeup of the land. Whole neighborhoods popped up overnight, hills shaved down to flat lands and perfect grids of new streets were laid out where wildlife had ruled for millenia. The farm was on borrowed time, though for now it was busy enough - a growing city was a hungry city after all. All the milk and beef the farm could produce went straight to Manhattan's restaurateurs, while fresh produce, eggs, and cheeses sold well at market. Every busy season started off with the hope that there would be a next one and at least this summer was busy enough that Fyodor Mikhailovitch Egorov was able to hire on some extra men to help him and his boys manage the place.
The men moved out in the fields and their strong voices carried on the breeze as they sang a crass tune that set a pace for their toil in the pounding sun. Fyodor had taken two of his three sons to sell fresh goods at the Hester Street Market. The hired hands were left under the supervision of the eldest of the Egorov boys - a sign that the father was starting to finally forgive the son for his transgressions of four years past. Yaroslav worked right alongside the rest, shoulder to shoulder with no regard for any supposed hierarchy among the working men. At the Egorov farm, everyone put in their share of the work and reaped benefits equally. Yaroslav threw his weight into plowing the field, thinking to himself for the millionth time that he was going to have a talk with his father about getting a plow that could be hitched up to some oxen. He could think of at least half a dozen things that he could use the hired hands for, instead of plowing fields by hand. Times like these, when faced with his father's stubbornness, Yaroslav thought back to the year and a half he'd spent on the streets of Manhattan as a newsie, thinking that city life wasn't all that horrid. There was no time to dwell on memories, however. The plow hit a boulder and Yaroslav had to stop and wrestle the thing out of the ground before he could continue.
The women were scattered about the grounds with their own chores, keeping closer to the main house. Some of them had come in with their husbands to help with smaller tasks and would stay on until November. They would help prepare produce for sale; package up meat, dairy and eggs; wash and mend clothes; help with the cooking and tend to their husbands to keep them from straying into town too often.
A few of the women were more permanent fixtures: the farmer's wife Varvara Petrovna; Anya, Tamara, and Olga - her three nieces who stayed at the farm for the summer; her three-year-old daughter Nora; and Lucy - the child's nanny. The Egorov brothers ranged in ages from seven to nineteen while their three-year-old sister was the only girl the family had been blessed with. Her mind wandering to her children once again, Varvara paused her mending and looked out from where she sat on the wraparound porch. Her sharp eyes scanned the fields until she could see Yaroslav's cropped, sun-bleached mop bobbing up and down as he worked. He was a handsome boy, his frame filling in nicely from all the hard work in the fields. He was a kind boy too, taking pity on all sorts of strays and the needy. It was a miracle that her Yasha had come to his senses all those years back and came home after getting the sour taste of life in the big city. True to his nature, he didn't come back alone but with another mouth to feed. At least she had proven herself useful. The girl he had brought with him, Lucy Sherway, was an odd one - quiet, with the graying hair of an old crone, and expecting. She never quite got the hang of their language, so Varvara had to give her instructions in English, which irritated her. At least she didn't shy away from hard work like she imagined most city-bred modern American girls would. She had some medical training, which often came in useful. But the deciding factor had been that she would be Nora's wet nurse, still able to produce the nourishment the baby so desperately needed despite Lucy's own eventual loss. She had been intended to just remain the baby's nanny, though over the years the list of Lucy's duties grew as quickly as the baby did.
Varvara had even considered giving the girl some sort of allowance, until one day she caught Yasha looking at the gangly thing with a longing that he had tried to hide. That was the day Varvara Petrovna Egorova decided reluctantly that the nanny had to go. Useful as she was, Yasha needed a good woman from a good family, not some disgraced runaway who, despite their many attempts, still couldn't say much more than a basic greeting in their Russian. Yasha was her son, so whether he liked it or not, while he was on the Egorov farm his parents got final say on how he would live his life and who he was allowed to be enamored with.
"Anya, go see what your baby cousin is doing. It's time for her to eat soon" Varvara asked of her niece. The subtext, of course, was to see what the nanny was doing. It was as if Varvara wanted to catch her red-handed, that would give her reason to dismiss the girl. Of course, none of that ever happened. Lucy was too aware of her own luck to have ended up in this place and would never do a single thing to jeopardize her current living situation.
