Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  Auntie Edna stopped in the middle of stirring the embers from last night’s fire in the stove. “To Siberia?” she said. “Siberia? No, how do you know?”

  “Sonya, please take Yulek into the other room and read to him or something,” Mother said.

  Sonya cut herself a piece of the sausage we had brought from the commissar along with the three jars of herring and said, “Come on,” heading into the other room. I followed.

  Sonya sat down cross-legged on her pallet, and I sat down near her. Instead of picking up a book, she leaned toward me. “What happened at the commissar’s?” she whispered.

  “He said it’s a political matter,” I whispered back.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think political means that it’s a big secret.”

  “That’s not what political means,” she said angrily. “I know what political means. What does it mean that it’s a political matter?”

  “The colonel can’t find his records. He sent Lieutenant Rostov back to look some more, but they can’t find them. But it’s not the colonel’s fault—somebody else lost it.”

  “Are you sure he was there in the first place?”

  “Yes, because when we were there before, the colonel read his name out of the file.”

  “Maybe they released him.”

  “No, because they have a list of people they released and he wasn’t on that list either. And the colonel said that Mother should forget about him, and Mrs. Rokief should go away from here. He wasn’t nasty about it. He even gave her a permit to travel to Lvow.”

  “So what does Aunt Barbara think happened?”

  “She said that they’re taking him to Siberia. I don’t know what that’s all about.”

  “It’s where the Russians send prisoners. It’s so cold there, they can’t escape.”

  “He hasn’t done anything,” I said.

  “Fredek says he’s a spy.” I had forgotten about this, having convinced myself that it would have been childish to assume that he had passed my fib on to Capt. Vrushin. Now I found myself revisiting my logic.

  “Childish nonsense,” I said scornfully, availing myself of that powerful phrase for the first time in my life. “How would he know?”

  “Sometimes he knows these things.”

  “All I know about Mr. Rokief is that he comes from Krakow and he’s a lawyer,” I said with finality. Sonya picked up a file from beside her pallet and began filing her nails. My mind turned back to the colonel’s arm around my shoulders.

  Auntie Edna came home without Mother. “I don’t really even know the woman. What do they expect me to do?” she said to Auntie Paula, who had come home just before her. “I went over with Basia and sat with her while she told the poor woman about her husband, and I thought my heart would break. And she has those two daughters, you know. But I don’t know what to say to her. We’re not even on a first-name basis.”

  “I didn’t even know they existed until she showed up here the other day,” Auntie Paula said. “Basia mentioned once that she had met a lawyer from Krakow, but I had no idea she was seeing them secretly. The man may well be a spy. Why else would they be sending him to Siberia?”

  “Basia says he’s disappeared from their records. She says his name was there before, but it’s not there now. There’s no record of sending him to Siberia or anywhere,” Auntie Edna said.

  “Then maybe they didn’t send him to Siberia.”

  “Basia is afraid they may have shot him.”

  Auntie Paula didn’t say anything. Then, after a moment, Auntie Edna said, “Basia says the colonel told her to forget about ever knowing the man and that his wife should leave Durnoval. He said the matter is totally out of his hands. That sounds like a warning to me—a clear warning to have nothing more to do with those people. The political commissar could have them all arrested as well, and Basia’s colonel wouldn’t be able to intervene.”

  “Basia could get us all arrested,” Auntie Paula said.

  “Where are Fredek and Bronia?” Auntie Edna suddenly asked. “Shouldn’t they have returned by now?”

  “Don’t worry,” Auntie Paula said. “There’s nothing connecting them to this Rokief man. And I’m not sure he isn’t a spy of some sort. We’ll just have to sit Barbara down and tell her she can’t do this kind of thing anymore. Children are involved. Or she can take Yulek and go live by themselves somewhere.”

  If Mr. Rokief was a spy, he was on our side, and he must have been spying on the Russians for Poland and that made him a hero. And then I thought of poor, sweet Mrs. Rokief again, and I was beginning to feel that ache, but I wouldn’t let myself cry this time. It had taken me totally by surprise before, but I was better prepared now, and I would not let Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula see me cry.

  Then Auntie Paula’s last statement registered with me, the one about Mother and me going to live by ourselves. That would mean leaving Miss Bronia, and now I could feel that ache getting stronger. But I wasn’t going to give into it in front of the Aunties. My mother was being a good friend to Mrs. Rokief, staying with her in her time of pain, and the Aunties were worrying about things that might happen. And I was worrying about things that might happen, which was not the way soldiers behaved. Soldiers didn’t worry about things—they acted.

  I picked up the little blanket that we would put around our shoulders when we went out into the hall to go to the privy, and let myself quietly out the door. Auntie Paula looked up, hearing the door open, but she had seen me heading for the privy many times before.

  Turning the other way in the hall, I was out in the street in a few steps. It was dark out, but I was sure I knew the way to the Rokiefs.

  I ran to the corner and stopped to look both ways before crossing. There was no traffic, and I ran on, my heart pounding not from the run, but the urgency. It was the first time I had been on a city street alone. I didn’t care if I looked stupid with a blanket wrapped around me.

