The news of Babusya Vilina’s death didn’t make me cry. I didn’t cry on the trip to Vinnytsia, which took forever, or at the funeral, which was swarming with strange faces. I didn’t cry even though as I buried my babusya, I was also burying my secret hopes of visiting her and staying permanently. I refused to internalize it and didn’t understand why my mother started getting ready to go back to Snizhne as soon as the memorial was done. Why was she in such a rush to get on the night train, which would be as hot as a sauna? Mom didn’t enjoy the scenery in Donbas any more than I did, and I wanted to stay, at least for a little while.

“We don’t know what your dad will come up with in the meantime,” she explained. “We’d better go look after him.”

At the station, it was already so oppressive in the train that the thought of a night on one of its bunks made me sick to my stomach. I shouted to Mom that I was going to get something to eat and joined the press in the narrow passageway until I could get out, though my mother was shouting something about having enough food already. A woman was blocking the corridor behind me with her luggage, so Mom couldn’t catch me before I jumped into the crowd on the platform. Maybe there would be a train going somewhere far away, I thought. Maybe there would be a train for Tallinn. Maybe there would be a train that could take me anywhere other than toward Donetsk Oblast. I happened upon a conductor in a garrison cap, who was taking parcels for delivery in exchange for money. Would he hide me in his cabin or somewhere else? Could I shake off my mother completely? But the train wasn’t going to Tallinn. Some other train would be. Some other train would have to. Some other train I could slip onto. I hurried forward as if this were my last chance to get home and then stopped when I heard someone talking about Moscow. Moscow? Why not? Better than Snizhne. The woman standing next to the train was taking something to sell in the Moscow markets in her big sacks. Someone else was hauling a bunch of carts to the same destination, kravchuchkas, which would make carrying the woman’s goods more convenient, and the cart man immediately began trying to make a deal. I didn’t have kravchuchkas to sell, let alone any currency, only the icon of the Holy Mother of God Babusya had left me, which I clutched in my pocket. Babusya had bought it from a Tallinn street vendor outside the Nevsky Cathedral, and it wouldn’t get me very far. I didn’t have anything to haggle over, to get money from, to escape with. My mother’s voice called after me. Pretending not to hear, I pushed aside the long coats and the luggage, and charged headlong without any destination, until the crowd began to board the nearest train and the crush bore me along, giving me no option to turn back amid the determined travelers. I found myself on a local train, which tried in vain to close its automatic doors. A few of the windows were open. Through them more bags were quickly loaded, along with a screaming baby. I grabbed one of the benches and noticed that the faux leather seat covers had been torn off. Someone had sold those, too. I heard my name again. Mom had managed to squeeze in and dragged me onto the platform just as the train set off. She shoved a damp handkerchief into my hand and whispered that there were clean ones in the suitcase. I didn’t understand why she did that. Then I realized I was sniffling. I hadn’t shed a single tear at Babusya Vilina’s funeral, so why now? I wiped my nose. The handkerchief was Babusya’s. I recognized its silken, worn, light blue lines and began to cry harder. I would never move in with Babusya. I was going back to that hateful city, where everyone scowled at us, and to the school where I didn’t have any friends. Babushka Galina had urged us not to talk about Vinnytsia or about our relatives who lived so far west. People in the east didn’t like them and vice versa.

In my bunk on the night train, I pretended to sleep and tried to remember Dynasty. I’d missed the last episodes of the series, and no one had written to me about what happened. Before our move, my friend Evelin had been leaving to see her relatives in Sweden, and Marina and her mother were going to Finland to pick strawberries. They weren’t interested in how I was doing, and why would they be? I doubted I even existed for them anymore.