Her father is still not allowed back into Poland; the threat of political imprisonment continues, as long as the country remains under Communist law. Radosław often recounted what the government official told him when the Barans were inquiring about asylum: “You deserted in 1975 and in your statement wrote that there was no such thing as a ‘Polish’ army. You were right. There is no Polska, kolego. There is only the Polish People’s Republic. And if you ever come back here, you are fucked, comrade.” Sometimes, when Radosław gets into one of his moods, he cries about the Commie pricks who killed his father, the Commie pricks who “castrated” him. “Commie pricks, Commie fucks, skurwysyny,” he whispers as he pounds his skull with his fists. His moods scare Anna more than his belt smacking the side of the bed, and more than the times he calls her a debil. Her father’s sadness frightens Anna the most, because she doesn’t know how to make it better, and no one can tell her.
Radosław is free to travel anywhere west of the Berlin Wall. Now, he does his freedom fighting from cramped, smoky offices in London, Paris, and Amsterdam. He goes on overseas trips that last for months at a time, bringing Anna back useless gifts like yellow wooden clogs. His work, which probably includes smuggling, is shrouded in secrecy. All Anna knows is that he has a collection of passports, driver’s licenses, and business cards that mysteriously read Import/Export. This summer, he decides to take Anna to Europe with him. Their last stop was West Berlin, where Uncle Adam lives.
Adam was going to Poland as a favor to her dad, who couldn’t cross the border. The trip had something to do with a printing press that Radosław’s friends in Kielce were counting on. It was only a three-day trip and, as soon as they mentioned it, Anna begged to go with her uncle. She delivered a beseeching monologue about how Radosław “didn’t raise a coward, did he?”; about how she yearned to see her homeland. When Radosław heard the word ojczyzna, coming from someone he clearly found lacking in guts, something must have clicked and he agreed to let her go. Anna threw her arms around her father’s neck and inhaled the ever-constant mix of tobacco and sausage. “Go,” he murmured into her hair. “And come back.” It was an order, disguised as permission. He swatted the top of her head, pulled on her bangs, and clutched the side of her face; a series of gestures executed quickly, like a secret handshake. Then, from around his neck, he took off his chain, the one with the Black Madonna medallion on it, the one he’d gotten from a priest while in prison. He put it on Anna, tucked it underneath her blouse. “Wracaj,” Radosław grunted, and then he walked off without another word.
Anna idolizes her father. He is a true bohater, a hero of Solidarność. But when he yells the whole house shakes and Anna is terrified of him, terrified of his anger, which is always on the verge of bursting. The last month, traversing Europe together, has been like a tense, drawn-out blind date. Conversation does not flow. Radosław refuses to spend money on hotels, and instead they sleep in the rental car or on colleagues’ couches. Anna has not been in a good mood since the plane ride, when midway over the Atlantic she got her first period. After they landed in Paris, Radosław made her buy her own maxi pads. Anna approached the nice French cashier, silently pointed to the big blue pouch of pads behind the counter, and felt like dying. When she finally managed to secure the giant foamy diaper to her underwear, she sat in the bathroom stall of a café and cried.
In the rearview mirror, Anna sees Uncle Adam wink and motion in front of him as they finally pass a green “KIELCE” marker. She stares out the window in awe as they roll into the city and, when Adam makes a right on Warszawska Street, her heart starts walloping in her chest. Minutes later, they park in front of her babcia’s prewar limestone building. When Anna opens the car door and steps out onto the cobblestone sidewalk, she opens her mouth to tell Adam that she wants to go up alone, but no words come out. When she turns around Anna sees the old rug beater she used to dangle from like a kiełbasa, and wants to shout for joy, but again, she can’t muster a syllable.
By the thicket of rowanberry trees, which are full of the bright red jarzębiny that she suddenly remembers picking as a little girl, Anna stares at the rug beater. The trzepak is made up of three iron poles that fit together like a frame, planted into the ground, with a fourth pole slicing the middle. Vacuum cleaners are still a Western luxury, and in the fifties local Communist housing administrations erected trzepaki in every neighborhood. When she was little, Anna remembers people dragging their rugs and carpets outside, hanging them over the poles, and thumping them with what looked like tennis rackets. Anna closes her eyes and can hear the thwap thwap sound that used to echo like a chorus and often woke her up in the mornings. The sudden memory is so vivid that she remains frozen until Adam speaks.
