For the defenders of Azovstal
CHAPTER ONE
The World Shatters
Mariupol, Thursday, February 24, 2022
The bed moved. I squinched my eyes shut and flipped to my side.
Smack. Something hit my head.
Was Dariia doing one of her silly tricks again?
I reached over to push her away, but her side of the bed was empty.
My hand landed on something hard. I opened one eye. A hunk of plaster? I looked up. A jagged brown spot showed through the white ceiling right above my head.
Not a dream and not my twin sister’s teasing. The whole bed room shook this time, and speckles of plaster salted down on me.
What was happening?
I tumbled out of bed and slipped my feet into my pink bunny slippers, then whipped out to the living room.
Dariia was up and dressed, sitting at the table across from Dad, who was in his pajama bottoms, sipping coffee. They both looked tense.
Just before I’d gone to bed last night, I had carefully sorted out all the components of the complicated bracelet I was making for my dance teacher as a gift for her name day. It was going to have dangling teardrop-shaped ornaments made from Azovstal metal. Dad worked at the Azovstal steel plant, and he collected scraps for me. I had already crafted the pieces into shape and lacquered them with one layer of fire-engine red nail polish and had set them on the tablecloth so they would dry evenly overnight. This morning before school, I was going to apply the second layer of polish so they’d be dry enough to assemble into the bracelet in time for tonight’s dance class. Except all the red teardrops were now shoved to the side of the table in a jumble. Normally, I would have told Dad and Dariia how I felt about them messing around with my stuff, but normal days didn’t start with ceiling chunks falling onto me.
I plopped myself at the table and waited to find out what was going on.
Mom came in from the bedroom dressed in her work clothes.
Her face was tight with worry. “The Russians are attacking the whole country,” she said, holding up her phone to show the news story. “Will it even be safe here in the apartment?”
My heart nearly stopped beating. The Russians were attacking? Was that even possible? They had barked about it for so long that I never dreamed they’d actually bite.
“It’s best to stay put,” said Dad. “They’ll be going after the airports and the armed forces. It wouldn’t make sense for them to waste resources going after twelve-year-old kids like Dariia and Rada, or civilians like you, but stay out of the cross fire.”
Dad’s statement filled me with terror. Stay out of the cross fire? Did he think they were going to be on the streets with guns?
“We need food, then,” said Mom. “There’s not much here.”
Dad got that annoyed look on his face. “Why didn’t you go yesterday?”
Mom’s eyes flashed. “You could have gone too, you know. I was putting together emergency packs for each of us in case the war started.”
She pointed toward the door. Four knapsacks, all lined up neatly.
“It’s not safe to go to the grocery store,” said Dad.
“We can just go to Tkachuks’,” said my sister.
Mrs. Tkachuk ran a shopping mart downstairs. Even though it wasn’t very big, we did a lot of our shopping there because it was so handy.
Mom punched the number into her phone, talked briefly, then hung up.
“They’re open right now,” she said. “But Mrs. Tkachuk said to hurry because she wants to get home.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Dariia. “To help carry stuff up.”
There wasn’t an elevator in our building, so everything had to be lugged up the stairs. I looked down guiltily at my own slippers and nightgown. If I had gotten dressed, I would have been able to help Mom, but Dariia was dressed and ready to go.
“Both girls should stay up here,” said Dad. “I’ll go down with you.”
He was sitting there in just pajama bottoms and slippers. He was no more prepared than I was. It didn’t surprise me when Mom shook her head at Dad.
“You’re not even dressed, Ivan. I need to hurry. Dariia is dressed. She can come with me instead.”
Dad reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I think your mom would be happier if we were both dressed by the time they get back from the store.”
I looked down at my nightgown and slippers. He was right.
Who knew what today would bring? We had to be prepared for anything.
The ankle-length vintage dress of burgundy crushed-velvet edged with pink piping that I’d laid out for wearing today now seemed wildly inappropriate. Much as I hated Dariia’s fashion sense, I had to admit that my sister’s leggings and hoodies seemed more practical if there really was a war going on. Normally, I wouldn’t dare touch her stuff—not just because it was often sweaty and gross but also because she had forbidden me to touch it. She thought I’d wreck it—which was just weird.
I put on my own underwear and T‑shirt, then went to Dariia’s side of the bed. I kept my clothing neatly sorted in a box under the bed, but my sister’s things were strewn all over the floor, dirty and clean mixed together. I ended up having to sniff three hoodies before I found a reasonably clean one that happened to be dark green—not my sister’s favorite color. After that, I pulled on a pair of bright yellow sweatpants that I had never seen her wear. I figured that even if she got mad at me for wearing her things, she couldn’t accuse me of ruining her favorite stuff. Once I was dressed, I twisted my braid into a high knot and stuffed my phone into a pocket. I stepped back into my slippers and went out to the living room.
Dad was dressed. He was sitting at the table finishing up a call. He set the phone down and said, “That was Ostap. He says all of us can shelter at Azovstal until this is over.”
“That’s great,” I said.
Azovstal was a massive steel plant built in the 1930s. It had a maze of bunkers and bomb shelters underneath it that went on for several kilometers. If any place was safe in Mariupol, it was in an Azovstal bomb shelter.
“But what about you? Don’t you have to report to your unit?”
“We’re meeting at the plant,” said Dad.
“So when Mom and Dariia get back, we’ll be on our way?
We’ll take the food with us, the knapsacks, and whatever else we’ll need?”
“That’s the plan,” said Dad. “We’ll get through this.”
Right at that moment a loud crash shook our building.
Through the window, I watched in horror as a high-rise a block away burst with smoke. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that this wasn’t going to be as simple as Dad said.
“Mom and Dariia should have been back by now,” I said.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Dad punched in Mom’s number. “It didn’t go through.” He hit Redial and stared at the screen. “Come on, Yaroslava, pick up.”
“Maybe we should just go down and meet them.”
“She’s expecting us to be in the apartment,” said Dad. “What if we miss them somehow? Let’s give them five more minutes to either call back or return. In the meantime, do your bathroom stuff.”
Another explosion flashed bright outside our window. I swallowed down my anxiety. I didn’t like the fact that Mom hadn’t picked up.
While Dad kept stabbing Redial, I slipped into the bathroom.
I’d just put toothpaste on my brush when a sound like a thousand dinner plates exploding made me drop it. The floor of the bathroom shook. I clutched the sink.
When the noise and shaking stopped, Dad called out, “Rada, are you okay?”
I tried to open the door, but it stuck on something. “I’m fine, Dad,” I shouted.
I took a step back, then charged the door shoulder first. It barely budged. The second time I bashed the door, it scraped open. The bottom of it was stuck on glass fragments and plaster that had fallen in front of it. On the living room floor was a Dad sized mound covered with the tablecloth, studded with shards of glass. And he had been worried about me?
My bracelet pieces were scattered in with the glass and plaster all over the living room, looking like giant drops of blood. Our window was blown out. It had just a few jagged fingers of glass left in it; rain and wind blew through our flat.
The shards studding the tablecloth looked razor-sharp, and thinking of my dad underneath all that made my heart pound.