Homesick for Another World(70)

When the curtain falls back across the window, I run away, back through the cemetery, kicking at the stones that mark whatever silly people have come and gone, and I wonder where they’ve gone off to, if there are other places for each of us, and whether my father is really, as the woman has always told us, in a better place than this.

? ? ?

That night the woman is angry at me again. She wants to know what I was reading at the library. “I hope you didn’t get some book that’s going to fill you up with crazy notions.”

“I didn’t find any good books at the library,” I say. “They were all boring. They were all dumb.”

“Ach, Urszula,” the woman says. “You think you’re smarter than all the rest.”

“But aren’t I? Who is smarter than me? Show me the person. Don’t you always say—” The woman has always said not to mind other children at school when they tease me, and that I am the smartest, and the best, forever and ever, amen.

“Forget what I always say,” says the woman. “You need to learn respect.”

“Respect for what? For you?”

“God forbid!” She turns her back and hacks at a loaf of bread with a butcher knife. It isn’t as big as the butcher knife I’ve stolen, though. I can’t wait to kill Jarek Jaskolka and leave this place, I think. Again I wish that the woman would be my person to kill. But she isn’t. I am pretty sure of that by now.

“And you, Waldemar,” the woman says when she turns around. “Who stole your candy? Why are you frowning like a lost little child?”

Waldemar looks sad with his soupspoon in his fist. He won’t look at me. He takes a chunk of bread from the woman and doesn’t answer.

“Did you do something?” the woman asks me. “Did you hurt my special boy?”

“I would never do anything to hurt Waldemar. Why would I? I love him the most.”

“Sometimes you can be rough, Urszula. You don’t show love the best way. When was the last time you did something nice for me? When was the last time you said ‘thank you’?”

Waldemar stands and leaves the table.

“Waldemar, come back, please. Your soup will get cold,” the woman says gently.

“Let him go,” I tell her. “He’s crying because of those marks you showed us. He thinks it’s his fault. But it’s yours.”

I really think I am just so smart.

The woman sits and lowers her face so that it is dark and sad and I can see her spirit rise up a little from her body, like it doesn’t want to be here either, like it has some better place to go.

“Jarek Jaskolka,” I say softly, reaching my hand out to touch the woman’s soft knee under the table.

“Ach!” she says, flinching. The legs of her chair scrape on the floor as she pushes herself away. “Pest,” she calls me and stands up and goes around the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets. I think she might be looking for the iron pot I’ve hidden in the closet. But she doesn’t ask if I’ve taken it. Nor does she notice her big butcher knife is gone. She puts the bread in the bread box and takes my bowl of soup away, spills it in the sink, unties her apron, and goes and stands by the window, staring out at nothing, it seems, just the darkness between the trees.

? ? ?

That night I have a dream about the old magician in the town square. He is showing me his tricks. “Like so,” he grumbles and shakes into my hand a pile of little pellets. When I drop them on the ground, they explode into puffs of smoke. “These are made from moonstones,” he says. He points up into the dark night sky. “You see that darkness? And you see the moonlight? There isn’t one without the other.” I guess I say some thing to show an interest in how his magic is possible, even though I know it’s just a sham. “You’re just a little child,” he says. “Why are you so concerned with what you don’t yet know?”

I wake up, and there is Waldemar sleeping in his bed beside me. It is very dark and quiet in the room. The woman is asleep in her bed on the other side of the wall. I can hear her snoring. At night, the noise from her nose is like a locomotive chugging. We are used to it. I think the noise from her nose is so enormous because her brain wants to take a train far away from here. I know she isn’t happy. She likes Waldemar but she doesn’t like me. It seems well enough that I leave this place. It will make her happy, I feel, if I leave. But it will make Waldemar so sad.

As quietly as I can, I drag the big pot of berries from the closet and take it to the kitchen. I light a fire on the stove and set the pot on the flame and drag a chair to the stove so I can stand on it and stir the berries. I pour a cup of sugar in and stir and listen to the berries singe and steam. The only light comes from a few lone stars through the darkened windows and the blue fire from the burner. “Jarek, this is for you,” I say under my breath and inhale the poison-berry smell. My brain is comforted a little by the smell. My eyes are drowsy. But I keep stirring. I feel sad there all alone in the dark kitchen. I wish Waldemar were here to help me. This is my last night on Earth, I think to myself. And here I am, toiling over the stove like the woman does all day. “Ha.” I laugh. Because my cooking seems funny suddenly, like I am making fun of the woman and her stupid life. I keep stirring. When the berries are all melted and smashed and mixed with the sugar, I spoon them up into one of the old glass jars the woman keeps on the shelf for her own jams and jellies. I switch off the stove, put the chair back by the kitchen table, take my jar in one hand, and drag the dirty pot back to my room, where Waldemar is still sleeping. In all that ruckus, nothing can be heard in the house but the locomotive engine, the woman snoring her way far away from here. I hide the dirty pot in the closet again. The jar of poison jam in my hands is hot. I get back into bed and let the jar cool on my nightstand. I sleep a little, but I don’t have any more dreams.