“We stopped at the warzywniak, and the checkout girl told me you were in there today, hammered. That you were knocking things off the shelves. Wstyd! A week in the ground and you’re making a mockery of him, a mockery of this entire family. How dare you?” She walks over to Justyna and smacks her across the face. Justyna fights the urge to smack her grandmother back.
“Hit me, hit me!” Kazia shrieks. “I’ll have the police down here faster than you can say mam cie. I’m sure they remember the address. They’ll take Damian from you.”
“Good.”
“If your mother were here, none of this would have happened. You’re rotten through and through, Justyna, and you’ve been that way since you were little. I tried all my life, I tried to do right by Teresa. But she’s no longer here and I’m tired, goddamnit. I didn’t sign up for this!”
“And I was first in line?”
Justyna walks out to the front yard and sits on the steps. A light snow is falling. She is flooded with memories. Paweł proposed to her here. He was tipsy and she had laughed in his face until he fished out an actual ring from his pocket, a gold band with green stones placed like the petals of a flower. She once gave him a blow job in the bushes at the side of the house, which turned out to be rampant with pokrzywa, and they scratched their blistered feet and knees for days, giggling. Things rush at her, snippets from a previous life. Paweł rocking baby Damian to sleep for hours at a time, while Justyna naps on the couch. Paweł in the kitchen drinking black Nescafé, reading motorcycle magazines until she grabs him by the hand and leads him to bed. Paweł, on his knees, showing Damian how to tie his shoes. Paweł, bringing home a pack of smokes every day after work and tossing them into Justyna’s open palms.
“You’re so lucky, Justyna,” her friends would tell her. She had been lucky.
Thirty-six Witosa Road is now a Smithsonian of memories. The absence of her husband stuns her daily to the point of paralysis. There is no end in sight, no end to the sinking feeling she has every morning when she turns her head and sees no one there, and every morning the surprise of it is overwhelming. Where are you? she asks, when she opens her eyes.
Justyna hasn’t cried once since it happened. She’d never been a crier, not even as a kid. Her mom used to joke that the last time her daughter wept was at her own birth. Now, when Elwira hears the wail, she comes running outside and stops in her tracks. She watches Justyna, head in her lap, shaking, rocking herself back and forth. She takes off her black sweater and drapes it on Justyna’s quaking shoulders, and without a word, she goes back into the house.
Anna
Wrocław, Poland
The morning of Anna and Kowalski’s romantic getaway to Wrocław, Anna finds herself at it again, standing in the kitchen, spying on Lolek through the lace curtains.
Every morning, Lolek stands outside his klatka, staring straight ahead, in the same teal blue sweat suit he has worn for days in a row. Every morning since Anna arrived in Poland two weeks ago, she has peeked through the curtains and watched him. Sometimes he’d still be outside when she left Babcia’s apartment. She’d sail past him with her heart thumping, fearing that if she actually looked at him, she’d see the image of his naked torso and his sagging man tits, pressing onto her own breasts.
Three years have passed since that night in the tent with Lolek, and Anna hasn’t been back to Poland in all that time. For three years she found excuses not to come back. She had to save money now that she was in college, and thanks to her father’s depression, Anna’s mother needed her more than ever. She didn’t want to believe that the real reason she wasn’t going back to Poland was fear.
When Lolek joked that night at the Sielpia campgrounds that he was finally going to have his way with her, Anna rolled her eyes and fended him off with playful swats. “You’re wasted, buddy,” she pronounced. “Out of my tent!” When he started kissing her, she let him for a few seconds, because why not; he was her oafish best friend. But when she tried to stop him, he grabbed her face with so much force that he drew blood. She didn’t even remember what he felt like inside her. She recalled only that the whole thing hurt and that it was over quickly.
Afterward, Lolek kept murmuring, “My Ania,” until he finally passed out and Anna wanted so badly to escape but felt paralyzed. In the morning, just as Anna was about to sneak out of the tent, Lolek rolled over and said, “Oh fuck, I feel like shit. Will you see if anyone’s got some aspirin?” Anna had looked past him, past his stained sweatpants, and crawled out. She spent the day in a daze, wondering if she should press charges or if the whole thing had been a figment of her imagination. The rest of the summer, Lolek acted a bit sheepish but definitely not like he’d commited a crime. And so Anna never told anyone; truthfully, she didn’t know what to say.
