The Lullaby of Polish Girls (9 page)

Kazia Anielska is wailing. Justyna cringes every time her grandmother lets loose a howl. It’s outlandish, this kind of biblical grieving; people are ping-ponging looks between distraught
Babcia
Kazia and the stone-faced widow. She catches one of her uncles staring at her, and she lifts her palms toward the sky and shrugs.

“O, mój Boże kochany! O, mój Boże kochany!”
Her grandmother is evoking God’s name with such personal affront, you would think it was her own son in the coffin, or her own husband. It was no secret—to Justyna, at least—that her seventy-one-year-old grandmother harbored a peculiar crush on Paweł. She was always cozying up to him when they walked to Mass, her veiny arm linked in his, batting what was left of her eyelashes. When he told slightly off-color jokes,
Babcia
Kazia giggled and blushed like a fawning schoolgirl. It was droll at first, but it became disturbing. When Paweł didn’t call
Babcia
for a few days to inquire if she needed groceries, she would pout and behave like a
spurned lover the next time she saw him. The way she was always going on and on about what a wonderful catch Paweł was, how lucky Justyna was that he had proposed, when really, he could have run as soon as Justyna announced her pregnancy, was absurd.

Justyna squeezes the jacket closer to her body. She marvels at how a funeral can come together in two days, when it takes months of planning to pull off, say, a wedding. Everyone moves with lightning speed when it comes to burying the dead.
Fuck this shit
, she thinks, and wonders what people would say if the stone-faced widow took off mid-service.

She can tell the mourners think she’s not acting her part. But when has she ever? When Justyna first realized she was pregnant she spent a few days punching herself in the stomach, but the pregnancy stuck. She smoked the whole nine months, in denial till the very moment a bloody skull popped out of her insides. But Paweł, Paweł was good, through and through. He wasn’t a glutton for drink, he regularly woke at sunrise, didn’t cheat, lie, or gamble. His shoulder-length mullet, his Hells Angels jacket, his dangly dagger earring, all hid an inherent softness. He was kind, hardworking, and he went to church most Sundays. But what turned Justyna on were the rare occasions when the savage in him surfaced, when he’d throw her on the bed and devour her.

Paweł was being buried beside his father and mother, at the cemetery off Spokojna Street. For a moment, Justyna had entertained the idea that Paweł would be laid to rest at Stary Cmentarz next to her mother, Teresa; the only two people she ever loved completely. But it didn’t really matter, did it? Her husband was gone; who the fuck cared where the wooden box ended up?

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the young priest intones, glancing down at his Bible. Justyna can tell this is probably his first time at the rodeo because his face is flushed tomato red, and he trips over his tongue as he reads from the book of Psalms. Back at the church, he stuttered while reading the Old Testament passage about Cain and Abel. It was an obvious choice, but in Justyna’s opinion, a tasteless one. What had God been thinking, letting that bastard simply wander the desert for a few decades when he’d committed murder? He had delivered
a much more severe sentence for a simple misunderstanding over an apple.

Justyna stares at Father Bruno, wishing he’d hurry up, but he meets her eyes askance with a sympathetic smile and plods on. Perhaps his stutters have nothing to do with priestly inexperience and everything to do with Justyna’s clingy dress.

“
Ciociu
, I have to go to the bathroom.” Justyna looks down and sees her niece grasping her thigh. Her scrawny legs are twisted like pretzels.

“Tell your mother.”

“I can’t.” Cela points to Elwira, who is now squatting on the ground, weeping openly.

“Well, then hold it.” The coffin is being lowered now and she knows this is her cue to walk over and drop a flower into the hole, a final farewell. But she can’t bring herself to do it, and not just because she didn’t buy flowers.

Cela tugs her skirt again. “I can’t!” Her whisper is frantic now.

“Be quiet, okay?” She watches as her niece’s oval face crumples and contorts, and then suddenly it goes blank.

“I pee-peed,” whispers Cela, her chin trembling.

Justyna kneels down and whispers in her niece’s ear, “Don’t worry,
kotku
, it’s raining. We’ll tell these idiots you just fell in a puddle.”

Later that night, after
Babcia
Kazia has taken the kids to spend a few nights at her apartment in Szydłówek and after every last mourner has left, an eerie silence fills the house. Elwira goes around dead-bolting all the doors, and muttering to herself like a madwoman. She tries to secure the broken balcony doors upstairs by dragging a bookshelf against them. Kielce is a small enough city, that’s what the cop Kurka had told her seventy-two hours ago. There are only so many places to hide, but Filip has evaded the cops thus far. He could be on his way to Italy by now, or he could be skulking in their back garden.

Justyna finds Elwira in the living room, staring at the television.

“I wish
Tato
were here.”

“Do you?” Justyna asked, and they both knew the answer. Their father was gone, gone since the days his beloved wife lay dying in her
little room on the third floor. He hadn’t even been at Teresa’s bedside when she took her last breath: he’d been passed out drunk at Uncle Marek’s house. Right now, their father would be useless anyway. Bogdan Zator couldn’t deal with death, of any kind.

Suddenly, it seems like there is nothing to do, now that the final resting place has been occupied and the bloodstains have been wiped up. For the time being, Damian has stopped asking about his father’s return. He’s thrilled to have a few days off from school. At the burial he asked her what was in the box, and Justyna corrected him: “Not
what
, Damian—who,” but she did not elaborate. Of course
Babcia
Kazia insists that Justyna is damaging Damian further by not telling him outright.

