The Lullaby of Polish Girls (5 page)

Wujek
Leszek growls, “Hubert, you
pudel
, you leave her the hell alone.”

Anna smiles. Hubert’s hair does resemble a poodle’s, tight black curls that extend past his head like a coiled tower.
Ciocia
Bronka starts laughing and chokes on the tea biscuit she’s devouring and
Babcia
runs for a dish towel, because “the crumbs, the crumbs, Bronka!” Anna’s smile widens; she loves them so much! Her heart aches with love, but how was it that just yesterday she didn’t even remember their faces? She never thought about them at all, aside from the calls to
Babcia
and the Christmas cards she signed her name on every year that were mailed along with care packages from her mom. She never really missed them, or Poland, as a matter of fact. And all of a sudden, she wants to live here, with all her relatives, in this very room, and never, ever leave.

“Actually, I
would
like to go outside.”

These are the first words she utters and Hubert and Renata jump to their feet.

“
Sama
. If that’s okay.”

Babcia
Helenka tells her not to wander off too far, to please stay in front of the building. Leszek says he’ll be spying out the kitchen window and if she talks to any boys he’ll report her to the authorities. It’s just a joke, but Anna instantly recalls her father’s warnings about the police. Truthfully, she just wants to go and hang off the rug beater to see if she can still pull off some somersaults.

When she opens the apartment building’s stairwell door, she sees that a dozen or more kids have gathered around. Most are hanging off the rug beater, some of them are squatting in front of it; they are an army of small warriors, holding down the fort in the face of an intruder. They must have seen the German car pull up; maybe someone caught a glimpse of a tall girl in Levi’s and spread the word. Anna walks tentatively toward them.

The boys, assorted ages but not sizes (with legs so skinny that it makes her sad, those giant knees), pretend to be idle with other things such as gum chewing. The girls stare at her unabashedly. They are all—boys and girls alike—clad in polyester short shorts and open-toed sandals. Suddenly, one kid, whose shorts are so small they look like underwear, squints up at her and asks,
“Mówisz po Polsku?”
Anna nods and the boy continues, “That’s a Volkswagen, right? So, are you from Germany?”

Jestem Polka
, Anna wants to say, “I’m Polish,” but it’s too early to feel defensive, so she merely shakes her head no.

Then, a pretty girl, who looks to be around Anna’s age and has brown hair that is cropped like a boy’s, asks, “Then, where
are
you from? Because obviously you’re not from here.” The girl stands with her arms folded sternly across her chest, waiting for Anna to answer. Some of the other girls chuckle and Anna flushes pink. The folded-arms girl wears orange cotton shorts with flowers on them, an outfit that would be ridiculed in the States.

“Actually, I
am
from here. I was born here. But I live in New York City.”

A slight hush befalls the group.

“You mean, like, America?” asks another boy, whose unfortunate bangs cut right across the middle of his forehead in a perfectly straight line. Anna nods again.

“I’ll be fucked!” exclaims a kid who can’t be more than six. And then everybody cracks up, including Anna.

The next day, Anna runs outside as soon as she wakes up. She exchanges addresses with her new friends. The pretty brunette is Justyna Zator, whose mother was best friends with Anna’s mother, Paulina. Justyna tells Anna that their moms got pregnant the same year and both of them had to quit school and that their mothers still keep in touch. “I know everything about you, girl. I know you live in Brooklyn and that your dad drives an Audi.” Justyna pronounces it
Brroookleeen
, and Anna smiles.

That day, Sebastian Tefilski comes back from summer camp and immediately sets his sights on the
Amerykanka
. Sebastian is cute (by Polish standards at least. He wears terry-cloth socks and tucks his shirts in) and Anna is smitten. Justyna tells her that he’s a total showoff and when they were dating last summer he kissed like a dog, slobbering so much that her chin broke out in a rash. Anna listens intently but doesn’t care about chin rashes, she just cares that the cool boy likes her. In fact,
everybody
likes her. The feeling is overwhelming and addictive all at once.

