1. The Pilgrimage
Around Thanksgiving when you’re a kid, you are subjected to every pilgrim story in the book. I don’t remember most of them very well, but I do remember that when I was about nine, my daycare teacher read us one story with an entirely new take on the idea of pilgrimness. The main character was a little girl who had to make a pilgrim doll for class, and for some reason that I don’t remember anymore, she was having a hard time with the assignment. On the night before it was due, when it seemed like this girl wasn’t going to have anything to turn in the next day, her mom helped her out by constructing a curvaceous doll with soft yellow hair wearing a long full skirt. The daughter protested that it didn’t look anything like the skinny drab pilgrims whose pictures she’d seen in books, and the mom said no, that this was what she had looked like when she came to America from Germany as a young woman. The daughter took the doll to school, scared it would be scorned as not a real pilgrim, and this was in fact just what her classmates did. But Miss Stikley, the teacher, understood, and told her students that pilgrims come in all shapes and sizes.
I’ve met immigrants since hearing that story, but never thought I’d become one, a modern-day pilgrim myself, much less in Europe where the “original” pilgrims came from. But here I am, here we both are, having gone east to start over. The fact that Izabela is originally from here doesn’t stop us from being pilgrims together. We may not have come to Poland for religious freedom, but we both came here to do what we couldn’t easily do at home -- find jobs that would enable us to have a nice life together. Of course there have been challenges -- crazy heating stoves, overbearing plumbers, goofy banks, and other bizarre surprises. But ever since Izabela started teaching Polish students about the concept of the American Dream last spring, we’ve realized how much those same ideas apply to us.
2. Declaring Independence
For a queer lady, getting a two-year stay card in Poland isn’t so much a straightforward affair as a process resembling a computer game. For a straight girl it would have been easy -- just get married -- you’ll be approved for sure. But as part of a gay couple and someone not enriching the Polish economy on the level of a business tycoon, you have to be a little craftier. At first, Izabela and I thought that if I opened my own small language school, the situation would be solved. But even once I became a Fulbright scholar, out plan didn’t turn out to be a guarantee of success. My little business didn’t generate enough cash flow to impress the emigration office, and the Fulbright scholarship would only last a year. Our sense of control over the situation was rapidly dwindling. We had labored over starting the business, put painstaking effort into my Fulbright application, and even though both plans had succeeded in their own ways, my visa was causing us some suspense.
The most important factor in the visa process is the caseworker. Izabela and I, with our wild imaginations, came up with all kinds of personalities for the man before we met him. “I hope he’s not a sectarian,” I said. “What if he has a disability too? Or what if he’s gay?” But our first encounter brought us to panic. We had just spent a month collecting all kinds of documents, beginning with my fingerprints and ending with the criminal background check from the Oakland Police Department. Most of these documents had to be translated and the fees mounted up. We managed to meet the deadline only to receive a letter from the immigration office with a long list of documents they still needed to see. In response, we wrote a letter of complaint and faxed it to both the governor and the immigration office. What followed was a heated discussion between Izabela and our caseworker.
“The rental agreement for Miss Lamar’s school that you signed appears fraudulent,” he said. “The 5 zł total for the month is neither realistic nor comparable with what’s on the market.”
At our last visit to the office we discovered that because we weren’t blood relatives, we were required to sign an official rental agreement. Izabela, exasperated, put in 5 zł, equaling about 2 dollars, as my monthly payment. Our caseworker thought this ridiculous.
“Of course, it’s ridiculous, “ said Izabela. “I’ll tell you why!”
“I’m not interested in your opinions unless Miss Lamar signs yet another document adding you to her case.”
“You will allow me to tell you anyway! We are a gay couple, and you want us to sign a document that pronounces us strangers to each other. If anyone is at fault, it is the state that obliterates our living situation.”
“Do I know you from somewhere?” He interrupted Izabela. “Aren’t you this writer I’ve seen lecturing recently?”
In the end, we couldn’t believe our luck. Pan Zaremba was exactly my age, a doctoral candidate in law, a huge fan of Izabela’s work, affiliated with our favorite publishing house; he spoke English and had all the vibrancy of a theater actor. This quality explains his embodying the role of a mean official. When he discovered that this really was the same Izabela Filipiak he had read, pan, or Mister, Zaremba was thrilled, and together, he and his boss came up with a plan.
In the history of gay partnership in Poland, our relationship is unique. Many gay Polish couples leave Poland -- not the other way around. Since I’m not a citizen of the European Union, I can’t stay here based on its immigration laws. Essentially, the chances of a non-EU citizen and a Polish person advocating for partnership rights in Poland are minuscule. According to Izabela, no one from any country outside the EU would dare come here seeking such a thing. Still, pan Zaremba and his boss utilized one particular EU law to process my visa, which states that families (key word) of Polish citizens, have the right to remain in Poland. When Izabela explained this, I was bewildered. “I can’t believe we’re getting away with being called a family,” I said.
“We’re only able to because pan Zaremba found this interpretation when he studied the rulings of the European Tribunal in Strassburg,” Izabela said. “In another caseworker’s hands, that law could be interpreted quite differently.”
Our job now was to declare, in front of pan Zaremba, that we would legalize our relationship, the thing that made us a family, as soon as Poland would allow it. But first we each had to answer a series of questions, separately, to prove that we really were together. I was required to have a translator, and for this task we invited Marek, our boss at the university and close friend, to come along.
Going through the test that is the emigration office is a process from which every couple could benefit. Dorota, the interrogator, took us into her office one at a time, asking us an almost identical series of questions. