The Lullaby of Polish Girls (21 page)

“No, Natalka, for me. I’m going to have my say, and then I’m checking into the hotel. I can’t stay here, and I don’t want to. I’ll sell this apartment and in the meantime you and Stasiu can move in. Give your mom and that dog a break.” Kamila smiles.

“Na serio?”

“It’s the most lucid thought I’ve had in days. Take it or leave it.”

“I take it! I take it!” Natalia throws her arms around Kamila’s neck.

“I’ll be back for you in an hour?”

“Half hour.”

“And if he’s not there?”

“He’s there. Look.” And she points with her chin toward her apartment, where the kitchen light is on.

“Kamila.
Trzymaj się
. You’ll feel so much better afterward.”

“Well, I can’t feel any fucking worse, right?” Kamila gets out of the car and watches Natalia drive off, waving at her as she heads up Wiejska Boulevard. Kamila feels her coat pocket for her keys. They jangle reassuringly. The stairwell is dim and alive with
obiad
aromas.

She slowly turns the key in the lock to her apartment and the door clicks open. She pushes it with her foot and steps into the
przedpokój
, and just like that she sees Emil, his broad back, at the kitchen sink, scrubbing dishes. Wojtek’s head pops in from the bedroom. When he sees Kamila, he yells in surprise.

Emil drops a dish at the sound. He turns his head and sees Kamila, who glances away quickly. The apartment is spotless and warm.

“Honey, I’m home.” Kamila doesn’t plan on saying it, and certainly doesn’t plan on saying it in English, but there it is. Right away, Wojtek is scrambling to find his shoes, retrieving his coat from the rack next to Kamila. She grabs his shoulder. “You’re not staying? By all means, stay. I won’t be long.” There are tears in his eyes, and Kamila feels a pang of pity and regret.

“Kamila. Please.” It’s all he says and then he’s out the door. Kamila shuts it behind him.

“Take off your coat.” Emil’s first words to her are spoken quietly but firmly. Kamila obliges, allowing her Calvin Klein wool coat to drop to the floor.

“Tea? I’ve got a fresh pot ready. As soon as I sweep this.” He points to the shattered plate at his feet.

“Sure.”

Kamila sits down. There’s a small plastic Christmas tree replica on the table with tiny plastic ornaments dangling off its skinny little branches. She feels the fight in her die. Emil brings over a cup and saucer and sits down across from her. He’s grown a beard and put on a few pounds. Love allows for a lapse in personal maintenance.

“I know. I got fat.” Emil smiles sadly and starts to cry.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“That I gained weight?” His laugh comes out like a hiccup. “You should have just told me, Emil. When we were twelve, or when we were sixteen and I tried to dry hump you at every sleepover we had.”

Emil wipes his eyes. “I thought you’d figure it out and leave me on your own. But I prayed you wouldn’t.”

“Dlaczego?”

“Because I didn’t want to be alone. Because I couldn’t name it, Kamila. I didn’t even know what it was, not till a few years ago, I swear to you. I thought it was a phase. Like pimples, and that in time it would clear up on its own. Please don’t hate me.”

Kamila sips her tea. She doesn’t hate him. She wants to believe him. She also wants to chew him out, rail against the injustice of being spurned all those years. But they are somehow having an adult conversation, meaningful and quiet. It isn’t any of the ways that she imagined this moment, but perhaps this is better.

“I can’t even go into what I’m feeling, Emil. I could have spent my teenage years running around town with some deserving guy, who would have
wanted me
. Who would have used me, or pined for me, or just … fucked me at the very least. You led me on.”

“You let me,” Emil says, quietly. For a moment, Kamila wants to slap his face, but instead she gulps down the rest of her
herbata
.

“You were everything to me, Kamila. You still are.”

“No, I wasn’t. I’m not. Isn’t that clear? There wasn’t anything real about it, and a lot of that was my fault, I suppose.” Kamila pauses. She reaches for his hand and holds it briefly.

