“Kasia’s already had too much. She is recovering, Mother.”
“A little brandy never hurt a patient. The Woolseys rubbed brandy on babies’ gums.”
Caroline stood, plucked the bottle from the table, and rested it on the counter. Mrs. Ferriday smiled at me and rolled her eyes. How lucky Caroline was to have her mother!
Zuzanna and Serge hadn’t noticed any of it, since you’ve never seen two people so happy to do dishes, laughing and poking each other with sudsy fingers.
Caroline raised her cup of coffee to toast. “Merry Christmas, all.”
“Weso?ych ?wi?t,” Mrs. Ferriday and I said, toasting with our empty glasses.
Merry Christmas.
1959
The following spring we all traveled from our respective cities and met up at San Francisco International Airport. We’d been away for several months at that point, and all missed home, but San Francisco had never seen so many happy Polish women. Janina joined us all the way from France. She’d recovered there with Anise’s help and gone to hair school in Paris, which improved our hairstyles a lot. How we all loved California! The air fresh and clean, the sun so welcome to those of us who’d spent winter in cold New England.
Nice as San Francisco was, Los Angeles was the highlight of the West Coast. You should have heard the chatter on that bus. Where to go first? Grauman’s Chinese Theatre? Rodeo Drive? Best of all, I could walk. Like a normal person. With some of the old pain left, but without a noticeable limp. Plus, the plastic surgery had smoothed out my calf and made my leg look more normal. Dr. Rusk had prescribed some pain pills, but I could have walked Rodeo Drive all day.
We went to Disneyland, a place we’d heard so much about. The thirty-six of us arrived by air-conditioned bus, Caroline filming it all with her 8mm camera like a Hollywood director. She brought her guitar along and played that at the noon meal, but we still had a good morning. Frontierland was especially fun. We took a ride on a log raft at Tom Sawyer Island. Zuzanna fell in love with the Three Little Pigs. Somehow these three poor souls trapped in overstuffed human clothes, black eyebrows like parentheses painted on their papier-maché heads in perpetual surprise, touched her heart. When Zuzanna simply mentioned this, it sent Caroline snapping a million pictures of my sister with these oversized, bald pigs.
Things got tense at the Casey Jr. Circus ride. That was the child-sized train that circled the edges of the park. It was not a particularly scary-looking train, but the haunting call of its whistle had followed us around the park all day. When it came time to board, Janina just couldn’t. It was hard to forget that other train we’d been on.
After California, we toured our way back across America, stopping at the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Zuzanna thought she’d broken the slot machine when the lights started flashing and money poured from it. By the time we made it to Washington, D.C., and were introduced at a special session of Congress, we felt like movie stars ourselves.
Once we arrived back in New York, we all fanned out to stay with different families for our last week, and Zuzanna and I continued to be Caroline’s guests, this time at her apartment in New York City. Caroline fussed over my sister like a mother hen, surprising her with a new nightdress and slippers. Once the doctors gave Zuzanna the good news that her cancer was officially in remission, Caroline celebrated and bought us both new dresses at Bergdorf Goodman. You’ve never seen a woman so happy—you’d have thought Caroline was Zuzanna’s mother.
If eating was any indication, my sister was recovering with record speed. It may have had something to do with being in Manhattan, the place of Zuzanna’s dreams. Or maybe it was Caroline’s Russian cook stuffing Zuzanna with Polish food.
Or maybe it was the Automat.
“When I die, I want to come here,” Zuzanna said, holding her white china cup under the silver-dolphin spigot. Coffee swirled into the cup, dark and fragrant.
If New York City was our Land of Oz, the Automat was our Emerald City. As the free matchbook said, it was the HORN & HARDART AUTOMAT AT FIFTY-SEVENTH AND SIXTH. It was warm enough inside to take your coat off, and food appeared there as if by magic. Happy women dressed in black, called nickel throwers, sat in the glass booths and made change for paper bills with rubber tips on their fingers. Put a nickel in a slot next to a food you liked, and the little door would open. Just like that you could choose cooked pullet, apple pie, brown-sugary baked Boston beans. Over four hundred different foods! We wanted to eat there every day.
Zuzanna and I blended in well. In our new Bergdorf Goodman dresses, we lived up to our new name, the Ravensbrück Ladies. It was hard to believe our trip was nearly over, that we’d fly out soon and leave it all behind, but I couldn’t wait to get home. To see Pietrik. Halina. Hard as it was to admit, I’d even miss Caroline, who’d done so much for us all, but it would be nice to finally have Zuzanna to myself the whole plane trip home, to laugh and talk about everything.
Zuzanna set her tray across from mine.
“I’m getting fat, Kasia. Don’t you love mashed potatoes?”
On her plate emerald peas rolled about a hill of mashed-up potatoes, a puddle of brown sauce on top.
A woman came to our table with a pot of fresh coffee and moved to pour some into my cup.
“No,” I said, one hand over it, for I had not ordered extra coffee.
“It’s called a free refill,” said Zuzanna.
New York was full of surprises like that.
Zuzanna dipped her fork in potatoes, trapped a few peas, and ate. She looked wonderful, like a fashion model.
“What we wouldn’t have given for peas back then,” she said.
She couldn’t bring herself to say Ravensbrück.
“At least now Herta Oberheuser is in a cold cell eating beans from a can,” I said.
“You might think about letting it go, Kasia.”
“I’ll never forgive them, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“It only hurts you to hold on to the hate.”
My sister seldom bothered me, but her positivity could be irritating. How could I forgive? Some days the hate was the only thing that got me through.
I changed the subject.
“I’m glad you’re getting fat,” I said. “Papa won’t know you. You’re like a different person. Although one who has not even packed yet.”
Zuzanna kept her eyes on her potatoes.
“I have a favor to ask you, Kasia.”
I smiled. What would I not do for my sister? I ran the tip of my tongue over my new tooth, afraid it might not still be there. It was my favorite souvenir, smooth and perfect, the exact color of my other teeth. I practiced my smile just for fun. A group of young men and women came into the Automat and scrambled into a booth. A boy kissed a girl long and hard, right there in public. How free and happy they seemed. I could see it all with my smart new eyeglasses.
“Anything,” I said.
Zuzanna pulled a folder from her bag and slid it next to my tray.
“I need your help. To choose…”
I opened the folder and flipped through the photographs inside. There were six, maybe seven pictures in there taken from the shoulders up, black-and-white, like passport photos, all of children. Some infants. Some older.
I closed the folder. “What is this?”
Zuzanna pressed little garden gates into her potatoes with the tines of her fork. “Caroline gave it to me.”
“For?” I took her free hand. “Zuzanna. What’s happening?”
She drew her hand away. “I’ve been wanting to tell you…I was at the hospital last week, and they asked my opinion about a case.”
“That happens all the time. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Afterward they asked me if I would teach a class.”
“Here?” I said.
“Yes, here. Where else, Kasia? I asked Caroline to extend my visa.”
“You’re not coming home?” Why had I fought to bring her there only to lose her?