On the third day, the day of her departure, tears are shed. Anna weeps, her cousins weep, her aunts weep while chain-smoking on the
balkon
, and
Babcia
weeps in the kitchen, kneading her rosary. Anna tries to cheer them up, and vows to return in ten months. She’ll work after school and buy her own airplane ticket if she has to. An hour before Uncle Adam comes to pick her up, Anna says goodbye to the apartment. She stands in every corner, touching each wall with her palms, touching as many things as possible. “I’ll come back,” she whispers to the pink bathtub in the tiny bathroom,
“Wrócę.”

Outside, the rug beater is occupied again, this time by an army of allies. They stare at her with sad, longing faces. Anna was never, ever this popular in New York. If her parents don’t let her come back next year, she will probably kill herself.

Sebastian Tefilski arrives to the goodbye ceremony last minute, as
Uncle Adam is about to load the car. He makes a gallant show of taking Anna’s duffel bag from Uncle Adam and then hugs Anna, hugs her tight, even though the adults start cracking wise. Sebastian whispers in her ear, “I can’t wait for next summer. You’ll be my girlfriend.” Anna gasps quietly into his neck. She will not forget his words:
Będziesz moją dziewczyną
.

As the car zooms past St. Józef’s church, her childhood neighborhood of Szydłówek disappears just like that. In the backseat, Anna feels her heart breaking. Just a few kilometers away but she already feels
tęsknota
—a Polish word that describes a kind of yearning for which there is no American equivalent.

“Don’t cry,
mała
,” Uncle Adam urges quietly as he steers back toward Warszawska Street, but Anna can’t stop.

Kamila Kielce, Poland

Kamila slams the front door, a slam so full of cuff it resounds through the whole apartment.

“
Mamo!
Did you or did you not go to school with a woman named Paulina Baran?”

Kamila bursts into the kitchen, and comes to a halt in front of her mother, who is sitting on a stool, a pail between her hefty thighs, peeling potatoes.

“What did I say about slamming doors?”

“Did you or did you not?”

Zofia stops peeling and points the tip of her knife in her daughter’s direction, her face just venomous enough to shut up Kamila instantly.

“How dare you run into this house like a banshee, conducting an interrogation? I’m not your buddy, Kamila. You have more than enough
koleżanki
out there. And I hope for your sake none of them lent you that lipstick. Is that lipstick?”

Kamila taps her foot on the linoleum floor and tries to stare her mother down, failing miserably after ten seconds. She huffs into the bathroom, grabs a piece of gray toilet paper, and wipes her mouth. Lidka Frenczyk let everyone sample her Pink Seduction
szminka
, and in the uproar surrounding the Anna Baran news, Kamila simply forgot to wipe it off before running home. Zofia not only doesn’t wear make-up, she doesn’t
believe
in make-up. She doesn’t shave her legs. She doesn’t dab her wrists with perfume. She has a large mole on her left earlobe that is brown and disgusting and that everyone stares at because how could they not?

“Better.” Zofia glances up when Kamila walks back into the room, seemingly contrite. “She wasn’t Paulina Baran back then. She was Paulina Chmielinska.”

“So, you knew her? Were you friends with her? Did you know she has a daughter exactly my age?”

“We were acquaintances.”

“And!?”

“And what?”

“The daughter! What about the daughter!?”

“Cut the ruffian act, Kamila! I’m pushing your curfew up one hour.”

Kamila fights with all she’s got to keep her foot from stomping the floor. It’s bad enough that her curfew is already the same time as the ten-year-old Kosiak twins. Instead of wringing her mother’s neck, she nods, slowly and deliberately, silently vowing to run away as soon as she has enough
złoty
saved up.

“Hand me a clean bowl. The one in the sink.” Zofia watches Kamila obey, the fighting spirit in her temporarily trounced.

