“That one, with the curly hair? He looks like Morten from A-ha, doesn’t he?” Anna follows Kamila’s stare, pulling back the outer corners of each eyelid; she looks like she’s doing a crude Chinaman impersonation, but it’s the only way she can see anything beyond a three-foot radius. Her glasses lie in her bag, where they will stay until she exits the pool.
“Jezus! He does, he totally looks like Morten! Take me on, baby.” Anna giggles.
“You’re looking at their faces, dziewczyny, and that’s not where you should be looking.” Justyna raises her brows meaningfully.
“Fe!”
“Fe what, Kamila? A face in the dark is inconsequential, even if it’s ugly. It’s how he makes you feel in the dark that counts.” Justyna pauses, and to make sure her meaning isn’t lost, adds, “It’s how his dick makes you feel.”
“Jezus!” Kamila flushes bright pink.
Justyna smiles knowingly and winks, and Anna winks back, but what the hell does she know? Back in the States, all she and Miguel have done is dry hump. He sometimes managed to slide her underwear down and graze the tip of his penis against her, but she always pushed him away. Miguel wasn’t the one. He had too many pimples, and he wasn’t Sebastian Tefilski.
“Too many people here today,” Anna murmurs. Kielce is in the midst of an unprecedented July heat wave, and the Tęcza Pool is swarming with folks looking for relief. Everyone looks so Polish to Anna. Nobody is willowy; even the thin women give off a sense of largesse. In a sea of shiny Slavic faces, no one wears sunglasses and no one cares about the fact that their swimwear looks decades old.
“Look at that one.” Kamila points to a stocky lifeguard in imitation Ray-Bans, whose trunks bulge ominously, even from across the pool. “It looks like there’s a rodent in there.”
“Ja pierdole!” Justyna snickers and lies down on the bench, rubbing her concave belly with one hand. Every move she makes, every gesture, oozes sexuality. Anna finds it both mesmerizing and annoying. At the start of the summer, Justyna confessed that she’d finally done it, with a very distant older cousin who was visiting from Lublin. She told them it hurt a bit, but afterward she had felt so powerful that sex was now basically what she lived for. She’d said it so matter-of-factly, as if she were talking about the weather.
Last summer, Anna had arrived in Poland with indents at her hips, a filled-out bra, and more hair everywhere. Maybe it was her American diet—hormones in the milk or something—but she’d looked positively Amazonian next to Justyna and Kamila. At fifteen, they talked about doing stuff, but they didn’t follow through with it, and that was just fine. This summer, sixteen-year-old Anna feels ready, rip-roaringly ready, to have sex. This summer, she ogles Justyna with envy. Justyna looks like a real woman, and it has nothing to do with her perky bosom. Her face looks different—all of a sudden she’s got bedroom eyes and bee-stung lips. Her short hair looks defiant now, not boyish. Anna is sure it’s the sex.
“I think I’m getting burned,” Kamila says, pressing on the sides of her nose. All morning she’s been in a foul mood. When they first spotted the bleacher seats, miraculously unclaimed, Justyna and Anna tripped over themselves to stake them. Kamila lagged behind, griping about ultraviolet rays and insisting on a small patch of grass in the shade.
“Burned? How is that possible? You’re draped in terry cloth.”
“My skin is especially sensitive, Justyna. I’ve always been fair. Anyway, haven’t you heard of melanoma?”
Kamila is wearing a yellow tank top with matching shorts, but the ensemble is all but hidden by the strategic placement of three separate towels—one for shoulders and arms, one wound around her torso, and one hanging off her thighs. The whole getup is meant to hide the seasonal eczema from which Kamila suffers, unsightly, scaly patches behind her knees and in the crooks of her elbows that she scratches to no avail.
Kamila shifts exaggeratedly on the bench, readjusting her wrapping. “Besides, if you must know, I’m menstruating, and I don’t want anyone to see my pad.”
Justyna lets her mouth hang open in mock horror. “You’re menstruating! Heaven forbid. Where’s your pad, Bloody Mary? Stuck to your bellybutton? Or do you have two, one on each arm? Jesus, I’m on the rag too. Why don’t you join the twentieth century and use a tampon.”
“Yeah, right, Justyna! Some of us are virgins who intend on staying that way.”
Justyna slowly lifts her head. “What the fuck, Kamila? You think a bit of cardboard is gonna rob you of your cherry? Anna, help me out.”