Anna started senior year of high school with a heavy heart. One night at a party a boy named Malachy Sullivan approached her. He was a senior too and they shared a few AP classes. They talked about Gabriel García Márquez, and then Malachy kissed her. It was a gentle kiss. They fell in love but broke up after graduation, and in the fall Anna went off to study theater in Pittsburgh.
A month before freshman year at Carnegie Mellon was over, Anna received a letter from Kamila. Where have you gone, Aniusia? I miss you terribly. I’m still pining for Emil, and now, it seems, for you too. Please come back. The letter made Anna cry and she did as told. She came back. Two weeks ago, her plane landed in Warsaw and Anna had taken the train to Kielce. She spent the three-hour ride sitting with her carry-on bag in her lap, staring out the window past the rolling fields and the sleepy wioski, past the birch forests and hay bales, and she couldn’t stop smiling.
In the hotel room in Wrocław, Anna and Kowalski are lying around listening to the radio, and before signing off the announcer says “and, finally, forty monkeys escaped the Vienna Zoo this morning. Authorities say they are headed west.” Anna turns the volume down and looks toward Kowalski, who is sprawled on the pullout, buck-naked.
“Maybe they’re running toward us.” Kowalski laughs and holds out his hand. Anna slinks toward him. He pulls her on top of him and wordlessly slides down her panties.
“Again?”
He nods his head; the condom is somehow already on. Yesterday, when she had interrupted their first frenzied go at it by asking him if he had protection, he was incredulous. “Against what?” he’d panted, confused. Anna had quickly reached for her pack of Eros-O-Lex, praying they were as good as Trojans, and then demonstrated how to put one on.
“But it’s like swimming with a cap. It doesn’t feel natural,” he had whined.
“Does AIDS?” Anna snapped back and he shut his mouth. Anna didn’t even want to think what his inexperience with the condom meant. He used to be the shy one, the hesitant one, always standing off to the side. Now there was no end to his sexual appetite, and, amazingly, no end to his ejaculations. It didn’t turn her on as much as she thought it might.
Kowalski vigorously pumps for a few minutes and then she feels his body tense up and shudder. When it’s over he falls asleep immediately and Anna gently removes herself from his arms. She throws on a T-shirt and goes out onto the narrow balcony. The hotel’s neon sign, attached to a nearby railing, is already lit, even though it’s barely dusk, and Anna goes back inside and grabs her camera. She snaps a photo of the blinking letters, spelling out H-O-T-E-L, with the steeples of Wrocław looming in the distance. The sunset has left the heavens smudged with red, purple, and cobalt, like the work of a finger painting. It’s beautiful.
Maybe when Kowalski wakes up, they’ll go to the Chinese restaurant near the hotel. Anna wants to take a picture of Kowalski holding a pair of chopsticks.
Back in the room, Anna goes to the phone. She crouches by the wall while Kowalski snores peacefully, his small, firm ass on display.
“Kamila? It’s me.”
“Hi! How’s your rendezvous?”
“Well, Wrocław is pretty, but the entire city is under renovation, so there are bu
lldozers and cranes everywhere. We went to the zoo this morning.”
“And?”
“The monkeys were cute.”
Kamila sighs on the other end. “No, dummy. And? How’s Kowalski? Are you in love?”
Anna mulls the question over silently. Somehow, after all these years, Mariusz Kowalski had grown some balls and a few days ago, he walked her back to her klatka, grabbed her shoulders, and started kissing her, just like that. “I didn’t think I’d miss you so much. Thank God you came back. I could eat you up, right here, right now.” Anna had been pleasantly surprised. She had always thought Kowalski was cute. Anna needed to get away from Kielce for a bit, and she invited Kowalski to take a trip with her.
“Where?”
“Anywhere,” she replied.
