Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  Asked for her money and jewels, Miss Bronia explained that she had none, since she worked for a woman in a cottage nearby. “Then you’re a worker like us,” they told her and gave her a red armband and a costume brooch before sending her back with a container of milk for the “sick child” she cared for.

  That day, the sewing that Kiki taught me was put to use as the mothers pried their valuable gems out of their settings and we sewed them up in layers of cloth as buttons for our jackets. I could see that my stitches were tighter and neater than Mother’s. Only Fredek refused to touch needle or thread. Money and small jewelry pieces were wrapped in cloth and sewn into jacket linings. A bracelet of Auntie Paula’s went into a thermos and laid among the cooking utensils. A brooch of Auntie Edna’s became a bright green pincushion.

  Finished by early afternoon, we settled down to wait for our expected visitors.

  “This isn’t the place for them to find us,” Auntie Edna suddenly said. “We should be where all good peasant women are, out in the potato field.” Mother and Auntie Paula agreed. “And Yulek can be the sick child Bronia told them she was caring for,” Auntie Edna added. “Bronia can be reading to him. It’ll make them sympathetic.” They agreed with this as well.

  Then Auntie Edna turned to me. “This is a game we’re going to be playing,” she said. “Some people will come here, and you’re going to pretend that you’re sick. We know you aren’t really sick, but they won’t know that.”

  I knew very well why I had to pretend to be sick, and didn’t need Auntie Edna to explain it to me. But I let her go ahead and explain it anyway. In a few minutes, the three mothers and Sonya had marched into the potato field across the road and Miss Bronia was left to care for the sick child. Fredek was posted as lookout, and, on his signal, I was to jump into Auntie Edna’s bed and act weak. I knew I could do better than that. I had offered to moan and cough, but the offer was turned down on the basis that I would not carry it off believably. I did, however, determine secretly that I would roll my eyes and drool, as I had seen a beggar do in Warsaw.

  Fredek sat by the window and I sat near the door to his mother’s room, while Miss Bronia read what had become my favorite story, the one about the toy bear, donkey, and tiger, and the little boy named Christopher. Fredek’s signal was to be a sneeze, and when it came I dashed into the bed and pulled the comforter up to my chin.

  “Give me your jewels!” came the command, but the high-pitched voice was Fredek’s.

  Miss Bronia explained, very seriously, that this was not a game and had to do with our safety. Chastened, Fredek returned to his post.

  Looking over Fredek’s shoulder, I could see four figures in the potato field crawling around on hands and knees. There seemed to be a familiar pattern to their movement, and I finally deduced that they were playing some sort of tag.

  Then Fredek sneezed again, and once more I dove into bed. This time Fredek apologized, claiming that there was a breeze coming through the window. Miss Bronia sent him to her room to sit on the bed where she could see him through the open door, while I lay in bed and was read to.

  We had no visitors that day. At suppertime, the women came in from the potato field, covered in dirt, laughing, and calling each other Comrade Barbara and Comrade Edna.

  That evening, men in blue uniforms came to our door. They were Polish border police escaping from the Russians. They had a car full of guns and ammunition, which they spent several hours burying around our cottage. The women set to work removing the insignia from their uniforms and replacing the metal buttons with buttons that had themselves been replaced on our own clothes that morning by the ones we had fashioned out of diamonds and emeralds. The men spent the night in our loft and drove away before I was awake.

  Later, Fredek found one of their uniform caps under the stairs. He put it on and began parading around the table, humming a marching song. Auntie Edna came out of her room, tore the cap off his head, and slapped his face before dropping into a chair and beginning to cry. After a moment, Fredek continued his march around the table, but quietly, on tiptoe, without the cap. I tiptoed outside.

  Miss Bronia ventured again to the Big House. There were no armed peasants this time, and the occupants were unharmed, though dispossessed of some jewelry, mostly costume. This time she brought back some peasant skirts and boots. With the top cut from one of her dresses, the deep blue, flowered, full skirt that Miss Bronia had brought, and two of her own scarves, one orange, the other yellow, Mother immediately fashioned what Auntie Edna called a stunning outfit and Auntie Paula declared not appropriate for the occasion. Of the boots, not one pair was small enough for my mother’s tiny feet, so her peasant’s outfit, minus the two scarves, began with the tennis shoes she had bought on her visit to town.

  We saw our first Russian soldier that day. He galloped past our house on a rather small horse. He had on a green felt cap with a point on top, like some of the German soldiers wore in photographs from the Big War. His helmet was strapped to the back of his saddle and a rifle rested across the front. He didn’t stop.

  Then, as we ate supper that evening, our front door burst open and five men and one woman stood in our big room. The men had rifles, the woman a pistol strapped around her large middle. They all wore red armbands and helmets over their caps. One, I noticed, had trouble seeing from under his. Another, I recognized as the man from the icehouse.

  “We are the Village Census Committee,” one of the men said in the heavily accented Polish. “How many people live here and what are they called?” Auntie Paula gave him all of our names, which one of them wrote down in the margin of a folded newspaper page. He and the man from the icehouse seemed to be consulting on the spelling, though they didn’t ask us. With erasing and refolding the paper for more writing space, the process took some time.

  “How much money do you have?” the woman asked. Auntie Paula said that we had just enough to buy food. The scribe seemed to be writing this down as well.

  There was some consultation among them, and the man who had spoken first said, “You are rich Jewish bourgeois women from Warsaw—your husbands own factories. Where is your money?” My heart sank as I realized where this information had come from.

  “Our money was all in the bank,” Auntie Paula said. “When the Germans started to bomb, the banks closed and we couldn’t get our money out.” This was written down as well.

  The man who had trouble seeing from under his helmet kept pushing it up with his finger, but it kept sliding down. I saw him pick up a candle off a table and slip it into his pocket. I knew that I should not say anything. I looked over at Fredek. With one eye closed, he was taking dead aim with his extended index finger at each of our visitors in turn.

  “And your jewelry?” the spokesman said. I noticed that he had a sword in its decorated scabbard strapped to his side. In the Polish army, the officers wore swords. He also had a mustache that hung down below his chin.

  Auntie Edna held up her two hands, denuded now of all but her wedding band. “Our jewelry is all in the bank too,” she said.

  There was more consultation while Auntie Edna’s answer was duly recorded. I saw the man who had taken the candle edging toward Sonya’s orange pincushion. It wasn’t the one with the brooch. This one was in the shape of a mouse.

  “We must search the house,” the leader said. “We are under orders. Your belongings will be respected.” Sonya’s orange-mouse pincushion had vanished.

  We stayed at the table as our visitors scattered throughout the cottage. Very much aware that it was I who had supplied the information about Lolek’s factory, I kept my eyes on my plate.

  Within a minute or two, the search was concluded, and the visitors had reassembled in our big room. “You have passed the census inspection,” the man with the sword declared. “We will be in contact.” Then he aimed his index finger at Fredek, fired an imaginary shot, and they were gone.

  “They took my pincushion,” Sonya said.

  “I know, dear,” he
r mother said. “You’ll get another one.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I was just so surprised.”

  “Well, they’re not real soldiers, you know. They’re just Ukrainian peasants who don’t like Poles very much and they’re taking advantage of the situation. The Russians, you know, are Communists.”

  Sonya knew that, but for Fredek’s and my sake, Auntie Paula explained about Communism and how the peasants here now felt that they could rise up against the landowners and others they considered rich, and whom they called bourgeois. I had never heard of Communism, though I didn’t let on in case Fredek had, but my sympathies did rest with the poor people like Kiki’s family and Marta, our cook, and Grandfather’s coachman, Adam.

  While Auntie Paula was explaining all this, Mother wrapped a stained rag that we used for dusting around our green pincushion with Auntie Edna’s brooch inside. This, as she explained, was to make it less attractive. I found the idea of making something less attractive, funny, but I understood what she was doing. Miss Bronia said that these were local peasants and not the same ones she had seen at the Big House the day before.

