Mother and Me (39 page)

Down the road I could now see the gray autobus, like a big whale, enveloped in its own swirl of snowflakes, making its way toward us. Mother stood on tiptoe, waving her red scarf back and forth.

In a moment, the autobus had pulled to a squeaky stop, and what seemed to be a bear leaped down to confront us the moment the folding door opened.

There stood Mr. Lupicki in a fur coat that began just above the ground and ended quite a bit above his head. From within the huge fur collar, the familiar pointed face grinned at us through crooked teeth. A university student's cap, like the one I had always wanted, with its silver braid and shiny bill, was cocked jauntily over one eye. On the front of the cap, Mr. Lupicki had a red enamel star with its hammer and sickle.

“Mrs. Waisbrem,” he said, “and Yulian!” I didn't trust the friendliness in his voice anymore.

“And the other ladies?” he asked, and then expressed regret when Mother said they weren't coming. “Life in Lvow is so much better than in Durnoval.” From a pocket of the fur coat he produced a silver and gold case and offered a cigarette to Mother. I could see that they were hand-rolled, and Mother
politely refused. The paper around hand-rolled cigarettes, I knew, was sealed by the roller's saliva.

Digging through the fur to his pants pocket, Mr. Lupicki next drew out a gold lighter. With his cupped hands he sheltered the flame from the wind and lit his cigarette. “If I had known you would be coming today, I would have brought some chocolates with me,” Mr. Lupicki said to me.

“He doesn't deserve chocolates,” Mother said. “He's being horrid to me.”

Now a second furry creature stepped down from the autobus. A woman, several centimeters taller than Mr. Lupicki, now stood beside him. “This is Vanda,” Mr. Lupicki said, “my partner.”

Unlike Mr. Lupicki's bulky, floor-length coat, Miss Vanda's looked to me like a stylish lady's mink or something. Under her round fur hat, Miss Vanda looked younger than Mother. Her pale face wore bright red lipstick and heavy splotches of rouge. Her eyes were light blue, and two thick blond braids fell forward over her shoulders.

“This is Mrs. Waisbrem who was kind enough to let me ride in her truck outside of Lublin, and her son, Yulian,” Mr. Lupicki explained.

Miss Vanda shook hands eagerly. “You have to sit with me. I have a lap robe,” she said. The suggestion of a lap robe in this weather sounded inviting, but the idea of sharing it with this painted lady scared me. Mother, of course, accepted.

“Herman will take care of the suitcases,” Miss Vanda went on. Her accent was the same as the farm people's.

As Mother and I settled in the first seat, under the lap robe beside Miss Vanda, with me in the middle, I tried to maintain separation from both my mother and the painted, perfume and cigarette-scented Miss Vanda. Now Miss Vanda had a cigarette case of her own in her hands, a silver and gold one matching her partner's, but smaller, and offered Mother a cigarette. These were manufactured cigarettes, not hand-rolled,
and Mother accepted one. Miss Vanda's lighter matched her cigarette case.

The autobus lurched into motion with a loud roar, and Miss Vanda immediately leaned her head over mine and addressed Mother. “Mrs. Waisbrem probably sees that Herman has joined the Communist Party,” she said, “but that was only to get the job. He isn't really a Communist. To have an important job like this, a person has to be a party member. But Missus should be assured that neither Herman nor I have any thoughts of revolution. Herman has the best connections among the finest gentry, and we are business people. If Missus wants to sell or buy jewelry or perfume, or if she needs to talk with personages of influence or needs something transported or a message delivered to someone in the German zone, Herman can arrange it. Does Missus have a place to stay?”

Mother said that actually we didn't, but that Mr. Lupicki had told her earlier that he could arrange it.

“And he will. Herman's word is his bond. And for Missus, who has been so kind and generous, he would climb out of his skin. You can stay with us tonight. We have lots of room. Even a bathroom.”

Mother said it was very kind of her. I could see on Mother's face how it pleased her to be called kind and generous, even though it wasn't at all true. She had taken both my knife and Miss Bronia away from me so that she could go live with her painted and perfumed friends, sitting in cafes and laughing that other people were killed and they weren't.