“Okay. How about Wrocław? I hear there’s a great zoo there.”
Anna had smiled and nodded. “Wrocław it is.”
Now, she glances at his rump, his dupa, on the couch. “In love? With Kowalski? We’re having fun, Kamila, but the man can’t string together a sentence. And he only packed one shirt. For three days.”
“I told you!” Kamila laughs. “Well, at least you’re getting laid. Emil still doesn’t wanna do it. I think I’m just gonna have to get him drunk and rape him and call it a day.”
“Desperate measures,” Anna says quietly.
“I’m serious, Ania. I just don’t know anymore.” Kamila sighs into the phone. “I love him, he says he loves me, but he hardly even slips me the tongue when we kiss. You’d tell me if my breath was the problem, right?”
“Your breath is fine, Kamila. That’s not the problem.” Anna wants to tell Kamila that her problem is that she’s probably in love with a homosexual, but you can’t say homosexual in Kielce, not in the circles they run with.
“Well, have your fun and hurry back. Besides, I’m rotting here without you. And, we should go visit Justyna. You gotta get over it.”
Anna doesn’t say anything. Justyna’s baby made the differences between her American life and her Polish life so much more palpable. She didn’t want to think about it. Just then Kowalski lets one rip. It’s a long, laborious fart, like a foghorn.
“What the hell was that?” Kamila asks.
“A sign from God,” whispers Anna and blows a kiss through the receiver. When she hangs up Kowalski rolls over, and much to Anna’s chagrin, he’s ready for action, still cloaked in a used jimmie. Anna wants out. Out of the room, out of Wrocław, and out of his reach.
“No, thanks. I need a shower.”
“All right. But I gotta take a dump something awful,” Kowalski announces and gets up off the couch.
Anna stares at the wall. “I was thinking, you know. Since we’ve gone to the zoo and all, maybe we should get back on a train tonight. Plus, I’m running out of cash. We can make the eight o’clock if we hurry.”
“No Chink food?” Kowalski calls out from the bathroom.
“I lost my appetite,” Anna says quietly and starts packing.
On the eight-o’clock express, Anna leans her forehead against the cool window, and closes her eyes. Kowalski burps and the air goes putrid with the waft of stale sausage.
“That kiełbasa from lunch.” He grins and waves a hand in the air, fanning toward her face. “Want some?”
The train ride to Wrocław had been different. They had cuddled, exchanged brief kisses, and shared a glazed raspberry pączek. Now, she glances at him with obvious contempt.
“Jesus. What’s the problem, Anka?”
“You’re the problem here, Kowalski. This isn’t working out. I need more than a willing lay. I need conversation.”
Kowalski looks at her like she’s insane. His face flushes crimson.
“See, that’s what I mean, you don’t say anything. I mean, I don’t need you to recite poetry but something other than a running commentary about the workings of your digestive system would be nice.”
Kowalski gets up and violently grabs his knapsack from the overhead bin.
“So you’re just gonna leave? You have nothing to add? Nothing? What’s wrong with you? It’s unnerving. You’re like an animal; you communicate through fucking, grunts, and farts. I need words.”
Before he slides open the compartment doors, Kowalski turns around. “You want words? I’ve got two for you. Odpierdól się. How’s that? You drag me on this trip, it’s your idea, you fuck me, we stroll around the ape cages like fucking Romeo and Juliet, and then you switch on a dime, so what words do you want? I never said I was good enough for you, Anka, but you don’t have to keep reminding me of it. Lolek was right.”
It is the most he has ever uttered in one breath. Then he is gone.
Anna gets home past midnight. Babcia is fast asleep on the wersalka in her little room. Babcia hadn’t been too happy that Anna had run off with Kowalski like that. Maybe Anna should have listened to her and just stayed put.
The next morning, the ringing phone wakes her at seven. Anna shuffles to the foyer, wishing, again, that Babcia would finally let her buy a cordless phone for the apartment.
“Halo?”
“So Babcia’s in a huff because you ran off with some boy to Wrocław? Did you have fun, córko?”
“I did. How’s Tato?”
