Motherland
I did not remember how the sofa was wedged mere inches from the center table in the living room, forcing the residents to shuffle sideways in order to make their way to the kitchen, itself the size of our food pantry back in the States.
The first and only time I suffered a broken heart did not follow a bout of wild-eyed, mismatched love. It happened, for reasons you will learn, just a few days after I stepped off a plane in John Paul II International Airport.
There, underneath a slew of storm clouds, the paved stretch of runways and lots that connected Poland to the rest of the known world had looked neatly folded into the patchwork quilt of fields that constitutes Balice, a tiny village on the outskirts of Kraków. I was returning to my homeland, a fact my mother had reminded me of for the umpteenth time as she helped me pack the essentials for a two-week stay. This was the late summer of my eighteenth birthday, marking not only my transition into the collegiate world but also the tenth anniversary of my immigration to the United States. Not until I made my way through the doors of the terminal did her parting words finally hit me: This is who you are. Who you always will be.
Still, my molars ground insistently, as if the significance of the words were yet more than I could swallow.
This was, as I have said, during the terminal summer of my childhood; and so my childhood begs some explanation.
Although most girls at the tender age of ten concern themselves simply with homework, soccer practice, and dollhouses, my extracurricular activities had always consisted of diaper-changing, dish-washing, and baby formula. While my mother was at work, it was my duty to take care of my younger sister from the moment I returned from school. After countless instances of turning down invitations to play at a friend’s house, grab ice cream, or catch a movie, I began to echo my friends’ incomprehension of my childhood lifestyle. “How come you can’t go?,” my social engagements would always begin; “I have to watch my sister,” they would always progress; “But why?,” they would always end. Why indeed? I posed the question repeatedly.
Yet I did not remember the peeling yellow paint that – before the descent of the Iron Curtain – had been used to brighten up the dank stairwell.
The years stretched into adolescence, and the conflict became more and more pronounced as my world grew, and with it foregone opportunities for fun and exciting endeavors with friends. My resentment of my family grew as well, as I continued to miss the teenage rites of passage that were mine by right of existence. High school did permit more freedom, but each additional hour came at a bitter emotional cost and with the required justification that the activity be beneficial to gaining admission to college or procuring a job. The moment our mail carrier bequeathed me a large envelope from the University of Chicago I began a countdown: college was going to set me free.
I was finally in the home stretch. Orientation began in two weeks, and the final task left to accomplish was to spend some time with my uncle and his family in their hometown of Tychy, where I had spent a large part of my formative years.
Upon exiting his Fiat Seicento, my uncle Jacek and my grandmother – who had driven several hours to retrieve me from the airport – led the way down the small, winding road connecting the parking area to the ten-story high-rise weathered by time, the elements, and civil ambivalence. For the duration of our walk, and the entirety of the trip, they filled the conversation with questions alternating between those regarding my life in America and ones that stemmed from “Do you remember—?” I did.
I remembered countless, joy-filled visits to my uncle’s home, where I would spend hours running around inside and out with my twin cousins Ania and Agnieszka, only two years my senior. I remembered sitting in my uncle’s lap as he read to me from a book containing folk tales from the island of Sri Lanka, my favorite stories at the time because they had seemed incomparably exotic. I remembered hiding behind my aunt Terenia’s long, printed skirts from their excitable, fully grown Doberman, not believing in the benign and playful intentions of a creature over a foot taller than I was. Yet I did not remember the peeling yellow paint that – before the descent of the Iron Curtain – had been used to brighten up the dank stairwell leading to the door of their seventh-floor apartment. I did not remember how the sofa was wedged mere inches from the center table in the living room, forcing the residents to shuffle sideways in order to make their way to the kitchen, itself the size of our food pantry back in the States.
