The lullaby of Polish girls: a novel.

Dagmara Dominczyk.

A Note from the Author.

On p.r.o.nunciation.

Polish is a very difficult language to speak; the strings of consonants and letter combinations are daunting even to some native speakers. Below are listed some of the most basic sound and letter changes.

Consonants.

C-ts as in danCe.

CI-chee as in CHEEse.

CZ-ch as in CHalk DZI-j as in Joke G-g as in Goat.

J-y as in Yolk -w as in Watch.

RZ-zhe as in French JE t'aime -shee as in SHEEp SI-shee as in SHEEp SZ-sh as in Show.

W-v as in Valise.

Vowels.

A-ah.

E-eh.

I-ee as in Eek.

O-au as in Off.

-oo as in bOOt.

U-oo as in bOOt.

Y-ih as in In.

On Names.

Polish names are tricky, as each one has many deviations. To use a person's birth name is formal, and almost every name has an intimate diminutive form. There are also ksywy-nicknames based on someone's personality or a physical trait-and most young Polish people have ksywy. And all names in turn are conjugated to suit proper grammar. So, for a character whose name is Jan (John), there can be the following variations: Jasiek, Jas, Jasiu, Janek. It seems confusing, and sometimes it is. I have followed this convention because it is an integral part of Polish culture.

Anna.

Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Looking back, Anna Baran could pinpoint the exact moment she'd fallen in love with Ben Taft. They were lying on his mattress, covers thrown off and sharing a cigarette, when Anna closed her eyes and asked him the question she'd been wanting to ask for weeks.

"Did you ever imagine you'd end up with a Polish girl?"

Ben looked at her and arched one eyebrow. "In bed? Or in life?" Anna blushed, but thankfully Ben continued. "Never. I didn't even know where Poland was on the map."

"And now?" Anna whispered, placing her hands between his warm thighs.

"Now? Now I know there's a lot more to your country than meets the kiebasa."

Anna rolled her eyes but silently urged him on, hoping he would get it right.

"I know Warsaw isn't the only city there. I know not every last name ends in -ski. The language is tough as h.e.l.l but I could listen to it all day. It's the land of amber, crystal, salt mines, and revolutionaries. And I know that the oldest oak tree in Poland is located near your hometown and that they named it Bart. There. How's that?"

"Db Bartek," Anna whispered, feeling tingly, as if he had been talking dirty. Ben went on about Solidarity and Swedish deluges, about pierogi and the Pope, about Communism and cleaning ladies. Anna interrupted him at a certain point with a kiss. "Kocham ci, Ben," she said, and he didn't have to speak the language to know what she meant. But that night was years ago, and it felt as far off as the G.o.dd.a.m.n stars in the sky.

At 3:57 A.M., Anna wakes up from a bad dream. Something about the Gestapo and a defunct Captain Video-the place she used to rent VHS tapes as a girl. She stumbles out of bed and walks into the living room, shuffling blindly toward the ashtray. The familiar stench of yesterday's chain-smoking leads her to the corner of the couch, where an ashtray sits on top of Ben's old throw pillow. Her eyegla.s.ses are nowhere to be found, but how can she look for them when she can't see a d.a.m.n thing, when her own hand in front of her eyes is nothing but a blur? Anna wonders briefly if she might actually be legally blind and if there is a way she can get tested without having to leave the apartment. With fumbling fingers, she extracts one third of what used to be a handsome Marlboro Light from the ashtray, retrieves a Bic from under the couch, lights the stale tip, and walks over to open a window. The November wind slaps at her face, but it feels good, a shock to the system, and her eyes water from the cold.

Lorimer Street must be empty; she can tell from the dead silence, her ears doing the work her eyes can't. While most New Yorkers dream of white winters in theory, Anna pines for snow and means it. It smells like winter out there, crisp and clean, though there's no sign of snow yet.

"We're a dying breed." That was Ben's opening line, on the first night they met, when Anna had walked up to him and asked him for a light. He extended his Zippo toward her and she arched her eyebrows and smiled, smitten right away. Two drinks later, they were making out by the coat check, waiting impatiently for their scarves and hats.

"So you're a New Yorker, huh?" Ben asked, when they stepped into his apartment a half hour later. Signs of three young men living on their own were everywhere, but Ben didn't seem embarra.s.sed by the mess and his roommates were nowhere in sight. Ben and Anna sat on the dirty floor and made small talk.

"By way of Kielce, Poland, my friend-the birthplace of Polish rap," Anna said. "We're known in Polska as the scyzoryki-the switchblades. And you don't wanna f.u.c.k with us." Ben laughed as he drummed the side of his beer can.

"Well, I'm always up for a challenge."

Those words echo in her head like a scratch on a beat-up record. Three years ago tonight, Anna and two friends had wandered into the Turkey's Nest because their fingers were numb from the cold, and there was Ben, in that blue sweater, with an eager smile. But that Ben is gone now. He's in Omaha with Nancy and Pappy and his innumerable cousins. Ben is only gone for another day, and yet, somehow, it feels like he is gone for good.

