What we carry inside

I sat on the floor of the basement, my hands covered in the thin layer of dust that comes from looking through old photos and letters. Happily strewn across my lap were the treasures I’d found in this box: grandpa’s harmonica, amber jewelry galore, a handwritten log of winning lotto numbers from the 1970s - my grandma’s doing. She died when I was young.

My sister, Laura, sat perched on a wooden crate nearby, reading some newly discovered old Lithuanian storybooks to her daughter, Emily. At the table, Mama sifted through photos, sipping wine and humming along to the classic rock station. We were spending the evening in Mama’s basement, looking through our grandparents’ keepsakes to find memorabilia for Emily’s third grade heritage project.

“Jackpot!” Mama exclaimed as she picked up a stack of fragile, worn photographs. “The photos they brought with from Lietuva.”

“Is the motorcycle picture in there?” I cleared my lap and stood up to go look.

“You mean THE motorcycle?” Laura asked cheerfully. “The one your dad buried on his farmland, because if he had to leave it behind--“

“--he sure as hell didn’t want the Soviets to have it,” we finished in unison. Our favorite story as kids, because it made grandpa sound like a badass. Now as adults, it carries different weight and tragedy.

“That’s the one,” Mama said, and turned the photo around to show us. Her dad, Jurgis, stood with one hand on his motorcycle, and her mom, Emilija, stood next to him with a hand on her stomach.

“It’s like a maternity photoshoot before maternity photoshoots were a thing,” I joked.

“Seriously,” Laura said. “I couldn’t imagine having to flee a wartorn country while in your second trimester.” We all nodded. Mama continued to flip through the other photos in the stack, all from 1940s Lithuania before my grandma and grandpa, or Močiute and Senelis as we called them, started their journey to the States.

“Alright Em, we found the pictures! We should start packing up,” said Laura. “We still have to run to Trader Joe’s on the way home.”

“Hey Močiute,” Emily called to her grandma, ignoring Laura and still looking through the box of books. “How do you say ‘look’ in Lithuanian?”

“Žiūrėk,” we all answered.

“Okay, then žiūrėk what I found! It looks old.” Emily handed her Močiute a small, black notebook. Its leather cover was worn and the corners bent, and its pages were covered in almost illegible handwriting.

Flipping through the notebook with a confused look on her face, Mama stopped to read “Mes su Emilija bėgame iš Lietuvos - Emilija and I flee Lithuania,” she translated. “This is dated October 1944… I don’t know how I’ve never seen this before.”

“It was hiding in another book in that box,” Emily explained.

Laura and I perched over Mama’s shoulders to follow along as she continued to look through the journal, amazed and emotional to see her dad’s handwriting. She never met him. A heartbreaking but equally badass story we knew about our grandpa - he was shot by Soviet soldiers while escaping Lithuania during WWII. He caused a diversion so that others, his wife included, could get away safely. He gave her a kiss and his bags, and her sister had to drag her away as he saved them all.

“Važiuojame su dideliu triukšmu. Keturi vagonai...,” Mama read from the book, and then translated for us. “We roll out with much noise and haste. A group of four wagons: Gedaitis, Rokas, Rukštelė families and my own - Dudėnas, totaling 26 people.”

We looked around at each other in amazement, all realizing what we just found. Mama stared at the journal and wondered aloud, “Why didn’t my mom share this with us? She taught me all about Lietuva in other ways, but…”

“It was probably too hard,” Laura finished, putting her hand on Mama’s shoulder.

Mama nodded and translated another passage, “Having made it to the top of the hill, we leave one wagon and toss out sacks of grain and potatoes. The weight was slowing us down.”

“These are great stories for my project!” Emily said with the innocence of an eight year old. She cozied up on the chair next to her Močiute. “Can we stay to hear more?”

I joined them at the table too, settling in for storytime. We all looked at Laura for her answer.

“We’ll grocery shop tomorrow,” Laura said with a smile, and she topped off our almost-empty wine glasses with another splash. The glasses happened to be our grandma’s crystal stemware; it’s as if she was here as well.

Mama perused the pages, “We leave at 10am. The neighbor’s house is already burning…We struggle uphill.” She tearfully flipped pages and settled on the following entry.

“We plan to track down my cousin Antanas once we get to America. He has found success in New York and has been helping me prepare for this journey. He has sent me everything he can to help us.”

