Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  “There’s last night’s stew on the stove,” Mother said. Fredek and Sonya immediately moved to the stove to warm themselves. Neither Auntie said anything as they hung their wet coats over the backs of chairs.

  “I didn’t want Yulek catching pneumonia out there,” Mother said. “But you’ll notice that I did bring some wood home.” Mother used the word some, but what the Russian soldiers had carried for us was several times as much as the others had brought home. I saw Auntie Paula notice our stack of firewood for the first time. There was a flicker of real surprise on her face for an instant, but her expression quickly returned to its previous disdain.

  “Oh, look at all that wonderful firewood!” Miss Bronia said. “Look, Mrs. Herbstein, Mrs. Tishman.” Since our first visit from the Village Census Committee, Miss Bronia had been instructed by the mothers to address them by their first names, but she had not found that easy.

  “How did you get it all home, Aunt Barbara?” Sonya asked. Neither of the Aunties said anything, but I saw them both pause, presumably to hear Mother’s answer.

  “Some soldiers carried it for me,” Mother said.

  “You’re so blank-blank-blank, Aunt Barbara,” Sonya said. I didn’t understand the words she used, but I could tell that they were complimentary. Neither Auntie Paula nor Auntie Edna spoke to my mother for the rest of the evening.

  The next morning Fredek had a sore throat. “Yulian had better not sleep with Fredek until he’s better,” Mother said, which made Auntie Edna cry. “I’m sorry,” Mother said, not sounding at all sorry, “but without proper nutrition or medicines, we all should be extra cautious.”

  It was Auntie Edna’s turn to sleep in the bed that week, and she made Fredek lie in it and drink hot soup or tea, which she brought him almost every hour. This made Fredek go to the bathroom a lot, and Auntie Edna made many trips to the toilet with a glass jar into which Fredek had no objections to peeing, while his mother held it for him, in sight of everyone.

  “You might have him wear wool socks,” Mother said, when she came home with a ring of sausage and cigarettes that evening. This made Auntie Edna upset again. “He doesn’t have any wool socks,” she finally said, at which point Mother produced a pair from her shopping bag. Auntie Edna snatched them from her angrily and went to put them on Fredek’s feet. “I’m just afraid his asthma will come back,” she said, her back to us. I knew about asthma—Kiki’s niece had died of it. I knew that it stopped you from breathing. I didn’t want that to happen to Fredek.

  After supper that evening, which Auntie Edna had spoonfed to Fredek, sitting on the edge of his bed, Sonya surprised me by asking if I wanted her to read to me. There had been occasions when Miss Bronia had asked Sonya to read to both Fredek and me, but her volunteering to do something with me alone surprised me. I understood that her mother must have told her not to go near Fredek with his sore throat.

  I accepted Sonya’s offer. I had found sounding out words to be hard work, especially since I had a tendency to reverse letters or simply mistake them for letters that weren’t even there. Fredek didn’t seem to have this problem. Sonya had a very pleasant reading voice. She was reading from a book Miss Bronia had bought for Fredek and me about knights in armor.

  Then, as she and I sat at one end of the table in the front room, we were all startled by a knock on the door. I saw Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula look at each other. Auntie Paula pulled her knitting close to her chest and Miss Bronia looked up from the stocking she was darning. Mother was sitting cross-legged on her pallet in the other room, doing a solitaire. Sonya paused in her reading.

  Nobody moved toward the door, and the knock came a second time. Finally Miss Bronia went to the door, unlocked it, and opened it a crack. I couldn’t see who it was, but I heard a man’s voice say something in Russian.

  “Mrs. Waisbrem!” Miss Bronia called, Mother being the only one with a good command of Russian.

  My mother walked to the door. I saw Miss Bronia plant her foot on the floor behind it to prevent its being opened further.

  “Ah, Comrade Captain!” Mother said, recognizing the visitor. She did not sound at all surprised. Miss Bronia seemed reluctant to remove her foot from behind the door, as Mother opened it wide. The comrade captain from the train station stood there in a freshly pressed uniform. He wasn’t wearing his gun belt, so his tunic hung straight down without the silly-looking folds. His black hair, dry now, was like a cap of curls on the top of his head. In one hand he held his hat, in the other, a small bouquet of evergreen sprigs. “It’s so good to see you,” Mother said.

  As Capt. Vrushin stepped into the room, I saw Auntie Edna jump to her feet and cross right in front him to disappear around the corner into the inner room.

  There was a moment’s silence, then Mother said in Polish, “This is the very nice officer who sent us the soldiers with the firewood, Comrade Captain Vrushin.” I suppose because of the similarity of the two languages, Mother spoke in the formal tones that she would have used had everyone spoken the same language. Then she introduced Auntie Paula, Sonya and Miss Bronia to the captain. I was very pleased when she called Miss Bronia, “my friend.”

  The captain made a stiff bow to each of the three in turn, turning all the way around to bow to Miss Bronia at the stove. Miss Bronia returned the bow with her head, and Sonya curtsied. Auntie Paula did something I had never seen another person do—she raised one eyebrow. I immediately tried to imitate it. It didn’t work, but my face was all screwed up when I heard the captain pronounce the Russian version of my name. My training overcame my embarrassment, and I crossed the room to shake hands. Pinning the hat to his side with his left elbow and still holding the evergreen sprigs in the other hand, the captain wrapped his huge right hand around mine. In his quiet voice, he asked Mother about my health, and she answered that, thanks to God, I was all right. But Fredek, she said, pointing to him lying in bed in the back room with a wet cloth over his forehead, had fallen ill from the rain

  “Do you give him hot tea with honey?” the captain asked.

  “We can’t get honey,” my mother answered.

  A smile lit up the captain’s long face as he reached his free hand into his tunic pocket and produced a jar of what certainly looked like honey.

  “Oh Comrade Captain, you are too kind,” Mother said.

  “And an egg,” the captain said. “Do you have eggs?”

  Mother shook her head. For a moment, I though he would pull an egg out of his pocket as well.

  “I will get you eggs.”

  “Won’t the comrade captain sit down and have tea with us?” Auntie Paula said. My mother immediately translated the invitation into Russian, indicating Auntie Edna’s vacated chair beside Auntie Paula.

  Instead of sitting down, the captain quietly said something to Mother, who answered him, and he laughed. Then he said something else, and she laughed. It was what I would later learn to call her “social laugh.” Now he indicated with his hand that she should translate it for the rest of us.

  “I told the comrade captain that Edna had gone to make herself beautiful, and he says we are the four most beautiful women in the city.”

  “Five,” Capt. Vrushin said, holding up five fingers and indicating Sonya.

  “Five,” Mother translated, though the Russian word was almost exactly the same as the Polish.

  Auntie Paula laughed a little, making a gesture with her hand indicating that she didn’t believe him, but at the same time her other hand moved to the braid pinned around her head.

  “Are those for us?” Mother asked, indicating the evergreen bouquet.

  “Oh yes, yes,” the captain said. I could see that he was embarrassed at having forgotten to give them to her. He clicked his heels together and handed them stiffly to Mother. “I am sorry they aren’t flowers,” he said.

  “But there are no flowers, Comrade Captain. How clever of you. They’re beautiful.” Then Mother held them out to Miss Bronia. “Be a dear,” she said in Polish, “and put them i
n water. And take the comrade captain’s hat too.” I could see that the captain understood what she had said, because he held his hat out to Miss Bronia.

  In a moment the captain was seated in Auntie Edna’s vacated chair and Miss Bronia was pouring water for tea from the kettle.

  “Give the captain his tea in a glass,” Mother said to Miss Bronia before taking her own seat beside the captain. From a glass, was the way I had seen my Russian grandmother drinking hers. Then Mother apologized for our lack of sugar, at which point the comrade captain held up his hand in a clear indication that this was not a problem. Reaching inside his tunic, he produced a little bundle of brown-stained paper, which he carefully unwrapped to reveal the stumpy, brown remnants of a sugar cube. This he laid on the table in front of him. I had seen Grandmother sip her tea through a sugar cube held between her teeth and watched it turn brown, though I never saw her wrap what was left of the cube for future use.

  Now Capt. Vrushin placed the cube between his own teeth and was about to raise his glass, when he must have realized that he was the only person with sugar for his tea. I saw his face grow red suddenly and watched him quickly re-wrap the cube and put it back in his pocket.

  “Oh please,” Mother said, “we have become accustomed to drinking our tea without sugar.”

  Capt. Vrushin raised his hands and said something to Mother. He was almost whispering. “Capt. Vrushin says that sugar rots your teeth anyway,” she translated. Then the captain pointed to mother’s eyes and said something else, and now they both laughed again. Mother’s laugh sounded even less real than before. I could see that the captain found it much funnier than Mother did, and his face grew red and tears came to his eyes. As he reached in his pocket for a handkerchief, he gestured with the other hand for Mother to explain to Auntie Paula and Miss Bronia. Mother then told about how shocked the captain had been at the sight of her eye makeup running in the rain. In the meanwhile the captain was pointing to his own tears and laughing even harder. Auntie Paula was laughing as well now, and I wondered if it was just for the comrade captain’s sake.

  Captain Vrushin whispered something to Mother again, and Mother translated that he was asking how much more beautiful Auntie Edna was planning to become. The captain was laughing at this as well, and Mother got up and walked into the other room. From where I sat, I could see Auntie Edna sitting on the edge of Fredek’s bed, waving a wet cloth in the air to cool it for his forehead.

  Because I was close to the archway leading into the inner room, I could hear bits of what Mother was saying quietly to Auntie Edna. There was something about how the captain had been kind to us, both before and now and how he was probably lonely in a foreign city and trying to be friendly. I couldn’t tell what Auntie Edna said in return, but Mother’s voice got louder, though she was still trying not to let our visitor hear her. “Don’t be a fool, Edna. He sent us firewood, and he could help with other things. He could get medicine for Fredek. He’s attracted to me because I speak fluent Russian and he feels comfortable. Now put on some makeup and a fresh sweater and come out and be the hostess you were in Warsaw.” Then she came out and announced that Auntie Edna would be out in a minute.

  “Bronia, why don’t you come join us,” she said to Miss Bronia, who was doing something at the stove. “You work harder than the rest of us put together.” Mother’s tone was very sweet now, though no more genuine. Miss Bronia immediately came back to the table and picked up her darning.

  Then Mother said something to the captain about what great things Miss Bronia could do with the little food that was available in stores. She asked the captain what town he came from and then translated his answer. It wasn’t Moscow, which was the only town I knew in Russia. As Mother went on translating, we learned that his mother was director of a high school, and his father had been killed by the Tsarists. I knew who the Tsar was, but I had no idea who the Tsarists were.

  Then Auntie Edna came back into the room. She had put on fresh lipstick and a green cardigan. When Mother introduced her to the captain, he had Mother repeat the story about her eye makeup running in the rain and how it had frightened him. The captain found this almost as funny as he had at the first telling, and his eyes began to tear again. Auntie Edna laughed politely.

  Then, in the same sweet tone Mother had used speaking to Miss Bronia, she said, “Sonya, dear, why don’t you take Yulek into the other room and read to him.”

  Sonya closed the book, her finger marking the page, and we stood up. As I had been taught to do when there were guests, I said, “Excuse me,” and gave a little bow, before leaving the table.

  The captain leaned back in his chair and beckoned me with his finger. Then he had a pocket knife in his hands, and I saw that he was actually cutting a button off the pocket of his tunic.

  “What are you doing?” Mother asked, and the alarm in her voice was genuine.

  “It’s for the boy. I have more.” He held the button out to me.

  Mother nodded her head, indicating that I should accept it.

  The button was shiny brass with an enameled red star. In the center of the star there was a little gold hammer and sickle.

  “Take it, dear, and say thank you,” Mother said.

  The hammer and sickle, I had recently discovered, was the Russian emblem, the way the white eagle was ours.

  “Take it and say thank you,” Mother repeated, the smile fixed on her face.

