The Lullaby of Polish Girls

by Dagmara Dominczyk

  Anna’s seen Lolek a few times. Standing around the neighborhood, smoking and swigging malted beer with the same group of local guys she recognizes from her youth. They’ve grown up to be the kind of guys that she’d never associate with in the States—guys who don’t read books, or discuss current events, guys with corroded teeth and black fingernails. The very same guys she’d been buddies with for all those years now made her cringe when she waved hello but hurried past them, feeling all kinds of sadness. When she was fourteen and handed out clothes and candy to the beholden post-Communist children, there was magic and power in it. When she was sixteen and rallied her girlfriends to follow their dreams, she was their ally and, more importantly, one of their own. “My Polaki,” she’d say. She was one of them. But she was better, and until this summer, she never felt there was anything wrong with that.

  Anna began to notice things this year that threatened to collapse her idea of Polska. The neighborhood bums—who huddled around lampposts at all hours of the day, passing bottles of home brew around—bugged her. The desperate wives and mothers, who had to search behind bushes for their wasted sons, bugged her. People who cut the line at the local warzywniak bugged her. Everyone seemed dismal, hurried, and hungover. Had Anna always been this blind? She felt utterly alien, as if Kielce was a place she no longer understood.

  Today, the most exciting thing Anna did was help Babcia move the credenza. At four o’clock the phone buzzes and Anna leaps up from her dog-eared copy of T. C. Boyle’s Water Music.

  “Dzieńdobry. Is Anna there?” a deep baritone voice inquires and Anna’s curiosity is instantly piqued.

  “This is Anna. Who’s this?”

  “Guess.”

  “I have no idea.” Anna laughs, scrambling to figure out who the voice belongs to.

  “That’s a shame. But I’ll give you a break. Będziesz moją dziewczyna.”

  Anna’s mouth falls open. “Sebastian?”

  “Ja, das ist Sebastian.”

  “I, I thought you lived in Germany,” Anna stutters.

  “Moved back two years ago.”

  Anna is silent for a beat, surprised and thrilled.

  “Can I take you out for a drink?” he asks.

  “Tak.”

  Sebastian tells her he’ll pick her up in an hour and Anna hangs up grinning like a fool.

  Two hours later, Anna hears a car honk and peeks through the kitchen window. There’s a beat-up old truck—one of those Star 200s from the eighties—parked in front of her grandmother’s building. When she walks out of the stairwell, Sebastian Tefilski is leaning against the driver’s side door, smoking a cigarette.

  “Did someone call for a limo?” Sebastian jokes.

  “You look like some kind of Adidas ad,” Anna tells him. He’s tall and sporting an Adidas baseball cap, Adidas polo shirt, and black Adidas sneakers. He’s also more handsome than Anna had imagined. Sebastian laughs, showing his white teeth, which throw her, because white teeth like that are definitely not a Polish thing. He eyes her up and down.

  “My, my. The Amerykanka’s all grown up.” He flicks his cigarette and smiles. “Get in.”

  They drive past Staszica Park, on their way downtown, past the lake that’s teeming with ducks and swans. At a red light, Sebastian turns to her. “Did you know that swans mate for life?”

  Yes, she says, of course she knows.

  “But did you also know a male swan—a cob—is the only bird that has a penis?”

  Anna laughs. The words for life echo in her head, and she feels dumb for reading into things already.

  At an outdoor pub on Sienkiewicza Street, they are making small talk over some beers when Sebastian says, “And then you had to go ahead and ruin it with that fucked-up letter. Man, Baran, you could have been my wife by now, instead you drove me out to Berlin, where I filled up on spaetzle, trying to forget you.”

  She laughs wildly. “What ‘fucked-up letter’?”

  Sebastian winks at her and stands up to get some more Zywiec. Anna has no recollection of a letter. When she left in 1989, she remembers handing Sebastian a note with her address, and he promised to write to her but he never did, and that was that. Maybe he has her mixed up with some other girl. When he gets back with two kufly of beer, Anna takes a sip, wipes the foam from her mouth.

  “I wrote you a lot of letters, Sebastian. Just never mailed them. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “All right, Anna.” Sebastian winks at her again and grins.

