The Lullaby Of Polish Girls Part 13

It took a brush with death for Justyna to realize her love for her son, and it took death itself to realize something else; life was fleeting and meaningless. Weeks after Pawe's murder, Justyna yearned to take Damian aside and clue him in so that when he headed out into life's open jaws, he would be equipped with a steely heart and a clear head. "Your father died because nothing matters," she wanted to tell him. But even though Justyna was sure that in the long run her son would thank her for the heads-up, she had a niggling suspicion that she'd be robbing him of something. So she let him believe that life was fair and perhaps Daddy was coming back.

On Christmas Eve morning Justyna and her sister wake up groggy but determined to rise to the occasion.

Babcia Kazia brings a small tree with her that afternoon, and when she walks through the door, dragging the choinka by a rope, the kids cling to her stockinged calves, yipping their dzikuje, and covering her knees in sloppy kisses, like their grandmother is wity Mikoaj himself. Justyna goes up to the attic, finds the small cardboard box labeled Bbki, and brings it downstairs.

Celina and Damian hang ornaments as Justyna and Elwira sit on the couch, watching them and smoking. Babcia Kazia keeps busy in the kitchen defrosting pierogi, red barszcz, and cabbage bigos and setting the table for Christmas Eve dinner. At three o'clock, Justyna comes to the table still dressed in her pink sweat pants and T-s.h.i.+rt. Babcia shares the opatek she brought with the kids and Elwira, but Justyna refuses to take part, and for once Babcia doesn't argue. Justyna eats a little of everything but doesn't comment on the food. When Babcia Kazia starts clearing the table Justyna tells her, "Leave it. Just let them open their gifts."

Celina receives two Barbies-a stewardess and a pet shop owner-and a pink tutu that is too expensive but worth the look of jaw-dropping happiness on Cela's face when she tears off the gift wrap. Damian gets a couple of Hot Wheels cars and a yellow digger. Elwira hands Justyna a Spice Girls CD and a bottle of cheap perfume. "Sorry," Justyna mouths to her sister, because she has nothing to give her.

When Justyna tucks Damian in later that night, he asks her if "wiety Mikoaj didn't bring Ciocia Elwira anything because her boyfriend did something bad?" Justyna is blindsided by the question and scrambles for a diversion.

"You know what? Tomorrow we can go to Puchatek and you can pick something else out for yourself. I like what Mikoaj brought you, but honestly I think you're way too old now for that plastic digger. What the heck was he thinking, right?"

Damian frowns. "Is it because he did something bad to Tata?" he asks again.

Justyna answers quickly, confidently. "Listen, synu. Mikoaj didn't bring Ciocia anything because silly Ciocia forgot to write him a letter. He can't read minds, you know? Kinda s.h.i.+tty, right?" Justyna chuckles.

Damian stares at his mother, his big blue eyes fixated on her, and when he finally speaks it is one word, exhaled like a sigh. "Oh."

The next morning, Justyna waits in the kitchen for Elwira to come downstairs. Her sister is p.r.o.ne to six A.M. cravings for ham and b.u.t.ter sandwiches, and, like clockwork, Elwira shuffles into the kitchen, in a dirty bathrobe. When she sees Justyna, she gasps, clutching her chest. "f.u.c.k me! Jesus, are you trying to give me a heart attack?" She walks over to the counter and grabs the rye bread.

"Did you tell Celina what Filip did?" Justyna speaks, quickly and to the point.

"No. Of course I didn't! What do you think, I'm crazy?"

"So how come my son knows something is up? How come my son thinks that a.s.swipe did 'something bad' to his father?"

"I have no f.u.c.king idea! What are you talking about?"

Justyna walks over to Elwira, s.n.a.t.c.hes the bread from her and throws it on the floor. "Did you tell her?" Justyna's hands grab Elwira's chin and squeeze until Elwira starts to cry.

"I swear, Justyna, I would never tell any kid that, let alone my own. But Celina is sleeping in my room now, and I call friends at night when I can't sleep. I mean I'm quiet, and I make sure she's out, but who knows? Oh f.u.c.k, maybe she overheard something, maybe ..." Elwira's voice collapses into a whisper. "Listen, Justyna, I can't do it like you. I have to talk, you know, it helps me process."

"Process? What's there to process? Filip killed my husband. What can't you process? And he's still out there. It's been twenty-nine f.u.c.king days and-" Justyna stops talking, barrels over to the phone, and quickly dials a number.

"Tak, halo, may I please speak with Officer Kurka? You can tell him the widow Strawicz is calling. Yes, I'll hold, I'll hold, G.o.dd.a.m.nit." She stares at Elwira, who is cowering by the fridge.