“Sorry, but I only use pads too. My mother told me it’s safer.”
“Safer? Who am I dealing with here?” Justyna sits upright, no longer amused. “Neanderthals. I’m hungry. French fries, anyone?” She extends her arms in front of her and yawns, aware that the heave and fall of her breasts is attracting peripheral glances. Anna reaches for her coin purse; she always buys. Thanks to inflation and a ridiculous exchange rate, the measly three hundred dollars she brings for her two-month vacation deems her a millionaire. Here money is of no consequence, while in the States she’s the one wearing her mother’s hand-me-downs and working after-school jobs.
This is Anna’s third consecutive summer in Poland, not counting those first three days back in 1989, and the summers can’t arrive fast enough. The rest of the year, Anna writes letters, sends care packages, and makes frequent trips to Brooklyn’s Polish neighborhood, Greenpoint, just to fill up on whiffs of kiełbasa at butcher shops. Every day, she gets home from school and checks the mailbox. Kamila writes the most, about once a week, and reading her dispatches is like subscribing to a personalized Kielce Daily News. Sometimes it still surprises Anna that life goes on after she boards the plane in late August, that seasons change, that school happens, and that there are holidays. She can’t picture her friends in scarves and mittens, trudging through the snow. She can’t picture leaves falling from the trees, or spring blossoms. To her Poland is summer and nothing else.
“Get me a Coca-Cola too,” Anna calls out to Justyna, “and don’t be so hard on Kamila. She’s obviously hormonal.”
“And I’m obviously right here so don’t talk about me like I’m not, dziękuje bardzo.”
“Oh, fuck off, Kamila!” Justyna shouts merrily and tucks Anna’s cash into her bikini.
“She’s unbelievable, right?” Anna mutters. It’s not a judgment. It’s what she loves most about Justyna. When they were thirteen, Justyna thought Anna’s buckteeth were cool. She had no qualms taking the hand-me-downs Anna shyly offered. Their mothers had been best friends and still kept in touch. Anna calls Justyna’s mom Ciocia, even though she isn’t her aunt, and sometimes Justyna introduces Anna as her cousin. Justyna rarely ever writes to Anna in the States but when July rolls around and Anna returns to Kielce, the two friends simply pick up where they left off.
But this year, Justyna is no longer interested in skipping down to Pan Narcyz’s cellar to refill seltzer bottles, or playing Chinese jump rope, or scaling the bomb shelter, or flipping somersaults on the trzepak. She is now interested in two things: boys and sex. It is overwhelming to Anna, and more and more she turns to Kamila for kinship. Kamila, who cuts her own bangs, draws hilarious caricatures, and devours books. With Kamila, Anna safely indulges all her childish whims; on rainy days the two girls sit on Kamila’s balkon playing with the Barbies Kamila still collects. They talk about true love, make crank calls, and sometimes Kamila shows Anna poems she wrote. But Anna also has no problem going along with Justyna to shoplift sunflower seeds or ogle her dad’s stash of nudie magazines. It is easy to switch sides because Anna Baran has two sides; she feels split between two languages, two places, constantly aware of the chasm in her life.
Justyna starts walking toward the snack shack, but she stops and turns around. “I’m just trying to help, Kamila. You’ve been starving yourself, so why not shed that dumb getup?” Anna nods in agreement. This summer Kamila never eats actual food; instead, she carries around a giant bag of puffed corn kernels, and sn
acks on them all day long.
“Besides, if I were you I wouldn’t worry about someone spotting your diaper. I’d worry about that booger that’s been hanging out of your nose all morning.”
With that, Justyna saunters away, hips working overtime. Anna can’t help but stare after her with a mixture of envy and admiration.
It’s been like this all summer—Anna teetering on the brink of self-ecstasy and self-loathing. Anna waits all week for Sundays when Babcia Helenka goes to two P.M. Mass. As soon as Babcia leaves, Anna lies on the pullout, half nude, and masturbates to her heart’s content. But feeling sexual and feeling sexy are two different things. Recently outfitted with a retainer (which she only wears at night), Anna’s cartoonish overbite is making a slow retreat. Now, she’s learning to expose enamel when she smiles. It’s a small step toward sexy, but it’s something. Anna remains optimistic about her hidden prowess. Just two weeks ago, she gave Heniek Żak a hand job in the stairwell. She has no idea why, only that Heniek offered to walk her home and when they got to the klatka, she grabbed him without a word and went to work. Heniek Żak was a nobody, a year younger than her, but he was as good as anybody to practice on.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he whispered after.