Standing by the window, Anna can see her breath. Her flimsy T-shirt, the one she's had on for days now-Ben's old Lynyrd Skynyrd one, with the neck cut out-fails miserably to keep her warm. Manhattan glimmers past McCarren Park, its peaks and pinnacles shining like man-made constellations, like something from the future. It's beautiful, but under a blanket of snow, New York would become even more so, turning twinkly and old-timey. This concrete mess with towers sprouting like beanstalks, with subways zigzagging and crowded streets teeming with grime-all of it would be obliterated.

Anna steps back from the window, but leaves it open; she can't smoke in an enclosed s.p.a.ce. Hipokryta, her father would have said. She is a hypocrite, dissecting everything, especially the things that bring her pleasure. Her father, on the other hand, would lie in bed, chewing salt.w.a.ter taffy, reading his Polish newspaper till three A.M., and chain-smoking More Reds, as her mother silently suffered beside him. Her father, who, every so often, threatened to hang himself.

"You're a refugee? You sure don't look like a refugee," Ben had said, eyeing her naked body supine next to his.

"Daughter of a refugee, if you wanna get technical. The Commies ousted my dad years ago. I was seven."

"The Commies. Sounds so ..."

"Dated?" Anna reached her hand toward his pretty American face.

"s.e.xy."

Anna places the ashtray on her lap, hugging it gently between her thighs. Cardboard boxes stare at her from every corner, ma.s.sacred by cheap utility tape. Months have pa.s.sed since she and Ben moved into their new apartment, but the boxes remain untouched. She remembers that the super is stopping by today to fix the refrigerator door.

Anna's head hurts. Her nose is stuffy. The corner of her bottom lip is hot and itchy, a sure sign of a cold sore brewing. There is a weird throbbing pain near her right shoulder blade, which has come and gone intermittently during the last few weeks, and which Anna suspects might be lung cancer. Ben calls her a "raging hypochondriac," and he's right.

When Ben left for the airport five days ago, he begged Anna to join him. It was their tradition: Thanksgiving in Omaha.

"Come with me. Don't you miss my mom's stuffing? She misses you, Annie."

"I can't fly, Ben. You know that."

"Then let's rent a car and make a road trip out of it."

"I can't, Ben," she said and turned away from him.

Ben's mother, Nancy, always sported Birkenstocks and smelled like patchouli. She had long gray hair and all-knowing eyes that-Anna was sure-could see right through you. Nancy loved Anna from the beginning, and was always begging her and Ben to "have a kid already, wedlock, schmedlock!" So, what would Nancy do if Anna showed up in her current state-slightly overweight and depressed? What would Anna say to her? Missed you, Nan, but I've been real busy, what with the auditions and abortions. It was too soon to face Nancy; the shame Anna felt was too much.

Ben had called from the airport. Even though things were strained between them, Anna had still wanted him to call her just before takeoff, in case anything happened. Since 9/11, she'd only flown twice-once to LA for a last-minute audition, and once to St. Thomas with Ben. Both times, her heart was in her throat. Anna shuffled down the aisle with her collection of crucifixes in her palm, relics from Catholic schoolgirl days, and her dad's old chain with the Polish Black Madonna medallion around her neck. She scanned her fellow pa.s.sengers for dark bearded faces (it was f.u.c.ked up but true), and didn't say amen till the wheels touched the tarmac again.

Ben is flying back home today. Back to what, Anna doesn't know. What can she offer him anymore? In the beginning she offered him exotic tales of growing up in the Flatbush projects, tales of a homely little Polish immigrant. She offered him daily b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs and Thai take-out every night. She offered him her world, a world of small but incomparable measure, a world where tanks rolled in the streets, where armed milicja jailed idealistic young men who fought for their freedom as their fathers and grandfathers had before them. She offered romance; it was all so incredibly romantic-the turmoil of a foreign country recounted by a Slavic-looking Marilyn Monroe.

In turn, Ben offered her a version of the New World, the uncomplicated pleasure of a boy who came from the average middle cla.s.s. "I've got four brothers," he told her that first night, as the sun was coming up. "Jonah, Jefferson, Simon, and Samuel." Anna swooned over the Midwestern musicality of their names. She repeated the names in her melodious voice, tinged with the slightest trace of an Eastern European accent, as if reciting a stanza of an Emerson poem.

"Anna Baran ain't bad either."

"Well, it could have been dzisawa." Anna laughed when Ben tried to repeat the word, his tongue twisting in on itself, his jaw clenched.

Last Monday, Anna had locked the door behind Ben and prepared for total isolation till his return. There would be no Thanksgiving in New York, but then again, there never had been. Her parents didn't partake in the turkey. Her father was firm in that regard. "I steal land from the Indian, I rob his everything and put him on casino war camps and now I eat like pig to celebrate? No f.u.c.k way!" So there was no one to bother her and she was free to smoke 147 cigarettes, take one shower, and come to the realization that Ben's absence has not brought fondness or longing, just dread.

