• • •
In the morning, I put the jar of poison jam in my satchel. I act like everything is normal.
“Good morning, Waldemar,” I say. I try to pretend I am normal, but Waldemar knows that I am not.
“What is it? What’s that smile for?”
“Oh, nothing, just that I’m going to kill Jarek Jaskolka today and go back to the other place. Sorry you can’t come with me.” I try to sound cheerful, like I don’t know that Waldemar’s heart is broken. He can see right through me. He has that ability, as my brother.
“I don’t like this idea, Urszula. I think Jarek Jaskolka won’t eat the jam. I think he’ll hurt you instead. You’ll get those marks like Mother, and turn into an angry woman just like her.”
“But I’m angry already,” I say. “Marks or no marks, it makes no difference. I need to get out of here. And if I go through the hole and arrive back to the other place, whatever that is, what will I care if my legs are full of worms?”
“Worms?”
“Worms.”
My thoughts go suddenly to the cemetery, the rich black dirt that was dug up to make room for our father to be buried in. I wonder, once I go through the hole back to the place, will my body be left behind? Later, will Waldemar stand in the cemetery and watch the dirt get dug up for me to be buried in? Will worms want to eat my flesh? Will they chew my flesh and spit out mud, which the teacher says is good for planting things? I can’t discuss this with Waldemar now. It would upset him too much to answer such questions. We get dressed for school and go to the kitchen for breakfast. The woman is slicing an onion, crying. I can’t look at her. I am worried she can tell I’ve used the stove the night before. The air, I worry, still smells like poison jam.
“You look tired, Urszula,” she says. “You look sick. Maybe you should stay home today. Maybe you’re getting Waldemar’s cough.”
“Yes,” Waldemar says. “You should stay home. Don’t go anywhere. Just stay in bed and read a book. I’ll bring your schoolwork home for you. Don’t go doing anything crazy.”
“You sound just like the woman,” I say to Waldemar.
“Call me Mother,” the woman says.
The woman gives us our bread and yogurt, Waldemar’s onion cooked in honey, and one for me, too.
“Thank you, Mother,” Waldemar says.
I roll my eyes.
We eat in silence, Waldemar sniffling and clearing his throat. I keep my eyes on the worn wooden floor. “Good-bye, stupid floor,” I say to myself. “Good-bye, ugly, stupid, old wood floor.” But what do I care about that floor? A house can be full of life one day, then torn down into rubble the next. Tramways can be laid out. Millions of silly people can walk across a bit of Earth and never know what was once built on that place. We don’t even know who’s buried beneath our feet. So many people have come and gone, and where are they now? I think of the better place. “Jarek Jaskolka,” I say to myself, but not out loud. I don’t want Waldemar or the woman to hear me. I don’t want any more trouble. I feel that I am ready to leave them both behind.
My satchel is heavy now, the jar of poison jam and butcher knife sagging down under my schoolbooks. Waldemar offers to carry my satchel for me.
“You look tired,” he says. “Why not let me take that off your back?”
“Oh, you think you can solve things? You’re just a little boy. You might have more muscles than me, but you’re only a day older. You think you’re smarter than me for that? You think you have all the answers, do you?”
Waldemar doesn’t say anything. I am very excited with the thought that very soon, I’ll be gone. I’m finally going home, I think to myself. I try to hate Waldemar, but I can’t. I try not to think about how much I really love him. It is hard to do.
We continue on our way up the road. I am breathing like a crazy person breathes. My heart is beating like a crazy person’s heart beats. “Don’t do anything crazy,” Waldemar had warned me. What is crazy about what I’m doing? What does “crazy” even mean? There is one person everyone calls “crazy.” She is an old lady who lives between the cans of garbage behind the market. She covers herself in cabbage leaves and fronds from carrot tops and old wax paper smeared with animal fat, and she talks to herself and smokes the dirty tips of cigarettes men toss to her where she lies during the day, basking in the sunshine, underneath the monument to the martyrs in the town square. But even she doesn’t seem so crazy. She is probably just sad, like me, and from another place entirely. She seems to be making the most of her time on Earth, though, doing as she pleases. She doesn’t work or have a crying baby to tend to. Nobody is going to get near her. Nobody is going to make her black and blue and bloody. She smells like so many toilets. But she does as she pleases. She is a grown woman. If I can’t kill Jarek Jaskolka, I think to myself, I’ll be like that crazy lady and cover myself in garbage.
