The Clarinet Polka (53 page)

There was a five-thirty Mass, and for anybody who had a suspicion they might be feeling a little rocky the next morning and maybe would want to stay in bed, it was a good way to get their Mass obligation out of the way. Well, my Mass obligation was totally out of hand by then, so I said, “I think I'll pass on it.”

We strolled around to see who was there—and everybody was there. I had a
kiełbasa
sandwich. With all that great food they had that day, I'd sort of eaten my way though the afternoon. And all of a sudden, here's Janice. She walked straight up to me and said, “Come to Mass with me.”

“I just love the way she orders you around,” Linda says.

“Sure,” I say to Janice.

“Boy, have you ever got the magic touch,” Linda says to Janice.

“Hey, girls, let's all of us just take a little break here,” I say, and we start walking over to the church.

For somebody who'd just been playing all that happy music, Janice seemed kind of down—or kind of something, I wasn't sure what. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

“You guys sounded great.”

“Yeah, I thought we did okay.”

We got into the church, and everybody else seemed to have the same idea. Naturally there was all the old ladies because most of them will—you know, like automatic—go to every Mass there is. And then a lot of that crowd from the street fair must have decided on the spur of the moment, so the church was really packed for a Mass at that time of day. My aunts and uncles were there, and Mom and Dad, and I saw Mondrowski come ducking into a pew at the back. And then, lo and behold, here comes the whole rest of the polka band following us. I never in a million years would have thought I'd see Patty Pajaczkowski at Mass, and she probably thought the same thing about me—and we exchanged these looks, like, hey, man, can you believe this?

It was peaceful in there, and it was nice to get out of the sun. Janice wasn't paying any attention to anybody. As soon as we got into a pew, she knelt down, and clasped her hands, and pressed her forehead into them. I mean she's praying, right? And I'm just watching her breath go in and out and looking at the nape of her neck—how beautiful it is, you know, with the tendons and all the little blond hairs. That's how far gone I am by then—that I think the nape of her neck is beautiful.

You get no homily with your five-thirty Mass, so it's a pretty quick service, and Janice and I have this funny moment when we're leaving. Like she's already looking through the doors, maybe to see if her family's out there somewhere, and I'm looking at her face, and our hands hit the holy water at the same time and, you know, collide. It's kind of startling, and there's this little pause, and we cross ourselves at exactly the same time, and then we both laugh. “Let's do it again to music,” she says, and we step out into the last of that hot sunshine—early evening in August—and wouldn't you know it, there's her whole family waiting for her outside the church.

The first thing that hit me was— Well, I hadn't seen Janice's dad for a while, and you know how people can age overnight? All that heavy stuff that'd been going down over the summer must have really got to him, because he was looking kind of chewed—tired and gray, with the big bags under the eyes and all the lines in his face just dug in there. He seemed real glad to see me, pumping my hand and asking me how I've been.

He was glad to see Linda too, his best student in Advanced Polish—well, his only student—and they had to exchange a few good words in Polish, but then he switched back to English right away on account of John's girlfriend, Anna. Naturally Linda and I got introduced to her, and Maureen and Sandy and some other of Janice's pals got introduced to her, and she couldn't possibly remember who's who, but she was trying her best, just smiling her face off, poor kid—working real hard to show John's parents that she was great daughter-in-law material. A dark, pretty girl, wearing sandals and one of those long skirts imported from India. Got her hair in Indian braids, and I thought that was kind of funny, you know, because it sure wasn't going to be earning her too many Brownie points with Mrs. Dłuwiecki.

While we were at Mass, the streets had really filled up—practically wall to wall—and that's the way it was going to be for the next few hours, and you could see a lot of those people were getting itchy to dance the polka. I checked my watch and said to Janice, “We better get started.” She just nodded at me. The minute she'd laid eyes on her family, she'd got silent as a stone.

We finally made it back to the flatbed, and Janice's parents and her brothers and their girlfriends lined themselves up right in front of it like they were going to be listening to a concert. Janice gave me this real long look, and I didn't have a clue what she was thinking. I was waiting for her to say something, but she just climbed up onto the truck.

