Ekaterina, Part Two: The Wild Winds

I was young, only twelve, when I met her. We were trying to get our visas, trying to make it possible to emigrate to the United States. The work wasn't good here, not for us. My father worked as a cabdriver, shuttling the few tourists we had, while my mother cleaned hotel rooms. Both jobs paid very, very little. To us, America sounded like a beacon of hope.

How naive we sound. Well, we were naive. We didn't know that the struggles you find at home are replaced with different struggles elsewhere.

Like I said, I was twelve and times were hard. Most of the money went either to helping feed and cloth my brother (still an infant) and I or to bribing officials to push through our visa applications. I did my part by trying to keep everything in the apartment neat and tidy. And then, one day, I saw an old shopping cart outside the building. Feeling as if it shouldn't be there, I pushed it until it was hidden in an alleyway.

I walked back to the apartment building and opened the door, when I heard the voice: "Who moved my cart?" The voice was old and coarse.

I looked back and there was an old woman, caul and kerchief tied around her head, her face wrinkled like an old crumpled newspaper. "Who moved my cart?" she said again and I felt guilty.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I did. I did not realize it belonged to you or you were coming back for it."

The old woman looked at me. "You're a very responsible young woman, aren't you? Very responsible."

"Thank you," I said.

"It wasn't a compliment," she said, her voice hissing. "Young women like you shouldn't be responsible. You should be wild like the winds. You should be like the breeze, free and going wherever it pleases you."

"I'm sorry?" I said.

She stepped forward. "Do you want to be like the winds?" she asked. "Show me my cart and I can make you like the wild winds."

I backed away. "I don't...I don't think so."

"You shudder at me," the woman said. "You should. I am the Grandmother of Shudders. I am the Wild Woman of the Wind. I can teach you hear the whispers of the wind, teach you their wanton ways."

I didn't know how to reply to that, so I turned and rushed back to our apartment.

That night, though, the wind blew open the window to our apartment several times and we had to push a chair in front of it to make it stop. I didn't tell my family, though, but every time the window open, I could hear the wind whisper to me, "Where is my cart?"