Warsaw Spring

Poland.

One

The darkness of the basement presses me into the hard, cement floor.

The wounded Polish soldier has stopped moaning and remains silent and still. Is he dead?

I’m so hungry. Starving! And all Babka’s preserve jars are empty. Why did I refuse that biscuit? Maggots are meat!

The pool of blood from the wounded soldier keeps spreading and spreading. I wish I could help him more.

My dress is loose because I am so skinny. I haven’t eaten properly for months. I’m beginning to forget how long the war has been going on.

The floor is cold, but I can’t move. The German soldiers will see me. They will shoot me. Dead.

There they are now, shovelling the rubble above, searching with their dogs, yelling commands.

They’re kicking the basement door.

They’re taking an axe to the door!

I shrink back even farther into the dark corner beneath the stairs.

Here’s some coffee, Eve, calls a cold, female voice. Get up for breakfast.

Oh! It’s just my so-called mother knocking on my bedroom door.

Thanks, Magda, I mutter and cast a bleary eye on the steaming cup being delivered to my bedside table. No mugs for Mother Dear. This cup is real china, with a gold rim and a cutesy little pink bouquet. And the coffee will be perked perfectly to the second. Instant coffee is for the unwashed masses, like me and Babka.

Rise and shine! Rise and shine! Magda chants as she flicks open my curtains and lets in the incredibly bright Alberta spring sun. Where’s that line from? Some soap opera in the 1950s? Father Knows Best? Why does she have to act all the time? Already her dyed, Barbie-doll blonde hair is perfect, her makeup is perfect, and her housecoat is probably out of one of her zillions of fashion magazines. At 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, she’s already on the studio set, primped for the cameras. Man, that’s dedication—or fear. Hey, Magda! Relax! Your show went into rerun limbo two decades ago!

As for me, I sleep in worn-out, second-hand clothes, like Babka. Or like a bag lady in training.

I groan and cover my face with the pink, flowered, frilly sheet, like I’m already the dead body of a bearded mad woman frozen one Christmas Eve in a downtown Edmonton back alley—or of a waifish heroine shot once in the forehead and left for stringy rat meat down in that basement over in war-ravaged old Europe.

I had this incredible nightmare about being in a war, I wail through the frills and flowers. Actually, I’ve been having this same nightmare over and over again for a long time. Maybe I died during World War I or World War II and was reincarnated. That’s what Carolyn thinks.

Your room is a mess, says Magda. I can hear that she is making like a dainty tractor with a front-end loader, scooping books from the floor and plopping them on my desk. Scoop. Plop. Scoop. Plop. Scoop. Plop. "How can you live this way? Books, clothes, papers all in a jumble. Carolyn is a bad influence. My goodness, what’s this? The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead?"

I’m doing my final essay for the history course on ‘The Causes of the 1917 Russian Revolution,’ I say, flapping down the sheet just in case Magda wants to examine my pale, drawn face with the dark circles under my bloodshot eyes. She doesn’t want to. Instead, she goes on scooping and plopping. Now it’s clothes. I stayed up till three in the morning looking at all this stuff the librarian gave me. So far I don’t understand anything, except World War I was pretty important. I think I’m going to switch to ‘The Effects of World War II,’ even though the essay’s due on Monday. Or else I’m just going to drop the course completely. That class is full of conceited, WASP types like Kevin Baker.

At least they’re not smoking heaven knows what, hanging around bikers and working in a dead-end restaurant job, says Magda. You always come home from that restaurant stinking of grease and cigarette smoke. What time did you get in last night—midnight? Let’s hope at university you meet a better class of people. Scoop. Plop.

What am I? Dog poo?

I got in at ten, I say. The restaurant’s in a mall, you know. Everything closes at nine, and it takes three-quarters of an hour to clean up. Where were you and George and Gord anyway?

We were visiting with clients of George, says Magda. They have a son the same age as Gord. George feels it’s very important to cultivate the Houston-Smiths.

"Houston-Smiths? They sound like British rejects from Dallas, I say. George should feel right at home. And by the way, Kevin Baker drinks like a lush, as do all of his snotty friends. Carolyn doesn’t let me smoke cigarettes. She does not do drugs—not even grass. And I might not go to university, you know. My marks aren’t good enough any more. I might go live in Poland permanently. I have enough money of my own to get there."

Poland is a dirt-poor, backward country, says Magda. (Scoop. Plop. Scoop. Plop.) Nobody in their right mind would go there. Anyway, your precious Aunt Janina has only invited you for a two-month visit. You’ll probably hate the place and be back in a week.

How do you know? I say, finally sitting up. You’ve never been to Poland. You’ve never even met Aunt Janina, or any other of Dad’s relatives. You’re more English than George. You’re both so phony . . .

That’s enough out of you, hisses Magda. She’s finally stopped the Perfect Housewife as Automatic Shovel routine and is actually looking at me. (Or should I say she’s looking at some deformed, giant monster that she imagines is me?) You’re a spoiled, selfish little brat who doesn’t appreciate how lucky you are. You’ve caused nothing but trouble since you insisted on moving in with us.