I checked the sound system, and the girls were doing their little good-luck things they always did before they played. Patty's banging away on all her toys, and Bev's checking her volume, and my sister's going buzz buzz, and Mary Jo's the only one who never does anything, maybe because she's always been ready to play for the last forty years. Janice usually blows like this whole bunch of notes—zippity zip up and down a scale. But she doesn't do that. She takes that piece of paper out of her clarinet case.

Meanwhile Czesław's saying to me, “Don't be a stranger, Jimmy,” and telling me how he's missed our little talks and I'm going to have to come up and visit him one of these days. And it dawns on me that he isn't just being polite—he really does like me—and it wouldn't have hurt me to go up and see him over the summer. Yeah, he'd been dealing with some heavy shit, the old soldier, and my heart, you know, kind of went out to him.

People can see that the band's about to play, so there's a kind of pileup in front of the flatbed. You look up the street and you see this absolute mob of people. Mary Jo steps up to the mike and her big voice comes booming out through that high-power system. “Is everybody having a good time?” Some cheers and whistles and like that, telling her they're having a good time.

“This is My Sister's Polka Band,” she says. She didn't like their name much, but she was doing her best with it. “Everybody up here is
somebody's
sister, right? And yeah, folks, it's polka time again, and we're going to kick things off for you with the good old ‘Clarinet Polka.'” And she steps back from the mike, big smile on her face, and Janice whispers something in her ear. She looks surprised. She goes back to the mike and says, “But first Janice wants to say a few words.”

Janice is taller than Mary Jo, so she adjusts the mike, raises it up to her level. And then she says in Polish, “Ladies and gentlemen—” Well, in Polish it's
“Szanowni państwo,”
and that's like “Honorable ladies and gentlemen.” And she says in Polish, “I know everyone wants to dance, and I won't take too much time, but I have a few things I want to say.”

Speaking Polish, she's talking to only a fraction of that crowd. She's talking to the old folks, and to a lot of people my parents' generation, but she's not talking to anybody younger than that. Of the people my generation, there's probably only me and Linda and Shirley Zembrzuski that can understand her. And of course her parents and her brothers can understand her.

Well, it's really startling to have a kid with pigtails talking Polish at you. People who don't know her are whispering, “Who
is
that little girl? Why's she speaking Polish? Is she from Poland?” And other people are whispering back, “That's Czesław Dłuwiecki's daughter.” They're so amazed she can speak Polish at all that they aren't paying much attention to what she's saying. So she's got to do her “honorable ladies and gentlemen” a couple times before she's starting to get everybody's attention. It's pretty clear she's not going to go on until people are listening to her. I told you she's stubborn, didn't I?

Just like everybody else, she really took me by surprise, and I'm scared for her—like I don't have a clue what she's doing, but whatever it is, I just hope she doesn't blow it—so I walk right to the edge of the flatbed, like giving her moral support. From where I'm standing I can see her legs shaking.

She glances down at her piece of paper, but she doesn't really need it. She's got what she wants to say in her head.

She says that when Polish people came to America, they brought their traditions with them just like they brought their faith, and they didn't lose either one of them. And some of the most important things to Polish people are their songs and music and dances, but in a new country those things were bound to change, and they did change. They became part Polish and part American, and that was wonderful because that way they got the best of both the old world and the new world.

“So we're going to play some of that Polish-American music for you,” she says, “and we're really proud of it, and we hope we play it right, and we hope you enjoy yourselves.”

I'm watching Janice, but I've also got my eye on her father to see how he's taking it. He was just as surprised as anybody else, but now he's paying real close attention, sort of nodding, like, well, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Or maybe he's just thinking, good going, kid, you haven't made any mistakes in your grammar yet.

And then Janice stops talking. She looks out over those hundreds of people. And it gradually gets real quiet. The people who have been chatting or whispering just shut up—I guess because they're afraid she's forgot her next line. There's this tension building up—like, come on, little girl, you can do it.

