1957
I picked Halina up from daycare one night after my last nursing shift. The facility was housed in one of many government-controlled childcare centers. In Lublin at the time, any child with two working parents was assigned to a childcare facility where school-aged children spent their days learning basic math, reading, and Communist Party rhetoric. I walked toward ours, which was situated in a drab former housing complex requisitioned by the Party, a beige, humorless place that smelled of cooked potatoes and cabbage, a smell I still could not tolerate twelve years after Ravensbrück. At least the government paid for it.
As I waited for the class to be released, I leaned against the wall to take the pressure off my bad leg and considered my new bracelet, the result of a plan Father Skala and I had worked out. Father, Papa’s dear friend, was our former parish priest, now retired. At Zuzanna’s urging, I approached him for advice about my being overwhelmed as a mother. With trying to juggle work, caring for a young daughter, and being a wife, I was often worn to a frazzle and lost my temper more and more. Father Skala suggested that, in addition to prayer, I might also wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap it every time I felt my temper getting the better of me. I wore the dull red band on my wrist and did a good deal of band-snapping each day. By week’s end, my wrist was raw from snaps.
“No running,” Comrade Jinda, Halina’s unit leader, called out as the children made their way to their parents.
It was easy to spot my daughter in the crowd. She had Matka’s golden hair and was a hand taller than most of the other children. At ten years old, Halina was a year behind the children her age, for she had been held back for not knowing her multiplication tables. How lovely it was to see her—my reward, the prize God had given me for all I’d been through. The children walked up to meet their parents and exchanged the accepted greeting. Halina shook my hand and gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. She had a lovely scent all her own, of soap and fresh air, even after being in that dreary place.
“Good evening, Matka,” Halina said.
Comrade Jinda noted with a smile that all children were accounted for and turned to assemble the next group.
“A real kiss for your mummy, Halina?” I said.
She reached her small hand to mine. “You know it’s not allowed.”
We headed for the door. What a serious little thing she’d become!
“So how is the most wonderful daughter today?”
“Not more wonderful than any other,” Halina said.
“Was rest time better today?” At daycare, the children were taught to eat and rest and even use the toilet on cue.
“I just pretended to rest,” Halina said
By the 1950s, the Polish United Worker’s Party, or PZPR, Moscow’s thinly disguised Polish proxy, was in complete control. Though Stalin was dead by then, his policies lived on. He had promised the Allies at Yalta that he would provide free elections in Eastern European countries and allow them to operate as democracies, but instead installed a Communist Party government in each country, Poland being no exception. We ended up with rigged elections, no independent political parties, and no criticism of the Party allowed. All policy was based on the collective needs of the people. I was reassigned to be a trauma nurse at the new state hospital and Pietrik to factory work just outside Lublin, where he was bused daily.
“I’ll talk to your teacher,” I said. “She must make sure you are getting a good sleep.” With morning drop-off at 5:00 A.M. and pickup at 7:00 P.M., a child needed a rest during the day.
“No, Matka. I’m not a baby. Besides, Comrade Jinda would just put me at the end of the lunch line again if you complain. Plus, it’s fine. It let me think about what I would paint this weekend.”
My leg burned as I hurried her past a breadline.
“We have no paints, Halina.”
“We have your mother’s brushes.”
“How was math class?”
“Comrade Jinda made flash cards. I may be in baby math until I am as old as you. I hate times tables.”
“I use math every day as a nurse.”
“Marthe said she would buy me paints for my name day.”
“When is the placement examination?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Halina said. She picked up a stick from the road and dragged it, drawing lines in the dirt along the side of the road.
“Did Comrade Jinda let you be on the blue team?”
“Yes,” Halina said.
“Without any trouble?”
“Yes. Once I told her there was no proof Jesus rose from the dead, she let me do anything I wanted.”
I stopped short, sending a ripple of pain up my calf.
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug.
I tucked that shocking bit away to discuss with Comrade Jinda. Religion was supposed to be off-limits at school. It was bad enough we had to sneak around to go to mass. Every trip to church meant a black mark on one’s record, and there were people paid by the authorities to note such things.
The childcare facility was a twenty-minute walk from our apartment. My leg ached from standing most of the day caring for patients, but I was luckier than most, since I lived within walking distance of childcare. Many of the other nurses were assigned to housing outside the city and only visited their children on weekends.
We were also lucky that Papa, somehow still working in his postal center job, managed to keep us all in our apartment. Pietrik, Halina, and I lived in my old bedroom; Zuzanna slept in her old closet room which only fit her bed; and though I tried not to think about it, Papa and Marthe slept in the room he and Matka once shared.
The smell of buttery pastry met us at the door. Marthe had been baking Halina’s favorite kolaczki again.
Halina ran to Marthe. “Babcia!”
“My little ciastko,” Marthe said as she turned from the stove and gathered Halina in her arms.
“Did you buy me paints?” Halina asked.
“Halina,” I said. “That’s not polite.”
“It’s fine,” Marthe said, sitting Halina at the table with a plate of apricot kolaczki. “She is just a girl.”
“She knows better,” I said.
I walked down the short hallway to my room, feeling as if a hot poker were stabbing my calf with every step. My old bed was pushed to one side, and a small bed for Halina stood along the other wall, the bed I shared with her most nights. When had Pietrik and I started sleeping separately? Pietrik sat reading a book, still in his gray coveralls from the factory. He’d been assigned to the Lubgal Ladies Garment Factory in the new suburb of Helenów on the edge of the city. It had its own training school and on-site residences for which we’d put our name on the waiting list.
It may sound strange, but I loved those coveralls. They fit him well in all the right places—his broad shoulders and long legs.
“What are you reading?” I asked. My leg ached, and I wanted more than anything to stretch out on the bed.
Pietrik did not answer. His book wore a brown paper cover, but it was Doctor Zhivago, one of many books on the banned list. His friend Aleksander had been sent away for reading Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience,” so Pietrik was smart about where he read.
I tossed my bag onto the bed. “How was work?”
“They took Symbanski today. Right from his bench. Didn’t make quota. He gave them a bottle of vodka, but they still took him.”
“We need to make the best of it—”
“We need a third world war.”
I stepped out of my uniform so that I was only wearing my slip, the one he’d once said made me look like Myrna Loy. “Halina needs to study for the math exam. Can you help?”
Pietrik kept his gaze on his book. “Does it matter how she places? She will end up on the assembly line next to me.”
“If she can get on the medical track—”
“Let her be.” Pietrik dog-eared a page. “And stop badgering her teacher.”