And with that Magda turns around and floats like Queen Elizabeth II at a walkabout in darkest Slob-ovia out of my cesspool of a room. Slam! goes my door behind her slim, upright, elegant form. The monster sinks its ugly head gratefully again beneath the deep, still water that lurks beneath the frilly sheets.

Ah! The peace of solitude in the stinking swamp! Is that a mating frog I hear? Or perhaps a newly returned bird? Do not void excrement on my head, little bird!

Brrrriiiinnnngggg. My radio-clock alarm goes off. Oh oh! Got to go! I reach for my coffee, now cool enough to gulp. Then I force myself to get up and get washed and dressed. What keeps me sane is that, as usual, I have a job to go to. Something fascinating, like scrubbing floors and washing dishes. Something to help me forget my rotten life in paradise.

Not lucky like you, Mummy Dearest, I mutter to the mirror as I flutter the poop-brown eyelashes that perfectly complement my cement-grey eyes. I try taming my mad-woman hair with a brush, then give up.

At breakfast, my so-called stepfather, George Rupert Whitehead, B. Comm., V.P., V.I.P., zap-cools the kitchen from behind the sports section of the Edmonton Journal. George is an executive in the Oil Patch. He is vice-president of his firm, and his big hero is Peter Pocklington, the multi-millionaire owner of the Oilers. You’d think every goal that Wayne Gretzky scored was the personal property of Pocklington and ol’ George.

Magda serves the perfect, Saturday morning, English Canadian breakfast of pancakes, maple syrup and sausages. After a full minute of letting the pancakes steam and the women wait (I swear he times it, counting out the 60 seconds, one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three), George folds his paper, lays it aside and inspects the offering.

Very nice, Maggy, he says. The sausages are perfectly browned, just the way I like them.

Then he picks up his knife and fork and begins to eat, cutting the pancakes in perfect one-inch squares, and chewing, chewing, chewing because this way he will live to be a hundred without a single moment of discomfort as he spends his retirement millions playing gazillions of games of golf at perfectly clipped, manicured courses from Hawaii to Daytona Beach.

Mother Dear also begins to eat, just as carefully, the one pancake and one sausage that her perpetual diet allows her. Her black eyes are now devoid of expression. They are often devoid of expression. I haven’t figured out yet how much of this void is due to tiny little pills and how much to her basic emptiness. Even a doggie has more expression, I think, as I pick up my fork. As for your expression, Mr. Iceman of the perfectly pressed, monogrammed pyjamas, it’s about what you’d expect from a walking, talking mechanical calculator. And, by the way, your wife’s name is Magda, or Magdalena, not Maggy. And being Polish is not something to be ashamed of Neither is being an unwed mother. That, I believe, went out about one decade ago.

I bolt down four pancakes and four sausages and excuse myself from the table.

Sorry. Gotta go. Thanks for the great breakfast, I say. (I’m not as much of a hypocrite as I sound. I know good food when I taste it. Besides—what can I say?—I’m a pig.)

We’ve got to do something about your hair, Eve, says Magda, finally coming to life in a marginal sort of way. How can you go around looking so disheveled? Those jeans you put in the wash have been patched and patched! How could Grandma let you out the door like that? A tall girl like you has to be especially careful about her appearance.

Hey! Sally Ann clothes are cheap! I say, eyeing the clock. Besides, I’ve got no time for shopping. Essays are due. Exams are coming up. I’ll get my hair done and buy some new clothes when school’s finished. Oh yeah, and when I lose some weight. You forgot to nag me about being fat. Babka fed me too much, remember?

You don’t need to work, intones George (alias Saint George), eyes glued now to the stock market reports. No woman in my house ever needs to work.

Thanks, George, but I like having my own money, I say, eyeing the philodendron in the living room. (The philodendron is supposed to represent George and Magda’s marriage. It was a wedding present from Babka—Babka is the Polish word for Grandma. Thirteen years later, it’s finally reached the ceiling. Now it will have to grow sideways, or else get chopped back, or else get moved to another, bigger house.)

And besides, I add, the guidance counsellor says working part-time is ‘invaluable real world experience’ for students.

George nods and goes back to dissecting his pancakes, as I knew he would. George is very big on real world experience. To him, this means (1) lots of money, (2) good job, (3) membership in the right clubs, including the right church, (4) success, (5) success, (6) success. I try to think of something really shocking to say, something to raise the roof and give the philodendron more room.

Oh, oh! Magda’s getting her I-need-a-pill look. Okay, Okay. No arguments about the starving millions of the world, underprivileged Blacks, or war-torn wherever. George calls me a hippie or a commie, and Magda goes off to the bathroom to pop a Valium. Don’t they know hippies also went out ten years ago? I was just a baby in the Sixties! What have they been doing since then? Oh yeah. They got married and focussed on George’s terrific career. Oh yeah, and on their terrific little son, Gord (as in Gordie Howe), the future hockey star and Oil Patch executive, who will no doubt have his breakfast served to him in bed.

