Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  “Do you know the words, Yulian?” Miss Bronia asked.

  If I said yes, she would ask why I wasn’t singing, and if I lied and said no, that would be even worse. Besides, she would probably tell me to listen to Fredek sing them again. I realized that of the options open to me, the most expedient one under even these dire circumstances was to just join in the singing. I did. It was, after all, wartime.

  In a while the road went into a forest, and people were sitting and lying down under the trees. There were wagons, carriages, bicycles, and all sorts of handcarts pulled off the road. Some had no people near them and looked as though they may have been abandoned there. When we found a spot big enough for our truck, Auntie Paula and Sonya turned off the road, and we all followed. In a moment the truck followed us onto the grass.

  “Is anybody a doctor?” Mr. Dembovski shouted again from the truck as soon as it had stopped. He turned and repeated it in the other direction. Nobody answered.

  “A man’s had a heart attack!” Mr. Dembovski said.

  Miss Bronia led Fredek and me a distance from the truck, and we sat down. “Anybody have to go to the bathroom?” she asked. I had to a little bit, but I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m hungry,” Fredek said. I was too, but I figured it wouldn’t help any to say so.

  “Who knows the story about the rooster and the pig?” she asked.

  “I do,” Fredek said.

  “Would you like to tell it?” she asked.

  “No. You tell it.” I was sure that Fredek didn’t really know it. I didn’t either, but my attention was still on the poor woman with the limp and the face like a heart and the sweat stains, whose husband was in the truck dying.

  Then I saw a woman, sitting on the ground not far from us, urging the man sitting with her to come forward—I couldn’t hear them, but I could tell by their gestures. Finally, he got up and came towards the truck. He had on a white shirt and gray suit trousers. He was bald with just a horseshoe of gray hair and a gray mustache. “I was a dentist. Maybe I can help,” he said.

  Mr. Dembovski led him to the back of the truck, and they disappeared inside. Other men were now gathering around the rear of the tuck and stood looking inside. I remembered how in Warsaw people would crowd around to look when a horse fell in the street. My mother, my Aunties, and Sonya were standing at the front of the truck talking together.

  Then a man who had been watching walked away, saying, “He’s dead. The dentist says he’s dead.”

  Miss Bronia stopped her story and all three of us watched the goings-on at the back of the truck.

  After a few more minutes, Mr. Dembovski got down from the truck and began talking to the people standing behind it. Then the group broke up. Mr. Dembovski went to the side of the truck now, opened a compartment, and brought out a shovel. Then another man came walking back carrying a shovel. And finally, a third man showed up with a shovel as well.

  “They’re going to bury him,” Fredek said. He stood up and started to run towards the truck.

  “Come back, Fredek,” Miss Bronia called, but he didn’t. Instinctively I braced myself for her reaction. But Miss Bronia didn’t do anything, just let him disobey her. I could have run with Fredek and watched them bury the man. But I didn’t do it and now, again, he was there and I was sitting here.

  “I saw my grandfather have a heart attack and die,” I told Miss Bronia.

  “Did you, now?” she said. “Would you like to tell me about it?”

  Her curiosity over the matter surprised me.

  “Did you love your grandfather?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I fibbed. Then, feeling that it needed elaboration, I added, “He gave me a red tricycle to have when I visited them in Lodz.” What I didn’t say was that I hadn’t yet ridden it because I wasn’t allowed to ride it either around the apartment or out in the street.

  “Tell me what it was like when he died.”

  “Everybody was calling for a doctor and crying.”

  “And what was it like for you?”

  I knew what she meant. I realized that somebody must have told her about my blowing the whole secret of his death on the phone with Mother. The story must have made the rounds of the family.

  “Pretty awful,” I said.

  “Did you cry?”

  “No.” Then I corrected myself. “Yes, I did,” I fibbed again, remembering that she seemed to be in favor of crying.

  “You were afraid to have anyone see you cry,” she said. But she said it kindly, not accusingly.

  I nodded my head. It was actually true what she said, though crying had not been an issue at that time.