  Emboldened by the alcohol, Anna kisses him lightly on the mouth when he drops her off at Szydłówek. He doesn’t kiss her back, but he doesn’t duck either. “I’ll call you in the morning. Maybe we can drive to Kraków for the day or something.”

  The next day, Anna wakes up with a sore throat and butterflies in her stomach. By eleven A.M., she’s on the balcony, looking for his truck. At five o’clock, she is ready to give up, but when Babcia draws the curtains for the night, Anna refuses to change into her pajamas. At ten P.M. Anna hears it: a single honk. Suddenly, she’s scrambling down the stairwell like a madwoman, calling back to Babcia, “I won’t be late but don’t wait up.”

  On the hilltop, where Sebastian parked the truck, he refills Anna’s glass. The wine is sweet and cheap. “Just like the company,” Anna joked when she took her first sip. They are fifteen kilometers outside of Kielce, past the little village of Masłów nestled in the Swietokrzyskie Mountains. The night air feels damp and chilly. The tickle in Anna’s throat has been bothering her all day, and it’s an effort to swallow every sip of wine.

  Sebastian and Anna don’t say much, just clink glasses and stare up at the sky. You can see it all up here, every possible configuration, from the Big Dipper to Orion’s Belt. When she got in his truck, he promised her the best view of the city, and he wasn’t kidding. In the distance, Kielce glimmers, aglow with what look like dozens of tiny flashlights.

  “It’s a pretty sight, isn’t it?”

  Sebastian smiles and nods his head. “Sure is.” Anna still can’t believe she’s here with him, on a date that’s been ten years in the making.

  “I had a dream about you last night,” Anna tells him as they lounge in the back of his pickup truck.

  “Oh, yeah?” Sebastian is noncommittal, breezy.

  “Yeah. You picked me up in the truck at Babcia’s and told me you were gonna drive me to America. You were wearing a white hat. And when we got in the car I was like, ‘Wait, you know there’s an ocean after Paris. How are we gonna drive across the ocean?’ And you said, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll make it.’ ” Anna immediately regrets telling him.

  Sebastian takes a swig from the bottle and closes his eyes. “That’s it?”

  “No, hotshot, and then I told you I loved you and we made out all the way to France.”

  He laughs out loud. “That’s better.”

  Anna flushes pink because that was the dream, goddamnit. Kocham cię, she had whispered three times in a row, as they sped down Toporowskiego and he had turned to her and started weeping.

  “So what are you doing tomorrow, Baran?”

  “You tell me. Maybe we’ll go to Kraków again.” Anna rolls her eyes at him.

  “Ha ha.” He opens one eye and takes a final gulp of wine, chucking the empty bottle over the side of the truck. “So, let’s get to the crux of the matter here, Baran. You have a fella back home?”

  Anna shakes her head. She’s pretty sure he’s not asking because he’s dying to know the answer.

  “I want a career, and then I’ll worry about ‘a fella.’ ”

  “You Americans do it all backward, huh? Look at your best buddies. They’re way ahead of you in the game.”

  “What game? And what best buddies?”

  “Marchewska, Strawicz. Kamila’s as good as married, Strawicz already has a kid.”

  “You don’t think I know that?”

  “I don’t know what you know. You might be too busy with Hollywood to keep up with the local news
reel.”

  “I still don’t know what your point is.” Anna sits up, irritated now. This was not how she had imagined the night unfolding.

  “Point is, love is in the air, Baran, up for grabs. But you have loftier goals, I guess.”

  “Loftier goals? I don’t want a husband or a child right now, what’s so lofty about that? There’s an expression in America, ‘whatever floats your boat.’ So it’s my boat and I don’t need anyone telling me how to float it.”

  “Till it sinks, right?” Sebastian laughs.

  Anna fusses with her jean cuffs. “And wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t it teach me a lesson, huh? That I should have settled for mediocrity? ‘Lofty ambitions.’ You say that as if it were a bad thing. Why is that? The minute you try to rise above the fray, what are you? Cocky, stupid, lucky? But it’s never admirable, so explain that to me. Maybe that’s why this country’s so fucked. ’Cause you’d rather sit on your asses, judging others and griping about life, than work to change your circumstances.”

  Sebastian stares at her, eyebrows raised. “Wow, if your acting thing doesn’t work out, you could always run for mayor, Anna.”