“It’s going to be hard for you here, now that …”

“I know. It’s already hard. Maybe Wojtek and I will pack our bags and go somewhere else. Warsaw, or London.”

“Well, wherever you go, just don’t go ‘back in the closet,’ ” Kamila says in English.

“Bek een da clazet?”
Emil smiles, confused.

“It’s an expression I picked up in America. It just means, don’t hide anymore.” Emil nods, grateful. Kamila smiles and finishes her tea.

“Here’s the deal. I can’t stay here, Emil. But neither can you. You have a week to find someplace. I won’t throw you onto the street, but please, a week is not a long time, so you better get cracking. I don’t want to see you for a long time. I wish you well and I’ll call you soon so we can talk about the divorce.”

“Divorce?”

“Absolutely. What else can there be? Live your life, Emil. Obviously, you don’t need me anymore to do that.” Kamila picks up her fancy coat, dusts it once, and drapes it over her shoulders. She walks out the door but turns around, one last time. Emil stands up.

“You look beautiful, Kamila,” he says, and she believes him.

Justyna Kielce, Poland

They say you fall in love with your child instantly. They say it’s a sudden-impact situation and that it happens moments after birth, right when they place the baby on your chest for the first time. They say that love bears down on you like a stone, till you can’t breathe. And it does.

But Justyna doesn’t talk about this love. She tucks it away, beneath her bravado and fear. She talks about her son as if Damian was a stray she took in years ago. In public she yells at him, to shut up, to scram, go away and find something else to do. She smacks his rear in grocery stores, pulls on his earlobe to hurry him along, while older women purse their lips and scowl in her direction, as if they had never felt the same impatience. Other mothers, Justyna has found out, are the most judgmental of them all.

Justyna didn’t fall in love with Damian moments after birth. Moments after birth she was dying for a cigarette, and left him simpering in his bassinet to sneak down to the lobby for a smoke. When Justyna returned, the nurse on duty was cradling her son and feeding him a two-ounce bottle of formula. “Smoking inhibits your milk flow,” the nurse warned. Justyna shrugged her shoulders, got back into bed. “Well, then, turns out it’s good for something. I’m a mother,
proszę pani
, not a cow.”

She didn’t fall in love with him when they got home either. He was colicky and fussy and the last thing Justyna wanted to deal with, as her own mother lay sick and dying. The moment it happened, the moment she finally felt her heart surge, was when Damian was two and a half and landed in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia. Justyna watched him as he struggled for breath, hooked up to IVs and heart monitors, all but lifeless for a day. Justyna felt like she too was fighting
for her life. When his eyelids fluttered open, and his hand reached out as if searching for hers, she ran to his side, crushed Damian in a hug, and placed her ear against his rattling chest. That’s when it happened. That’s when she finally felt it.

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 Paweł’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
dziękuje
, and covering her knees in sloppy kisses, like their grandmother is
Święty Mikołaj
himself. Justyna goes up to the attic, finds the small cardboard box labeled
Bąbki
, 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-shirt.
Babcia
shares the
opłatek
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 “
Świety Mikołaj
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 Mikołaj 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
. Mikołaj didn’t bring
Ciocia
anything because silly
Ciocia
forgot to write him a letter. He can’t read minds, you know? Kinda shitty, 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 prone to six
A.M.
cravings for ham and butter sandwiches, and, like clockwork, Elwira shuffles into the kitchen, in a dirty bathrobe. When she sees Justyna, she gasps, clutching her chest. “Fuck 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 asswipe did ‘something bad’ to his father?”

“I have no fucking idea! What are you talking about?”

Justyna walks over to Elwira, snatches 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 fuck, 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 fucking 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, goddamnit.” She stares at Elwira, who is cowering by the fridge.

“Yes? I understand it’s
Boże Narodzenie
today, I got it. How’s your Christmas been,
proszę pani
? You wanna know how mine is? Pretty fucking dismal, what with my husband dead. No one over there gives a fine crap about—Yes, I’ll hold, but I know he’s there and I have his mobile number so maybe I should just fucki—” 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 bloody 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.