  “Would you like to cry now?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprising myself. She reached out and drew me against her. I cried deliciously against her neck, though it wasn’t for Grandfather and, maybe not even for the poor man in the back of the truck nor his poor widow.

  “That’s just fine,” she soothed, stroking my head and shoulders. “Crying is good for you. Any time you feel like crying, you can come to me.” I had had no idea that life could be this good.

  After a while I noticed that Mr. Dembovski and some other men were digging a hole next to a bush. Fredek was standing there watching. I quickly turned away before Miss Bronia could catch me looking.

  “It’s all right to look,” she said. “They’re digging a grave for the poor man who died. We may see more graves before this is over. If you want to go over there with Fredek and look, it’s all right.”

  I wanted to go look, and I wanted to stay in Miss Bronia’s arms. But I realized that not going over to gawk would be more grown-up. “That’s all right,” I said. “I don’t need to look.”

  “Do you want to tell me more about your grandfather?”

  The extent of Miss Bronia’s curiosity regarding this matter surprised me. “Well, of course he was very old and he couldn’t walk,” I said, beginning with the main thing I could think of about him.

  “He was very old and he couldn’t walk?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, surprised now that she should know about my blunder on the telephone, but not about his paralysis.

  “Yes. He was paralyzed and had to be pushed around in a wheelchair.” I knew it would be inappropriate to tell her about the incontinence device sticking out of his pant leg. But there wasn’t much else I knew to tell her about my grandfather.

  “He was paralyzed and had to be pushed around in a wheelchair,” Miss Bronia repeated after a while.

  That was what I had said. Now I wondered why Miss Bronia had to have it repeated. She certainly was very nice, but now I wondered about how bright she might be. Marta, our cook, was like that. Things had to be explained to her.

  Then my thoughts were interrupted because Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula came over to us. They carried a wooden chest with handles between them, and water was dripping out of the bottom.

  “Mr. Lupicki brought us this,” Auntie Paula said to Miss Bronia, setting down the chest. “Don’t ask where he got it,” she added with a tilt of the head towards me.

  I understood that signal. Mr. Lupicki had probably gotten it from a car with dead people in it. I wondered if Miss Bronia understood. I would make sure she did, later.

  Auntie Edna opened the lid, and I saw that the chest had a tray with what looked like sandwiches and things wrapped in wax paper. Under the tray, there were two small cakes of ice. Two bottles with what looked like water rolled around the bottom as well.

  Miss Bronia unwrapped a sandwich, sniffed it, and handed it to me along with its waxed paper wrapper. I bit into it eagerly. It tasted like chicken.

  Later, when it was dark again, we all got back into the truck. I was surprised to see the poor woman whose husband had died, still sitting there. It seemed that she was going to come along with us. She sat between Mother and Auntie Edna as though they were holding her up, and Auntie Edna had an arm around the woman’s shoulders. The woman cried gently into a handkerchief. The rest of us were al
l quiet. Fredek and Sonya were playing some kind of silent game with their fingers. It was one I had never heard of, but they seemed to find it very entertaining.

  I knew that I shouldn’t be staring at the poor woman in her grief, but it was difficult to keep my eyes off her. She was the only person I had ever seen, other than Grandmother, who had been so bereaved, and I understood myself to be in the presence of something momentous.

  This woman was very different from Grandmother. Grandmother had carried on, walking aimlessly from room to room, twisting a kerchief in her hand and saying, “Oh, my God,” in Russian over and over. Kiki had wiped the makeup off Grandmother’s face with cold cream and the polish off her finger and toe nails. She had looked as though she didn’t have any face. This woman just sat there between Mother and Auntie Edna and sobbed quietly into her handkerchief. She reminded me of a little girl I had seen sitting between her parents on a park bench eating a banana.

  “He was helping me walk,” she said after a while. “Our car had burst a tire, and Anton was trying to fix it, but we were blocking the road, and some men came along and we thought they were going to help us, but they just pushed the car into the ditch and we had to walk.”

  I was horrified by what those men had done, but the woman didn’t seem at all angry at them. She must have been an extremely kind woman, I concluded—saintly, even.