  I looked for the name of the street I had to turn left on. But I couldn’t read the sign. There was only one light at each intersection, and this one was diagonally across from the street sign. Its brightness didn’t reach the street sign. The stores, all of them shuttered now, looked nothing like the way they did in the daytime when some were open.

  Now for the first time, I was aware of how empty and dark streets could be. In Warsaw there had been many street lamps, bright store windows, people, cars, horses, trolleys. Older boys would be darting in and out among pedestrians. Here there was only one lamp at each intersection and the light from apartment windows. A few figures moved through the shadows. Six soldiers marched by down the middle of the street, counting cadence in Russian. A horse and wagon clopped noisily across the next intersection.

  A figure came out of a dark doorway and walked quickly toward me. It was a man in a long coat and flat cap. Instinctively I pressed myself against the cold building wall, and he walked past me. I should have asked him what street this was, I realized when it was too late. The next person that came by, I would hold my hand up to stop him or her and say, “Excuse me, is this Mikowanski street?” After all, I had marched up to the general in Warsaw, saluted and asked for his autograph.

  I saw two people scurry by on the other side of the street. I should run across and ask them, I knew. But I would have to stop them from behind, and I didn’t have a strategy for that. Maybe if I walked one more block, I would recognize something.

  I resumed walking, staying close to the wall. If I were to stop someone, I would have to walk in the middle of the street where they could see me. I shouldn’t jump at them out of the shadows and scare them. It felt safer near the wall, but I moved out into the middle of the sidewalk.

  At the next corner, there was no street sign at all. This could have been the street. I didn’t think it was the next one—that would have been too far. It was either this street or the one before or the one before that.

  Another man was walking toward me. ‘Excuse me, is this Mikowanski st
reet?’ I was going to say. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

  Then I heard my name called from behind. “Yulian!” it was Miss Bronia’s voice. “What are you doing out here?” she demanded.

  Turning around, I saw Miss Bronia and Fredek hurrying down the street toward me. In one hand, Miss Bronia held a headless chicken by its feet—a sight I had seen before on these streets. “What in heaven’s name … are you doing … out in the street?” She asked again. She was out of breath, and I realized they must have been running to catch up to me.

  “My mommy’s at Mrs. Rokief’s,” I explained. “They sent her husband to Siberia. Or maybe they’ve already shot him.”

  “They shot Mr. Rokief?” Fredek repeated.

  “Hush!” Miss Bronia said. “Here!” She handed the chicken to Fredek. Fredek demurred holding the dead bird. “Take it!” Miss Bronia commanded, transferring the feet to his hand. “Yulian, give me your hand!”

  I obeyed. Her hand wasn’t as gentle as it usually was. She held me as though I might try to run away. I saw her take a deep breath. “Isn’t anyone home?” she finally said.

  “Auntie Edna, Auntie Paula, and Sonya.”

  Miss Bronia took another deep breath and let it out slowly. “How did you get out?”

  “I pretended to …” I began, but she interrupted me. “It’s all right,” she said in a calmer voice now. She lowered herself to one knee and put her arms around me. “I know,” she said. “I know. Let’s go back now, and we’ll wait for Mommy to come back. She’ll be home soon.”

  Miss Bronia didn’t really understand. “Mrs. Rokief …” I began, but didn’t know what else to say.

  “Mrs. Rokief will be all right.”

  I must have begun to cry, because I felt Fredek’s hand on my shoulder. “She’ll be all right,” he echoed. “You’ll see. We’ll go home and wait for Auntie Barbara.”

  My urge to go to Mrs. Rokief and her daughters wasn’t as strong anymore, and I was glad for the encounter as we walked home.

  Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula were on the sidewalk in front of our house when we got there. “What did you think you were doing?” Auntie Paula demanded as we got close.

  “He’s very upset,” Miss Bronia said, leading me straight inside. I heard Fredek say, “He’ll never do it again.”

  “Take off your clothes and get straight into bed,” Miss Bronia said. “I’m going to make you some tea. Have you had any supper?”

  I shook my head.

  “I will bring you something. Don’t get out of bed. Cover yourself up well.”

  As I was undressing under my covers, Fredek came over to our pallets. “What were you going to do there?” he wanted to know.

  “There,” of course, meaning at the Rokiefs, and I had no answer to give him. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “So why were you going there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said again, and, actually, I had no idea anymore why I had had such a great urge to be with Mrs. Rokief. I still felt sorry for her—very sorry—but now I could see no way that my presence might have mitigated the tragedy.

  “The woman cut the chicken’s head off right there on the street,” Fredek said. “She had a little log standing on end, and she put his head down and just went chop!”

  Then Miss Bronia brought me a cup of tea and told Fredek to leave me alone.

  In a few minutes, I could hear her speaking to Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula. She was speaking quietly, but she sounded angry. I had never heard her speaking angrily to the other grownups before.

  Sonya bought me some bread and ham. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she announced. I got the sense that there was something more she was trying to communicate, but it eluded me.

  The following morning, Mother still hadn’t come home. But nobody seemed concerned. It was only Fredek who asked at breakfast why Auntie Barbara hadn’t come home.