“Are you mad?” Waldemar asks, kicking a little rock across the road.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t sleep well. I’m all testy. My brain is like a bug bite I scratched bloody. Sorry,” I say again.
Waldemar puts his arm around my shoulder, plucks some berries from the bush as we walk past. He puts one up his nose and hands me the rest.
“Thanks,” I tell him, but I don’t swallow any berries. I don’t want to be poisoned anymore. I want to be awake and ready to jump and dive down into the hole when it opens up for me. I don’t want to be sleepy and miss my chance, in case the hole is only open for a second. And I want to be on my toes for when I kill Jarek Jaskolka. Waldemar puts another berry up his nose. I feel I have more courage than Waldemar now. He seems like the sad lost child the woman had said he’d looked like the day before. I let the poison berries in my hand drop to the ground. When we reach the square, I turn in the direction of the cemetery. Waldemar turns to the road that leads to school. We stop and look at each other.
“Are you really doing it?” Waldemar asks.
“It’s worth a try,” I shrug. I am just pretending to be easygoing. Inside, I am determined.
“I’ll come with you,” Waldemar says. “I mean that I’ll walk to Jarek Jaskolka’s house with you, just to see what happens. If he is really your person, and you kill him and the hole opens up, maybe I can jump through with you.”
Somehow I don’t believe what Waldemar is saying. I feel like he’s just giving an excuse to follow me. I worry that he might sabotage my plans. But then I look into his eyes. No. He won’t get in my way. He is my brother. He will never keep me from being happy.
So I allow Waldemar to follow me on the road to the cemetery. We are quiet as we walk. I don’t ask what he’s thinking. I don’t want to know. When we get to Jarek Jaskolka’s house, we stand and watch the dark, curtained windows for a while. A meadlowlark comes and taps its beak on the glass and hovers. Then another comes and flies right into the glass and breaks its neck. Its body falls to the ground. The first meadlowlark flies away. This seems like a good omen.
The sun comes out from behind a cloud. The shadows of my body and Waldemar’s body lie out in front of us like holes in the ground. I carefully lay my satchel down and put my arms around my brother.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I have to go in there alone. You know the hole will only be big enough for one. You know that, right?” I ask.
Waldemar nods. All our lives, we’ve understood each other. Even when we are angry, there is too much love to pretend to think that what we know to be true is only a made-up story. That’s the cruel way of all those silly people: they tell you that what you believe is just some silly story. That’s why I hate it here. Everybody thinks that I am crazy. I let go of Waldemar and pick up my satchel and start up the big broken concrete slabs to the door of Jarek Jaskolka’s house.
“Will you come back for me?” my sweet brother asks. There are tears in his eyes. He looks so small and lost and sad from where I stand up high above
him. I tell him I wish I could stay with him, but not here, not on Earth. Earth is the wrong place for me, always was and will be until the day I die.
“Just try, if you can, to send me a letter from the place. And if there’s some way you can come back, come get me.”
“Okay, Waldemar. I’ll try,” I say, but I will never come back. Even if I can come back, I won’t. I drop my satchel down into the dirt below. The books land hard like the sound of “good-bye.” I hold my arms behind my back, and with the butcher knife in one hand, the jar of poison jam in the other, I kick on Jarek Jaskolka’s door. Waldemar cries and hides against the wall of the house, holding the dead meadlowlark in his hands. He pinches his eyes closed.
“I’ll miss you, Waldemar!” I whisper.
I wait for the bad man to let me in.
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Homesick for Another World Page 23