Karolina Waclawiak - How to Get into the Twin Palms

I THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE WOULD FINDin my apartment after I left. What remnants of me would tell them who I was? The television said they were closer to figuring things out. Possible witnesses. I went about searching for things in the apartment.

I found:

1. Strands of different colored hair.

2. “Adamba” brand Polish style żurek , like my mother always bought. I had lost count of how many packages I had collected. The front had a lady in a chustka and floral apron holding a steaming bowl of soup.

3. Bobby pins. Both mine and the mystery girl from when I had moved in. Separated in two piles.

4. Matches.

5. Several empty boxes of varying types of Misty cigarettes.

6. A bloody mattress.

7. Love notes — to the city and to individuals, that I had never sent.

8. My grandfather’s glasses, in their case. The thick bottle cap kind, with lenses that looked like sea glass, almost. His case, a thin, stiff leather. They felt 100 years old.

I HAD FIFTEEN MISSED CALLS AND SEVEN MESSAGES.I didn’t think anyone would call and I was keeping a low profile as people like to say. When I checked the messages I confirmed that no one good had called.

My mother left all the messages on Sunday. I knew what it was about. Lent. What was I going to give up? Had I gotten ashes crossed on my forehead. Had I gone to confession? I had done both.

I turned the television on for the first time in several days. The newscasters were on site, ash in their hair. The fire someone had set near the Hollywood sign was spreading and the observatory was already damaged. They were spraying the surrounding homes with water, keeping everything wet, the ground saturated. There were evacuations, but some people didn’t want to leave. They were showing a man next to a pool with a surgical mask on. He was pumping pool water in a hose to the sloping hillside. He said, “I’ve been through fires before and beat them every time.” The newscaster had an urgency in her voice, like he was being foolish, like he might not make it if he didn’t leave.

I opened the windows to let the air in and the smoke came in huffs. The newscasters played out the scenarios. How to save each letter. How firefighters were stationed around the sign, wetting it cold and damp. Trying to keep it safe. It was going to be a story of saviors, that’s how it was playing out now. Heroes were being made right on the television.

There was a knock on my door and I was afraid to open it. I hid back in the shadows of the apartment but could see my neighbor leaning over and trying to peer in through the glass doors. I worried about him jumping the lip of my balcony, seeing if they were open. Why hadn’t I closed the blinds? He moved away from the glass and went back to knocking on the front door.

I came and opened the door a little, eyeing him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine. Sick.”

“My mother made you soup.”

I looked at his empty hands.

“She has it on the stove,” he continued.

I was wearing clothes that I had not changed for days. I had not showered and I had tufts of hair growing in my armpits. He smiled at me and nodded his head. Saying yes for me.

I kept the door open as I went to look for my shoes. When I came back he motioned to the mountains and said, “It is nice.”

Their apartment was built much like mine. Wall to wall oatmeal-colored carpeting, a living room, their sliding glass door, a dark hallway leading to bedrooms and a slim alcove of kitchen to the left, instead of the right, like mine. The blown up photographs of family lineage I had seen through the window were right in front of me now, lining the tops of the wood and glass cases, tacked to the walls in a line all around the tight room. Close up they were fuzzy with dust and yellowing.

They had fit a dining table, sofa, Persian rug, six curved and wooden dining chairs and dozens of black-and-white photos in cheap plastic frames into the front room. I was in a mausoleum smelling of chicken fat and boiling root vegetables. The old woman in the chustka came out of the kitchen smiling, holding boiled chicken pieces, tawny skin fat still puckered and goose-pimpled, and thick-sliced pieces of gray boiled beef sitting in a thin sleeve of oily chicken stock. She set it down on the white embroidered tablecloth and dribbled oil on the cloth and went back into the kitchen, ladling soup over thin egg noodles and passing the bowls to her husband, the small hunched man I had seen walking back and forth in front of our apartment building, hands behind his back held together by the thumbs and loose-fitting gray slacks bunched at the waist with a belt. He wore the same square-sided hat atop his head, beaded and sparkled. I wondered if he was wearing it for religion, for some Russian Orthodox reason. I didn’t want to ask. The television was blaring guttural fast-talking. When he put the bowls on the table he put himself back in the worn leather chair and his wife set the soup in front of him. He turned the TV louder and I noticed the glazed gaze I often saw when passing by the window. He didn’t say a word to anyone and my neighbor and his mother sat at the table, smiling their toothy and toothless grins at me. Waiting for me to slurp the soup and break apart the loose-skinned chicken sitting in front of me. I looked down at my soup, the parsley cut coarsely, floating atop a film of oil and gristle. It smelled delicious. It smelled like the old country. I ate it up quickly and was given seconds. Not even working around the brown and gray bits floating in the broth, I ate those too. They smiled and the mother nodded.

She said, “Good.”

I nodded and said, “Very.”

Her son smiled at me and said something to her in Russian. They both smiled at each other and then smiled at me. He didn’t translate what he said. I kept my head down. Smelling the rosół and my own body odor. I would shower when I got home, I decided. I would start fresh. The soup warmed me and made me feel taken care of. They spoke in another tongue, ignored me, and it felt fine.

IN THE SHOWER I SHAVED MY LEGS AND ARMPITS, looked at the fine hairs on my arms collecting water drops from steam. I foamed my legs and pulled the razor up carefully, cutting through the cream, shaved my pubic hairs, all of them. I cut the lip down there and let out a whimper. It bled into the water, pouring down my legs, and I bit down hard. I had done it before and knew it would take a long time to heal. My hair was washed thoroughly, shampooed twice until my fingers felt no slickness from grease and squeaked clean against the hairs. Next, the conditioning treatment for shine. I left it on for 10 minutes. Longer than necessary. So I shampooed again and hoped the shine would stay. I rubbed soap on and finally turned off the shower, pulled Epsom salts from next to the tub and poured some in my hand, careful not to drop any in the tub, lose any. I scoured my skin, taking off layer after layer. Checking for softness, spending extra time on my kneecaps, elbows, the skin next to my anklebone. I rubbed my toes and my heels and rubbed at my heels until they felt raw, then my fingers and wrists, the part above my wrist bone, pulled salt around the thin blond hairs of my arms and tried to scour the hair away. I rubbed salt on my shoulders, tried to reach my back, rubbed my butt raw, trying to rub the stretch marks away, the same with my thighs, my inner thighs, careful not to get salt into the cut I had given myself while shaving. I had felt the sting before and had not liked it. My face was last, lightly on the cheeks, forehead, chin. I knew I would be red-faced but I needed to get it all off — smells of him, ash flecks, smells of smoke both from Los Angeles and my cigarettes. I turned the water back on and the spray from the shower pooled all the salt at the bottom of the tub and I watched it go down, turned it hotter, almost scalding, and watched my skin turn red.