Karolina Waclawiak - How to Get into the Twin Palms

“You’re not doing it right.”

“Do it for me then.”

“No.” I walked away. Closed my bedroom door again. I put my head down on my pillow and waited to stop hearing his sounds.

“Anya.” He came in and crawled into bed beside me. “You still have no sheets.”

I rolled over and tried to get away from him.

“I have to stay here a couple of days.”

“No.”

He pulled me close. Wrapped his arm around me and kissed my neck.

“No,” I said.

He wasn’t listening.

THE NEXT DAY, I GOT UP AND LEFT HIM SLEEPINGon my mattress. I stood on the balcony smoking and wondered what I had done. My neighbor came up to me. I didn’t want to talk to him but I hadn’t thanked him for the mackerel yet.

“Did you like?” His mustache was newly trimmed. Too nipped in at the sides. He smiled at me and really wanted me to like it.

“It was delicious.”

“I made for you. My mother said you would like.”

I smiled at him and sucked in my cigarette. “It was delicious.”

“Did you watch out for the bones? I was afraid you choked.”

I thought about it. The bronzed skin of the mackerel. The foggy eyes, the slit stomach, the brown meat. I hadn’t eaten it but I had studied it. The scales looked gilded and I touched them, smoke smell on my fingertips. I had stuck my fingers inside the stomach, touched the flesh and slid my fingers over the ribs, breaking up the meat.

“I didn’t choke.”

He stood there smiling at me. I didn’t know what else to say so I told him it was delicious, again. He walked over to his mother’s balcony and pulled himself over the ledge. He opened the curtains and I saw her portraits. Old faces, black-and-white 8 x 10 photos lining the walls — hardened faces, mothers and fathers, dark suits, staring out into the living room. She had them all edging the ceiling. On all the walls, looking down into the living room with disdain. She brought the village to Los Angeles. I wanted to steal her photos. I wanted to line my walls with them. I thought about the village. My family in the village. My cousin with permed maroon hair. I helped her perm it once when we visited them. I was thirteen and stained my hands because I didn’t know better yet. The box had a smiling woman with curly hair and the chemicals smelled horrible. I wound her hair tightly around the curlers. They were rubbery and light green and I wondered how old the box was.

My cousin had a garden in her front yard. There were Gerbera daisies and lines of flowers in her small plot. Her sister was named Jagoda and had Down’s Syndrome and she lived there too. Jagoda wore skirts and smiled and sunned herself in the garden. My cousin was married to a man who liked to drink and sometimes he crawled into the wrong bed at night. Jagoda didn’t say anything but my cousin knew and she wasn’t going to leave him. They didn’t do that there. They had our family members in pictures lining the walls and watching them. They had chickens in their backyards and mushrooms drying in their cellar. I liked to walk down there and smell the air. Thick with forest mushrooms and dirt. It was cold down there and I felt alone and I liked it. Jagoda never went downstairs. She didn’t like the dark.

When I left they all stood in the garden and waved at me. Jagoda stepped on some flowers and my cousin scolded her. Her husband just watched me go and waved heartily. Jagoda looked down at her feet, at the flowers pressed into the ground and bit her lip. She looked up and started waving again. Forgetting what she had done. My cousin turned around and walked back into the house. Did anyone else know what I knew?

I passed the graveyard in the middle of the village and saw old women washing the headstones. It was Saturday. The graveyards were filled. Women in chustki lined the dirt walkways between the headstones. Kneeling, praying, scrubbing, changing flowers, holding rosaries, and rocking back and forth. Rubbing on the headstones of their dead husbands. They rubbed their hands raw cleaning the headstones.

Before I left we had gone to the church where my parents had been married. It was quiet, empty. When I closed the door behind me I closed out the sound of the roosters in the front yard across the street, and my cousins chattering in the garden. I walked inside and tried to think about how it was back then. There was an altar and it was covered in food. Glistening bread sculptures. Round, brown, and shining. Babki in the form of roosters, cows, and sheep. All on the altar as an offering, the farmers begging for a good crop. There were dried corn stalks leaning against the altar, baskets of apples, potatoes. I stared at it all. They were offering up their food to make more food. I thought about Easter in the Polish church in America. People bringing in baskets with colored eggs, white sausage, salt, pepper, chocolates. Some had lottery tickets peeking out in between sausages and eggs. The priest would come around throwing his holy water at us. We’d cross ourselves. The other Polish people would cross themselves and stare down at their lotto tickets. In this church in Poland there were no lottery tickets stuck around the altar. Just the food and the Black Madonna staring down, cut on her face, holding her son. Gold crown. I stared at the cut in her face. I heard the door open again and knew it was time to go. We walked by the cemetery again. My family was buried there and there were spaces for me and my parents too.

They weren’t coming back to be buried here but I wasn’t sure yet. The women had stayed hunched over the headstones, cleaning and shining while I walked by.

My neighbor closed her curtains and I couldn’t see the pictures anymore. It was Saturday. I knew the women were washing and rubbing headstones today, in Poland.

I walked into my apartment and went back into my bedroom. It was early evening and Lev was still in and out of sleep. I crawled next to him. He tucked me into his arm and pulled me close. It felt nice. I liked his warmth as he breathed into my neck and it felt familiar. I wanted to forget about his wife. He was here, not with her, and that meant something to me.

Later, his phone started to ring. He didn’t answer it at first. But it kept ringing and ringing. He finally stirred and got it. He yelled in Russian and grunted, got up and walked out of the room. I knew who it was and when he closed the door to my bedroom and walked away from me I knew I wasn’t winning anything. He came back in and started putting on his pants. He said some things in Russian. I didn’t want to say anything, yet. He paced around the room and then sat down. I didn’t want him to say it.

“Bitch.”

I was happy. It wasn’t what I thought he was going to say.

“I have to go.”

My face fell. He saw. I didn’t want him to, but he did.

“I have to go. She took my car.”

He put his dress shirt on. It was crinkled. I knew where he was going and I was going to go too. I was just going to wait for a bit.

He left me and I pretended like I was going to stay in bed. I heard the front door close and I got up. I went to the bathroom to fix myself up. The box color said Spicy Ginger. I put on the plastic gloves and mixed the mixture. It stunk but I was used to it. I painted it on, dripped on the bathmat and moaned. Thirty-five minutes of waiting. I put on a shower cap and caught myself in the mirror. I looked ridiculous but this was it. I knew this was what I finally needed. I would look ravishing, fresh, and new. I could start over again and try harder this time. I would ask more of people.

I showered, washed the dye out of my hair, watched it trail down the shower curtain, shaved my legs and armpits. I cut my ankle while I was shaving. I watched the blood slide down my foot. It hurt like hell. Lev had a wife.