She starts to talk again, and you can hear this little quiver in her voice. That really shuts people up. “It was really hard back in the old country,” she says. She's keeping her Polish real simple. “And it was really hard in the new one too. It took a lot of sacrifices to start a new life, and to build this beautiful church here, and to carry on our traditions, and to hand them down to a new generation. It took many many people making sacrifices so we could have this music to play here today. It took—” and her voice breaks. She looks up to the sky, like, oh, please, don't let me cry.

It's so quiet you can hear the locusts in the trees. “It took many many people making sacrifices so we could even be
alive
here today to play this beautiful music. And I just want to say—to all of you—thank you.”

There's this kind of sigh moves over the crowd. The old people have been following Janice pretty close, and now I see my grandma and Shirley Zembrzuski's grandma and Mrs. Bognar and some of the other old ladies are all dabbing at their eyes. Then Janice says in this firm, clear voice,
“Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła póki my żyjemy.”

You don't have to think about it. If you speak Polish, you just react to that. So there's this huge yell goes up, and everybody who doesn't speak Polish is going, “What's that? What'd she say?”

Janice's father looks like he's been hurt. He kind of caves in on himself and presses his hand against his chest.

What she said means in English, “Poland is not lost for as long as we are alive.” If you're looking out at a street full of Polish Americans when you say that, you're bound to get to them—anyhow to the ones who can understand you. And a lot of them can understand you because it also just happens to be the first two lines of the Polish national anthem.

Janice yells,
“Raz Dwa!”
—counting in the band, and she steps back from the mike and puts her clarinet in her mouth, and they kick into “The Clarinet Polka,” and all of a sudden for two whole blocks people are dancing. Oh, boy, does that music sound good.

Janice's brothers are both kind of stunned, and then they look at their girlfriends, like, hey, let's do it, and off they go, dancing. Janice's father is just standing there. He's hunched forward and he's just looking down at his feet. His wife is standing next to him, looking real worried.

I couldn't imagine what he could be doing just standing there looking down like that. Then he raises his head. And he looks around. And all around him are all these people dancing.

He looks at his wife, and he's like somebody who's just woke up from a long sleep. And he smiles. And he bows to his wife, and she does a little curtsy for him, and he opens his arms for her, and she steps into his arms, and it's just too much, you know what I mean? Czesław Dłuwiecki is dancing the polka. He's got that smooth, old, gracious European style, but he's stepping right along. He's dancing all the way down to the end of 46th Street, and he makes a big loop through all those crazy Polaks and he comes dancing back again with his wife in his arms, and he spins her around and around. I never saw anybody dance such a beautiful polka.

NINETEEN

All of a sudden it's September and whoosh, it's like somebody let the air out of the balloon. Summer's over and everything's getting back to normal.

The street fair was over so the band wasn't having those frantic rehearsals damn near every day, and I wasn't seeing Connie anymore so I didn't have to worry about her not killing herself. And Georgie Mondrowski got himself a full-time job with the city. Truck comes roaring up, slams to a stop by your place, the guy who jumps off and grabs your garbage can is him. He said he liked getting up early and all the exercise, but he was just bagged by the end of his shift, so I lost my training partner and I just couldn't motivate my ass into the Y on my own.

Janice was back in school, and I was only seeing her a couple days a week. The band was rehearsing on Tuesday nights again, and I was picking her up from Central, and I'd usually watch the rehearsal, and then I'd drive her home just like last year. I couldn't take her out on Friday nights because that's called a date, but most Saturdays we'd run into each other, you know, accidentally. And then on Saturday nights maybe she and Linda and I would go do something, but I wasn't sure how much longer we could go on running that one—because if people keep seeing you hanging around with a sixteen-year-old, naturally they're going to think you're going out together, but if they keep seeing you hanging around with a sixteen-year-old
and your little sister
, they're going to think you're just plain weird. I don't think we were fooling anybody anyway.