  “You’re happy? You’re happy being a truck driver at twenty-one? Why don’t you just knock up one of the wide-eyed fawns that are probably lined up around the block for you, and call it a day?”

  “It’s easy to visit, Anna. Try living here and then talk to me.”

  Sebastian leans toward her and and touches the small medallion dangling from the chain around her neck. “Patriotka,” he murmurs, and suddenly they’re kissing. It’s not how she envisioned it, but the moment grabs hold of her and doesn’t let go for a long while. Anna parts his lips with her tongue. They kiss hungrily, their mouths still tasting like cabernet.

  And then, just as suddenly, Sebastian stops, stands up, and jumps off the side of the truck, dusting his hands off on his jeans.

  “There’s a woman,” Sebastian offers quietly. And Anna knows that it’s over. All of it.

  They drive back in silence, the rickety truck speeds down the hill, and in eleven minutes they are pulling up to Toporowskiego, where Anna jumps out before Sebastian can make a full stop.

  “We really should drive up to Kraków,” he calls out after her and she turns around and stares at him, memorizing his face, his hangdog expression and churlish little smile, his black curls that are matted to his forehead. She knows this is the last time that he’ll be this close.

  “You carried my bag,” she whispers. “You were thirteen years old and you hoisted that duffel over your shoulder in front of everyone.”

  Sebastian leans his head out the window. “What? I can’t hear you, Anna. Just come here for a second.” But Anna turns and runs into the building, runs up the three flights of stairs, almost knocking down Pani Nowacka, who’s heading to work.

  That afternoon Anna wakes up on the couch with Babcia sitting beside her. Babcia has a wet washcloth folded in her hands, which she gently places on Anna’s forehead. The handkerchief sends icy hot shivers down Anna’s neck, and she weakly moves her head from side to side, trying to slide it off.

  “You have a fever, córeczko, and a bad one at that,” Babcia informs her. Anna opens her mouth and winces in pain; the skin on her lips is cracked and brittle. “My throat,” she croaks in English, hoping Babcia will guess, because if she tries to stretch the open vowels for the Polish words moje gardło, she might draw blood. Her grandmother shakes her head and places her hand on Anna’s chest. “Your heart.”

  Anna stares into her grandmother’s loving face, into her gray eyes that shine like titanium. “Cut it out, Babcia,” she manages.

  “I saw the way you ran down those stairs last night. Tell me, córeczko, did you sleep with him?”

  Anna shakes her head, surprised at the question. If Anna could talk, and if she could talk of such things with Babcia, Anna would confess that she was the one who wanted to make love with Sebastian last night, she was the one that didn’t want to stop kissing him.

  “Were you able to say everything you wanted to tell him?” Anna shakes her head again. Tears are gathering in her eyes and she feels stupid and confused. She wishes Sebastian had never called her.

  “No wonder your throat is sore.”

  “I caught a cold, that’s it, Babciu. It was freezing last night.” Anna tries to sit up.

  Anna just wants to sleep everything off, but Babcia continues. “Did I ever tell you what happened to me after I met your grandfather for the first time?” Babcia wipes her hands on her apron and folds them on her lap. “I was seventeen. It was summer and I was on my way back from town. My hands were full of shopping bags, and I was tired and hot and not paying too much attention to where I was headed. As I crossed the street I tripped on the curb and skinned my knee. I should have been wearing stockings but it was too darn hot that day. My mother had admonished me, but what did I care?” Babcia smiles at the memory.

  “Anyway, my bags spilled every which way and suddenly there was a shadow over me. I looked up and there he was, your grandfather. Oh, Aniusia, he was so dapper then. He knelt down and, without a word, licked his finger and blotted the blood from my knee. He stood right back up, tipped his hat, and said, ‘Stefan Chmielinski, at your service,’ and then sauntered off, leaving me on the pavement to clean up the rest of the mess. That would turn out to be his modus operandi when we were married, but back then, what did I know.” Babcia divorced Dziadek Stefan years and years ago, long before Anna had been born.

  “Well, the next day I woke up covered head to toe in a terrible rash, itchy red hives everywhere. Doctors came and examined me and not one of them could explain what was the matter. But my grandmother, your pra-pra-babcia Walentyna did. ‘This Stefan, he got under your skin, Helenka, and until you see him again, the rash won’t heal.’ And she was right.”