I’m gone, I say. See you tonight. Like it or not.

Two

Outside the employees’ entrance at the back of the Fast ’n’ Friendly, the so-called family restaurant for escaped housewives and bored teenagers, Carolyn is waiting for me. She is chain-smoking and hugging herself. Even from the other side of the parking lot I know she is upset about something. She is wearing the lime-green and electric-orange caftan poncho she was given when she made the FnF raise a thousand dollars for a therapeutic craft workshop for emotionally disturbed adults. I call the poncho her Carolyn-the-Baptist outfit to be donned in Times of Great Effrontery.

Carolyn is a lot older than I am. She’s already in her thirties, like Magda, but sometimes she seems even older than that. She dropped out of high school as soon as she could and has been working at the FnF ever since. She told me once that Nick, the owner, got her pregnant when she was eighteen, but he paid for an abortion in the States and gave her a raise. She hasn’t slept with Nick for a long time because he’s kind of old and had a heart attack, and anyway he’s back with his wife and kids.

Now Carolyn lives with this younger guy who drove his motorcycle right over their landlady’s front lawn the first night after they moved into this basement apartment on the fringe of Camelot Park—Camelot Park is where I live now. He was stoned, as usual. Carolyn had to explain to her landlady that he was an orphan from a young age and doesn’t know any better.

Carolyn goes for orphans, delinquents, schizophrenics, and other birds with broken wings and rumpled feathers. Like me. Awkward, fat, messy, unfashionable, highly intelligent and gifted even but flunking, abnormal me. Who else but Carolyn would have given me a job? Of course, I don’t deal with the public. I’m just sort of a cleaner in the background. I come by this profession naturally. My grandmother, who raised me, is a cleaner too. She cleans at the University of Alberta. Anyway, Carolyn makes Nick and her boyfriend leave me alone, and, if I don’t make some major goof like tripping and pouring a pitcher of ice water down a lady customer’s back, which I did once, she gives me fifteen percent of her tips. Carolyn gets good tips. She says she gets even better ones when I don’t make mistakes, so now mostly I don’t. Actually, Carolyn says I’m doing so well these days she’s thinking of giving me a raise.

One reason Carolyn fascinates me is because the way she looks and acts expresses something besides complacency. I think Caroline really thinks about life and feels stuff for other people less fortunate than herself—when she can find someone less fortunate than herself—which here in Camelot Park isn’t easy. I guess I admire that, even though nobody else does. Maybe because nobody else does. My mother says Caroline looks hard, but I think her face expresses vulnerability, like Ophelia’s face does in the movie of Hamlet that Mr. Kelp showed us in English class. Like a victim. Vulnerability is a big word, I know. Sometimes I like big words, as you’ve probably noticed. My favourite book these days is the dictionary. Abnormal, eh? Maybe that’s why I like it.

As usual, I reach for the package of cigarettes in Carolyn’s pocket.

No way! Carolyn says, as usual, and she slaps away my hand. You want to get cancer?

You look awful, I say.

Gee, thanks, says Carolyn, stubbing out her cigarette. Dave didn’t show up all night. No explanation. Nothing. Not even a phone call. Carolyn coughs and lights a fresh cigarette. Her incredibly fly-away, fountainy, orange hair looks even wilder than usual, and her heavily rouged cheeks even less healthy. Sort of like a sad clown.

Sorry, I say. I never say the right thing, or even what I really mean. I just mean you look tired and upset.

Naturally, says Carolyn, dividing and tying her hair with elastic bands, so now it’s in two high, dry, floppy, orange wings. I hardly slept all night. I mean what if he’s been in an accident or something?

If he’s been in an accident, the police will tell you, I say. He’s probably just taken off, as usual. Anyway, you’re too soft-hearted. That guy isn’t worth your time and worry. He doesn’t deserve you.

For a dumb kid, you’re pretty smart, Eva, says Carolyn, unlocking the back door of the restaurant. (Carolyn is always very careful to pronounce my name the Polish way, not Eve like in eavestrough but Eva like in evidence, if you pronounce the i in evidence like the short a in apple, if you follow me. If she knows something is important to a person, even a boring nothing person like me, she treats it like it’s important.)

Actually, you’re pretty smart too, Carolyn, I say. But you just don’t think you are.

Maybe, says Carolyn, but now she’s not really listening. (She doesn’t listen when the conversation is about herself. Just like she doesn’t really look when she’s looking in the mirror. I don’t think Carolyn likes herself too much.) Can you open that big can of ketchup and fill the bottles on every table, please. And try not to spill any this time. Use the funnel. And take a damp cloth to wipe up any drips.

I think the way you’re smart is more important than how a lot of other people are smart, I say as I lug the giant can of ketchup over to the electric opener. "You see the good in other people that nobody else can. You’re—I don’t know—selfless. That’s why you’re at the bottom of this crazy capitalist society, like me and my grandmother, and you don’t have this big house and two new cars in the garage."

It’s a bit more complicated than that, kid, says Carolyn. She takes off her caftan and puts on a clean apron over her