Her Mother's Daughter (66 page)

The trouble was I
needed
them to be happy for me. They were all I had. I decided to call my mother, but not in front of them. I waited until they were in bed. And my good mommy was as excited as I, she was really proud of me, impressed. She'd given up on me, I knew that, and here I'd gone and done something after all. My face had a smile plastered on it when I hung up the phone, it didn't fade even after I'd lain back against the bed pillows and started to imagine my exciting future.

Well, partly I was laughing, too, because Mother sounded so tense at first, worried about who would take care of the kids when I traveled. As soon as I said Pani she breathed out, “Oh that's
wonderful,
Anastasia! How wonderful! And she's right there, it's so convenient for her, she doesn't have to get in her car and drive there, and she can go downstairs into her own house any time she wants to.”

So, I'm just like my kids, I expect my mother to live for me, don't I. And the night before I left, last night was it last night?—they gave me a party. They invited Pani Nowak and they served pizzas made on English muffins, and they gave me a present. They chipped in to buy it, but they must have used their Christmas money, or else Pani gave them a lot, no, she wouldn't, she couldn't afford to. Because it was expensive. They both held the box as they handed it to me, and stood so close to me when I opened it that I could hardly move my arms. It was a camera case—a snappy leather one big enough to hold several cameras, lots of film, lenses, and all the small paraphernalia. I have to carry only the one case and my tripod. It has a shoulder strap and when it is filled, it weighs enough to give me bursitis. I love it.

Tears came into my eyes when I saw it. And they both hugged me at once. Oh god. No one has ever given me a gift like that before, something for
me,
not something I needed or asked for, but something they thought about, that would please me. They are good kids. They're adorable. I love them, my sweet babies.

Everyone else is either watching the movie or sleeping. I'm going to get up and get myself another Bloody Mary. Anastasia, you're being corrupted!

My babies. They were pink from excitement and the hot kitchen, opening the broiler door every few seconds to check on the pizzas. So proud of themselves, grown-ups, buying a present with their own money, preparing a meal. Making those little pizzas was a major achievement for them. I understand that firsthand. First they had to decide what to serve. I can imagine the tentative suggestions, scorned proposals, arguments, the irritated voices rising, then Arden taking charge, deciding. Then they had to find the recipe and make a list of what to buy, and go to the market and find it all. They had to make tomato sauce, something they've never done before. And lay all the ingredients out on those little muffins, and broil them. They forgot to toast the muffins first, but I didn't point that out. There was brownish tomato sauce under Billy's fingernails, and melted cheese on the end of some strands of Arden's hair. They got into it, body and soul. So sweet, so dear. Oh god I hope they're not unhappy.

I had no shame in those days. I should have worked for a greeting card company photographing fat-cheeked tots in pink and blue, madonna-calendar girl mumsie with divine light in her eyes. Mumsie never guessed her little darlings would grow up to become…what? Bruises on a heart, pinched nerves.

Pani Nowak was overjoyed when I asked her to stay upstairs and take care of them while I was away. She said, “Oh, yes, what I make? They like my stuffed cabbage, no? Or potato soup?” Maybe she thinks I don't feed them properly. And maybe she's like my mother: food is love. Is that inherent in a peasant culture?

She's lonely, poor soul. Sad that she's alone after raising five kids. She says it's because she had no daughters: a son is supposed to go away, she doesn't blame them. A daughter would have stayed near her in her old age, live next door or across the street. Mrs. D'Antonio's daughter lives down the block from her mother, and Mrs. Schneider's is next door. Law of nature. She never asks, but I can see she wonders why I don't live near my mother. She wouldn't understand if I said my mother doesn't want me next door, doesn't want my kids running in and out of her house, doesn't want to sit with them while I have my hair done—if I had my hair done—or go to the A&P. I think she misses Joy, but she's always far away, three-year tours, trouble with marrying an Army man. In the Philippines now. I stop in to see Mom one afternoon a week and have coffee with her, or iced tea. She's happy I come alone, without the kids. She has her own life now, finally, as she should. Pani doesn't understand any of that.

