by Laura Ruby
Roza was grateful when they finally landed. On stiff and frozen legs, she followed the other students off the plane and into customs, trying to keep her eye on them as they were split into different lines. Why hadn’t she talked to one of these people on the plane? Maybe they knew where they could find their bags. Maybe they knew where the buses were. Maybe they didn’t feel so sick or so scared, as if they’d already handed their fates over to someone else without even realizing it.
Her line was slow, and then the customs officer stared at her passport for a long, long time, and at her face even longer. She knew some English, though her accent was heavy. She said, “Yes? Is okay?”
“You’re Polish.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look Polish.”
“Sorry?”
“Polish girls are blond.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She bit her lip.
The man smiled in a secret way, as if he had not meant the smile for anyone else, not even for her. He said, “Are you a model?”
Heat crept up her neck into her cheeks. Was he joking? “No, no. I come for study.”
“Who needs school when you could be a model?” He held the flat of his hand over her papers, trapping them there, trapping her there. She glanced back at the line of people behind her, but nobody was watching. The last of the other students was disappearing through the doorways in front of her. She wanted to peel back the man’s fingers till he yelled. She wanted to punch him. She wanted to cry. But this was a grown man and some sort of official, and she didn’t dare say a word. Instead, she waited with her burning cheeks and her own dumb smile until he slid her papers back to her, rough fingertips briefly brushing her wrist.
She grabbed the papers and ran, rubbing her arm on her jeans hard enough to start a fire. But she needn’t have worried about losing the other students. They were too boisterous to miss, loitering around one of the baggage carousels, laughing and talking as if they’d known one another for years. Roza scooped her ancient flowered bag off the belt and trailed the students to a man who held a placard with the name of the university written on it. He gathered them, counted them—there were a dozen from Poland, another dozen from other places in Europe—and took them out the door into the surprisingly wet and chilly May air. He pointed to a waiting bus. Roza dropped into a seat next to a girl wearing a sad puppy expression on her face.
“Isn’t it horrible?” said the girl.
“What?”
“This place.”
Roza rubbed her arm where the official had touched her. “I don’t think I’ve been here long enough to decide.”
“I have,” said the girl. Her name was Karolina, her horrible parents had made her come, she’d had to leave her boyfriend behind, she hadn’t had lunch, she was starving, it was cold, she said, eyes welling, and it was all too horrible for words. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Roza dug around in her backpack and pulled out a paper bag. She opened the bag and found the babka she’d bought two airports ago in Poland. Not too stale. She offered it to Karolina.
Karolina sniffled and took the bread studded with fruit. “I haven’t had this in ages.”
Behind them, the English words rang out, so exaggerated that they managed to make the speaker sound that much more Polish: “Omigod, you’re eating carbs?”
Karolina dropped the bread into her lap as if she’d just been caught with heroin.
Roza turned around. Behind them, a pretty but brutally skinny girl blinked heavily lined eyes. “What? Carbs will make you fat.”
“She’s hungry,” Roza said.
“So?” said the girl.
Roza turned back to Karolina. “You didn’t have lunch.”
Karolina shook her head and held the babka out to Roza. “It’s okay. You eat it.”
Roza shrugged, took a bite. The girl behind her sang, “Fat!”
Roza thought being fat was better than looking like an angry chicken carcass boiled for angry soup, but said nothing more. Which was lucky, because the brutally skinny chicken carcass turned out to be her new roommate.
Her name was Honorata. Honorata’s parents didn’t make her come to America, she’d demanded to come. And now that she was here, she had twelve weeks to find a rich boyfriend who would buy her lots of jewelry. If Roza wanted a boyfriend, Honorata said, she better start wearing some makeup. And buy a decent pair of jeans. And get rid of the ratty sweatshirt. And stay out of the sun; she already looked like some kind of Egyptian.
“I like these jeans,” Roza said.
“Don’t tell me you’re here to study,” said Honorata.