"Yes? I understand it's Boe Narodzenie today, I got it. How's your Christmas been, prosz pani? You wanna know how mine is? Pretty f.u.c.king dismal, what with my husband dead. No one over there gives a fine c.r.a.p about-Yes, I'll hold, but I know he's there and I have his mobile number so maybe I should just f.u.c.ki-" And that's when Justyna notices a large plastic bag on the floor, peeking out from the corner of the living room doorway. She drops the receiver to the table. Echoes of Halo? Halo? fade into the background as she makes her way toward the bag.

"What? What is it?" Elwira's voice whispers.

Justyna stops at the foot of the plastic bag and wills herself to peek around the bend. The door leads straight into the kitchen. Why hadn't she noticed it sooner? Her dog, Rambo, is lying motionless, a b.l.o.o.d.y shoelace round his neck, securing the plastic bag over his head. She stoops down, shaking. She wants to untie the bag but can't bring herself to do it.

"What the f.u.c.k is that?" Elwira starts creeping toward Justyna, who holds out her hand.

"Don't!" Justyna blurts out, and Elwira immediately shrinks back.

There are no locks on the windows in the house. The balcony doors on the second floor don't close all the way, and no one's bothered to repair them.

"Run upstairs and check on the kids. Right now."

Elwira scrambles upstairs, crying. Silently, Justyna strokes Rambo's torso, her hands hold his paws. She knows she shouldn't touch the victim, shouldn't f.u.c.k with the fingerprints, but she can't help it because Rambo was her mother's dog and now he's gone, just like Teresa's gone, just like Pawe is. One by one, everyone is dropping like flies.

In a daze, she walks back to the kitchen, and she picks up the telephone. The line is dead so she redials the police station. "Yes, halo. Tell Officer Kurka that the person who murdered my husband came back last night, while we were all sleeping-and that includes two kids, miss. Our dog has been butchered and left with a plastic bag tied around his neck. Tell Kurka that I will personally drive myself and my family to his house tonight, right now, and we will stay there, camped out on his f.u.c.king wersalka, until the police stop jacking off and start doing their job. Do you understand what I am saying? Have you been writing this down? I f.u.c.king hope so."

Elwira comes running into the kitchen as soon as Justyna hangs up.

"They're fine. O Boe, Justyna. What is it?"

Elwira is sobbing, the fear in her eyes is astounding. Justyna lights a cigarette and points toward the dog.

"He was here. And he left us a gift."

Elwira shuts her eyes and shakes her head. "Let's call Tata. Please. We'll tell him he has to come back. I can't be here alone anymore. I'm scared."

"Don't be pathetic, Elwira. It's embarra.s.sing." Justyna stares at the remains of the dog. Someone will have to move him, bury him. It would be a job for Pawe, just the kind of thing he was good at, taking care of stuff that no one else wanted to do, like changing lightbulbs or cleaning up the trash bins.

"I want you to go upstairs and pack bags for Cela and Damian. I'm calling a cab, and you are taking them to Babcia's and you are not to leave there till I tell you to. Don't tell Babcia what happened, tell her we had a fight."

"What about you?" Elwira asks.

"I'm staying."

"No! Justyna, please, prosz ci! Oh my G.o.d, why would he come back? Do you think he knows I talked to the police?"

"He's f.u.c.king crazy. That's all."

"But you don't come back to the scene of the crime unless you wanna get caught, right?"

"I don't f.u.c.king know, Elwira! Maybe he's trapped, or it's cold as f.u.c.k out there, or he just couldn't help himself, so he came back. I'm not a f.u.c.king criminal psychologist! Point is, he was here."

"So, does that mean he'll come back again?"

"I don't know. But next time, I'll be ready for him."

"Stop it! Who do you think you are, for f.u.c.k's sake, Kojak? He snuck in here during the night and killed our f.u.c.king dog. You're coming with us. We'll call the police and they can stake out this house and wait for him."

"And what? They'll cuff him and haul him off in a van and we'll live happily ever after? The police give f.u.c.k all about what happened to Pawe, and what happened to our dog, and what is going to happen to you and me. You're scared and I don't blame you. I swear I don't blame you but I'm not scared."

"Yes, you are. Don't f.u.c.king lie to me."

"I'm not. I'm not scared. I'm not anything. There is nothing left in me, nothing left to even properly take care of my son. Do you understand that?" Justyna sits at the table and reaches for her pack of cigarettes. She offers Elwira one.

"So, what? You're gonna stay here and wait for him and have it out?" Elwira smokes the L&M, taking quick puffs one right after another.