  That night we heard several gunshots. Next morning at breakfast Auntie Edna reported that her alarm clock had disappeared in the search. Mother said that her orange and yellow scarves were missing as well. Before we could leave the breakfast table, three members of the previous evening’s Census Committee returned and demanded to know who had been shooting. They were again led by the man with the long mustache and the sword, but this time they presented themselves as the Village Security Committee, and they weren’t wearing their helmets.

  Auntie Paula said that we had no firearms. They had searched our cottage last night, she reminded them.

  “We will search again,” the leader announced. “Everybody must go outside.”

  “What a beautiful sword you have,” my mother said from her seat at the table. The man looked down self-consciously.

  “My father had a sword from the last war,” Mother went on. “Did you fight in the last war?”

  “In the Lancers.” He drew himself up stiffly.

  “You have the look of a cavalryman,” Mother said.

  The man blushed. Then he said something in Ukrainian to his companions, and they headed for the front door. Their leader pulled off his wool cap. “Goodbye, Comrades,” he said before following his men out the door.

  “What did they want?” Auntie Edna said.

  “You sure got rid of them, Aunt Barbara,” Sonya said admiringly. Mother laughed.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game,” Auntie Paula said. “That man has a lot of power.”

  Mother laughed again. “He’s only a peasant with a sword and an armband,” she said. “That’s how Yulek goes to the park every day with Miss Yanka. Tell Yulek he looks like a cavalryman, and he’ll do anything you want.”

  I didn’t like her saying that about me, but on reflection I realized that she was probably right.

  I could tell that Auntie Paula still wasn’t happy about Mother speaking that way to the man, but the talk turned to a discussion of whether they should go out into the potato field again. Auntie Edna said that there wasn’t any point to it since the peasants all knew that they were from the city, and Auntie Paula reminded her that the Russians didn’t know that, and who knew when they were going to show up. Auntie Edna started crying again, but she stopped after Mother told her that we all had to be brave.

  It was decided that we would be safest with the mothers in the potato field and me sick in bed. Miss Bronia gave Fredek one more chance to prove his reliability as a sentry.

  We saw no Russians that day, but that evening, after Fredek and I had been put to bed in our corner of the big room, there was a knock on the door, and I saw two of the men from that morning’s Security Committee come in. Comrade Tishman, they said, was wanted at headquarters.

  Auntie Edna was very frightened, but she didn’t cry this time, and Mother demanded to know what it was about.

  “Comrade Konievik says you must come,” the man said.

  “What for?” Auntie Paula said.

  “Comrade Konievik says you must come,” the man repeated. He raised his rifle a little to show the seriousness of his intent.

  Auntie Edna stood up slowly. “I’ll come with you,” Mother said, standing up beside her.

  “No, you come alone,” the man said.

  “I’m coming with her,” Mother said.

  “No, no,” the man said in sudden confusion. “ Missus … I mean Comrade must sit down,” and he motioned to Auntie Edna to sit. Then he pulled a folded section of newspaper with last night’s notes from inside his jacket. Both men looked at it.

  “Which one is Comrade Tishman?” he finally asked.

  Auntie Edna looked at Auntie Paula. “I am Comrade Tishman,” she said.

  “The pretty one,” the man said, “you,” indicating my mother with his free hand. “What is your name?”

  “I am Comrade Waisbrem,” Mother said.

  The second man was crossing something out in the newspaper margin. “You come, Comrade,” the first man said to Mother. Now he was sweating. “Comrade Konievik says you must come. Don’t be afraid.”

  Fredek and I had both been pretending to be asleep, but now we sat up with unconcealed interest.

  “What does Comrade Konievik want with Comrade Waisbrem?” Auntie Paula asked, speaking very slowly and deliberately.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the man repeated. I thought that now he was more afraid than anybody. “He wants to talk about his sword.”

  “His sword,” Mother said, her voice turning suddenly melodic. “I’ll be happy to talk to Comrade Konievik about his sword.” Then, to the Aunties she said, “I’ll be right back.” The second man held the door open for her.