I turned around to look at the interior of the autobus behind us. I counted twenty-three other passengers and four empty seats. Empty wooden crates knocked against each other in the last row of seats. Wrapped in big coats or robes of some sort, the people all looked too bulky for the seats.

Miss Vanda was telling Mother about the beautiful suit that Mr. Lupicki wore when they went out in the evening. At the same time, she had taken out her compact, which matched
her cigarette case and her lighter, and was applying still more rouge to her cheeks. “This compact,” she was saying, “and my cigarette case and lighter, they're a set he gave me for my birthday. Herman has a matching cigarette case too. He got them from some Warsaw Jews for eggs and cheese and things. I thought Jews were supposed to be such sharp businessmen. Herman certainly got the best of that bargain. He used to have his own shoe store in Lublin, you know.”

After a while, the autobus stopped and Mr. Lupicki got out. There was nothing there but snow-covered fields. Several of the passengers, men and women, followed him out into the field.

“Do you need to get out, little boy?” Miss Vanda asked me.

I could see no advantage to it. “No, thank you,” I said.

“I'll be right back,” Miss Vanda said, getting up to join the others.

I watched the people stand around in the snow, as though looking at the horizon, except that you couldn't see it for the falling snow, their feet planted solidly. Then they all climbed back into the autobus, leaving yellow stains in the white snow.

Back in her seat, Miss Vanda opened her compact again and, looking into the mirror, touched up her lipstick. “Do you like the color?” she suddenly asked me. I had to look to make sure she was talking to me. “ I have fourteen different lipsticks at home,” she went on.

“It's very nice,” I said.

“I don't know if I like it or not,” she said, her pencilled eyebrows crinkling into a little frown. “But I love the case, don't you?” She handed the blue-enamel case with its spiral of gold to me.

I hated touching her lipstick, but took it and pretended to admire it. “Very nice,” I said, handing it back.

“I have a little brother your age, you know,” she said. “He's going to be seven next month, and I'm giving him a rocking horse for his birthday.”

I knew I should let the matter go, but I could not allow the affront to my honor. “I'm seven-and-a-half,” I said. “I'll be eight next month.”

The statement had no effect on Miss Vanda. “I gave a pair of good boots for it,” she said. “One ear was missing, but Herman made a new one from the end of a belt that was too big for him. He's awfully clever, you know.”

Then she leaned across to Mother and raised her voice above the roar and clatter of the autobus. “Like I said, tonight you can stay with us. We have our office in the apartment, so there's lots of room. We have carpets on the floor.”

Then I must have fallen asleep because I woke up as the autobus came to another noisy stop. I could see that we weren't in any town yet. There was only a cottage across the road.

Nobody got up this time, except for Miss Vanda, who said she'd be right back and made her way past our feet to the door. I watched her run across the road to the cottage. She wiggled as she ran.

“Do you need to make peepee?” Mother asked.

I shook my head. Actually, I did have to go a little, but I wasn't going to do it at her suggestion.

“Why don't you do it now so you won't have to later,” she urged. With the bus quiet now, I was sure people had heard her. I shook my head again.

“Just go over there,” she said, pointing to the empty field on the right side of the autobus, “and turn your back. No one will know what you're doing.”

That was an outright lie. Of course people would know what I was doing, standing there in the snow. How stupid did she think I was? She was the stupid one to think she was fooling me! Now that I had paid my price for breaking that Commandment, I was free to call her names—to myself, at any rate.

Now I saw a man and a woman come out of the cottage and walk to the rear of the autobus. They opened a door, which immediately sent a cold wind through the autobus, and began
unloading the crates from the back seats. Holding a crate in each hand, they walked back to the cottage. In a moment they were out again, this time each holding a crate full of live chickens. After several trips, the back seat was filled with clucking chickens in their wooden crates.

I saw Mother take one look at this procedure at the back of the autobus and then turn to face the front. The other people seemed to take no notice of it at all. When the loading was done, Mr. Lupicki, who had been smoking a cigarette in the driver's seat, stepped down from the autobus and walked around to the back.

