The dining room table is littered with issues of Pravda and a scattering of handwritten receipts, a sight Grandma would never have allowed in her house. Sasha looks up at the wall with Kolya’s paintings she remembers so well. One of them, The War Ration—a slice of black bread and a small fish, as dark and dry as the bread—is hanging at an angle, revealing a patch of blue wallpaper underneath, bright as a cornflower, not discolored by light. She straightens the frame, and the original deeper blue of the wallpaper disappears. It is back to its washed-out color, the wear of time. It’s back to order now, as Mama would say.

Mama and Grandma are both gone. And how many are left of those who used to inhabit this house? Sima is buried in Ivanovo; Grandma is there, as well, although on the other end of the cemetery that burst beyond its original boundaries decades ago; Kolya, most likely, under layers of mud and other bodies at the Leningrad Front; Mama in Leningrad. Besides Grandpa, she is the only one left.

The door to her grandparents’ room is open, and she walks in as she used to when she was a child and wanted to play under Grandpa’s drafting table that is still jostling for space with the armoire. The bed is in the corner, its hand-crocheted cover Grandma knitted pulled on hastily and crumpled in places. Sasha straightens it, ironing out the white lace with her hand, just as Grandma would have done. Then she steps to the armoire and opens its heavy door, something she has never done before, something she was never allowed to do. She feels she is allowed now. Grandma’s dress is still hanging inside, the dark-blue cotton dress with little white stars and a white collar she remembers so well, the one that always gave her the woody smell of home. Sasha holds the soft fabric between her fingers, then buries her face in it, sniffs the smell out of the collar and the sleeves, inhales whatever is left of Grandma, now all ephemeral, all fleeting. All gone.

The shelves on the left are filled with packs of aspirin and tetracycline, with rolls of bandages and cotton, with knitting needles and a rainbow of crocheting thread, the same things Mama kept in their Leningrad armoire. The top shelf seems to be empty, and for no reason whatsoever, she stands on tiptoe and shoves her hand up to swipe around its bottom. Her hand slides over what feels like a small box, but she is too short to close her fingers around it, so with the help of a stool from the dining room, the box is now in her hands, and she is back on the floor.