The breeze played with the flyaways frizzing on top of Lucy's head thanks to the humidity of the day and her repeatedly running a hand over her hair and forehead to wick away sweat. The sun had stripped the last of the colour from her braids and it was now a snow white, which made her look at least five decades older than she was. Her arms were starting to grow tired from the repetitive motion - grab a shirt, throw it on the line, pin it, grab a pair of pants, throw them on the line, pin them. It was peak season, which meant endless clothes to wash every morning for all the extra men and women that were now in temporary employ Even though she did get help at the stream with the actual washing, somehow it was just her dealing with hanging wet things to dry on lines strung up by the barn in direct sunlight. Once the laundry was done, there was mending to do, cleaning, cooking, and a slew of other chores that added up to a full day with barely a minute to sit. All that with caring for Nora all the while.
She desperately wanted a cigarette. The salty ocean air had done a good job of clearing her lungs of the tobacco damage over the years she'd been there. However, the itch in her fingers, craving to hold a tightly-rolled cigarette and the sensation of inhaling the smoke, blowing it out slowly to let the clouds tumble out of her lips - that particular craving was the harder hurdle to get over.
She wasn't going to smoke, no, but she could still want one. It wasn't right to do it around her pint-sized chaperone even if others were just fine to pollute the air around the sweet little thing.
Lucy picked up a large sheet out of her basket of washing and rolled her neck and shoulders before tossing it on the clothesline and tugging it to smooth it out. She pinned it in three places with wooden clothespins and ducked around the sheet to check on Nora. The child sat happily in the grass that was now wet from the dripping laundry, making mud pies in the little puddle she dug out with her clumsy fingers.
"Lusya!?" she heard Anya shout her name, running feet stomping the gravel path that ran from the house to the clearing behind the work shed where the clotheslines were stretched in several rows.
"I'm here! Hold yer hosses, I'm comin'!" She shouted from the where she was still wrestling with the sheet, several rows in and hidden among the clean laundry.
"Hey Annie, how's it rollin?" Lucy spoke as she moved under and around the clothes, her speech still thick with the slang from another life.
"Lusya, it's luchtime soon" Anya called from the edge of where the washing hung in neat rows. Nora giggled happily at the sound of her cousin's voice and teetered toward it on chubby legs, plowing right through the grass that was now damp from the dripping wash, forgetting about her nanny altogether. "Come on and clean up, both of you, before the men starve" the twelve-year-old was authoritative beyond her years. Lucy followed after she finished hanging up the last few things in her basket. She carried the large and empty thing over her shoulder, hanging down her back like some massive shell. Even with her height, Lucy could bet that if she tried really hard enough, she could easily curl right into the bottom of the basket like the red tabby mouser did in the house at the bottom of Varvara's old knitting box.
While Anya entertained Nora on the porch, Lucy loaded up a cart with lunch for the men out in the field and pushed it down the wide dirt road that skirted the fields. Varvara had chosen to follow along that day to check in on how work was progressing. Lucy was never quite sure of how to speak with Varvara - even short, harmless quips about the weather or something adorable Nora did were met with an immediate scowl. Of course, she knew that she was a nobody on the farm - just a set of extra hands and working tits when Nora had been a baby and Varvara couldn't feed her herself. Maybe Varvara resented Lucy because of that too.
Gathered around the cart, the men shared a simple lunch of bread and homemade cheese - workers and family alike. Lucy refilled everyone's tin cups with water still cold from the well, before sitting down close to Yaroslav and offering him a bowl of crisp, fresh apple slices. They all chatted idly about work and the endless rocks out in the far field. Yaroslav kept stealing glances at the girl by his side, a faint glimmer of hope sparking up in the corners of his eyes, inspired by her attention. She always showed him kindness, that was true, but she surprised him by remembering seemingly insignificant details, such as his preference for sliced apples instead of whole. He had bit into a big worm as a kid and ever since then, preferred his apples cut up to avoid a repeat of that gruesome experience. He had never told her the story and she never asked, just noticed that he ate apples in slices and brought him just that.
"Lusya, the coffee" Varvara gestured when the men were done eating and lighting up their cigarettes in order to savor the last few minutes of their reprieve from work. The smell washed over Lucy, soothing her somewhat, though the itch returned to her hand and she kind of wished she was anywhere else but here at the moment.
"Ma, she ain't a maid, how many times we gotta talk about this?" Yaroslav gave his mother a sharp look and got up to help Lucy set out tin mugs for her to pour pitch black coffee into. His accent was quite faint, punctuated by the same speech patterns that Lucy had picked up from the boys in Manhattan.
