The Lullaby of Polish Girls (19 page)

Anna New York, New York

Anna blows on her frozen hands; it’s cold and getting colder. Her fingers comb through the branches of the Christmas trees, feeling for the right one. And then she sees it. Taller than the rest, perfectly proportioned, deeply green, and regal. The bright yellow tape stuck to one of its impressive branches reads $140. She motions to the potbellied proprietor, and he ambles over.

“That’s a beaut. I’ll give it to you for $135.”

“$120?”

“No way. This is one of the best trees on the lot.”

“So why hasn’t it sold? Tomorrow’s Christmas, sir, and it’s still standing here.…” Anna smiles coquettishly. Just then her father appears, dragging behind him a scrawny, sickly looking specimen. It’s a Charlie Brown tree.

“Whatchu doin’? Let’s go. I got it.”

“Dad, that’s, like, a bush. I think we should get this one. It’s beautiful. That one won’t even hold half of Mom’s ornaments.”

“A hundred forty dollar? Whatchu, crazy fucka? Ees the high robbery. I go to forest and get one the more beautiful for zero dollar.” The lumberjack shakes his head and walks off.

“You’ve been saying that every Christmas since I was eight. We’re gonna drive upstate and chop down our own tree? Really? Just let me get this one! It’s my money.”

“I your father and I say that’s eet.
Nie pieprz głupot
.” Radosław hoists his tree onto one shoulder and starts walking. By the time she catches up to him on Columbus Avenue, he’s close to the apartment building, smoking a More Red, and he looks pissed.

He speaks quickly and in Polish. “Never embarrass me like that again. You moved back under my roof, and if you don’t like my rules,
get back on the fucking L train.” Anna wordlessly holds the lobby door open for him.

Two weeks ago, when she arrived at her parents’ apartment in Manhattan with her duffel and announced that she and Ben were over, her mother raised her eyebrows but petted her shoulder reassuringly. “He didn’t have money anyway,” she said. Her father hadn’t acted surprised, and had told her that living in sin had its consequences; a kick to the curb, he said, was what she deserved.

When they open the door, Paulina is on the living room floor, arranging delicate glass-blown ornaments, the Polish-made
bombki
she’s collected over the years. She’s amassed Santa Clauses from every continent, tiny glass mushrooms, glass birds with feathery plumes, wooden doves, and miniature cottages. Paulina takes pride in these baubles, and she gets excited when she can finally put them on display. Neighbors from the apartment building come by every year and proclaim that the Barans’ tree is straight out of a
Gracious Home
catalogue, while Paulina, the super’s wife, poses next to her creation and flushes with pride.

“I tried.” Anna unwraps her scarf and slowly takes off her coat.

“What do you mean?” Paulina asks, panic already rising in her voice.

Radosław heaves the tree into the living room and goes about securing it in the stand. When it is upright he rips the binding off with his bare hands and gives the trunk a good shake. Paulina and Anna assess its many shortcomings. The spruce is pallid green, it is short, ungainly, unruly, and altogether tragic.

“Is this a joke?” Paulina asks Anna. “Did you leave the real one in the hallway?”

Radosław picks up a glittery glass bulb the size of a grapefruit, bright red and painted with pearly white doves, and he throws it to the floor. It instantly shatters into tiny pieces. Before Paulina has time to react he grabs another ornament, a Danish Santa Claus in a white robe.

“Should I keep going? Maybe if I keep going there’ll be just enough left for the fucking tree. Pagans!”

Paulina starts crying and runs to get a broom.

“You’re such a miser, Dad.”

Radosław shrugs and walks into the bedroom.

Later that afternoon, after the tree has been decorated to the best of their abilities, Anna and her mother sit on the couch, drinking tea and staring at the TV. The Polish satellite channel is playing an episode of Paulina’s favorite soap,
Złotopolscy
. Anna couldn’t care less about the dismally acted comings and goings of some fictional Polish upper-middle-class family, but her mother is enthralled, commenting on the action as it unfurls. Anna waits for a commercial to speak.