She comes from a different era, or a different culture. She's a saint, like my grandmother. There are no more women like Pani. Terrible loss to the human race. But who'd want to be one? Still, these days children with mothers like Pani tend to flee to the other end of the continent. I wonder why that is. All of her sons live far away. Antoni lives in Ohio, Jan in Detroit, and Paul lives in California. I had a hard time keeping her from calling him when she heard where I was going. She
never
makes long-distance calls, she can't afford them. Paul's an engineer and makes good money from what she says, but he only calls her on Christmas and Mother's Day.

Her sons never call on her birthday. Funny. They don't seem to realize she has one. They probably think she has existed since creation like an eternal verity. My kids are like that too. They were surprised to discover a couple years ago that I have a birthday just as they do, that I was actually
born.
But once they realized it they were darling—Billy lugged a big leafy plant home from Woolworth's in his little red wagon, and Arden painted a beautiful card for me, of a mother with two children.

Last year, I gave Pani a birthday party. I invited her two friends, nobody Polish, there are no Poles around here except us, and I baked a cake. I made it from scratch because I know how she feels about packaged cake. It was a little gluey, and tasted of baking powder. Pani is like my grandmother, mother, too, she makes only yeast cakes. But she liked the party, she was happy, she kept hugging me. We had balloons and sweet wine.

She was convinced that Paul would be deeply hurt if I went to California and didn't stay at his house. She said that when someone comes to Poland on a visit, a relative or a friend of a relative, the whole village comes to meet them, bringing food and staying to drink vodka and to talk about the ones who went away and dance to Pan Zborowski's accordion. I wonder if they still do that. What would that be like, to be there? I wish I could see that, be part of that. Oh, I have such longings, I know they will never be filled….

I'll never experience that kind of world, the kind that made Pani Nowak what she is. I wonder if they are all like her, so kind, so giving, so sweet, a different kind of people. No meanness in her face. Like my grandmother's face. Watery pale blue eyes, like my grandmother's. But Pani's eyes are still bright, she hasn't wept the light out of them as Grandma did. She can still feel pleasure, she loves the kids, she really gets a kick out of them, out of me too. And she asks nothing. She's overjoyed if you just pay attention to her. She'll spend half a day making stuffed cabbage for us, and all she wants, her only reward, is your liking it.

Oh, I'm stupid to worry, they'll be fine and here I am headed for Los Angeles, I've never been there, well, I won't be there this time either, but still, LA! I have to find Coast Air, I hope it's not too far from the American terminal, where will it be will there be a bus will I have to walk miles carrying this equipment? I'll ask the stewardess. Coast Air to Fresno, then a little plane some funny name to the Sierra Nevada. Sierra Nevada! Just the name is exciting! What can it be like? A new hydroelectric plant, I wonder why
World
thinks that's important enough for such an expensive plane trip, eighty rolls of film, $100 a day for me….I wonder why they gave me this assignment. It sounds more like a man's thing. Will I know how to shoot it? hydroelectric plant, I don't even know exactly what that is… .

And then I bought some New Clothes. I haven't had New Clothes since long before Brad and I…Three pairs of khaki pants, I bought them in the men's department, the salesman was really irritable with me when he realized I was shopping for myself, as if my trying them on would defile the clothes. I couldn't help giggling. And a khaki jacket, and some cotton shirts, women's, because they have more flair, but in a large size, I love to look as if I'm wearing my father's clothes. And a wool skirt and a sweater and some hiking shoes and loafers. I have a hat too, a cap with a visor. Men's department. It looks cute on me though. I think.

Cute! Oh, Anastasia!