  To Anna, the story is a good one, but that’s all it is. Anna is not lovesick, she has a throat infection that’s been brewing for days now, that’s all it is. But she can’t argue with Babcia. This is the same woman who swears up and down that cancer is an actual crab that hibernates in the body, and if it “wakes up” it preys on its host. Anna wants to laugh at the story but she’s too tired for an argument, so she closes her eyes.

  When Anna boards the plane back to JFK five days later, her throat is still throbbing. As the wheels lift off, she wipes away tears; saying goodbye to Poland would never be easy. But Anna spends the next nine hours replaying the trip in her head, wondering if summers in Kielce are worth the hassle anymore. Somehow, her hometown has lost its luster. This time, when the customs officer hands Anna back her United States passport and says, “Welcome home,” she doesn’t roll her eyes.

  Kamila

  Warszawa, Poland

  “And so, after what felt like a lifetime of skirting the issue, I finally got down on one knee, right in the middle of Zamkowy Square, and asked Kamila if she would allow me the honor of being her husband. And thank God, she said yes. I hadn’t really planned on it, even though I’d been thinking about it for years.”

  “Years,” Kamila chimes in, because she just can’t help it.

  “Okay, okay, koteczku”—Emil turns red, but plows on—“but I didn’t think it would happen yesterday! When we were packing, I thought, lemme bring the ring, just in case the mood strikes me. And boy, it struck me. It sure did. Tourists were taking pictures of us and everything.” Emil ceremoniously throws his arm around Kamila’s shoulder and brings her in for a rough squeeze as if she were a goal-scoring player on his soccer team. “We have to refit the ring, that’s why she’s not wearing it right now—it was my great-grandmother’s and she had tiny fingers. Kamila’s got paws, right, kochanie?”

  “Well, that’s the most romantic thing I have ever heard,” squeals Jola, and elbows Norbert’s side.

  Kamila takes a sip of her daiquiri and sloshes the drink around in her mouth before rolling her eyes. “ ‘Kamila’s got paws’? That’s the most romantic thing you’ve
ever heard?” Everyone laughs.

  Norbert lights his girlfriend’s third consecutive Vogue cigarette. All night long, Kamila’s made it a point not to stare at his hair plugs, but she’s failing miserably. They look fresh, like little black turnips sprouting in rows on his scalp.

  “Let’s have a party at the country house before you guys leave on Monday. An engagement party. It’s been too long since we partied up at the chatka, don’t you think, Jolusia?” Norbert winks.

  Jola twirls the skinny cigarette between her fingers, her French manicure gleaming, and nods vehemently in agreement. “Za długo!” she thunders. Kamila is fascinated by her cousin Jola, by her two-inch-long nails (“Acrylic tips! Asian-owned salon. Kamila, I’ll tell you what, those Orientals know what they’re doing”), by the way she flounces into a room in three-inch high heels, and by the fact that Jola is schtupping her forty-two-year-old boss, a bona fide Polish millionaire, who has his own plastic surgery practice, as well as his own wife and two kids.

  “But my procedure is scheduled for tomorrow,” Kamila reminds them.

  “Then we’ll reschedule it for Monday. Jola, you can set it up, can’t you, kotku?” He laughs loudly because of course Jola can. If she could, Jola would pull up the office calendar now. She’d do anything to keep her job with all its perks, including weekend getaways at the “chatka” Norbert has in Suruck, on the outskirts of the city. Chatka, my ass, Kamila thinks. It’s not a hut, not even close. The vacation home where she and Emil have been staying for the past two weeks is more like a castle, with turrets and balconies and a stable in the fields surrounding the grounds.

  Norbert motions for the waitress, and Kamila excuses herself. Jola hops up and follows her. “It’s like they need help with wiping or something,” Kamila hears Norbert say to Emil. Kamila cringes as Emil erupts in a fit of giggles.

  The bathroom is all polished porcelain with perfectly folded hand towels. White cans of Rexona deodorant perfume and Elnett hairspray sit in neat rows next to the sinks. It’s like a five-star spa, not a bathroom; even when it comes to its shitters, the Warsaw area is shiny, effusive, and impossibly chic compared to Kielce. Kamila is suddenly overwhelmed. She stands in front of the enormous mirrors and examines, among other things, her painfully short bangs and big paws.