  Auntie Edna made a soothing clucking noise.

  “Then I twisted my ankle, and Anton was helping me walk. He was such a strong man. When he was young he was an athlete. When the war is over, we’ll come back and bury him in the cemetery, won’t we?”

  “Yes, we will,” Mother said. But I knew that she didn’t mean it.

  “You’re very good to take me in your truck,” the woman went on. “My cousins will be so grateful to you…. oh, I hope the Germans haven’t bombed them too. Do you think they have?”

  “There aren’t any people on the road now,” Mother said, “so I would guess they haven’t been bombing here.”

  “Oh, that’s good, and you can stay with them as long as you want. They have a house. We just had an apartment, you know, but the German planes dropped a bomb right on it. Anton said we should go into the basement as soon as the sirens sounded, and he was so right. It saved our lives. Oh, God, poor Anton. He was an accountant, you know, for Zielenski Brothers, a very careful man. Everything had to be done just so. He was a wonderful man, too. So kind and so gentle. You’re all very kind too. My cousins will be so grateful to you for helping me.

  “We used to have a little dog,” she began, and I was suddenly gripped by the fear that it had been in the apartment when it was bombed or in the car when they pushed it into the ditch. “His name was Kropka, and we took him everywhere we went. He had a little pillow that he lay on in our car. He would beg for his food and roll over and always come when you called him. But he died last year, and Anton was so upset.”

  I was much relieved. Then she went on to tell us about the company her husband had worked for, that built apartment buildings. I don’t think she stopped talking until the truck stopped.

  Then we were at the house of her cousins who lived in a two-story house on a winding, hilly street in the outskirts of a town. Getting out of the truck, I had seen the tall three-and-four-story buildings and the high church spires of the main part of town downhill from where we stood. Their house was actually two stories at the uphill end and three on the downhill side.

  The cousins were very happy to see our passenger, but not so happy to see the rest of us. They clucked and cried at the sadness of her husband’s death and then the woman spread her hands out, palms forward, and explained that they had no room for us. There were four of them, mother, father, a girl around my age, and a toddler of indeterminate gender. The mother was in a blue bathrobe, the children in nightgowns. The girl my age held her hands out from her sides like her mother. The toddler pressed against his or her mother’s leg and sucked her or his thumb. The father had on a blue shirt with white pin stripes, but without its detachable celluloid collar. Gray suspenders held up his gray trousers.

  “Oh, but you have to put them up for the night,” the woman who had lost her husband said. “They were so kind to me, and they buried poor Anton. And they’re going on to Durnoval tomorrow.” We were all standing in the dining room, except for Mr. Dembovski and Mr. Lupicki who waited in the truck. Fredek and I were each holding one of Miss Bronia’s hands. I recognized a picture of Jesus on the wall.

  “The army has taken over the hotel,” the father said to us, but I think he meant that for his wife. I had the feeling that he really wanted to let us stay.

  “They can sleep on blankets on the floor,” the woman whose husband had died said. “They’re tired, and the children …”

  “We have no food,” the other woman said. She had a heart-shaped face like her cousin’s, but she was shorter and stouter. “The stores are all empty, and you have to go directly to the farmers and pay a terrible price. And who knows how long that will last. Many of the farmers have been taken into the army.” The buffet behind her was stacked high with jars and cans of food.

  “We can pay,” Auntie Edna said.

  The woman brought her hands to her temples. “What good is money?” she said. “They’re bombing people in the cities. They’ll be bombing here next. The army took our automobile.”

  “Let’s go,” my mother said.

  “The children need to eat and to sleep,” Auntie Paula said. Then to the woman she said, “You have children.”

  “I’m not staying in this woman’s house,” my mother said and turned toward the door. Auntie Paula grabbed her by the wrist to stop her.

  “Marinka, these are children,” the woman who had lost her husband said.

  “Then do what you will,” the other woman said. She wrapped an arm around the shoulders of her cousin and led her quickly into the hall and up the stairs. Her two children hurried after them. I never saw any of the four of them again.

