The Lullaby of Polish Girls (3 page)

The Polish enclave of Wyandotte was seven square miles small and made Kielce seem like a metropolis, but its size didn’t matter to Kamila. She hadn’t come to America to sightsee. Her plan was to distance herself from recent events and to make money so that she could go back to Poland clad in Ann Taylor and Banana Republic from head to toe, showing off the fabulous look that American women have perfected—chic nonchalance. To earn money she took on babysitting and a cashier shift at a local
masarnia
—a deli that paid under the table. The dollars accumulated quickly, fistfuls of crumpled Andrew Jacksons that she stuffed in her dresser, but, despite the money, Kamila was wilting.

Today was a snow day and the streets were full of suburban teens. The most formidable nation in the world closed up shop when it snowed. Solemn news reporters urged residents to stock up on canned soup and bottled water. It was so pathetic. And on the streets, hooligans flew past, outfitted in ridiculous coats that brought to mind blowfish, throwing snowballs and shouting mindless obscenities.

Now, Kamila sits upstairs at her desk, hands folded, staring down at her old typewriter, the one she lugged through three airports because she’d been afraid to check it in Warsaw. The one her grandmother bought her when Kamila was thirteen and confessed her dream of becoming a famous writer. Kamila could leave her job at the pharmacy, she could leave her husband, but there was no way in hell she was leaving her typewriter.

She hasn’t written a letter in a long time, not like this, not one that
wasn’t sent via email. But her parents, for all their newfangled American ways, have opted out of getting a computer. “There’s no art to it, Kamilka,” her father explained. “I’d rather read letters from home and watch the nightly news, in the good old-fashioned way.” So Kamila walks into town and sits for hours at an Internet café on Biddle Avenue anytime she wants to check her inbox and scan silly sites about American celebrities until her brain goes numb. The Internet café, however, isn’t an option for the deed at hand. No way was Kamila going to write what she had to write in a public place; there were roaming eyes everywhere, especially in this community, where the Poles rubbed their noses in everyone’s business as if gossip were a vocation.

Emil Ludek is far away. He is seven hours and seven thousand three hundred and twenty-two kilometers out of her reach, and she thanks God for it. It is two in the afternoon in Kielce, and he is probably still lounging in their bed—probably with his lover. She can picture the two men, one of them her husband, snuggling under her lavender duvet. In Wyandotte, Kamila’s hand shakes as she finally begins tapping the keys on her Remington.
Dear Emil, Why? Why didn’t you tell me you were g
—Kamila’s fingers freeze. She can’t do it. Just then the door to her room cracks open and her father, her mousy little father, pops his head in.

“Kamilka? I just got a call from Poland. Some bad news.”

Kamila’s heart thumps loudly in her chest. “From who?” She told Emil never to call her again.

“From
Pani
Kazia.”

“
Pani
Kazia?”

“Yes, Kamila, remember? Justyna Strawicz’s grandmother. Weren’t you two good friends?”

Kamila swallows audibly. Slowly, she pulls the unfinished letter from her typewriter.

“We were.”

Justyna Kielce, Poland

The last twenty-four hours have brought a bloodbath upon the Strawicz home. They have brought the inevitable, but Justyna can’t see that now. All she can see is that overnight, she has become someone who will be whispered about. From now on, people will whisper that she’s too sad, or not sad enough. They’ll whisper accusations and apologies. And surely they’ll whisper if she ever finds another man, but who the fuck in this town will want to date an unemployed widow with a kid, anyway?

On the way back from the police station, walking up Witosa Road, Justyna saw her neighbors staring out their windows and clustered on the sidewalk, stealing glances in her direction. She walked past, enjoying a smoke, trying to elicit eye contact so she could wave and make them fucking squirm, but no one bit. She was ambling through a nightmare, through a haze, and nothing seemed real.

The kitchen sink is full of dishes. Rambo, her mother’s dog, has left two piss puddles in the hallway that no one has bothered to clean up. Her son, Damian, is getting antsy on her lap and asks if he can go outside to play. It’s cold and snowing, but Justyna pushes him off her.
And don’t come back
, she thinks, as he runs out of the kitchen.

From the foyer, he yells, “Will
Tato
be back when I come home?” Justyna shrugs her shoulders.

“We’ll see!” she shouts back.

She lights another cigarette. Upstairs she hears her sister, Elwira, crying again. She hasn’t stopped crying and Justyna can’t blame her. Last night, Elwira’s boyfriend killed Paweł, killed him in the upstairs bathroom, cold-blooded, out of the blue, just like that.

Celina, Elwira’s daughter, wanders into the kitchen, a naked Barbie dangling from her skinny hand. “
Ciociu
, the dog pee-peed by the stairs.”
Justyna says nothing. “
Ciociu!
It stinks!” Justyna looks at her niece, at her big blue eyes, ratty hair like tangled straw, her pretty oval face.

She hands Celina a dish towel. “If it stinks, then clean it up.”