At four-twenty A.M., the phone rings. The ashtray balancing on Anna's lap flies in the air and spills all over the couch. She scrambles to the table on the other side of the room. A phone call at four in the morning can mean only a few things. Dad, Anna thinks, it's Tato.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Ania! Oh, Ania ...!" Her mother, Paulina, is wailing on the other end, and Anna's heart explodes upon direct contact with the sound, a sound that pierces the silence of the room and has no business infiltrating the hush of night in such a sudden, earsplitting manner.

"What is it? Oh G.o.d, Mamo, what is it?"

"He's dead! O moj Boe, Anna, he's dead." This is the phone call that Anna's been waiting for since she was thirteen, waiting for on subways, in school halls, while playing Chinese jump rope, or taking a bath, or biting her nails like a zombie in front of the TV while her mother paced the dining room waiting for her father, Radosaw, to turn up.

"How did he do it?" she hears herself asking before it all has sunk in.

"He didn't do it. Filip did it!" Anna's breath slows down and the walls stop closing in.

"Who's Filip?" Her mother is still crying, loudly, incessantly-and right now, in the midst of obvious confusion, it's infuriating Anna.

"Filip, Elwira's boyfriend! Anna, who do you think I'm talking about?" Anna doesn't answer but her mother thankfully plows on. "Justyna's husband is dead, he was murdered last night, in his own house. By his sister-in-law's boyfriend. Can you believe it?"

"Poczekaj! Wait. Just wait a f.u.c.king second, Mother! Just hold on, okay?" Anna breathes slowly, rearranging her thoughts, smoothing down the tabletop with her hand as she does. "Justyna? From Kielce?"

"Yes! Jesus, how many Justynas do you know? Her husband was stabbed in the middle of the night. Justyna's a widow. A twenty-six-year-old widow ..." And now her mother is whimpering, mewling like an injured cat.

"Wow."

"Wow?!! Wow!!??"

"What, Mamo? What do you want me to say? It's four in the morning. You caught me off guard-"

"Well, I'm sorry if this isn't a convenient time to tell you that your best friend's husband was just murdered-"

"She was my best friend. She was."

"Oh, Jezus, Anka, really?"

"It's horrible. It's horrible, but I thought you were ..."

"Were what?"

"Nothing. How did you find out?"

"Her dad called me from Poland. I have to go now. Their poor mother is turning over in her grave. Please call Justyna. When you stop crying, call her." There are tears running down Anna's face, her neck. How can that be? she asks herself again, and then the dial tone signals her to hang up the phone and ask stupid questions later.

Kamila.

Wyandotte, Michigan.

They call it Downriver, these cl.u.s.tered neighborhoods of southern Detroit. It is below zero right now, frozen over, iced down. The snow is no longer fluffy or crunchy; it is rock solid, piled high along the road like glaciers. It's only a few days after Thanksgiving, and already merry fools are dragging Christmas trees along the curb. Kamila can't help but think that they look like corpses. America is a strange place.

"niadanie!" her mother barks from downstairs, but Kamila can't eat breakfast so she ignores her mother. Kamila has other things on her mind today, things that can no longer be put off. She's been here for weeks, and now she's ready.

The house is quiet. The modest little yellow house that her parents scrounged for is a two-story, gated little piece of the American dream, just off Spruce Street. Kamila's parents have lived here since 1997, and five years after they left Poland for good, Kamila, their only daughter, has finally come for a visit.

When Lech Wasa won and the world changed, Kamila's parents, Wodek and Zofia Marchewski, took full advantage of their nation's newfound freedom. They flew from Poland to Ankara for Easter, spent Christmas in Crete, and then, one summer, Wodek visited his second cousin who lived in a sleepy, leafy suburb of Detroit. And Wodek kept visiting, each time for longer periods, until finally his wife, Zofia, allowed him the courtesy and joined him, first for two weeks, then for good. Why exactly he fell in love with Michigan as opposed to Rome or London, n.o.body knew, least of all Kamila. But fall in love he did, and that love eclipsed all fear of laws and impunities, and so her parents became, like countless other Poles in the States, illegal aliens.

Despite her father's tales of dollar stores, central air, and the beautiful Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church (Built in the 1800s by our people, Kamilka!) Kamila decided to stay behind and finish college in Kielce. "Just send me some postcards now and again, Wodziu," she told him, half-joking. Wodek did send his only daughter postcards, one every week for the last five years, postcards boasting sepia-toned vignettes of the quaint, historic downtown of his adopted city. Every month he sent her ten twenty-dollar bills neatly folded in half and held in place by a single rubber band. And life was good that way, it was fine and dandy, until the day Kamila needed to escape, far away, and somehow nowhere seemed farther from Kielce, Poland, than Wyandotte, Michigan.

Kamila Marchewska-Ludek has done everything in her power to recoup this past month. You need to de-stress the situation, you need to cleanse your palate. f.u.c.k him! her best friend, Natalia, wrote in an email a few weeks ago. "f.u.c.k him." Was Natalia being funny, or did the irony go sailing past her? Kamila had done nothing but try to f.u.c.k him for the entire length of their nine-year relationship, but Emil had always denied her. Let's wait. Let's be old-fashioned. And she believed his excuses, masturbating once a week to visions of his alabaster body pressed on hers. Later on, he proposed and they married, but nothing changed.