"Yasha, sit." His mother instructed firmly. Unlike her son's very clear English, Varvara's speech was peppered with hard 'r's and 'k's, her accent thick and sometimes hard to understand whenever she got flustered. "Is her work, like field is you." she had no issue with reminding both of them of their place, in case they ever forgot.
Yaroslav bristled and grumbled something in Russian under his breath, still firmly planted by Lucy's side.
"It's alright, Jake" Lucy glanced up at him, speaking softly, a sincere apology in her eyes "she's right". There was nothing more aggravating to him than when Lucy sided with his mother, especially in matters that directly affected her negatively, and yet she always seemed to do it. "You rest. Here, take the coffee" she pressed a mug into his broad hand and slipped away to distribute the drink to a few of the others. He tried to brush her fingers when taking the mug, but she pulled away so quickly that for a moment he thought the mug itself had burnt her. He frowned when he realized it wasn't the mug, but him.
Later that evening, after Nora had been put to bed and all the chores done for the day, Lucy sat on the stoop of her tiny clapboard cabin, the one on the far end of the row of similarly tiny cabins that were on the property for the hired help. These were meant to be habitable only through the warmer seasons, but Lucy had stayed in hers even in the dead cold of winter, managing somehow. It was the only shred of freedom that she was granted by the Egorovs and she was pretty sure her luck had been simply because they didn't want her anywhere under the same roof as Jake, or Yaroslav as was his real name here.
Lucy had been studying the stars and the moon that was getting so close to full. Another two days and it would bathe the night with all its pale glory. The slam of the kitchen door pulled her out of her reverie. Jake was saying something in Russian to his mother, exasperated by whatever disagreement they had in the kitchen. Another slam and Fyodor Mikhailovitch followed his son and wife out to the porch. Lucy shifted into the shadows of her stoop, trying hard to hear and understand what they were saying. Just because she couldn't speak a word of the language, didn't meant she didn't pick any of it up over the years. She could understand just enough to have it as an ace up her sleeve. Especially when someone was talking about her. Her heart sank when she understood a few key words.
"Nyet!" Fyodor said with a finality that made Jake stop, rooted to his spot on the porch. "Ti naidesh sebe paru, ili mi naidyom...tol'ko ne takuju...vot...kak ona" something about a finding a pairing - Lucy assumed they were speaking about courtship or an arranged marriage. It sounded like Jake had been asking about someone that Fyodor didn't think was a good match.
A few more exchanged words, too quiet for her to hear and Jake stormed off, leaving his parents to speak among themselves as they headed back inside the house.
"Hey you" she spoke in the direction of the crunch of the gravel coming around the side of her cabin a few minutes later. She knew Jake by the sound of his footsteps and the strong scent of soap that always followed him after he was done in the fields. For a farm boy he was the cleanest person she'd ever met. "Everything alright?" she wasn't going to hide the fact that she had heard something. Jake always seemed to know when she was lying.
"Doesn't matter" he mumbled and sat down heavily on the stoop next to her. "It's not a big deal, just a misunderstanding" he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Well there went his tell - Jake only smoked when particularly aggravated. Lucy's fingers twitched involuntarily, lightly twisting the fabric of her skirt, tempted to just reach out and pluck the cigarette from his mouth. She sucked in her bottom lip, trying to push the craving away, but Jake was a few steps ahead already - he pulled out another cigarette and silently offered it to her. Surprising even himself, he leaned in and pressed the end of his own glowing smoke to the unsullied one that she had taken. Their faces lit up momentarily with the faint orange light of the embers and Lucy realized that he was close enough to feel the heat radiating from his cheeks.
"I'm sorry" she pulled back as soon as she could taste the tobacco burning on her tongue "It ain't fair to you, whatever they're doing. You work so hard, you deserve a little leniency."
"Yeah, well...Ain't about that, Luce. It's fam'ly first and...they're real picky about who gets ta be fam'ly" he sighed, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the night sky.
"I'm sorry" she echoed again, sad on his behalf that he couldn't just do what he wanted. Jake deserved to be happy. He was one of those few people that was just genuinely good and there was absolutely no reason to deny him a sliver of his own joy in the world. "So...who's the unlucky girl who doesn't get you because she ain't good enough?"
Jake snorted a bitter laugh and took another drag of his cigarette.
The reply was muffled by the thick cloud of smoke he exhaled through his mouth and nose all at once "You"