“Little Ania Baran was born exactly six weeks after you were. I think you were baptized on the same day, but I can’t remember. I do remember during the whole ceremony, you were bawling your head off.” Zofia allows a complacent smile. “That was the year that Teresa Anielska, Paulina, and I all got pregnant. Of course, I was married to your father and you were completely planned, but the school kicked me out as well.”

They were baptized on the same exact day? Kamila wants to shriek in triumph. Hah! She wants to take this information, run back to the benches, and rub it in Justyna’s face.

“Guess what? Little Ania Baran isn’t so little anymore.”

“Well, I would assume so. But, hopefully she’s not as ‘not little’ as you. I’ve warned you plenty, Kamila; girls like you cannot afford to get fat. Life’s not kind to
ofermy
like you so you better break the habit now. Have you used my hairspray today?”

Girls like you
. Kamila’s face burns. Girls like us, her mother means: unlovable, ungainly. Girls who asked for second helpings and snuck in thirds. Girls who didn’t care for diets or restraint in any capacity. Girls with bad hair, bad skin, and bad thoughts.

Kamila can’t remember about the hairspray, she can’t remember anything that preceded the news that Anna Baran had come to town.

“
Mamo
, she was here. Anna was here! In Kielce! This weekend!”

“Really? The Barans were here?”

“No! Just her. It was like a super-secret trip or something. Her uncle smuggled her in from West Germany.”

“I see.”

“Point is, Mother, that I was at our stupid
działka
this weekend with Dad, picking strawberries and twiddling my thumbs when I could have been forging a lifelong friendship! Why did you make me go?”

“Because you go every weekend, and you and your father have a great time in the country. Now, stop with the theatrics and put these in a pot.”

Kamila takes the bowl of newly skinned potatoes over to the stove. God, she loves potatoes so much. She hopes her mother is making
zalewajka
. A bowl of the sour soup with juicy
kiełbasa
and a hard-boiled egg would do wonders for her mood right now.

“Anyway, Mother, now Justyna Zator is all bragging about how Anna and her totally bonded and they’re best friends
and
they exchanged addresses so they can write to each other, but Justyna won’t show me Anna’s address! And I wanted to write her a letter saying how sorry I was that I missed her and that if she comes back next summer I want to be her friend too. And now it’s all ruined because you made me go to the stupid
działka
and because Justyna is a selfish pig!”

Kamila collapses into a chair by the window and weeps. She can’t help it. The single most important event of the entire summer, and she missed it because she was too busy picking berries and weaving dumb garlands with her father. Once again, the brutality of the world takes Kamila’s breath away. She can’t go on if things like this continue.

Zofia stands and walks over to her daughter. “Why are you getting so excited, Kamila? It’s very unattractive.” Kamila looks away and doesn’t say anything.

After Jakub died, instead of clinging to the one child she had left, Zofia let Włodek do all the primary parenting. He read Kamila fairy tales at bedtime, and kissed her scrapes, and showed her how to make animal figurines from blocks of shapeless clay. Zofia wanted none of it and accepted the role of bad cop with open arms. The result was
twofold: she had succeeded in keeping a safe distance should any tragedy befall Kamila and in return Kamila had grown to resent her.

“Guess what, Modrzejewska? If you want to write Ania a letter, you’re more than welcome. I still get a Christmas card from the Barans every year. Why don’t you finish peeling these and I’ll go look for one in the credenza?”

Kamila lifts her face off the table.
Modrzejewska
. The most famous Polish actress that ever lived. If only! If only Kamila had one ounce of the beauty and grace that Modrzejewska possessed. Before her mother has time to react, Kamila throws her chubby arms around Zofia’s waist and pulls her close, stuffing her face into the folds of Zofia’s apron. It would be nice if Zofia would put her hand on top of her daughter’s head, or stroke her hair, but Zofia doesn’t.

Later that night, Kamila calls her father into her bedroom. She hands him the pages silently and he begins reading.