The Woman had one ornament she treasured. An angel, golden wings and skin of cream (porcelain perhaps, but it was difficult to say as no one remembered the angel’s precise origin). Fair, fair hair she had and an even fairer face – dusted champagne cheeks. Robed in a lovely, carmine dress that flowed from the cut of her collar bones down to her toes.
The angel held a star in her hands. And she was a star herself too: the star that adorned the yelka, the pine tree assigned once a year to the corner of the Woman’s living room, an evergreen beacon placed to attract the spirits of joy. Though, the angel was no star in the traditional sense of decorations, physical crowning jewels, and the glittering like. Rather, it was a metaphorical sense, a matter of ungarnished reverence. To the Woman, this one angel was the most precious figure, and it was this young maiden that was summoned first by the Woman each year when the yelka arose from her slumber. When the inevitable cold of December announced its annual, frosted appearance, the Woman’s daughter would observe how the Woman carefully parsed through the glass globes and Saint Nikolai’s that filled the large box dedicated to hosting the spirit of Novyi god each year until it was time to celebrate the winter festivities, when she would pull out the angel before all else. It was with a mother’s delicate hands that she would scoop the angel out, gently unraveling her from the swabs of white tissue paper that enveloped the angel during the darker days spent inside the box, in the warmer times of the year.
For it had been her own mother that had bestowed the angel with golden wings and robed in a lovely, carmine dress to the Woman some many, many months ago. Months which had slipped into decades as the new years kept coming. The Woman would admit that she could not quite say when or where her mother had found the angel in the first place, but the Woman figured she could surely inquire at a later date. Besides, details such as these don’t matter nearly as much as the feelings which surround the fact. What did matter to the Woman was that the angel had come from her mother. And now that she was far from her (separated by practical barriers such as continents and oceans) and could not quite say when or where she might see her again (prevented by practical matters such as passports and credit cards), the angel possessed an incredible amount of gravity – funny, perhaps, considering angels are not meant to be tied down to this zemlya. The angel was further a kind of tangible proof – of the country the Woman and the Daughter had come from, and of the country she wondered whether she would ever return to.
So the Woman would scoop the angel out, unravel the swabs of paper slowly, and faithfully search the angel’s face for indications as to how she had been faring since the two had last seen each other. Blow softly on the fair face to shoo away the specks of dust which had accumulated despite the box’s best attempts to shield her from time during the off-season.
The Daughter always noted how the Woman would smile at her angel, still anchored in unchange. What a beauty you are! the Woman would think to herself. A beauty fit to be hung at the top of the yelka. Front and center. Certainly above all the baubles that dangled from the branches of the yelka, and even above the Nikolai’s. The rest of the ornaments hung from paper clips, untwisted and retwisted to make for make-shift hooks, but the angel hung elegantly from one gleaming thread that fed into the flaxen hair that fell to her shoulders.
Each year, the Woman reassigned the angel to her designated spot on the yelka. Upon guiding the angel to her place, she would take a step back and smile at her handiwork. Or, rather, handiwork may not be the proper word to describe what it was that the Woman so admired. The Woman had not made the angel after all – her fingers had taken no part in the crafting. No, she had simply taken care of it all these years. Treating it with the dearness one affords a child until she might perhaps return it to her mother someday. Ask her where it had come from.
The Woman’s daughter had watched the Woman repeat this sacred ritual year upon year until she came closer to comprehending the significance of the custom herself. Tried to. When she had been very young, the Woman’s daughter could not at all understand why this angel was deemed worthier than the other, much bigger and more colorful ornaments. The vibrant balls that glimmered under the twinkle of lights and the snegovik with his cheerful face that smiled back at the Daughter. Or her favorite Saint Nikolai – the one with the fur-lined coat and black boots and rosy cheeks that hinted at ebullience in a way in which the angel never could. Yes, if the Daughter had her way, he would be at the very top of the yelka, above all the other toys which the angel somehow triumphed in the eyes of the Woman. But the Woman had insisted.
The angel flew first on her golden wings to the yelka.
Once, the Daughter had even attempted to place Saint Nikolai where she thought he’d look best, stretching up on her tiptoes to try and reach this higher perch. The Woman had not said anything then, but the look she cast had been answer enough. The Daughter sighed deeply, took Nikolai into her hands again and moved him a little lower, and a little bit to the left. In that moment, the Daughter had asked why, but the Woman offered no explanation besides a passing because in exchange. Such was the standard response.