“
Mamusia
, what’s going on?”

“Well, Katarzyna just found out she’s pregnant but she’s in love with Father Piotr, who’s actually having an affair with
Pani
Hania from the bakery. I wonder if she’s going to keep the ba—”

“With you, Mom. What’s going on with you and Dad?” Living with them again, Anna has noticed the growing strain between them, evident in the fact that her father has taken over Anna’s old bedroom, and is sleeping there nightly.

Paulina stares into her teacup for a moment before answering.

“Have you ever had your fortune read?”

Anna shakes her head.

“I did, when I was twenty, tea leaves in the bottom of the saucer. My
Ciocia
Alusia was the real deal. She warned us that my dad was going to die young, due to emphysema. Anyway, you know what it said? My fortune? ‘Things will break apart and it will always be your job to put them back together.’ ”

Anna glances at her mother’s hands. Paulina’s fingers wrap around the porcelain Bayreuth cup. They are weathered beyond forty-eight.

“What if the broken thing is you,
Mamo
? Isn’t it your job then, to put
yourself back
together? You need to divorce him.”

“He’d kill me.”

“And then he’d get over it.”

“No,
córko
, he’d hunt me down in the middle of the night and stick a knife in me. He’s told me so.”

“He’s full of shit. And you’re afraid of dying? You’re already dying!”

“Oh, cut it out, Anna! Life’s not that simple.”

“It is! It is that simple. I packed a bag, I wrote a note, and I shut the
door behind me. Stop being a
tchórz
, Mother—you are wasting your life.”

“A coward?” Paulina’s face contorts and her eyes blink rapidly, fending off tears. “What happened after you left that note for Ben? You ran here so you wouldn’t have to look him in the face. You sneak off to get clothes when you know he’s at work. So who’s the coward?”

Anna doesn’t answer because there is no answer. She
has
been evading Ben; it’s been hard work to avoid phone calls, to hide out in her parents’ living room. It’s hard work but it comes naturally to Anna.

At six o’clock, Radosław emerges from his cave, wearing jeans and a wrinkled white shirt. The table is ready. An extra place is set for a wandering vagabond—it’s a Polish tradition. If anyone knocked on the door tonight, they would be taken in, just like Joseph and Mary who begged for shelter on Christmas Eve and found it in a manger.

Before Anna and her parents eat, the
opłatek
is shared. Anna breaks off a piece of the square wafer, imprinted with a nativity scene, that she bought for two bucks at a Polish deli, and wishes her mother peace and money, as she’s done for years now. Her father chews noisily, then engulfs Anna in a hug.

“I just want you to be happy,
Tato
.” Anna’s voice quivers.

“Oh yeh, yeh, yeh,” he answers, goofy and glib, and shrugs his shoulders. “Sorry for me. You should have the career and the guy who love you, eef you wanna, my dough-ter.” Her father was capable of poetry once. Anna has read the letters he wrote to Paulina from prison.
I dream of your naked body, of your hips, which slope shyly toward me, like two pearly seashells
. There must have been a love story, once.

Sharing the
opłatek
was always Anna’s favorite part of Christmas Eve. The words and intentions were fleeting, but it didn’t matter; Poles worldwide were soldiering on, and for five minutes the atmosphere was full of repentance and hope. Out of the corner of her eye, Anna watches her parents silently exchange a truce, her father’s arm slung casually around Paulina’s neck, her mouth pursed in a straight line. Then they eat, and after the dishes have been put away, they exchange gifts and small, gratified smiles. It’s a nice hour and then it’s over.

At around three
A.M.
there is a huge, shattering crash. Anna’s eyes adjust to the dark and there it is, the cause of the ear-splitting ruckus.
The tree has fallen, weighed down with too many ornaments. Her parents run in from their separate rooms and one of them flicks on the light. The tree lies across the coffee table inches from where Anna is sleeping on the sofa; glass debris is everywhere, like rainbow-colored shrapnel. Paulina starts sobbing and swatting at Radosław’s face. He expertly grabs her wrists and shoves her away from him.