“I don’t care if you do,” Anna replied, and she almost meant it.
Then, at her sixteenth birthday party a week ago, when Kowalski showed up without his girlfriend, Anna did a shot in the kitchen before asking him for a slow dance. When they swayed to the melodic undertones of the Scorpions, she could feel his erection pressing on her thigh. Then, someone hit the light switch and, in the dark, she let him French-kiss her. She was so turned on it frightened her. Kowalski has potential. He’s on the short list of possible candidates to lose her virginity to. But Anna’s been secretly waiting for Sebastian Tefilski to finally come back to Kielce and make a woman out of her. His family moved to Germany in 1990, a week before she came back to Poland, just like she promised him. The news of his departure crushed Anna, but there wasn’t anything she could do, except hope that one day he’d come back.
“Why is Justyna so spiteful?” Kamila’s eyes well up as she furtively wipes her nose.
“Kamilka, she’s not really. You’re just extra sensitive today. When I have my period all I wanna do is eat and cry.”
“That’s not it, Ania. I mean you’re right, but it’s more than that. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my brother’s death. We have to go to his grave and then sit around the table while my parents tell stories about when he was alive. We do it every year, but I’m over it, Ania. I don’t even remember him. And I don’t care. Is that awful?”
“No, it’s not awful. It’s normal. He’s dead, but you’re not. Any way you cut it, it just fucking sucks.” Anna smiles and doesn’t know what else to say.
Anna remembers the first letter she ever got from Kamila, remembers reading the part about her brother’s death over and over again. Anna wrote Kamila back, confessing that when her hamster had suffered an untimely demise after crawling into a hot oven, she was despondent for a whole week and therefore knew firsthand what an “accident like that” could do to a girl. If Kamila was offended at the comparison, she never let on, because the next summer the minute Anna touched pavement in Kielce, Kamila was waiting by the trzepak.
Kamila turns to face Anna, her face streaked with mascara.
“Will you come with me tomorrow? Please? I can’t do it alone this year and you’re my best friend. I don’t have anyone like you in my life, Ania. You make everything better.”
Before Anna can answer Justyna returns, eating an ice cream cone, her tongue darting back and forth like a kitty cat’s. The lifeguard with the rodent-filled trunks stands next to her juggling three orders of French fries and two Cokes.
“I couldn’t carry all this shit. So Patryk here was gallant enough to help a lady out. Why are you crying?”
Before Kamila can fumble for an excuse, Anna chirps in with “Cramps,” an obvious salvo.
The lifeguard smiles widely, and it’s all Anna can do to keep her eyes from roaming toward his swimsuit. She can swear the contents are moving.
“I bet we have some aspiryna in our first aid kit. Should I get you some?” Patryk asks, unaware of the slow death Kamila’s now dying. Anna forces herself to look in his face and decides, aside from his seemingly remarkable package, there’s not much to look at. He’s bug-eyed and his nose looks like a potato.
“So should I? It’s no problem.” Patryk repeats his offer. Kamila shakes her head madly at the same time Justyna purrs, “That would be so sweet of you.” Patryk gallantly places the snacks onto their bench and bows away.
“What the hell?” Kamila hisses.
“I know, I know, he’s a bit of a mół but his friends are gorgeous, I promise you. I invited him to my birthday balanga next week and he’s gonna bring his boys. Morten included.” And with that Justyna triumphantly digs into the soggy frytki. Anna is stunned and impressed.
“It was obvious she’d been crying. You think it would have been less awkward if nobody said anything about it? Take some fries or I’m gonna eat them all.”
Suddenly Kamila stands up, towels dropping like hotcakes. “I’m going home. You two can stay and get skin cancer. It’s not like you want me here anyway.”
“Skin cancer? You’ve been reading too many foreign magazines, dziewczyno.”
Kamila swings her mesh beach bag across her shoulder and jumps over the bench and unfortunately lands cockeyed, stumbling to the ground. Justyna does a spit take.
“Kamila! You okay?” Anna scrambles toward her friend.
“Yeah, should I call old Patryk back with a stretcher?” Justyna laughs.
“Shut the hell up!”