On the table, Justyna moves her ashtray around in a circle. She can still see Paweł’s body in her head, twisted and puffy, splayed on the coroner’s table. Had his last word been an angry
“kurwa!”
or a cry for her, a frantic
“Justynka!”
? No one gives a shit and Justyna doesn’t blame them. Her husband was just a carcass; she could see that in the way the examiners had poked at him. Paweł would never be someone who
used to be;
to them he had never existed in the first place. He was a corpse. Justyna had stared at his gashes, as if she too had no point of reference anymore, as if she was gazing at some unfortunate stranger and not at Paweł at all.

Later, at the police station, Justyna smoked one L&M Light after the next. She stared at the puke-green walls and talked, while a middle-aged cop scribbled everything down. The cop, whose nameplate read
Kurka
, rubbed his eyes every once in a while, stifling yawns.

“Elwira’s boyfriend beat up on her. Not just a slap here and there, ’cause God knows, she deserved that from time to time. I’m talking a black eye, cigarette burns, that kind of thing. I never did anything to stop him. Neither did you guys. But my husband …” Justyna faltered. “My husband tried to stop him. He—”

Kurka had stopped scribbling after “she deserved” and sat there stiffly with his lips pursed.

“Mrs. Strawicz, we need information pertaining to last night. Just last night.” Justyna tapped a cigarette on the table. How could she explain to this dimwit that the last twenty-five years of her life pertained to Paweł’s death? That somewhere in the far-flung past, there was a kernel of an answer to what the fuck had happened a few hours ago.

“At about midnight, Filip came home drunk, started picking on Elwira. Told her to cook him food, or something. So she goes, ‘Fuck off’ and he—”

“Elwira Zator, your younger sister?”

Justyna nods her head. They knew exactly who Elwira Zator was; at that very moment her sister was in another room down the hall, getting interrogated by another drab officer.

“Anyway, he smacked her and her nose started bleeding. Paweł was, like, enough of this shit. So, you know, he punched him, punched Filip, just once but it was enough.” Justyna smiled recalling the force of her husband’s gallantry. “Then Filip went upstairs. Fell asleep, I guess.” Justyna was aware of her repeated use of the term
guess
. She sighed audibly; there was no point to the interrogation and she wished Officer Kurka would just let her go.

Filip had lugged himself up the stairs, blood sprayed on his face, drunk as a skunk. He was roaring obscenities and Justyna was afraid the kids would wake up, but they were used to slumbering through fights. At one point Filip lost his footing and fell backward, on his ass, grabbing the railing at the last minute to keep from tumbling downstairs. Justyna wondered where they would all be now had Filip lost his grip completely, had he tumbled backward, perhaps twisted his neck.

“We all went to bed. Around one-thirty
A.M.
I
guess
. Ah, goddamnit, you sure you wanna hear it? I mean, nothing I got here—nothing!—is, whattaya call it,
conclusive
.”

Kurka nodded impatiently.

“Okay, then, I
guess
Filip woke up and went down to the kitchen to get a knife. Elwira was sleeping on the couch. She heard him but thought he was just parched, sobering up, and she went back to sleep. Aren’t you guys getting all this from Elwira? I mean she was the one who saw—”

“Just go on, Mrs. Strawicz. We need to hear every single witness account.”

Witness
implied awareness, it implied action, but Justyna felt like a passerby at best. She exhaled loudly, her head spinning.

“Elwira heard the scream. I can sleep through anything. Obviously.” Justyna sighed and smiled dryly. “By the time I found Paweł in the bathroom, he was facedown on the floor, there was blood everywhere and, um, I dunno, sir, just a lot of fucking blood. I just stood there. Like I … like I couldn’t fucking move.”

“Shock, Mrs. Strawicz.”

“No shit, sir.”

Kurka pursed his mouth again. She could tell her constant cursing was irritating the fuck out of him.

“Then Elwira ran up, her throat bloody, from where Filip, uh, grabbed her, I guess. She was crying and she managed to tell me that Filip had run out the back, but not before he found her on the couch and told her if she said anything she’d be fucking next. She didn’t know what he was talking about, naturally. Not then, anyway.”

“Well, try to get some rest. Kielce is a relatively small city, Mrs. Strawicz, and we’ll do our best.”

Two young cops drove her home. They were nice enough and the one with the mustache was kind of cute. They told a joke about a prostitute and a blind gypsy and Justyna laughed along. She asked to be dropped off a few blocks from her house.
The neighbors
, she explained, rolling her eyes. They smiled back at her kindly and for a moment, Justyna thought that all this—her husband’s death, her kid, her mother’s cancer, her whole fantastic fucked-up life—that all of it was a dream, and any moment she’d wake up.

Anna Kielce, Poland

In the backseat of the Volkswagen, Anna wakes up with a start. She wipes some drool from her mouth and stares out the window. The sun is rising quickly. It is enormous but shapeless, as if God has taken a knife to it and is spreading it across the sky. The American sun blanches in comparison.

“Are we there yet?”

“Almost. Crossed the border while you were napping.”

“So we’re in Poland now?”

“
Tak
. Welcome back, Ania.”
Wujek
Adam keeps his eyes on the road when he speaks to her. Her uncle is so cute, with his thick black hair and lopsided grin, like a Polish Tom Cruise.