CHAPTER TWO If anything ever happened to Bellatine''s hands, this story would be over before it began. Without her hands--their delicate motions, their deft strength--none of this would be possible. They were woodworkers'' hands, able to whittle an ornate little owl into the neck of a spoon or heft a chainsaw through a Douglas fir. These hands were gentle as lace when they needed to be, or strong as iron. They were small, in fitting with Bellatine''s general stature, but could muster a vise-strong grip on a jam lid or a torque wrench. The fingernails were often slicked with a gold glitter polish, gnawed and chipping at the edges. The knuckles, slightly over-plumped from cracking and the fingertips calloused from labor. To guess her age by looking at her hands would be futile, as they suggested far more than Bellatine''s twenty years.
These were her mother''s hands, too, and her mother''s before that, and hers. Heirloom hands, passed down through generations. Hands like these are versatile enough to carry an entire story in their cupped palms. Luckily, no harm will befall them. Not in this story, at least. There will be many other sufferings--I can''t protect you from that. But I can promise that of all the pains this story holds, none of them belong to Bellatine''s hands. Her hands will remain unsullied.
*** On the third day in September, Bellatine''s hands were busy wringing one suspender of her denim overalls like a goose''s neck. Her knuckles were white, fidgeting. She was nervous. She could admit that much to herself. Maybe she had no reason to be, but she could feel a long eel of dread swimming laps in her stomach, nonetheless. The Greyhound toward the Red Hook Marine Terminal was only halfway to its destination. It had paused at a gas station, and Bellatine jostled past rows of carpeted seats and down the steep stairs to the parking lot. She untangled her matted bus hair with her fingers, a jaw-length shingle bob with bangs; she knew the flapper flair of the cut looked incongruous with her slouchy uniform of overalls and striped T-shirt, but she didn''t care.
Long hair can get caught in power tools, so she kept hers short and sweet. It was a cool afternoon, the promise of autumn just beginning to puncture the air. She bent over to touch her feet, stretching the tight muscles in her back, sore from hours on the half-empty bus. Was Isaac already there, at the shipping yard? She hadn''t heard from him in four days, when they''d first agreed on a time to meet. Maybe he wasn''t even coming. It wouldn''t be unlike her brother to vanish without a word and leave her to deal with the shipment on her own. She imagined herself sitting in some estate office, filling out acquisitions paperwork, cursing her brother''s absence while signing her name in wet black ink on the package release forms. The anxiety quieted.
Wishful thinking, she realized--to not have to deal with Isaac at all. As much of a hassle as it would be on her own, it would be easier. Calmer. Without Isaac, she could at least be the one in control. But no. He''d be there. There was no chance in hell that Isaac would skip out on a mystery like this. He wouldn''t arrive with a sense of duty, no desire to help out with a tedious family chore--it''d be his curiosity that would draw him in.
He''d want front-row seats to see whatever was about to be hauled off that barge when it pulled into port. A few days prior, both Yaga siblings had received an identical call from a man with a thick Eastern European accent. An inheritance lawyer, he''d claimed. Bellatine had assumed it was a scam at first, but when she called home to check, her mom confirmed the information as legitimate. "Your twice-great-grandmother, my bubbe''s mother," Mira, Bellatine''s mother, had clarified. "On your dad''s side?" Bellatine asked, pinning the phone between her ear and shoulder to leave her hands free. "My mom''s. What''s that noise?" "I''m at work.
" She set down the sandpaper and cracked open a tin of mahogany wood stain, dipping in a rag. "You know, she may have been the one who started the surname tradition, where the women passed on the family name rather than the men. Or maybe that was the next generation . At any rate, we''ve always been a stubborn flock, Yaga women. You certainly inherited that much from the family line, Bellatine." Stubborn was one word for it. It was true--by all accounts, Yaga women were bold and took what they wanted; what they wanted, however, rarely included their own daughters. Though Bellatine had spent years on tour with her family''s puppet company growing up, she felt like she barely knew her mother.