Justyna looks at Anna, and then lets out a low whistle. “Shutting up. But next time you talk to me like that, you’ll have my foot up your ass. And despite the rumors, you won’t like it. Got it, bejbe?” Anna closes her eyes, weary all of a sudden.
Justyna stands up and wipes her greasy hands on her bottom. “Screw this overcrowded shithole. We are gonna walk home, in the shade, so as to avoid ‘the cancer,’ take showers, refuel, re-pad, re-fucking-lax, and then have an awesome time tonight. All right, pipki?”
The word pipki does wonders, more than Justyna’s backhanded apology. Pipki: small vaginas. It’s crude and comical, and vintage Justyna. Fighting smiles, Anna and Kamila nod their heads and pack up their gear, leaving the French fries, and Patryk with his aspirin, behind.
The girls walk through the woods that surround the zalew, and halfway, when they pass the corrugated shed that serves as a bus stop, Anna reaches for both their hands. Neither friend fights it. They end up walking hand in hand the rest of the way.
After a cool shower, which is not really a shower but a squat in the tub and a dunk of the head under running water, and after a plate of Babcia’s fried schabowy and sweet cabbage, Anna nestles onto the sofa with some crosswords, listening to the sound of Babcia washing dishes and singing those Russian ballads she loves, the vibrations of the TV in the next room, the passing cars on the street below, and the slow billowy dance of the lace curtains by the open balcony. Perfection, Anna thinks. This is her very own personal Jesus.
Anna puts the puzzle book down onto her chest and closes her eyes. Soon, she’ll meet up with Justyna and Kamila again, and they’ll go meet the chłopaki. She’ll bring her cassette deck. The boys will pass around a bottle of wine and listen to “Words” over and over again, and Lolek will beg Anna to translate the lyrics one last time.
Babcia waddles into the living room, a muumuu-clad penguin, with a little green rag perched on her shoulder. “Need some help, córeczko?”
Anna smiles and opens her eyes. She pats the lumpy fold-out wersalka in invitation. No one has beds here; there’s simply no room for them in cramped Polish apartments, and even that thought fills her with affection. Babcia sits down next to her. Even though with every passing summer Anna is less inclined to hang
out with family, she always makes time for Babcia, who calls her little daughter. They eat breakfast together every morning while Babcia recaps Anna’s youth in exquisite detail, bringing up memories Anna’s mother has seemingly forgotten. “You used to steal my sewing scissors and cut up all my plants, Aniusia.” Sometimes Babcia gets out a shoebox full of ancient black-and-white photos, and they rifle through them gleefully. “Babcia, you looked just like Vivien Leigh.” Anna sighs staring at the picture of her grandmother standing on a cobblestone street, wispy and gorgeous, her dark, wavy hair falling over one eye.
Anna loves Babcia Helenka’s soft glistening skin, pampered every morning and night with a healthy dollop of Nivea cream. She loves Babcia’s dainty fingers, her moon-shaped fingernails, unpolished but perfectly trimmed. She loves the way Babcia stands in front of the mirror, brushing her silvery hair, which she refuses to dye. She loves the array of podomki Babcia wears every day (braless), with the deep pockets in the front that she sews in herself. Anna adores the way she kneads dough for homemade makaron; the way she takes off her shoes and slips into her trepki the minute she walks into the apartment, one hand leaning on the foyer dresser, the other clutching a grocery bag; the fact that she always has a covered plate of kromeczki waiting for Anna at night: rye bread smeared with butter and thin slices of gouda cheese and smoked ham.
“Five letters, starting with s. ‘Handy holes in the kitchen’?”
“Sitko.”
“Oh my god, sitko! How did I not know that?”
“I’m the same way, córeczko, simple words will just fly out of my head, but I hunt them down in time. Patience is key. How do you say it in English?”
“Colander.”
“O, Jezus! Karender? Kawendol?”
Anna laughs and laughs.
Later, on her walk to meet Justyna, who was spending the night at her Babcia Kazia’s in Szydłówek, Anna thinks about the camping trip they are planning. She knows that Sielpia Lake was where she was conceived; her parents went pod namioty, camping, for two whole weeks, by themselves, after her dad left the army. Wouldn’t it be serendipitous if she made love for the first time under the same stars that shone down on her parents sixteen years ago?
The Lullaby of Polish Girls Page 7