“Do you know cousin Antanas?” I interrupted.

“Never heard of him,” shrugged Mama. “My mom and her sister ended up in Chicago, not New York.” She continued reading.

“We don’t bring much with us, but we made room for some things to remember our country. Emilija wears her amber necklace, and I bring our family Vytis. Everything --”

“What’s a Vytis again?” asked Emily.

“The country’s coat of arms, the symbol of the knight riding on a horse,” Laura explained. “Is that the one you have hanging upstairs?”

Mama nodded and reached for the stack of photos from earlier. Sifting through them, she found a photo of her parents in their house in Lithuania, the Vytis shield hanging on the wall behind them. “It’s the one in this photo, too.” She continued reading.

“Emilija wears her amber necklace, and I bring our family Vytis. Everything else that can help us, we carry inside.”

“That’s powerful,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mama agreed. “And a little…strange… cause look, ‘viduje’ is underlined, the word ‘inside.’” She turned the book to show us. “It’s the only time something is underlined in the whole book.”

“Everything else that can help us, we carry inside.” Laura repeated. We all looked at each other, puzzled and smiling with curiosity.

“Is this like a riddle?” I asked with excitement.

Laura had been scanning the page, thinking and rereading. “Antanas sent ‘visa kita kas mums gali padėti’ - everything else he can to help us.”

“Do you think the ‘visa kita’ he sent is inside something?” Mama wondered aloud. “We don’t have any of their travel bags...”

“Do you think Močiute knew what he was talking about?” Laura asked. “Or did she even read this ever?”

None of us had answers, but we continued asking each other questions. We wondered if the intentional vagueness was a security measure, in case the Soviets got their hands on the journal.

I looked at the photograph again and studied the Vytis hanging on the wall behind my grandparents. I pictured where it hangs upstairs, too. The Vytis symbol is made of metal and mounted on a wooden shield. The shield part is pretty thick…

“Mama,” I started talking as I was still piecing it together. “Do you think there is something inside the Vytis? It’s like, thick. And kind of heavy, if I remember.”

We all arrived at the idea at once and bumped into each other as we got up from the table, raced to the stairs, and clamored up to follow our hunch. Emily got there first and was jumping to grab it when we entered the room. Though tall, she couldn’t quite reach. Laura took the Vytis down off the wall and handed it to her.

Emily turned it over in her hands and looked up at us with pure excitement on her face. “There are screws on the back.”

After a few minutes of searching drawers and making “National Treasure” jokes, we had the kitchen counter set up as our workspace.

“Are you okay with this, Mama?” I asked as I handed Laura the screwdriver. “There is a chance we’ll be ruining this for no reason.”

“That Vytis endured traveling across borders in times of war - I think it’ll handle a little tampering.”

Laura got to work on the first screw. It was stubborn at first, but eventually she got it to budge. Three more just like that, one in each corner, and she put the screwdriver down, placed her hands on the back piece of the emblem, and picked it up. Inside were two yellowed envelopes.

We each grabbed one to open, and as we did, our jaws dropped in unison. Money. Pure cash. American cash.

“What the f--” I started.

“What is it?!” Emily jumped up excitedly to see. Laura emptied the contents of her envelope onto the counter: a stack of money, $100 bills, about half an inch tall. My envelope was full of the same.

After some excited jumping and screaming from all parties, we let Emily do the honor of counting the stack. I double checked. Ten-thousand dollars in each. Twenty-thousand total.

“Jezau Marija!” Mama exclaimed as she wiped tears from her eyes. “I have so many questions! How did my mom not know about this? Did Antanas try to find her to tell her? Did...”

Still bewildered, I picked up the front half of the Vytis again and traced my finger over the emblem, marveling at yet another badass move from Senelis. I picked up the back piece of the Vytis to reassemble it when something caught my eye. A key was taped to the inside, and a small tag hung from the key.

The rest of the family was distracted, talking over each other excitedly and emotionally. I silently removed the key from the backing and looked at the tag - coordinates, and a small doodle of a tire...

“We have to tell the family! We have to track down Antanas’s family!” Mama planned and paced around the kitchen. “We have to--”

I placed my hand on her shoulder to get her attention. I held up the key in my other hand. “We have to go dig up that motorcycle.”