In a moment, Miss Vanda came out of the cottage with a covered basket over her arm. She ran back across the road, and I saw her wiggle like before. She seemed, somehow, to run more like a girl than a lady. Maybe that was because I couldn't remember ever having seen a lady run.

Then Miss Vanda was back in her seat beside me, with the basket in her lap.

“We'll be starting in a moment—you'd better go now,” Mother said to me. I shook my head. I was sure Miss Vanda had heard her.

Miss Vanda leaned down to me. “Would you like to see some puppies?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said eagerly, guessing now that that was what she had in the basket. But Miss Vanda stood up and put the basket down on her seat. She made her way past me and Mother, and then reached back for my hand. I took her hand and followed.

We stepped down from the autobus and, still holding hands, ran across the road. But instead of going into the house, we ran around to the rear. “You can go there,” Miss Vanda said. Her voice was low and conspiratorial, even though we were out of anybody's earshot. She was pointing to a privy, like the one we had had on the farm. “When we get back, you can tell your mother you got to hold a puppy.”

Well familiar with privies, I used this one gratefully. I found that I was liking Miss Vanda despite her painted face and cigarettes-and-perfume smell. We ran back to the autobus holding hands again.

“Did you like the brown puppy or the black one better?” Miss Vanda asked me aloud when we were back in our seats.

“The brown one,” I said. “He has longer ears.”

“I liked the black one. He has that white tip on his tail,” she said. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud at our subterfuge.

Then we were on our way again, the clucking of the chickens drowned in the clatter of the autobus.

“I have some sandwiches here,” Miss Vanda said, reaching into her basket. She pulled out a paper-wrapped package and handed it to me. I knew I wasn't supposed to accept anything from her.

“I brought some sandwiches,” Mother said.

“These are chicken cutlets,” Miss Vanda said. “Missus and the boy will like them.”

“It's been months since we've had chicken cutlet,” Mother said. “Thank you.” I remembered the delicious chicken cutlets Marta used to make.

“Here, let me unwrap it for you, little boy,” Miss Vanda said to me. “I had her cut it in four pieces because I didn't know how much you'd eat.” For no apparent reason, we both found ourselves laughing as though this, too, were a conspiracy.

“Thank you,” I said, as she placed the opened package in my lap. “My name is Yulian.”

“Yes, I know,” she repeated. “You're the first Yulian I've ever met.”

I could think of no appropriate reply to that, so I busied myself with the sandwich, which tasted even better than Marta's. I ate all four pieces. Miss Vanda had also brought pickles, but Mother wouldn't let me have any.

When we had finished eating, Miss Vanda took out her compact and lipstick, and touched up her face. “This is from
Vienna,” she said to Mother, indicating her fur coat. “I bought it from a lady who had been to Vienna. The streets, Missus knows, are all water. You go from house to house in a boat.” She held her arm towards Mother, across my lap. “Would Missus like to touch it? I love how soft it feels.”

Miss Vanda was showing off again. Showing off was a term Kiki and Marta would both use about some of the friends of Mother and Lolek who came to our apartment covered in jewelry and stuff. Mother touched the sleeve that Miss Vanda had proffered and agreed that it was soft, but I could tell that she was just doing it to be polite.

I had begun to like Miss Vanda, particularly after that puppies business. But that, I realized, had just been something to make me like her. The rouge on her cheeks and her talk about all the things she owned, gave away her true character.

I wondered if God really intended to destroy Lvow, as He had those other cities. I wondered if I would be spared, since I didn't laugh at people for being dead or show off, or did cursing my mother this morning doom me as well? Would there be someone in Lvow who could christen me so that I could go to heaven? I should have gotten Miss Bronia to christen me. I should have told her that I was almost a Catholic and that all I needed was to be christened by another Catholic. But I hadn't done anything about it, and now I was riding an autobus into Lvow, which had a good chance of being destroyed, and I wouldn't get to Heaven.

Mother had mentioned escaping from Poland over the mountains. Auntie Paula had mentioned wolves and border guards shooting at us, but that was a risk worth taking to avoid God's wrath. Based on what Kiki had told me of those other cities, our odds were better with the wolves and border guards. If I could only find a Catholic who I could talk into christening me.