  The man stood there looking very uncomfortable. For the second time that day, I was reminded of the time I had put on the blue wool sailor suit to go to the park and knew how the man must feel.

  “I’ll help you bring your things in,” he finally said. “We’ll lay some blankets out in the parlor.”

  “We have blankets,” Auntie Edna said.

  “There are two men with us,” Auntie Paula said, “The driver and another man. They can sleep in the truck.”

  “They can sleep in the kitchen,” the man said. Suddenly people were bringing things in from the truck.

  “There are eggs,” the man said, “we have chickens. And there’s ham and potatoes.” This was very different from what his wife had told us. “Our cook has gone home,” he added.

  My mother and the Aunties all looked at each other. “I can fry eggs,” Auntie Edna said.

  “I’ll do it, Mrs. Tishman,” Miss Bronia said.

  “You have such beautiful children, Mr. Halpin,” I heard my mother say. “They resemble you more than your wife.”

  “She’s very upset,” he explained. “Her father was killed by the Germans in the last war, and now her brother is at the front. I’m not in the army because of my liver, but she’s afraid that if things get bad enough, I will have to go too.”

  “I know just how she feels,” Mother said. “Our husbands are all at the front. There is nothing left of our apartments in Warsaw.”

  Then, Miss Bronia, Mr. Dembovski, Mr. Lupicki, Fredek, and I ate at the long kitchen table with its thick, bare wood top. My mother, my Aunties, Sonya, and Mr. Halpin were in the dining room. I could hear their voices, and sometimes they would all laugh.

  In the kitchen, Mr. Lupicki entertained us with magic tricks. He made little balls out of bread and made them disappear and appear out of Fredek’s ear. He borrowed Miss Bronia’s ring and made it appear under my arm and pulled a long, colored handkerchief out of Miss Bronia’s hair, and all of it without saying a word. We sat and watched and la
ughed, and at some point I must have fallen asleep.

  In the morning, Miss Bronia woke me up to give me a bath. I discovered that Fredek and I had been put to bed under the dining room table. Fredek was still asleep, curled up on his side. Miss Bronia had put a washtub on the kitchen table, and I had to take my clothes off, climb up on the table and into the tub. I was embarrassed to undress in front of Miss Bronia, but knew it had to be. I kept myself turned away as I climbed up and in so that she would see only my behind.

  Her hands were gentle with the strange-smelling soap. “Here, wash yourself while I go get a towel,” she said, handing me the soap and washcloth. The moment she stepped out of the room, I got up onto my knees and washed my privates. I was seated again when she returned, and the water had grown opaque.

  Fredek came into the kitchen bragging that he had had his bath the night before when I had fallen asleep. I hoped he would leave the kitchen before I had to get out of the tub.

  Then a woman I hadn’t seen before came in with a broom and a dustpan full of sweepings which she poured into the flames in the stove along with some additional sticks of wood from a cubbyhole in the wall. She was stout, with white hair pulled into a bun and, like Marta our cook, didn’t wear makeup. She wore a gray dress and man’s shoes.

  “All right, you big fish,” Miss Bronia sang out. “It’s time to get out.”

  The woman was stirring a pot on the stove with her back to me, but she might turn around at any moment. I shook my head. “Hey, slippery fish, we have to get going,” Miss Bronia said cheerfully. I found myself clutching the edges of the tub as I shook my head again. Miss Bronia held up the towel as a screen between me and the cook. I stood up a little, and Miss Bronia immediately had the towel wrapped around me. She had her own head turned to the side, but I didn’t really mind her seeing my birdie. Wrapped inside the big towel, it felt wonderfully soft and warm.

  Fredek, Sonya, and I ate some sort of oatmeal and bread with honey at one end of the dining room table while Miss Bronia packed suitcases and folded blankets. Sonya had coffee with her breakfast. Mother and my Aunties sat at the other end talking in low voices. Then I saw the cook come in with a cup of tea for Mother. “Thank you so much, Helga,” Mother said to her. “Now, would you be a dear and toast this bread a little for me.”