“That’s what you get,
szmato
. Be glad God struck down the fucking tree and not you. But so help me, if you touch me again, I’ll do it for him. Get a broom, Anka,” he orders, scratching his belly. Anna huddles on the couch, careful not to move, sure she is covered in tiny glass fragments invisible to the naked eye. She turns her face toward her father. “
You
get a broom. Or better yet, get back on your meds.”

“What meds?”

“Um, it’s called Prozac and it’s what makes you human.”

“Mind your business, and clean up this mess,
idiotko
.”

“You think I’m gonna run to my room and cry because you called me a name, Dad, like I did when I was twelve? I’m not scared of you anymore,
Tato
. In a few years, you’ll have nothing left but visions of your bygone glory, dancing like sugarplums in your warped head. And you’ll still be hosing down the sidewalk for the Americans.” Anna’s voice cracks before she continues. “You were my hero, my
bohater
, and I worshipped at your altar. I really fucking did.”

Her father’s fists are clenched at his sides. His hands are purple.
Go ahead
, Anna begs silently,
give me something to cry about
. But he walks back into his room and slams the door behind him.

Moments later, it’s as if nothing’s happened at all. Paulina is quietly doing her best to sweep away the debris. The tree is already by the door and Anna can’t recall how it got there. Anna grabs her coat and walks out of the back of the apartment, to the alley where her father sorts the recycling. After Anna graduated from college, her parents left Brooklyn and moved to the Upper West Side, when her dad lucked out and got a job as a superintendent in a fancy high-rise. “We’re like the Polish Jeffersons!” Anna had joked, but her parents didn’t get it. She lights a cigarette now and as she smokes, she remembers the time Radosław told Paulina he was taking Anna to Costco, and instead they rented a car and drove to Atlantic City, where they played nickel slots. On the
ride back home, her father shared stories about his wayward youth. They had been happy. She flicks the cigarette into the dark and walks back inside.

“There’s glass in the cushions, but I can’t vacuum now. Or should I?” Paulina is sitting on the couch, dustpan in her lap.

“You should go to sleep,
Mamo
. It will be okay.”

Anna sits down next to her mother and thinks about reaching for her hand.

“
Mamo
, I have a one-way ticket in my purse. I’m going to Polska today, booked business on the eleven
P.M.
flight. Come with me.” Paulina looks down.

“I can’t,
córko
. I just can’t.”

Anna nods her head. “Tell me, then. Tell me what made you love him. Tell me something that will make me understand why you’re still here.”

Paulina’s eyes close. “He used to mold me little figurines out of bread and water, when he was in jail. Little stars and a bear. I still have them. He was unbelievably handsome and everyone called him Ponderosa because he wanted to be a cowboy.” Her mother is crying softly and now Anna takes her hand and holds it.

When Anna wakes up, it is light outside and she is parched. She walks to the kitchen and is startled to find her father sitting at the table, playing with a match. He lets the flame burn down to his fingertips, till there is only a hiss, a small puff of white smoke. When Anna was little, her father brought
kasztany
back from his trips to Europe—shiny, smooth chestnuts, oversized and beautiful—and he’d make little animals from them, using matches for legs, horns, and hooves. Anna lined them up on her windowsill, and stared at them in the mornings, imagining their lives, till they began to rot and her mother threw them out.

Radosław takes another match and lights a cigarette. He tilts his head back and exhales a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “I never wanted this.”

“Yeah,” Anna replies, not wanting to cry.

Suddenly, Anna remembers taking Radosław to see
Braveheart
the
year it came out. Her father was riveted, laughing happily when the barnyard Scots mooned the ruthless Brits, and wept like a child when Mel Gibson died in the end, and then every day afterward Radosław walked through the house bellowing out, “Freeeeeeedom!” It was in his blood, and yet now, he sits hunched over like a child.