Sometimes she felt that her mom parented her puppets more closely than her. Mira wasn''t cruel, exactly. Just sealed off, like a museum display of a mother enclosed behind a glass cabinet. To be studied and respected, but never played with. They''d certainly never spoken at length about their family history--or anything else, for that matter. Mira''s own mother had died when Bellatine was little, but the few memories she did have of her bubbe had left a cold, chalky impression, rather than one of maternal warmth. Mothers and daughters might share a name in the Yaga line, but that''s where the intimacy stopped. "Do you know anything about this woman? Any idea what might be in her inheritance?" "I don''t have time for this, Bell.
Your father and I are supposed to meet with the board at noon, and I''m knee deep in planning the festival. We''ve been working with a new set painter, an incredible woman from Yemen, but I honestly don''t know where in the budget we''ll--" "Just quick, then. Anything." "When my bubbe came to the United States," Mira continued, making sure to sound put out, "my great-grandmother stayed in Russia. There may have been letters after that, but they never saw her again. I know she was very poor, like my grandparents were poor, so we didn''t think she''d bothered to leave a will. What would she have written into it? Seems like we were wrong." Per stipulations in this will, according to the lawyer, it had been hidden from the family until seventy years from the date of their ancestor''s death.
As of this month, those seventy years were up. Allegedly, the document had specifically directed that the inheritance be bequeathed to the deceased woman''s "youngest living direct descendants." When the estate lawyer had traced the Yaga bloodline, he''d found the youngest members: Bellatine, and her older brother, Isaac. "No money," the lawyer had insisted. "An heirloom." "What kind of heirloom?" Bellatine had asked. "Very large. But I know nothing what inside box, I have not open.
The will clearly: no one open but you and your brother. There will be shipment, from Ukraine to New York. You must go New York, receive shipment, early next week. Paperwork wait for you at terminal." And so, Bellatine had booked a bus from northern Vermont to New York. Soon, she''d be there. If all went according to plan, the shipment would be waiting. And so would Isaac--her only sibling, whom she''d last seen six years prior, when he''d dropped out of high school to hop trains and chase stories and see America, leaving everything and everyone behind.
Even her. *** Behind her, the Greyhound growled back to life. She imagined its headlights glowing like nostrils full of golden flame. Great wings unfolding from its metal spine. Her hands tingled, dots of heat humming in her rough fingertips. She reached into her overalls'' pocket and gripped a little wooden spoon, pressing her thumb into the dipper, already smooth and worn from touch. Breathe slow. In, then out, she told herself.
Count to five. Her emotions were getting the best of her. She hadn''t felt her control on edge like this in a long, long time. But ever since she''d learned that she''d be seeing her brother again, her thoughts had been fragmented, flitting from the past to the future to the past again. She squeezed her fists tighter until her joints cracked. She couldn''t let herself get careless. There was work to be done. She turned and climbed back aboard.
*** Scarlet scaffolding laced over the Red Hook Marine Terminal, hovering above concrete runways in vast, interlocking bridges. It gave the appearance of a massive red spiderweb, woven with steel. Bellatine navigated past car-sized crane hooks, which swung down to hoist shipping containers from barges to the mainland. The containers reminded her of children''s building blocks, all orange and green and blue and silver, stacked one atop the next. Across the black harbor waters, the New York City skyline loomed steady, a chrome army of giants keeping watch. Bellatine nudged past a cluster of longshoremen in hard hats. She followed signs for the freight station, where cargo was stored and unloaded from boxes before being restuffed and transported by train. According to the short, white-whiskered man she''d encountered at the gate, her great-great-grandmother''s shipment would be held there for pickup.
How she''d manage to transport it afterward was another question--but that was a problem for later. First, she''d need to find out what exactly was in that box. At just past four, the sun was beginning to weep down toward the horizon, hazing the quay in pale peach-colored light. Bellatine rounded a tall warehouse. There, perched on a stack of wooden pallets, sat Isaac. He was leaning back with his eyes closed, a cigarette tucked behind his ear. Asleep, Bellatine realized. Beside her broth.