The Sky Unwashed Read Online Free Page A

embroidered shirt and long red sash that wound several times around his narrow waist, and which also held up a pair of satin blue
sharavary
, the balloon-wide pants that had fit him more snugly in his younger days.
    “We’re taking bets to see if Hanna and the drunk she’s marrying will show up,” Marusia overheard the man in front of her say.
    “Oh, she’ll come all right,” said the stout woman next to him. “The grandparents promised Hanna her ruby necklaces and a wad of money Evdokia got from selling her cow. That’ll help her get through the next winter, for sure, and now with a new little soul on the way . . .”
    The crowd hushed one another and nodded their heads in the direction of a short woman, dressed in a long white wedding dress and veil, slowly making her way on the muddy road toward the crowd. The hem of her dress was dotted with wet mud, and her long veil dragged over the ground. She held a fading bouquet of pansies and tulips and hesitated each time her spiked heels caught in the mud. “
Do bisa!
” she cursed loudly when she nearly slipped and fell. She regained her balance and continued.
    “Pick up the train of your dress,” a woman in lavender lace shouted. “Or it will get dirty!”
    “It’s too late for that, Mama!” shouted the bride.
    “Where’s the groom?” someone snickered.
    A robust young man, blond with watery blue eyes, and in workclothes from the Chornobyl plant, put down his lunch pail and ran toward the bride. He picked her up and carried her the rest of the way to the grandparents.
    The crowd applauded. “Well done, Maksym,”shouted the bride’s father dressed in a blue pin-striped suit with a pink boutonniere.
    “Maksym, you should marry her yourself,” someone in the crowd shouted.
    “And make my wife mad? No thank you!” Maksym said. The crowd laughed at the blushing man. Everyone knew what a bad-tempered woman he was married to.
    “Good people, this is a solemn occasion,” shouted the bride’s mother. “Hanna go ahead.” She gently pushed her daughter toward a tiny fringed rug beneath the grandparents’ feet. Hanna knelt before them and grabbed their withered hands into her own. “Bless me
Babo
and
Didy
. I am about to leave my home and become a bride.”
    Some of the younger people were snickering. Hanna immediately recognized them as her friends from her job at the plant. “Hey Hanna, where’s the groom? Maybe he went to the wrong wedding,” yelled out a brassy-haired young woman with the same shade of lipstick as Hanna’s.
    Hanna stood up and turned around, shaking her bouquet at them. “You all just shut up or don’t bother coming to the party later on!”
    “Hanna, you shut up,” her mother said. “Don’t disrespect your grandparents.
Tatu
, wake up.” She gently nudged her old father’s shoulder.
    “Oleh, wake up and speak to her,” said Evdokia.
    The old man looked up. His mustache was long and white, with dabs of beeswax turning up the corners, and he pulled on it as he spoke. “Well, nice to see everyone.Let’s go to the church now. Come on. It won’t kill you.” He stood up and would have left, but his daughter grabbed him and firmly pressed his shoulders, leveling him back into his chair.
    “Sit down, crazy fool,” Evdokia whispered. “We can’t go anywhere without the groom.” She sighed. “Get up Hanna, no use waiting for your husband like that. You’ll be on your knees long enough, you’ll see, either praying over or cleaning up after that . . . that bad one.” She shook her head. “You’ll see.”
    “Hanna! Hanna!” A young man standing in a cart pulled by a white horse shouted in the distance. His light brown hair was darkened by hair cream, and he was dressed in a suit and a wide crimson tie that could have flagged any bull in a field. It was Ihor, Hanna’s groom. He waved his hand, and a long, scandalous purple and green Italian silk scarf tied to his wrist flapped in the breeze. The three other men in the