Karolina Waclawiak - How to Get into the Twin Palms

“Anka, I like it,” he said.

He pulled at my hair and I just smiled. He didn’t say any more about it.

“You going home?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I come by when I’m done.”

“Done with what, exactly?” I smiled at him but he didn’t smile back. He turned and ground the cigarette down under his heel.

I drove away without an answer and watched him in my rear-view mirror as I turned off Fairfax.

The house needed to be cleaned, my underwear changed. I checked down there to see the state of things and was unhappy. I turned on the shower, plucked my eyebrows furiously and tried to keep my hand from shaking too much. He hadn’t specified when he’d come, but I knew he would. I tapped my fingers on my brow, tapping away the redness and closed the shower door behind me, careful not to wet my hair in the scalding water. I did what I could shaving, trying to look effortless but purposeful.

I knew that he had a wife, but what else did he have? A wife I could deal with.

Maybe.

I laid out my clothes, a push-up bra. In the light I noticed the cream color was a dull shade of gray. I had been wearing it so often and not washing that it had taken on a different tone. I considered the time he’d be here, the light filtering into the room. If this shade of gray, dirt, dry skin, sweat, was acceptable. If I wore a dress or a skirt and he could touch my legs and in between my legs he wouldn’t notice the soiled push-up bra. I looked for the best choice of skirt and chose a black mini, black v-neck shirt tucked in.

LEV DIDN’T KISS ME WHEN HE CAME IN. HEstood in the doorway and asked me where I wanted to go.

I didn’t think we were going to go anywhere. This was a new thing.

“I don’t know,” I said, unprepared.

“I know a Polish place. I bet you miss your own food.”

He was walking to his car before I could say, no, I didn’t want that. I didn’t miss it.

There were two — Warszawa was upscale, new Polish. Or the other place, in Eagle Rock. He chose the one in Eagle Rock. A strip mall, where no one would see us. Parking was difficult in front of the dry cleaners. On the glass windows of the place, big red letters said “Nutritious Polish Dishes” in cursive. And then, below it, “ Smaczne Obiady! ”

It wasn’t anything like the Twin Palms and it made me ashamed. He pushed me forward and I opened the glass door. A tinkle of the bell alerted the owners that we were there and I wished that I had had an answer for him when he asked me where I wanted to go.

Inside was cramped, booths were crammed next to each other, the inside of the place filled with cheap tables and plastic floral tablecloths. The walls were cubbies filled with dust-covered artifacts from Poland. Blue and white plates with dots and ducks, Polish flags with eagles, everything red and white and fake-royal looking. People hunched over their full plates of food. It smelled like dill and boiled potatoes and Lev looked around and I didn’t want to look at him, I just stared at the walls. Pope John Paul II in a gilded frame, the Black Madonna nearby, beer steins from Gdańsk, dried flowers pressed into frames and looped into woven, matted straw-sewn vases.

My face grew hot. This was like the mobile homes on the side of the highway in Poland — tucked in the woods. Frequented by truckers and the young girls from Moldavia and Romania who would bend down over their laps in the cabs of the trucks. Fumbling and sucking. Those roadside restaurants had one picnic table outside and a tilting smoke stack shooting through the roof — homemade. This place was no better. Just bigger. And with Mexicans cooking the food. Dusting the potatoes with dill.

The owner greeted us with open arms.

“Please, come in, table for two right here and for you.”

The owner pushed the plastic menus toward us and I stared down at the choices. A small girl ran around the tables. He beamed at her and smiled at us.

“My daughter, Barbara.”

He had a thin comb-over, long and tucked behind his ear, a thin mustache, sweat cradling his brow, a checked shirt tucked into his pants. His wife looked up from the window of the kitchen. She was much younger, close-cropped curled hair. When she smiled I could see the metal wires glinting from her canines, her teeth long pulled out and put in fake, like they did in the village, and I knew how she had come here. She went back to making the salads, covered in sesame seed Asian dressing. I didn’t know why and Lev didn’t ask as he forked around the lettuce leaves, moving around the julienned carrots.

I HAD HEARD ABOUT HIM, THIS MAN, THEowner of Solidarność . He had been a truck driver once, up and down the highways of Poland, past the women standing in the trees from Moldavia, Estonia, waiting to be picked up, to make some money, they stood away from the hunched-over babcie selling dried mushrooms along the road. They looked young, 15 or 16, tired and worn-through. I decided that the owner had stopped for them. More than once. He came here and drove trucks again, talking about his exploits, how to please a woman. What to do after hours on the road, how to clean up and smell good. How to open her legs and go down on her. I watched his mouth as he spoke to us, smiled at us, and told us about the specials. I knew this is why he made the restaurant familiar to him. Roadside familiar. Young-girl familiar.

His young wife, almost my age, came over and smiled at us, flour covering her hands, and they stood next to each other like father and daughter and I thought about his mouth on her and I didn’t want to eat anymore. Lev pored over the laminated menu and asked for a vodka. The owner said, “I bring it special here from Poland.”

I knew it was from plastic jugs bought at Ralph’s. That he poked a plastic funnel into Polish vodka bottles and poured in the Ralph’s brand, passed it off as authentic and no one knew better. He talked about the aphrodisiac properties of the Żubrówka, how the bison grass made you virile. Lev gulped down the vodka and asked for another. “You don’t have anything better?”

“This is the best, from Poland,” the owner said, nearly breathless.

“It’s shit,” Lev said.

Lev thought a moment and asked if they had Stolichnaya.

“We don’t carry cheap brands here. Only Chopin. Only Żubrówka.”

I wanted to ask him about the economy-sized garbage cans full of empty plastic jugs of Ralph’s brand vodka in the back alley, but kept my mouth shut. I was concerned about my need to defend Lev over my own kind. Why instead I felt an urge to shame him, and emasculate him.

The owner walked away and I looked at Lev.

“Why the face, Anka? These are your people. Your place.”

I didn’t want to tell him that I didn’t want this anymore.

The owner brought us more vodka. He asked us what we wanted to eat. He pitched us the Królewski Platter — pierogi, gołąbki (cabbage stuffed with meat and rice), and gulasz . It didn’t sound like a royal platter to me. Potato and cheese pierogi, sauerkraut and mushroom pierogi, pierogi with meat.

“What are you going to order?” I asked.

Lev grunted and drank his vodka. They brought us soup. Żurek . Potatoes, oily bits of bacon, the sour rye taste and smell.

He slurped it up and kept his head down. I looked around at the other non-Polish patrons. They thought this is what we were like. The dusty, dirty shelves of eagles and ceramic red and white sculptures. Salad with sesame seeds. I’m sure they were laughing at this version of us, with all its kitsch and old-world charm. I was embarrassed that the owner pushed it this far. I felt a sense of pride and shame all at once. I felt like I had to tell them how it really was, but then, I didn’t really know at all.