"If I'm next, so be it. I don't care. But I want to look that psycho in the face, I want to-"

"You're sick. You're in denial. You just went insane at the thought of Damian knowing what happened to his father so don't tell me you don't care. Please, Justyna, f.u.c.king on my knees, I beg you, just come with us!"

Justyna looks down at the kitchen table. Every morning before school she'd come down and her mother would be sitting at the head of this table, filing her nails and smoking a Marlboro. Eggs or eggs, ptaszyno? Every morning, the same, calling Justyna her birdie, scrambling half a dozen jajka in gobs of b.u.t.ter, serving it up on rye bread. Every f.u.c.king morning. Eggs or eggs?

"Remember the summer we all went to the Croatian sea, na wczasy? The first day we went to the beach, the waves were so high. Mama dared us to jump in the water. And you stood by the sh.o.r.e, crying. You wanted to jump, but you just couldn't do it."

Elwira speaks softly. "I remember how you dove in and went under. You swallowed a ton of water, and we thought you had died, and then Mama told you you were stupid for actually jumping in, that she'd just been kidding."

"The thing is, I don't think she was kidding. I still believe that she wanted me to jump in. And I'm jumping in now, Elwira. And I don't expect you to join me. I don't want you to. But I have to do it."

Elwira walks up the stairs. In a few minutes, Justyna hears the kids waking, hears Elwira gathering their things. They'll be fine, thinks Justyna, and she dials the number for a taxi.

Anna.

Kielce, Poland.

After another three-year absence, Anna arrived in Poland that August with zero fanfare. Her cousins Hubert and Renata had made lives for themselves in Dublin and Naples, respectively, and her aunts only came by once in a while. Babcia had been happy to see her again. "You look like a woman now, Anna," she said, wiping away tears. Babcia, on the other hand, looked old. She'd apparently given up on her dentures, and the sight of her toothless mouth threw Anna. "Why, Babciu?" Anna asked, and Babcia just grinned wider. "Oh, corciu! They click and clack and it doesn't feel natural. Besides, I'm not afraid of growing old." For the first time ever, Babcia Helenka's apartment seemed huge and empty.

Besides Babcia, n.o.body seems to care that Anna is here. n.o.body has called since her return a week ago. Kamila is in Warsaw with Emil, spending the summer at some seventeenth-century villa. "We'll try to come back before you leave, Aniusia. It's been ages, hasn't it, darling?" Kamila had sounded so cosmopolitan and grown up on the phone. When Anna called Justyna, she said she was busy with kid stuff. "He'll s.h.i.+t anywhere in the house: the carpet, on the balcony, in our f.u.c.king cactus planter, but not in the G.o.dd.a.m.n toilet!" But she promised to see Anna before the summer was over.

"I'm only here for two weeks this time, Justynka." The whole conversation made Anna's heart sink.

Szydowek is a ghost town. In the mornings, Anna gets up late, eats a parowka dipped in mustard for breakfast, and goes jogging around the zalew. In the afternoons, she sits on the curb by the church, watching traffic. She saw Kowalski once, from a few blocks away, recognized him by the silk s.h.i.+rt he had on, the one he used to wear in 1995. Anna had to stop herself from calling out his name. She'd wanted to apologize for their last exchange, for the way she had spoken to him on the train. But instead she looked away and prayed he wouldn't notice her.

When it rains-and it's been raining the whole week-Anna spends her days on her grandmother's balcony, staring past St. Jozef's steeple, hoping someone will see her sitting there and spread the news that she is back, but no one does. When the rain lets up, Anna goes on walks, mining information from the neighbors. When she ran into Pani Nowacka by the trzepak a few days ago Anna called out to her.

"Pani Nowacka! Where is everyone?"

"Oh, you know, probably in the skwerek, getting drunk. All your old pals, they're criminals now, stealing in broad daylight. You had better tell your babcia to hide your dollars, that's all I'm saying." But Pani Nowacka had continued, gleefully informing her that Lolek had just been released from prison, after serving time for aggravated a.s.sault. "That's what his father says anyway, but there's another rumor floating around...." Anna had given Pani Nowacka a hasty wave goodbye and hopped onto the rug beater. She didn't want to hear any more.

Anna's seen Lolek a few times. Standing around the neighborhood, smoking and swigging malted beer with the same group of local guys she recognizes from her youth. They've grown up to be the kind of guys that she'd never a.s.sociate with in the States-guys who don't read books, or discuss current events, guys with corroded teeth and black fingernails. The very same guys she'd been buddies with for all those years now made her cringe when she waved h.e.l.lo but hurried past them, feeling all kinds of sadness. When she was fourteen and handed out clothes and candy to the beholden post-Communist children, there was magic and power in it. When she was sixteen and rallied her girlfriends to follow their dreams, she was their ally and, more importantly, one of their own. "My Polaki," she'd say. She was one of them. But she was better, and until this summer, she never felt there was anything wrong with that.

