The Lullaby of Polish Girls (4 page)

“Excited?”

When they left Berlin at four
A.M.
it had still been dark. Uncle Adam said it would take about nine hours to drive to Kielce. Anna glances at her wristwatch, does the math, and squeals in the backseat, immediately regretting it. In the rearview mirror she sees Adam shake his head.

“I guess so.” He smiles and lights a cigarette.

The road is narrow and bumpy, making it difficult to navigate. The other drivers swerve their cars maniacally, passing each other whenever there is a lapse in oncoming traffic, and from time to time Uncle Adam does the same. But Anna isn’t afraid of this kind of driving; whatever brings her to Kielce faster is fine by her. They are surrounded by fields full of roaming cows, actual cows! Vast patchwork hillocks just like she’s seen in Irish movies pass by endlessly. Once in a while, she spies old men on rickety bikes or old women by the side of the road with handmade signs offering
jagody
or
truskawki
, fresh berries sold in glass jars. When she rolls down the window, Anna is taken aback. She
didn’t know she would remember the air here. It smells like burning haystacks and fresh laundry, like sunshine and sausage, piquant and fresh at the same time. There are layers of scents in this old air; it is aged to perfection.

“
Wujku
, nobody in Kielce knows, right?
Tato
didn’t ruin it?”

“Nothing’s ruined. I just hope your
babcia
doesn’t have a heart attack.” Anna squeals again, this time unrepentant. She sticks her face out the window, like a puppy, and everything swishes past her—a ribbon of countryside zooming by.

Last time she was in Poland, Anna was a scrawny little seven-year-old. Now she’s almost thirteen, tall and curvy, with plump lips, big blue eyes, and newly permed blond hair. The tank top she’s wearing shows off both an impressive bust and an adolescent paunch. Will her family even recognize her? Will she look foreign to them? Will she look American?

Six and a half years ago, when the Barans landed at JFK airport, armed only with two suitcases, standing in the line at customs and immigration felt like the end of something. They had no money, no knowledge of English, and no relations or acquaintances in New York. Their sense of loss was so huge it felt like the three of them were suddenly nothing but driftwood. A Polish woman named Aleksandra from the AFL-CIO greeted them at arrivals and escorted them to a refugee hotel on the Lower East Side, where they stayed for three weeks. At first, the city was too much for Anna and her parents to bear. There was too much noise and too much movement. For the first few days, they cosseted themselves in the hotel room and just stared at the color TV. At night Anna and her mother often woke up to the sound of Radosław stomping on roaches.

After that, the AFL-CIO helped them rent public housing in downtown Brooklyn. Anna vaguely remembers how her parents struggled. Their furniture was scavenged at night, while Anna slept. Her parents combed the streets, stunned at what people in New York City deemed garbage. They couldn’t help Anna with her homework, not even the first-grade stuff. Paulina started cleaning houses to earn pocket money. Anna doesn’t remember what Radosław did. She doesn’t remember what it felt like not to understand a language and maybe
that’s why Anna has only fragments: a Pac-Man machine in the lobby of the Breslin Hotel, commercials for
CATS! The Musical
, the marvel of rubbing shoulders with black people, Chinese people, and Hasidim.

Soon, Anna was giving her father English lessons, earning a dime for every word he misspelled during their nightly dictation sessions. She was the one calling the bank, and translating the notes Paulina’s employers left regarding laundry. Anna excelled in her ESL classes, and her parents, having neither the time nor money for English school, relied on both Anna and the television as teacher. They never quite caught up.

The years passed, each one quicker than the last. This September Anna will attend eighth grade at a Catholic school in Brooklyn. Her girlfriends are all Italian and prefer to have get-togethers at their houses; nobody wants to come to the projects to sit in Anna’s room and stare at her posters of Elvis, New Kids on the Block, and the lone map of her homeland.

Anna tries to be all that her parents demand—studious, proud, and courageous. But she has a hard time looking people in the eye. She’s in constant turmoil about her overbite and the glasses she was prescribed at age eight. When Anna laughs, she cups her hand to shield her mouth, like a geisha. She has crushes on boys but doesn’t do anything about them. She’s in a constant state of pining, for what and for whom she doesn’t know. When Radosław yells at her for not wearing a hat in the winter she doesn’t protest or raise her middle finger when he turns his back. Instead, Anna runs to her room, shuts the door politely, and quietly weeps. Radosław says crying is for pussies, but Anna can’t help it.

Her father is still not allowed back into Poland; the threat of political imprisonment continues, as long as the country remains under Communist law. Radosław often recounted what the government official told him when the Barans were inquiring about asylum: “You deserted in 1975 and in your statement wrote that there was no such thing as a ‘Polish’ army. You were right. There is no Polska,
kolego
. There is only the Polish People’s Republic. And if you ever come back here, you are fucked, comrade.” Sometimes, when Radosław gets into one of his moods, he cries about the Commie pricks who killed his father, the Commie pricks who “castrated” him. “Commie pricks,
Commie fucks,
skurwysyny
,” he whispers as he pounds his skull with his fists. His moods scare Anna more than his belt smacking the side of the bed, and more than the times he calls her a
debil
. Her father’s sadness frightens Anna the most, because she doesn’t know how to make it better, and no one can tell her.

Radosław is free to travel anywhere west of the Berlin Wall. Now, he does his freedom fighting from cramped, smoky offices in London, Paris, and Amsterdam. He goes on overseas trips that last for months at a time, bringing Anna back useless gifts like yellow wooden clogs. His work, which probably includes smuggling, is shrouded in secrecy. All Anna knows is that he has a collection of passports, driver’s licenses, and business cards that mysteriously read
Import/Export
. This summer, he decides to take Anna to Europe with him. Their last stop was West Berlin, where Uncle Adam lives.

Adam was going to Poland as a favor to her dad, who couldn’t cross the border. The trip had something to do with a printing press that Radosław’s friends in Kielce were counting on. It was only a three-day trip and, as soon as they mentioned it, Anna begged to go with her uncle. She delivered a beseeching monologue about how Radosław “didn’t raise a coward, did he?”; about how she yearned to see her homeland. When Radosław heard the word
ojczyzna
, coming from someone he clearly found lacking in guts, something must have clicked and he agreed to let her go. Anna threw her arms around her father’s neck and inhaled the ever-constant mix of tobacco and sausage. “Go,” he murmured into her hair. “And come back.” It was an order, disguised as permission. He swatted the top of her head, pulled on her bangs, and clutched the side of her face; a series of gestures executed quickly, like a secret handshake. Then, from around his neck, he took off his chain, the one with the Black Madonna medallion on it, the one he’d gotten from a priest while in prison. He put it on Anna, tucked it underneath her blouse.
“Wracaj,”
Radosław grunted, and then he walked off without another word.

Anna idolizes her father. He is a true
bohater
, a hero of
Solidarność
. But when he yells the whole house shakes and Anna is terrified of him, terrified of his anger, which is always on the verge of bursting. The last month, traversing Europe together, has been like a tense, drawn-out
blind date. Conversation does not flow. Radosław refuses to spend money on hotels, and instead they sleep in the rental car or on colleagues’ couches. Anna has not been in a good mood since the plane ride, when midway over the Atlantic she got her first period. After they landed in Paris, Radosław made her buy her own maxi pads. Anna approached the nice French cashier, silently pointed to the big blue pouch of pads behind the counter, and felt like dying. When she finally managed to secure the giant foamy diaper to her underwear, she sat in the bathroom stall of a café and cried.

In the rearview mirror, Anna sees Uncle Adam wink and motion in front of him as they finally pass a green “KIELCE” marker. She stares out the window in awe as they roll into the city and, when Adam makes a right on Warszawska Street, her heart starts walloping in her chest. Minutes later, they park in front of her
babcia
’s prewar limestone building. When Anna opens the car door and steps out onto the cobblestone sidewalk, she opens her mouth to tell Adam that she wants to go up alone, but no words come out. When she turns around Anna sees the old rug beater she used to dangle from like a
kiełbasa
, and wants to shout for joy, but again, she can’t muster a syllable.

By the thicket of rowanberry trees, which are full of the bright red
jarzębiny
that she suddenly remembers picking as a little girl, Anna stares at the rug beater. The
trzepak
is made up of three iron poles that fit together like a frame, planted into the ground, with a fourth pole slicing the middle. Vacuum cleaners are still a Western luxury, and in the fifties local Communist housing administrations erected
trzepaki
in every neighborhood. When she was little, Anna remembers people dragging their rugs and carpets outside, hanging them over the poles, and thumping them with what looked like tennis rackets. Anna closes her eyes and can hear the
thwap thwap
sound that used to echo like a chorus and often woke her up in the mornings. The sudden memory is so vivid that she remains frozen until Adam speaks.

“I’ll wait down here for a few, all right? So you can have your big moment. Whistle if we need to call an ambulance.” Adam leans against the car and lights a cigarette, laughing.

The stairwell in the apartment building smells the same. Anna takes her time winding up the three flights, her clammy hand gripping
the bright blue balustrade, inhaling the blend of cigarettes, rain, fried pierogi, and metal. If her whole visit consisted of standing in the stairwell and breathing, it would be enough. On the third floor there are three doors. She knocks on the last one, and it opens, and there, just like that, stands
Ciocia
Ula. They stand and stare at one another. Anna is struck by her aunt’s hair—a poufed bob the exact color of pumpkin. And when Ula finally asks, “Who’re you looking for?” Anna sees that Ula, despite being only in her mid-thirties, has absolutely no teeth.

“O Matko Boska!”

Faces appear behind Ula, the cries of “heavenly mother” grow louder. Suddenly there is a mad rush, a cacophony of yelps, and Anna is pulled into the apartment by dozens of limbs; or at least that’s what it feels like. Faces press into hers; people are shouting and jumping up and down and then, just as suddenly, there is an eerie stillness, as Anna’s face is drawn into a warm, heaving bosom. Her grandmother’s embrace is so strong that it hurts. Finally,
Babcia
Helenka breaks the clinch and takes Anna’s petrified face into her hands, which happen to be the softest hands in the world.

“
Aniusia
. You’ve come back.”
Aniusia
. Nobody calls her that back in the States. But the Poles have codes and deeply rooted traditions when it comes to names. What someone calls you is what they think of you. Diminutive, demonstrative, cautious, guarded, formal, intimate; the form of your name is a symbol of your status. So, Anna is Ania, Anka, and sometimes, once in a while, she is Aniusia: darling, sweet, little Aniusia.

Later, after they stop literally pinching themselves and her,
Babcia
tries to coax her toward speech.

“But your Polish is beautiful. Don’t be embarrassed. We always talk on the phone when your mama calls, and now we can talk in person. In person, Aniu!”
Babcia
Helenka entreats as she kneels by Anna, tenderly stroking her hair. But Anna smiles through her tears and says nothing.

After the shrieking dies down, Adam comes up and fills them in on the hows and whys and then he leaves. “I’ll be back for you Sunday, ten
A.M.
” Anna sits on the divan with an empty plate on her lap that mere minutes ago was filled with homemade meat
pierożki
and sweet carrot
soufflé. Her relatives, who had all come over to
Babcia
’s for
obiad
that day, hover around, offering jokes, smiles, biscuits, and tea.
Ciocia
Bronka and
Ciocia
Ula, her mother’s older sisters, are there with their children Hubert and Renata.
Wujek
Leszek, Bronka’s husband, stands by the balcony, smoking and asking about her dad. Anna’s cousin Hubert sports a curly pompadour and acid-wash jeans, belted high above his waist. Cousin Renata is taller than Hubert and with her wide nose and small, pretty mouth she looks just like Aunt Bronka.

Hubert cuts in among the chattering women. “People, leave her alone.
Jezus Maria
, she’s exhausted. Anka, just ignore the barbarians. What do you wanna do? Wanna take a walk or something? Renata and I can take you to the
zalew
. Remember the bay? We used to go there every summer. The water’s shitty now, but the Café Relaks is still open. Remember it? And that Czech circus has pitched its tent right on the—”

“Oh my God, Hubert, talk about leaving her alone!” Renata laughs and rolls her eyes in Hubert’s direction. Renata took Anna to her first movie. Anna was five, and she remembers hurrying there in the rain, the almost religious hush in the theater, and images of the film,
W Pustyni I W Puszczy
. She spent weeks dreaming of the movie and the young Polish lead, her first crush. Anna remembers all of this now, in a momentary flash.