Where did you get it? the Daughter asked again.
Nothing. So she made an educated guess. Furrowed her brows in thought.
Did Babushka give it to you?
The Woman nodded simply.
As the Daughter aged forth with the Woman, she took it upon herself to care for this yuletide order too, wanting to demonstrate to the Woman she cared as well. She would slap lightly at her younger brother’s eager hands when he tried to place the snegovik in place of the angel, not that he could reach the top of the yelka anyway. That’s not his spot! she would explain, a bit presumptuously. Angel goes first! Together, they moved the snegovik a little lower, and a little bit to the right.
Across the years, there came a point when it became the Daughter who continued the act. When the Woman stopped caring to extract the angel from the box that sheltered it year round, it fell instead to the Daughter to do so.
This change struck suddenly. Why the Woman stopped caring was, at first, difficult to determine, and she certainly was not about to speak the answer out loud to her Daughter. For the woman had never been one for explanations. Rather, to find the reason behind this change, if reason can ever be a satisfactory tool to explain a human act, the Daughter had to think back to what she knew of the angel. Where had the Woman gotten it from? Why did the Woman love it so? What caused such love to seemingly vanish?
All the Daughter truly knew was that the Woman had once received the angel from her own mother. From Babushka as they had called her – an elusive and almost peripheral character whom the Daughter had only met twice herself. One meeting blended seamlessly into the first four years of the Daughter’s life, when she had been too young to parse through time and translate being into memory. When both the Daughter and the Woman had not known borders such as continents and oceans that keep people apart, when living had been easier. That first meeting had been stretched into every day, habitual visits paid by Babushka to their fourth floor apartment block, until passports and credit cards became necessary to meet again.
The second meeting had come about four years later, one the Daughter ingrained into the folds of her subconscious so that she would never forget. The Daughter had latched onto every detail then, the fourteen hours flight to the Charles de Gaulle airport and how they had to run to not miss the next leg of their journey farther east. The AirFrance airplane cheese had stunk and her brother cried when his ears popped as the plan began its descent. Babushka had been waiting for them when they landed.
This second encounter was when the Daughter formed her primary impressions of the Woman’s mother. She was a bit of a bristly character, like prickly pear or pineapple. She spoke in commands and didn’t waste her words on praise and compliments. Strong-willed, one might say, and far shorter than the Daughter had imagined her to be. Why at eight years old she had even been taller than Babushka! Still, there was something appealing about this distant figure who had somehow managed to direct the decorating that took place in a home miles away, wielding an iron influence (at least, when it came to the aesthetics of yelkas and angels) over the Woman and the Woman’s daughter for years.
Truthfully, the Daughter was a bit scared of Babushka. But she did have a beautiful singing voice that any khor would no doubt be sad to lose, and one that somehow rendered her into less of a frightening personality. When Babushka kissed them all goodbye at the airport, so they could return in time to adorn their own yelka and celebrate across the ocean where they now lived, the Daughter had not realized then she would never again hear the melodies sung by that stunning voice. They would never sing them together.
Five years past that second meeting, sad was not an apt enough word to articulate what the Woman felt now that she could no longer bring herself to touch the angel. She spoke even less than she had before.
The new years kept coming as they had prior, without pity for the grieving Woman. The Daughter puzzled over this change in tradition and significance long before she could come to understand it (perhaps, she never fully would), and the Woman, these days, had little desire to continue the caretaking that she had upheld for the past eight years spent across the ocean. After all, there was no longer anyone to return the angel to. No more visits to Babushka. Her golden wings and skin of cream… no one could say now where the angel had come from originally. The fair hair and even fairer face, the lovely, carmine dress. No, the Woman could not continue looking upon the angel on the yelka when she spent her days praying for a different angel now. One much more real, and much more lost.
One she hoped the heavens had received, and one to whom she might never return the angel she had guarded in indefinite waiting.
Meanwhile, come wintertime, the Daughter would open that same big box which still housed the Woman’s angel. Place the shunned beloved upon the yelka. The Daughter hung the angel carefully in its spot, whispering, I remember.
And wondered, was Babushka remembering too?