“I’ll wait down here for a few, all right? So you can have your big moment. Whistle if we need to call an ambulance.” Adam leans against the car and lights a cigarette, laughing.
The stairwell in the apartment building smells the same. Anna takes her time winding up the three flights, her clammy hand gripping the bright blue balustrade, inhaling the blend of cigarettes, rain, fried pierogi, and metal. If her whole visit consisted of standing in the stairwell and breathing, it would be enough. On the third floor there are three doors. She knocks on the last one, and it opens, and there, just like that, stands Ciocia Ula. They stand and stare at one another. Anna is struck by her aunt’s hair—a poufed bob the exact color of pumpkin. And when Ula finally asks, “Who’re you looking for?” Anna sees that Ula, despite being only in her mid-thirties, has absolutely no teeth.
“O Matko Boska!”
Faces appear behind Ula, the cries of “heavenly mother” grow louder. Suddenly there is a mad rush, a cacophony of yelps, and Anna is pulled into the apartment by dozens of limbs; or at least that’s what it feels like. Faces press into hers; people are shouting and jumping up and down and then, just as suddenly, there is an eerie stillness, as Anna’s face is drawn into a warm, heaving bosom. Her grandmother’s embrace is so strong that it hurts. Finally, Babcia Helenka breaks the clinch and takes Anna’s petrified face into her hands, which happen to be the softest hands in the world.
“Aniusia. You’ve come back.” Aniusia. Nobody calls her that back in the States. But the Poles have codes and deeply rooted traditions when it comes to names. What someone calls you is what they think of you. Diminutive, demonstrative, cautious, guarded, formal, intimate; the form of your name is a symbol of your status. So, Anna is Ania, Anka, and sometimes, once in a while, she is Aniusia: darling, sweet, little Aniusia.
Later, after they stop literally pinching themselves and her, Babcia tries to coax her toward speech.
“But your Polish is beautiful. Don’t be embarrassed. We always talk on the phone when your mama calls, and now we can talk in person. In person, Aniu!” Babcia Helenka entreats as she kneels by Anna, tenderly stroking her hair. But Anna smiles through her tears and says nothing.
After the shrieking dies down, Adam comes up and fills them in on the hows and whys and then he leaves. “I’ll be back for you Sunday, ten A.M.” Anna sits on the divan with an empty plate on her lap that mere minutes ago was filled with homemade meat pierożki and sweet carrot soufflé. Her relatives, who had all come over to Babcia’s for obiad that day, hover around, offering jokes, smiles, biscuits, and tea. Ciocia Bronka and Ciocia Ula, her mother’s older sisters, are there with their children Hubert and Renata. Wujek Leszek, Bronka’s husband, stands by the balcony, smoking and asking about her dad. Anna’s cousin Hubert sports a curly pompadour and acid-wash jeans, belted high above his waist. Cousin Renata is taller than Hubert and with her wide nose and small, pretty mouth she looks just like Aunt Bronka.
Hubert cuts in among the chattering women. “People, leave her alone. Jezus Maria, she’s exhausted. Anka, just ignore the barbarians. What do you wanna do? Wanna take a walk or something? Renata and I can take you to the zalew. Remember the bay? We used to go there every summer. The water’s shitty now, but the Café Relaks is still open. Remember it
? And that Czech circus has pitched its tent right on the—”
“Oh my God, Hubert, talk about leaving her alone!” Renata laughs and rolls her eyes in Hubert’s direction. Renata took Anna to her first movie. Anna was five, and she remembers hurrying there in the rain, the almost religious hush in the theater, and images of the film, W Pustyni I W Puszczy. She spent weeks dreaming of the movie and the young Polish lead, her first crush. Anna remembers all of this now, in a momentary flash.
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 e
xactly 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?”
The Lullaby of Polish Girls Page 3