Elwira breaks the silence as if they have been long in conversation. “So, yeah, I can’t believe Ania Baran called you.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s been a few years, right? You missed her premiere. I forgot about that.” Two years ago, Anna Baran was in Poland to celebrate her starring role in a big Hollywood movie—something with corsets and horse-drawn carriages. A lot of their friends took the train to Warsaw for the big event and Anna had offered to pay for travel if they couldn’t afford it. In Anna’s interviews she told the journalists that the premiere wouldn’t mean anything if her Polish friends and family wouldn’t be there. But Justyna didn’t go. The fact that her mother was dead and that she had a five-year-old on her hands had been reason enough to skip a reunion; but there were other reasons too, and so Justyna had steered clear of Anna Baran and her newfound celebrity.

“It’s actually a good movie, Justyna. You should check it out. I totally cried at the end.”

“Yeah, that’s what I fucking need now. A tearjerker.”

Elwira smiles. “I think it’s nice she called. Is she working on a new movie?”

“I don’t fucking know! We didn’t go over her résumé!” Justyna snaps as Elwira’s face crumples. “She offered to send us money.”

“Na serio?”
Elwira wipes her nose on her sleeve, suddenly bright eyed.

“Yeah, she did. She’s Hollywood now, right? It’s the least she could have done.”

But Elwira does not catch the sarcasm in her sister’s voice. “How much is she sending?”

“Elwira? Are you fucking crazy? Like I would take one
złoty
. We’re not a charity case.”

Elwira shrugs her shoulders. “We’re not?”

“Anyway, you know what surprised me? That Kamila Marchewska wasn’t there. Didn’t even send a
wieniec
.” It was customary to send a wreath if one couldn’t attend a funeral and Justyna had quickly surveyed the ones that had been on display next to the coffin that morning, scanning the cards for
Marchewska
or
Baran
.

“She’s in the States. At least that’s what I heard,” Elwira answers.

“I guess it’s the place to be.” Justyna sighs, wondering why she ever gave a shit.

“Justyna. I’ve been thinking—” Elwira interrupts Justyna’s thoughts.

“And? How does it feel? Like your head hurts a little, but you can get used to it?” Justyna smiles.
Let’s go back to four days ago
, she thinks.
Let’s be normal again
.

“I think I should move out.”

Justyna glances up, trying to read her sister. “Where would you go?”

“Back to Szydłówek. To
Babcia
’s.”

“You and Cela and
Babcia
Kazia, all in a one-bedroom?”

Elwira lights a cigarette and walks over to the balcony doors. “Well, obviously I can’t stay here.”

“No one’s kicking you out.”

“Justyna! What if he comes back here, looking for me? He put his bloody hand around my neck and told me if I talked he’d be back. And I talked, I fucking talked! What if he does something to Cela?”

“He doesn’t know where
Babcia
lives?”

“But she lives on the third floor.”

“He killed someone with a kitchen knife. I’m sure he can figure out how to climb a balcony or two.” Justyna clicks the TV off and starts for the door.

“He did. He
did
, right?”

Justyna turns back and stares at her sister.

“What you said now, Justyna. The way you said it. Kitchen knife. This is real, right? There’s no going back?”

Elwira looks so small next to Justyna, like a little dove. Once again, Justyna silently curses her mother. If Teresa suddenly appeared like Lazarus in their living room, Justyna wouldn’t think twice about slapping her upside the head. She was young and pretty and fun and she loved them more than anything in the world. And then she died and left them, just like that.

“I don’t know what will happen if I stay here. I don’t want Damian to suddenly hate me.”

“Damian lost a father. He’s allowed to hate anyone he wants.”

“See, this is what I mean. We can’t do this. How can we live together?”

For a second, Justyna wants to get down on her hands and knees and beg her sister to stay. To confess that she can’t face these four walls alone haunted by the past. In one room the ghost of her mother lies on the bed, where she took her last breath seven years ago, and now there’s the bathroom where her husband’s throat was slashed as he finished taking a piss.

“Do what you wanna do, Elwira,” Justyna says quietly. “Just don’t leave me alone tonight. Please.”

Anna Kielce, Poland

The lifeguards are everywhere, slithering around in skimpy orange Speedos. When wet, the cheap lycra works like a suction cup, leaving nothing to the imagination. They swagger around the pool, barrel-chested and cocksure, keeping a lazy eye on the crowd. Anna, Kamila, and Justyna are having a hard time not staring.

Around the Tęcza
Basen
, beefy grandmothers sit on blankets, in their bras and underwear, chain-smoking cigarettes while their annoying grandkids in polyester trunks run wild, breaking the no diving rule and getting fished out and carried off like flailing puppies. Kamila, Anna, and Justyna are spread out directly across from the lifeguards’ station, perched on a bleacher. The Tęcza Pool’s stadium seating compliments the gladiatorial pageant they are viewing. On the other side of the pool the lifeguards are surrounded by bleached-blond groupies who never dip a toe in the water. They glisten in the sun like a bikini-clad harem.

“That one, with the curly hair? He looks like Morten from A-ha, doesn’t he?” Anna follows Kamila’s stare, pulling back the outer corners of each eyelid; she looks like she’s doing a crude Chinaman impersonation, but it’s the only way she can see anything beyond a three-foot radius. Her glasses lie in her bag, where they will stay until she exits the pool.

“
Jezus!
He does, he totally looks like Morten! Take
me
on, baby.” Anna giggles.