Jadzia

(This is a profile of what I imagine my mother was thinking and feeling as a young émigré in her first home in Nebraska.)


Jadzia walked into the kitchen of the house that was now to be hers and saw what was there rather than what was not there-- the two yellowed white cabinets, the faded brown linoleum on the floor, a porcelain basin for washing dishes, a white gas stove on long legs. She looked out the kitchen window at the small, weathered, red barn out back and long, narrow chicken house behind it. Her warm, grey eyes expanded with relief and anticipation, and her strong, proud, peasant shoulders began to relax. This was home. This was finally her home after years of being involuntarily uprooted from anything that could be called by that name. When had she last been in a dwelling that she felt belonged to her? Before the war? Before the German soldiers arrived to take her away from the Polish village where she taught school and conscripted her into involuntary labor? Certainly not in the home of the German officer where she was taken to work as an unpaid nanny to his three young children, and where she could not leave the house without her armband appliqued with a “P” for Polska. And then, a temporary, sunless room in the German army barracks converted into housing for the Jewish, Polish, Gypsy, and other Eastern European refugees after the war, the place where she had met Antek, who carried his own troubling scars from the past.

There were other temporary houses, one shared with the farmer who sponsored them here in America, and later, another with a warm basement but unheated upstairs near the wide and shallow Platte River, a small unused farmhouse offered through the kindness of parishioners from their new Catholic church. Parishioners who could not speak her language, who spoke as though they had potatoes in their mouths so that she could not understand the words and relied on their smiles and extended hands. She thought she knew how a gypsy might feel to shuffle from place to place looking for somewhere to belong, someplace where she could stay, plant flowers and a garden, and watch the children as they grew up.

She looked at herself in the small mirror on the bathroom wall. What did those parishioners think of this tall, sturdily built young woman with the soft eyes and soft smile? Did they look at her light wavy brown hair falling just above her shoulders and know that she cut it herself? Could they tell that the worn floral cotton dress she was wearing, one that was difficult to button over her bosom was given to her by a kind but skinny neighboring farmer’s wife? Did they know that the few pretty dresses she brought with her on the transport ship were taken from her only suitcase by the covetous wife of the farmer who had sponsored her family, as though she had no right to keep even her own clothing? And there was nothing to be done. She could not and would not tell them.

Through the window, she could see Antek holding the baby and showing the barn and the outbuildings to the two small children at his side. The baby, born soon after they arrived in this country and the only one of them with the privilege of being an American at birth, was waving his arms at his siblings wanting to be put down to run with them. It was still winter, but the icy ground was beginning to thaw and moved under their feet as they ran from their father to the next interesting object in the yard. She could imagine Antek saying, “This is where we will have the chickens and here is the stall for the cow your mama will milk. Kazimierz, stop! Do not climb that ladder. You will fall! Come see this big field. It will have grass and alfalfa for the cow’s hay, and here near the house we will have apple and pear trees.” He would forget about the flowers. “Plenty of room for a big garden, plenty for all of us,” he would continue. “We will have so much food that we can even give some away to neighbors.”

She pictured fresh eggs and new potatoes for the parish priest who had helped them to buy this house. Nothing short of a miracle – she knew God was answering her prayers. She would plant zinnias and phlox to put on the altar of the church that was a constant for her– its Latin mass the same as in her homeland. In its sanctuary, with the statue of the Blessed Virgin looking down at her, she could close her eyes and pretend she was in the simple church of her village where she and her sister would walk barefooted with their grandmother on Sunday mornings in the summer. The choir here would sing the same Kyrie and Sanctus and she would join in, her powerful melodic soprano voice more restrained and tentative now in its new surroundings; yet still clear in its tone and rising above the simple voices of others.

Slowly Jadzia walked through the house admiring its high ceilings, dark wood moldings and large rooms with faded flowery wallpaper. Her feet were firm on the linoleum clad floors. She peeked into the bedrooms, thinking about where the children would sleep and wondering if it would be warm enough for them. There was a gas heater in the living room, but it looked too small to heat this big house. They would need beds and blankets. So much to do, suddenly she wasn’t sure she had the energy she needed. Everything she touched reminded her of her past. The kitchen stove, of the hearty potato pancakes her mother once made while her father played his accordion; the table, of the boisterous dinners surrounded by her eight brothers and sisters that she had not seen since the war began, two of whom had not been as lucky as she was and had died in the war; the floral pattern of the wallpaper in a bedroom, of a dress she had once worn to a dance with a handsome young man in Warsaw who claimed to be in love with her and then left for Argentina. All now in the past and all so far away-unreachable except in memories which would become her stories to tell her children and someday perhaps her grandchildren?

Her musing was interrupted by the sounds coming from the kitchen. Antek and the children had come into the house seeking shelter from the cold Nebraska wind. The children’s faces were lit with excitement. The two older ones ran to her reaching out their skinny little arms to wrap around her legs and asking for something to eat. Antek passed her the baby whose nose and cheeks were red and felt cold against her neck as she hugged him to her. The floor once again felt solid beneath her feet and she gazed out beyond the frosty front window to where she would plant the red tulips.