Three men gave me a real look-over as I sat in the terminal waiting for the plane. That hasn't happened to me in years, maybe it has never happened to me at all. I had kids so young. When you are with children you are invisible to men. One of the guys was good-looking, too, he looked like Dana Andrews, all-American bland, but still…

Maybe I should break down and buy some makeup. Just a light eyebrow pencil, a pale lipstick maybe. I used to use makeup once in a while, on nights when Brad and I went someplace fancy. He didn't like my looking different from the other women, he kept telling me to dress myself up. But I liked my hair long and straight, I like simple clothes and I can't wear high heels, I can't walk in them. His friends' wives wore lots of makeup and beehive hairdos and dresses with sequins and tottery high heels. They looked glamorous. To please him, I did darken my eyebrows a little, and put on some lipstick. I wonder if those things are still lying around the house someplace. I seem to remember the kids finding them one rainy day and decorating themselves. They were so cute then.

The truth is I never tried it—being a woman the way women are supposed to be, the way the magazines teach you, wearing the makeup, the elaborate hairdos, the girdles and stockings and high heels, the bras with wires in them, the waist pinchers or whatever they're called. Something in my stomach reared up at the mere thought of doing myself up that way. I
WOULDN'T
. I felt I—me, who I am—would die.

The way I
looked
disturbed Brad, but should it have? I wasn't ugly, or dirty, or even sloppy. I just didn't adorn myself much. Could a thing like that wreck a marriage? I don't understand men. I remember Brad's friend Lou coming up to me once at a party and looking me up and down in an evaluating way. I was outraged at his presuming to look at me that way but he went further: he scolded me. He said I looked like a kid, that I wanted to be a kid, that I didn't want to grow up, didn't want to become a
woman.
The way he pronounced
woman
made my stomach clutch, especially since he was a fat slob, his belly hung over his pants, and he had a mouth like a porpoise's. I wanted to smash his teeth in, but of course I didn't. But before he could tell me that
he
could make a woman of me, I snarled (I couldn't help it, I didn't plan it, it just came out that way): “Who would want to be a woman if you were the man?” and stalked off.

He glowered at me the rest of the night and he must have told people I'd said something rude to him because soon his wife was glaring at me too, and later on, Eileen asked me why I was so rude to Lou. I told her what had happened, but she didn't seem to understand why I felt insulted, she said I was neurotic. And one day at the newspaper, Arthur Wurtz, the arts editor, came up and ordered me to put on some lipstick: “You look like a ghost!” he cried, looking appalled. And I did it.
I did it!

It's strange that men feel they have the right to criticize a woman's appearance to her face. Women don't go around telling men they're getting too paunchy, or suggesting they buy a toupee. Do they? Or suggest they use deodorant, or even tell them they have egg on their tie or spinach between their teeth. I never even criticized Brad's appearance, and I was married to him. It's true I hated seeing him all dressed up in a three-piece suit. I liked him with long hair and a fancy shirt, standing on a stage…. And I wouldn't have liked him to grow a mustache, I wouldn't have liked to kiss it.

But maybe I have missed something. Maybe I was neurotic, as Eileen said. Maybe I was trying to insist on myself, on my difference from other women. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to try it. After all, here I am with a job women don't usually get—how many women photograph for
World
? None except me. And I don't have a husband, so it's not as though I were obeying someone, like Cheryl, whose husband insisted she dye her hair even though she was allergic to hair dye. She ended up losing all her hair and having to wear a wig.

Maybe it would be fun to use makeup, to dress up a bit.

I feel like a fool, I'm so excited, my heart is racing, my blood is speeding through my veins.

They were
really
looking at me. I felt…what would you call it?…desirable.
That's
what it was. I've never felt desirable before. I've felt desire, but that's different, desire consumes you, it takes you over, you forget yourself completely. All you can think about is the other, the one you desire, your
self is
just a fire.

But when you feel
desirable
—well, that's not so pleasant either. I felt very self-conscious when they were looking at me, as if I were a set of parts, each of which is supposed to be polished to perfection. Legs, breasts, hips, hands, feet, stomach, mouth, eyes, hair, voice, posture, clothing—is my slip hanging? is my nail chipped? I was being watched, someone was looking to see how I disposed my legs, if I shave them, if my stockings were wrinkled at the ankle, if they had a run. And how are your eyes? Is there red among the white? is your mascara smeared? And your hair: is there silver among the gold? I felt a little as if I were living in a country that had been invaded, as if enemy soldiers were exercising surveillance on me.