  “Don’t you harm her!” Auntie Paula warned the two men.

  “We don’t hurt her,” the first man assured her.

  “Comrade Konievik likes swords very much,” the second man added.

  “You boys go to sleep,” Auntie Paula commanded when they had gone out the door. Fredek and I quickly lay down again. The Aunties, Miss Bronia, and Sonya began whispering at the other end of the room.

  I woke up a little while later when they were talking loudly again. My mother was back already. “I slapped his face, of course,” she was saying. Apparently I had missed something.

  “You couldn’t leave his sword alone?” Auntie Paula was saying angrily.

  “Men like to be flattered,” Mother said. “He’s a man, isn’t he?”

  “So you found out,” Auntie Paula said. “This may not be the end of it, you know.” Then they dropped their voices before I could find out why Mother had slapped his face.

  When I woke up the next morning, the committee members were back in our house.

  “Get dressed quickly,” Miss Bronia was saying to Fredek and me, and there was anxiety in her voice.

  “Please, can we give the children their breakfast first?” Auntie Paula was asking the man who seemed to be in charge. He had a red scarf around his neck in addition to his armband. The man with the sword wasn’t there.

  “You will pack and go immediately,” he commanded.

  “But the children,” Auntie Edna said. Mother was not in the room.

  “We will be back in an hour,” he said. He pulled up his right sleeve to look at his watch. He was wearing at least three. “Then you will get in the wagon and go to Durnoval.” He left the cottage, followed by the others.

  I understood that we were being forced to leave and was sure that it had something to do with Mother’s slapping the man’s face last night.

  I didn’t want to leave this place. I didn’t want to go back to Durnoval or anywhere else. Being able to go outside without supervision, to roam and pretend with Fredek, to take the wheelbarrow by myself to the icehouse, and to go back to that stone barn where the boy said I could come and jump in the hay, were all things I wanted to keep doing. I wanted
to do that even more, I knew, than I would have wanted to go back to Warsaw if the war ended tomorrow.

  Mother came out of her room sliding a suitcase along the floor. Auntie Paula looked at her, and I could tell she was angry at my mother. “They’ll be back in an hour with the wagon,” she said to Mother. “You’d better just stay out of their sight.” Mother didn’t say anything.

  “Where are we going to live in Durnoval?” Auntie Edna said.

  “We can ask the Roseviches to help us find a place,” Auntie Paula assured her. That was the name of the people at whose house we had stayed before.

  “I tell you,” Mother said, “that the reason that they want us out of the house has nothing to do with last night. They want us out of here so they don’t have to share the land with us when they divide up the estate by Soviet law. What happened last night just gave them a convenient excuse.”

  “Just stop giving them excuses,” Auntie Paula said angrily. “You put ideas into a simple man’s head, like you did with Lupicki.”

  I wasn’t following any of this. I did know that it was Mother who had made the man angry at us by slapping his face and with her silly talk about Grandfather’s sword from the Big War. Grandfather was an old man, paralyzed from diabetes; Francis, his attendant, had to give him injections every day, and he had not fought in the Big War. And, I was sure, he didn’t own a sword.

  When they came back for us with the wagon, two men carried our belongings out to the wagon. It was the same wagon that Fredek and I had ridden in with the elephants and the cabbages, but pulled by a different horse. An old man with a white beard drove us to Durnoval.

  Nobody talked much on the way, except for Miss Bronia and Sonya who got to dangle their legs over the back end of the wagon and whispered and laughed together. Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula sat with their backs against one side of the wagon, my mother against the other. A large wooden box that Miss Bronia had filled at the last moment with pots, bowls, and other utensils from the cottage, clanged in the center of the wagon. Fredek and I were sitting up with the driver—one on either side—but that didn’t really matter to me at the moment. I was jealous of Sonya for Miss Bronia’s company. I thought about the way Mother had gotten us kicked off the farm with her silly lies about Grandfather’s sword and how she had undressed me in front of everybody and I came to the conclusion that making a Christian out of her was something that neither I nor, probably, anyone else could do.