  “Hush,” his mother said. “We’re not going to talk about that.”

  “Just answer his question,” Auntie Paula said.

  “All right, Auntie Barbara is spending the night with a sick friend.”

  “Why did they send Mr. Rokief to Siberia or did they shoot him?” Fredek asked.

  “That’s what we’re not going to talk about.”

  Auntie Paula broke in. “Miss Bronia has heard that the Russians have arrested a few men and we don’t know why.”

  “Was Mr. Rokief a spy?” Fredek asked.

  “We don’t know. None of us knew Mr. Rokief.”

  “You said ‘knew.’ Does that mean they shot him already?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Now it was Miss Bronia who broke in. “Because it’s too cold and rainy to go out, the boys and I are going to do what we’ve needed to do for some time.” She paused long enough for us to wonder what that was. “We’re going to start washing and re-stuffing the pallets.”

  We had sewn an extra pallet cover over the previous week for someone to sleep on while theirs was washed and hung on the clothesline that Miss Bronia had rigged above the stove. We had been collecting straw for a change of stuffing for some time, and now Fredek and I welcomed the opportunity for the physical activity. The Aunties and Sonya, who had proper weather gear, albeit some of it makeshift, went out on their rounds of foraging.

  Mother came home that evening. Her eyes were bloodshot and most of her makeup had been wiped off. She spent the night, she said, convincing Mrs. Rokief to go to Lvow, as Col. Bawatchov had advised—and the day waiting for this morning’s train to Lvow to leave the station.

  “It’s very different in Lvow,” Mother said. “I talked to people who have been there. There is food. There are restaurants. There is coffee, and matches.”

  Mother said we should pack up and go there. She could get Col. Bawatchov to give us travel permits.

  Auntie Edna said that it had been announced that children between certain ages all had to be registered for school and she and Auntie Paula had registered Fredek and Sonya. Mother answered her that the teachers weren’t going to chase her to Lvow if Fredek failed to show up for class.

  For a change, Auntie Paula agreed with my mother. She had also heard that conditions were much better in Lvow, and if Mother could really get us travel permits, and if we could be sure we could find housing, then we should go. Mother said she would go see the colonel the next day.

  “Isn’t he going to get tired of seeing you so often?” Auntie Edna asked.

  “He likes Yulek,” Mother said.

  “My throat hurts,” said Fredek.

  As we climbed the stairs to the colonel’s office the next morning, I was well aware of my own importance. Col. Bawatchov genuinely liked me. He wasn’t like some of my mother’s friends who made a big show of being nice to the little boy.

  Perhaps we were wrong about calling the Russians our enemies. They had said that they had come to stop the advance of the Germans, whom we weren’t strong enough to resist because Poland was a smaller country than Germany, and they did stop them. The food and firewood supply systems had been disrupted, but that couldn’t be helped in view of all the extra people who were in town now, and it would, as the colonel said, get all straightened out. I only regretted that we had lied to this kind man about my ability to understand Russian. I started to climb the steps two at a time, but Mother pulled me back.

  This time we had to wait a few minutes outside the colonel’s office until an elderly couple came out. The woman was crying, and the colonel had, himself, opened the door for them.

  “I do what I can,” he said to Mother when the door had closed behind us, “but there’s only so much one can do.”

  They shook hands. “You have a very difficult responsibility, Comrade Colonel,” Mother said.

  I saw the little footstool from last time now under the colonel’s desk. Reaching with my foot, I slid it over to my chair

  “Ah, Yulli,” the colonel said, “you are at home here.”

  I wasn’t sure if that
was a greeting or a rebuke, and I was grateful for the opportunity to wait for Mother’s interpretation—which, of course, didn’t come. Mother had forgotten again. She appeared not to notice my intentionally blank look and answer for me, “He admires you very much, Comrade Colonel.” Since I had never discussed the colonel with Mother, this was pure fabrication—even if partially true.

  “And I am very grateful to you,” Mother went on. She had sat down in her chair and crossed her legs, but the colonel had pulled up a third chair so that he was now sitting on our side of the desk, and Mother turned to face him. “I put my friend and her daughters on the Lvow train yesterday,” she continued.

  “Yes, I know,” he said.

  Mother laughed. It was a throaty laugh that I had not heard from her before. “You know everything that goes on in your town, Comrade Colonel.” In view of his ignorance of Mr. Rokief’s fate, I thought this somewhat of an exaggeration.

  “I try to know everything I need to know,” he said. “I’m sorry you and your friend had to wait so long. The engineer is sick, and his assistant was ….” and the colonel put his thumb to his lips and lifted his head quickly to simulate drinking from a bottle.

  “It gave me a chance to speak with some people who have been to Lvow lately,” Mother said. “They tell me the conditions there are better than they are here.”

  “And you would like to move to Lvow.”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel.”

  “I can’t give you a permit,” the Colonel said.

  “But Comrade Colonel…”

  “I did it for Rokief’s wife because she was in danger, but I can’t do it for you.”

  “But Comrade Colonel…”

  He cut her off again. “I am watched closely, too,” he said.

  Mother didn’t say anything.