  I didn’t want the Russian button. I should have dropped it on the table—or on the floor and stepped on it. Or thrown it at him like a hero, and he would have had me arrested and shot with a blindfold. But I couldn’t do that to Capt. Vrushin. He was a soldier, ordered into Poland by his general, and he was helping us out of his own kindness. Actually, I found that I liked him. I could not insult him like that. I took the button and mumbled, “Thank you.” But I did not look him in the eye. I did not want him to see my conflict. I followed Sonya into the inner room.

  Sonya was standing a few feet from Fredek’s bed. Fredek was telling her that his head hurt a lot.

  I remembered the headaches that Kiki would sometimes get when she had to lie on her bed with a wet wash cloth over her eyes and forehead. I would freshen the cloth and wring it out in a dish of water, and walk around on tiptoe. I felt sorry for Fredek now. With Sonya and me not permitted to go near him, there was no one to freshen the cloth for him.

  “Do you want me to read to you?” Sonya asked him. “I can do it from across the room.”

  “No,” Fredek whispered, then he reached for his throat letting us know that it hurt to talk. Sonya tiptoed to the corner farthest from Fredek and signaled me to follow her. We settled down on the floor, and Sonya opened her book. Then she put it down again and got up to bring over a table lamp that we had acquired a few days earlier. Finally, she switched off the ceiling light and settled down to read to me in a whisper.

  Only I don’t think it was the same book that she had been reading to me before, because instead of the boy learning to be a knight, we were now dealing with a painter who didn’t have enough money to buy food. I would have been disappointed except that I realized how his situation compared to ours. Only we had money, but no food to buy with it. Then, when a beautiful woman came to the studio to pose for him, my mind came wandering back to the people in the other room.

  “He wants us to call him Vasilli,” I heard Mother say.

  “Paula,” I heard Auntie Paula say, and I could visualize her tapping her chest with her fingers.

  “Paula,” the captain repeated.

  “Basia,” Mother said. The captain repeated it, but putting the accent on the last a.

  Now Mother repeated it the way he had said it. Then she said something in Russian. She spoke more quietly to the captain than she did in Polish to the others. Finally she said, “I said to him that Russian is a much prettier language than Polish.”

  I didn’t like hearing that.

  Captain Vrushin said something else in his quiet voice. “He says the
two languages are very similar,” Mother said. “He can understand a lot of what we say.”

  “Then we have to be careful what we say,” Auntie Paula said. “Tell him that.” Mother translated and they all seemed to laugh.

  “Edna … Bronia,” Auntie Paula said. I realized that Miss Bronia and Auntie Edna had not given their own first names.

  Captain Vrushin repeated the names, and I now recognized that his pronunciation did give a new softness to the two names. Well, if Russian was softer, Polish was more manly, I decided.

  Then Sonya’s painter was helping the beautiful woman mount a horse, and, at mention of the horse, my attention immediately switched away from the people in the outer room.

  My attention snapped back quickly a few minutes later, when I heard the captain’s boots crossing the floor. Through the archway, I could see Mother walk the captain to the door.

  When the door closed behind him, everyone was talking at once. The three mothers came into the inner room, and Auntie Paula turned on the overhead light.

  “Shshsh, I think Fredek is sleeping,” Auntie Edna said, and everyone grew quiet.

  Mother and Auntie Paula took off their blouses. Mother brushed her teeth while Auntie Paula washed under her arms at the washbasin. Auntie Edna sat on the edge of Fredek’s bed and put her hand over one of his.

  “Freshen up, Edna,” Mother said, speaking around her toothbrush.

  “I’ll stay with Fredek,” Auntie Edna said.

  “Oh, come on. Fredek doesn’t need you to watch him, and Vasilli likes you,” Mother said.

  “I’ll just stay here,” Auntie Edna said again.

  I wanted to like Auntie Edna for the way she cared for Fredek when he was sick. But at other times she was mean to him. I didn’t understand her.

  “Captain Vrushin isn’t going to hurt you,” Auntie Paula said. Now she was talking around her toothbrush, and Mother was at the basin washing under her arms. “He’s just a big, friendly, shy boy in a strange country,” she went on. I found the idea of the tall captain described as a shy boy amusing. But he really was shy, and I had never heard of a shy adult before. “He could be the key to our getting food, as well as some medicine for Fredek. You know, it never hurts to have powerful friends.” This I understood.