“I am. Botany.”
“Botany? As in plants? What are you going to be, a potato farmer?” Honorata threw open their door. “Hey, guys! My roommate wants to be a potato farmer!”
Roza pushed past her into the hallway.
“Where are you going?” Honorata said.
Roza said, “I’m going to see if Karolina wants some potatoes.”
She found Karolina’s room, four doors down. Karolina was sitting on her unmade bed, texting her boyfriend, and crying.
“I’m going to get us some food,” Roza said. “You’ll feel better after you eat something.”
“What kind of food?” Karolina said. “Who knows what they have here? Bugs? Bats? Snails? Carbs?”
Roza rolled her eyes but forced her voice to remain cheerful. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “They have McDonald’s, just like in Kraków.”
Outside, it was nothing like Kraków. The buildings were squat and boxy. Trash cans overflowed with fast-food wrappers and soda bottles. She’d thought all of Chicago was going to be made of marble and metal and glass, like something out of a sci-fi movie. Where were the sleek new skyscrapers? Where were the women in dresses made of fifty-dollar bills?
Never mind that. Where were the trees? Where was the grass? She thought of the rolling hills of her village, the chocolate-eyed cows, the woolly sheep, the chatter of her neighbors, the smell of Babcia’s cooking, and felt a wave of loneliness so strong it almost knocked her down.
The smell of Babcia’s cooking. She found herself in front of a small grocery from which came the odors of garlic and sauerkraut. Roza almost burst into tears herself when she saw the sign in the window: MÓWIMY PO POLSKU TUTAJ. We speak Polish here.
She bought a large container of beet soup, a green salad, sauerkraut, roasted potatoes, and Polish sausages warm from the pan. Roza brought the bundle back to Karolina. “Look!” Roza said. “No carbs!”
“Potatoes have carbs.”
“Yes, but only delicious ones.”
Karolina wiped her eyes and put away her phone. They spread the food out on the desk. The smell of garlic and beets drew in the other exchange students, who couldn’t keep themselves away from something that smelled so much like home.
Classes began. Roza’s took place in the biology department’s greenhouse with a gray-faced professor visiting from central Illinois. She learned about the effects of carbon dioxide on different plants, the medicinal properties of hops and licorice and red clover. Not the same as being outside, hands in the earth, sun on her back, but better than being stuck in a classroom. At night, she cooked soup and sausage and pierogi on a small hot plate she’d smuggled into the dorm room. She cooked so much that the Polish girls started to call her “Mama.” The boys did, too, some of them sweetly and shyly, some of them smacking it with their lips. Which drove Honorata crazy. “What’s so special about her?”
One of the boys, Baltazar—“Bob,” as he introduced himself—was a big golden boy with big blue eyes. Most of the girls could barely keep from drooling in his presence. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t keep those blue eyes off everyone’s breasts. Didn’t seem to matter that all he did was brag about his part-time job with his cousin, who had been in the country for five years. “Big money. All the rich Americans want us to fix their houses. They can’t do it themselves. Too stupid.”
With his b
ig money, Bob bought a rusty old car that looked as if it had been painted with brown house paint and invited Roza, Karolina, and Honorata for a ride. She didn’t want to go, she didn’t like Bob, Bob was a golobki, but Honorata said Roza sounded like someone’s cranky grandmother, and she should shut up and stop ruining things for everyone else. Inside the old car, it smelled of old goat and moldy sausage (or moldy goat and old sausage, Roza couldn’t be sure). Or maybe it wasn’t the car at all. Maybe it was Bob. He’d made sure that she had the front seat, but Roza curled away from him like a flower seeking the sun as everyone else rattled away in Polish.
“I have second cousins here, too,” Karolina said.
“Yeah?” said Bob. “Where do they work?”
“I think one of them works at a meat company. He said he could get me a job if I want to stay longer.”
“A meat company? What, like making kielbasa?”