“Don’t change the subject. I wanna talk about the fun.” Anna can see the small smile on her mother’s face, she can hear the wistfulness of her plea.
“He’s the subject of our lives, Mamo.”
“Your father’s a mess, but what else is new. He refuses to take his Prozac, he cut up all my credit cards.”
Over the years, Radosław has sunk into real depression. When Poland held its first democratic elections in 1991, he couldn’t get over the fact that he wasn’t there to celebrate with his old friends. His anger overwhelmed him, and in turn, overwhelmed his wife and daughter. One morning, they found him in the bathroom with a steak knife pressed against his wrists, and talked him back into bed, where he cried into his pillow and didn’t speak for days.
“I’m sorry. The fun, huh? Well, Wrocław is gorgeous and the boy was too. Kind of.”
“Oh, Anna, I’m so jealous.…” Anna laughs but she knows Paulina isn’t kidding. The depth of regret Paulina lives with is something Anna never wants to experience. Before her departure to Poland, she took her mother out for drinks, and when Paulina, sloshed on martinis, began detailing her awful sex life, Anna shouted “No!” laughing. She didn’t want to hear it.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?” she asked instead and Paulina had looked sadly into the bottom of her glass, dipped her finger in and swished it around absentmindedly.
“I wanted to own a cukiernia. I wanted to make candy.” It was that disclosure, more than anything, that broke Anna’s heart.
After she hangs up with her mother, Anna walks into the kitchen, where Babcia is making pierogi. When the first batch is ready, boiled to perfection and drenched in onions and butter, Anna eats more than is good for her, stuffing them whole into her mouth. Babcia eats like she always does, over the kitchen sink, straight out of the pot.
When Anna walks downstairs at five forty-five, she notices someone has spray-painted the word kurwa next to Babcia’s mailbox. Kurwa like bitch, kurwa like cunt, like whore, kurwa like all of the above. She wonders if Kowalski did it.
Anna sits down on the curb in front of Babcia’s apartment building. She brings her knees to her chest, and suddenly, she’s fourteen again. She remembers one summer when a neighborhood kid walked past her and muttered, “Go back home, Amerykanko.” Anna’s face had flushed, but she caught up with the kid and swung him by the arm. “I am home, you little fucker,” she’d hissed and the boy looked at her like she was crazy but he never bothered her again.
This place is her private corner of the world. No one can ruin this patch of sun-baked grass, these cobblestones, that trzepak in front of her, unfaltering as ever. No one can ruin Poland for her. Just then a flock of blackbirds flies overhead, in perfect formati
on. “They’re on their way to a wedding,” Babcia always said and that’s how Anna had always pictured them: gathered round a white canopy, dancing till dawn. The birds disappear past the rooftops, flying quickly, as if they’re late.
Kamila
Kielce, Poland
Motivated by the account of Anna’s lusty escapade in Wrocław, Kamila decided that she was finally, finally going to do something about Emil.
Her father was at some art historian seminar in Lublin for the weekend—and her mother was visiting Kamila’s Ciocia Frania in Sandomierz. The stars were truly aligning. Yesterday Ciocia Frania had taken a turn for the worse, and Zofia had rushed off, hoping to positively affect the contents of her aunt’s last will and testament.
Kamila told Emil that she was having a small party, since her folks were out of town. “I only invited Lidka Frenczyk and Irek, bring some wine if you want. We can make pizza.”
When she opened the door, in her red bustier and high heels, Emil nearly passed out. He was cradling a bottle of white wine in his arms, with a green satin ribbon tied around its neck. The bottle fell from his hands and shattered, soaking the welcome mat and his shiny black loafers. “Is this a costume party?” he stuttered.
“I’ll get a towel. And get in here. I don’t want the neighbors to see me like this. They’ll tell my mother I’m running a brothel in her absence,” Kamila muttered. She scurried into the bathroom to regroup, trying to make herself believe that things could only go up from here. She sat on the toilet, which felt like an icicle against her bare ass, and whispered a small prayer. “Please, God, let me have sex tonight and let it be everything I always dreamed of.”
The Lullaby of Polish Girls Page 11
