KATRINA, OR: THE WOLF

Ukraine. Rural Ukraine. Woods. Trees. Just about as much trees as you’d see in a Ukrainian folktale describing the wolf running. I am saying this in reference to Sirko, a Ukrainian folktale. There is always a wolf running. Why is there always a wolf running in any Eastern European folklore? He must be running from something. From his problems? From the negative opinions of others? From the life that he had to endure? I think so.

Katrina grew up in Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine. It was beautiful. Lots of trees. And not the type of trees that may accompany an individual with peacefulness, but trees that made Katrina’s mind race. Her mind was always racing; she was never stable.

Katrina is six years old. She lives with her mother and her younger brother, but has always dreamed of escaping. No, not escaping into the trees. But, escaping to America. “America iz da lend of za free,” she always heard her neighbors say in their broken english. Was it the land of the free, or was it the land of the free for wealthy American citizens only? She didn’t know, and she was too young to care.

“MAMA,” Katrina screamed as she opened the bathroom door after coming home from school and witnessing her mother passed out with a needle in her vein, “what are you doing!” She was unconscious, unresponsive, and in Katrina’s mind, dead. Katrina’s mother has been dead to her for many years because she never thought about her children, only the drugs. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. Katrina hated that word. Katrina approached her brother, Bogdan, and said, “Boda, mama’s dead.” Boda, of course, started to cry. Katrina, on the other hand, remained somewhat hopeful.

The paramedics arrived, and her mother was taken. Her mother wasn’t the smartest lady; she was a cashier and a seamstress. But, Katrina loved her. How can one not love their mother? But, how can one love a mother who leaves her kids hungry some nights? How can one love a mother whose opioids rush through her veins, whose drugs satisfy her soul, but whose drugs breaks her childrens’?

“She’s alive,” the doctor informed Katrina and Boda. I’m going to call him Boda, since I prefer nicknames for long, Ukrainian names. Boda cried. Katrina was happy, too. A couple of days later, Marina, Katrina and Boda’s mother, relapsed. Get better, relapse, get better, relapse, get better, relapse. It never improved. It was an ongoing cycle. Katrina hated it. But, hate is not the best word. “How can one support their drug habit before their kids?” she always thought to herself.

Katrina applies for a Green Card. I’m sorry, but–

She doesn’t read the rest. Denied.

Katrina is eighteen years old now. She escapes. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it and I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but I’m going to do it,” she said. She disguises her and Boda’s identity. They are now Christina and Alexander. Christina is Alexander’s mother, and she is entering the United States under the claim of political asylum.

One-way ticket to Dallas, Texas. “Where is Texas?” Boda asked me. “Is that in New York?” I laughed at him. “Look at the kapta, and you’ll find out.” Kapta, pronounced kaa-rta, means map in Ukrainian.

No english. No money. No friends. No family members. No resources. No nothing.

We got lucky. How did they let us in? Until this day, I’ll never know.

We arrived to the Fort Worth International Airport. For three days, we slept on a bench in the airport parking lot. I brought a lot of blankets if Boda was cold. It was December, it was cold. Not as cold as Ukraine’s winter, but cold enough. All of these wussy Americans think that this is cold? “Ha-ha,” I laughed to myself, “come to eastern Europe first.”

Three days pass. Katrina finds scraps of coins on the floor; she entered only with $100.00, so she must spend it wisely. “A pay phone,” she screams as she runs towards it. She phones her mother.

Beep. Beep. Beep. No answer. Beep. Beep. “Aaaaallloooooo?” her mother says as she slurs her words.

Mama sounded lifeless.

Katrina always believed in her. Katrina always believed in everyone. She was too nice.

She trusted mama.

It’s the drugs that she never believed in. It was mama’s drugs that made Katrina dread looking at her or Boda’s green veins in the winter.

Mama’s veins were lifeless.

“Mama, it’s me, Katrina!”

The call ends.

“Alo” is Ukrainian for “hello.” “Aaaaallloooooo” is drug language for “hello.”

I call back. Lyudmila, our neighbor, answers. “Katrina, she left us,” she says. “She’s overdosed.”

I hang up.

Stripping. Prostitution. What was I to do? How was I to feed Boda? How was I to find a place to stay?

What was I to do? I was poor.

What was the American Dream? A lie. That’s what it was. A made-up romance that they show in American movies to us, foreign kids.

Boda is old now. He is fifteen and I am twenty-one. Still stripping, still selling my body.

Until I make the mistake. Heroin.

The cycle. It returns.

But, how can I escape? It reminds me so much of the trees.

Oh, how nice it feels. The trees. The greenery. The utopppiiii-

Overdose. Acoma. Boda, alone.

The cycle, it only repeats. I fell into it.

The trees, I escaped from you for a reason. Why must you take me back?

I am the wolf now.

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Ashley Kaminski is an undergraduate at Pace University double majoring in Political Science and Justice Studies. She enjoys playing the piano and traveling, and aspires to be an attorney because her passion is to write. “Writing takes me to another world; it is my escape from reality.”