“I guess,” said Karolina. “I don’t know what they make. I’d work in the office. I’m going to be an accountant.”
Bob laughed. “Girls aren’t so good at math.”
Roza clucked her tongue. “Who told you that?”
Bob laughed again. “Are you going to be an accountant, too?”
Honorata leaned forward, breathed in Bob’s ear. “Roza likes to play in the mud.”
Bob waved his hand by his head as if shooing gnats. “That could be fun.”
“I study plants,” Roza said.
Honorata said, “She’s taking a class in magic.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Karolina. “She’s studying herbal remedies.”
Honorata laughed. “Yeah. Remedies for hot flashes. She’s going to help all the dried-up old ladies.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Bob said.
Roza wondered what she was doing in this car with these people. She and Karolina could have gone to a movie. She could be back in the greenhouse listening to the gray-faced professor drone on about his plants. “Aspirin came from the bark of a tree,” she said, “so why not other medicines?”
“It’s nice you’re helping the old ladies,” said Bob. “They’re not much good for anything.”
While they idled at a red light, a sad man with a dirty beard and a cup limped to the driver’s side. Bob rolled down the window and spat: “Get a job!”
Roza rubbed her head, wished she had some willow bark, decided there wasn’t enough willow bark in the world. “Why did you yell at him?”
“Because he’s a bum,” Bob said in Polish. “This is America. You work for your money.”
“What if he was sick?” she said.
“He looked healthy enough to me,” Bob said.
“He looked sad.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Roza was about to say that no, she wasn’t kidding, the man really did look sad to her, but she realized that Bob wasn’t interested in what she had to say.
He said, “I work hard. I bought this car myself.”
“It’s a very nice car,” she said.
“It’s a piece-of-garbage car, but it’s my car, and that’s the point. And don’t think I won’t get a better one soon, because I will.”
“Absolutely,” said Roza. “Probably a Mercedes.”
He stared at her, wondering if she was playing with him. He must have decided that she was sincere, because he said, “This is America.” He stepped on the gas, and the old tires squealed in protest. “I want a Mustang.”
He asked Roza out for dinner. She said, “I’m sorry, I have a late class.” He asked her out to the movies; she said, “I have homework.” He asked her to go dancing; she said, “No, thank you, I have to call my grandmother.” It was too hot for sweatshirts, but she wore hers anyway, zipped to her neck.
He caught her in the dorm hallway, backed her against the wall. The meaty goat smell came off him in sickening waves. Up close, his eyes looked watery and gray like Ludo’s.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Why don’t you wear a dress or something?”
“I wear what I want.”
“You think you’re too good for us?”
“Who is us?” she said.
“Me. You think you’re too good for me?”
“No!” she said.
“Then prove it.”
She shoved at him. She was strong, but he was stronger. “I don’t have to prove anything!”
He loomed over her, stinking, staring. She turned her face away, chewing the inside of her cheek so hard, her mouth filled with blood. The professor had told her about doll’s eyes, another name for the white baneberry that could cause cardiac arrest. She wished she had a handful to stuff down his throat.
“Bitch,” he said. “You’re nothing but a stuck-up bitch.”
The next time Roza tried to get into her dorm room, she found the door chained from the inside. She waited in the lounge for an hour before trying the door again. This time, the door flew open and Bob charged past her, bumping her hard enough to knock her off balance.
Honorata sat on her bed, eyes dark and unreadable, lipstick smeared like a wound.
“I told you he was horrible,” Roza said, only recognizing the cruelty of her words as she said them.
Honorata whipped a pillow across the room. “Go to hell!”
“Did he hurt you?”
“What do you care?”
Roza picked up the pillow, laid it on Honorata’s bed. She opened her books on her desk, pretended to study.
Much later, after she’d shut off the light, Honorata whispered, “You’re no better than the rest of us,” voice so thin and tight Roza thought it might snap. “Someday, someone will show you.”
