Refusing to sleep in our home that awful night, I slept in the barn (Father laid his coat on me as a blanket).

Next morning came.

"YOU POOR LITTLE LAMB!" A bellowing sob rung loudly in my ears as an abrupt awakening. 

A lumbering, broad-shoulder, bass-voiced giant of a hearty, fleshy, ruddy and beefy-faced woman crushed me into a wrenching embrace and whisked me with such an amazing speed back into our home.

This vociferous titan of a woman was my Father's sister, Pelageya Nikonovich.

My Aunt Pelageya, a lonesome, meddlesome sort, instantly roosted in our home after the funeral.

Memory serves me poorly- I can't remember of her situating herself officially in our home.

Except for her sobbing for my late mother and excessive cooking because she "would never, God strike her down DEAD, allow her darling nephews”- and here she darted an accusative glare at my unwitting father that’d kill Terrible Ivan on the spot if he met her eyes-“ and careless brother starve to death and go in rags."

"Men need women as women need men! You can't care for these darling little lambs on your OWN! Not without a woman's care. I won't hear anymore of it! I'll live with you, Danya! Little darling Andreika and Kolya need a woman's care now!" I remember Auntie bellowing like a pair of oxen set loose in the kitchen.

She was 40 then.

At this time, a woman is respected as a spinster- she can cast off that disdain from the gossips. But Auntie Pelageya never attracted any gossip at any time of her life because her size and strength cowed anyone who libeled her.

But not only that!

She was endowed with an iron-like will of being the moral superior. She even turned confirmed drunkards and loafers in our village into something decent by simply boxing their ears or yanking on their hair as she cursed them a hundred ways with a hundred words I can't remember.

Father said the men gulped in her presence and declared in front of others, "Pelageya Nikonovna is a woman of fine character! Who among us deserves her?"

What they really meant who deserved her!   The notion of any of our men marrying her demanded more courage than being assigned against those stubborn Germans. Auntie Pelageya as a wife! Well, that's a harder life still for a soul.

She commanded a certain meekness among everyone-young, old, men and women. I don't even think the higher officers commanded more intimidation and order than Auntie did. Now set Auntie into the barracks, she’d whip us all into something sharp. Set Auntie into the thick of the Ataman’s election, well, they might make her Ataman were she a man!

But she was a fine woman, nonetheless. One of those rare women God intended to be like an iron kettle that last for years. Now God doesn't make women like anymore! I guess to make life harder since we forgot about Him.

As an aunt, she doted on Kolya and I  fiercely. Nothing was too good for us, her only nephews-she always emphasized this like she thought we were some rare being that should be revered for simply existing.

Pride would spoil Kolya later, in his cadet years. As a child, I’m proud to report my little brother proved a humble, unassuming saint of a lad.    

But as a proud child, I relished her attentions.  But my pride also forced me, in my boyish dignity to outwardly reject her doting in the presence of my "peers"-the other boys might mock me mercilessly if they saw how motherly Aunt Pelageya was with me.

Alone, I would succumb and confessed an apology to her. I feared losing her good graces-and her generosity of pies on my plate.

She always defended my vices as a child. Even the Old Believer Zealots we learned in history class couldn't rival my aunt's raging devotion upholding the enfant terrible I must have been as a child. As I said, Kolya needed none of this. He was the perfect Cossack lad.  Yet, children, I've learned from observation, who are defended the most are the worst-behaved.

The excuse she repeated like some holy refrain from a hymn was, "He's still so young! A real lamb! He's innocent!" She said this even I reached my 20's and had hair on my face!

"He's growing finer than the other boys! Why, he'll be a real saint when he grows up! He'll have a handsome rank and pay, too!"

Each time my courtships failed, Auntie would rally herself like some hero against the Turks, march right to their house and rail against the girl and her family right outside their house.

She would denounce the girl as some "tempting hussy trying to make her innocent nephew suffer with her bag of tricks"- the fathers said nothing- no men had the sense to confront her. But women are bold with women, and the caterwauling and bellowing matches between Auntie and the families's womenfolk was the stuff of lore.