Anna began to notice things this year that threatened to collapse her idea of Polska. The neighborhood b.u.ms-who huddled around lampposts at all hours of the day, pa.s.sing bottles of home brew around-bugged her. The desperate wives and mothers, who had to search behind bushes for their wasted sons, bugged her. People who cut the line at the local warzywniak bugged her. Everyone seemed dismal, hurried, and hungover. Had Anna always been this blind? She felt utterly alien, as if Kielce was a place she no longer understood.

Today, the most exciting thing Anna did was help Babcia move the credenza. At four o'clock the phone buzzes and Anna leaps up from her dog-eared copy of T. C. Boyle's Water Music.

"Dziedobry. Is Anna there?" a deep baritone voice inquires and Anna's curiosity is instantly piqued.

"This is Anna. Who's this?"

"Guess."

"I have no idea." Anna laughs, scrambling to figure out who the voice belongs to.

"That's a shame. But I'll give you a break. Bdziesz moj dziewczyna."

Anna's mouth falls open. "Sebastian?"

"Ja, das ist Sebastian."

"I, I thought you lived in Germany," Anna stutters.

"Moved back two years ago."

Anna is silent for a beat, surprised and thrilled.

"Can I take you out for a drink?" he asks.

"Tak."

Sebastian tells her he'll pick her up in an hour and Anna hangs up grinning like a fool.

Two hours later, Anna hears a car honk and peeks through the kitchen window. There's a beat-up old truck-one of those Star 200s from the eighties-parked in front of her grandmother's building. When she walks out of the stairwell, Sebastian Tefilski is leaning against the driver's side door, smoking a cigarette.

"Did someone call for a limo?" Sebastian jokes.

"You look like some kind of Adidas ad," Anna tells him. He's tall and sporting an Adidas baseball cap, Adidas polo s.h.i.+rt, and black Adidas sneakers. He's also more handsome than Anna had imagined. Sebastian laughs, showing his white teeth, which throw her, because white teeth like that are definitely not a Polish thing. He eyes her up and down.

"My, my. The Amerykanka's all grown up." He flicks his cigarette and smiles. "Get in."

They drive past Staszica Park, on their way downtown, past the lake that's teeming with ducks and swans. At a red light, Sebastian turns to her. "Did you know that swans mate for life?"

Yes, she says, of course she knows.

"But did you also know a male swan-a cob-is the only bird that has a p.e.n.i.s?"

Anna laughs. The words for life echo in her head, and she feels dumb for reading into things already.

At an outdoor pub on Sienkiewicza Street, they are making small talk over some beers when Sebastian says, "And then you had to go ahead and ruin it with that f.u.c.ked-up letter. Man, Baran, you could have been my wife by now, instead you drove me out to Berlin, where I filled up on spaetzle, trying to forget you."

She laughs wildly. "What 'f.u.c.ked-up letter'?"

Sebastian winks at her and stands up to get some more Zywiec. Anna has no recollection of a letter. When she left in 1989, she remembers handing Sebastian a note with her address, and he promised to write to her but he never did, and that was that. Maybe he has her mixed up with some other girl. When he gets back with two kufly of beer, Anna takes a sip, wipes the foam from her mouth.

"I wrote you a lot of letters, Sebastian. Just never mailed them. I don't know what you're talking about."

"All right, Anna." Sebastian winks at her again and grins.

Emboldened by the alcohol, Anna kisses him lightly on the mouth when he drops her off at Szydowek. He doesn't kiss her back, but he doesn't duck either. "I'll call you in the morning. Maybe we can drive to Krakow for the day or something."

The next day, Anna wakes up with a sore throat and b.u.t.terflies in her stomach. By eleven A.M., she's on the balcony, looking for his truck. At five o'clock, she is ready to give up, but when Babcia draws the curtains for the night, Anna refuses to change into her pajamas. At ten P.M. Anna hears it: a single honk. Suddenly, she's scrambling down the stairwell like a madwoman, calling back to Babcia, "I won't be late but don't wait up."

On the hilltop, where Sebastian parked the truck, he refills Anna's gla.s.s. The wine is sweet and cheap. "Just like the company," Anna joked when she took her first sip. They are fifteen kilometers outside of Kielce, past the little village of Masow nestled in the Swietokrzyskie Mountains. The night air feels damp and chilly. The tickle in Anna's throat has been bothering her all day, and it's an effort to swallow every sip of wine.