Roza was better. They were better, even angry Honorata. Roza could have been any of them, every one of them. The story hadn’t changed. Only the costumes. Only the players.
One of the benefits of the costume: concealment. At dinner in the castle, when the icy-eyed man stopped staring at her long enough to take a sip of wine from his jeweled goblet, Roza slid a knife from the table, tucked it in the folds of her gown.
Finn
LOST
SINCE THEY’D STARTED THE JOB, FINN AND MIGUEL HAD replaced more than a dozen fence posts, spliced hundreds of yards of wire, and still it was as if they’d barely begun. Each day, the sun grew hotter and more punishing, too hot for June, and the fence seemed to get longer and longer, like a living thing snaking out across the prairie. Now they did strip off their shirts, for no other reason than to stay cool; their backs and ribs were marked where the fencing wire had whipped and stung them. They were extra careful with the barbed wire that they installed on the top and bottom of the fence, wire that could easily tear them open.
After only two hours of work, Finn took a break to pour a bottle of water over his head.
“Hey,” said Miguel. “You’re not going to faint on me, are you?”
“Sorry. Not getting much sleep.”
“I heard.”
“What did you hear?”
Miguel knotted off a section of fencing wire, tossed the clamps and pliers to the ground. “I heard you weren’t getting much sleep.”
“Come on,” said Finn.
Miguel took a drink of water. “It’s Bone Gap. People talk.”
“Which people?”
“All of them,” said Miguel. “You might be wandering around in the dark, but we can all hear the hoofbeats.”
“I like to ride.”
“No shit. Where do you go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Nowhere?”
“Wherever the horse wants.”
“Awesome.”
“Seriously, we just ride around. It’s not a big deal.”
Miguel nodded. He looked at the ground, at the shovel, at Finn, everywhere but the road.
Finn said, “Is she here today?”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Lonogan,” said Finn dryly. “Amber? Pink bicycle? Chews her own hair?”
“Oh, her,” Miguel
said.
Finn laughed.
Miguel grabbed his shovel and resumed digging. “Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
Miguel tossed a shovelful of dirt at Finn’s feet. “I wouldn’t want to make your horse jealous.”
“Maybe I should bring the horse tomorrow. She can take you to see Amber, since you don’t have the balls to go on your own.”
“Don’t rush me, dude. I’m waiting for the perfect time.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
That was the one thing Finn couldn’t do: wait. Every evening, when the darkness had settled over Bone Gap, Finn sneaked out to the barn. And every evening, the night mare took him to Petey’s house. Sometimes Petey was waiting in the beeyard, a fire lit, the bees humming soft and low. Sometimes the beeyard was still, and he would ride up to the house and rap on her window. She would emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis.
When she met him in the beeyard, they would roast marshmallows, dip the s’mores in a jar of Hippie Queen Honey, and talk about the grind of high school and how they’d survive their last year; Calamity Jane’s six kittens; Finn’s fickle mom; Petey’s deadbeat dad; silent, angry Sean; Charlie Valentine and all his alleged dates with mystery women no one had met; the Rude boys; the weirdest college essays they could think of: Describe someone who has had the biggest impact on your life using only adverbs. Explain a moment that changed your worldview, written in recipe format. Tell us how you feel about Thursday—is it better or worse than Tuesday? And if Petey’s words and moods occasionally stung, her lips were always soft.
When Petey wasn’t waiting in the beeyard, when he knocked upon her window and she climbed from the house, they would ride the mare past the stream, across the giant meadow, through the forest that wasn’t there, over the cliff with the wind that caught them in its soft, plush hands. Hours later, they would return, breathless and weak-kneed and trembling, not understanding where they’d been, but knowing they’d been somewhere too impossible to exist. Finn would pull Petey into his arms, and he would kiss her until they were both so dazed they could barely walk.
Finn was still dazed. A perpetual daze.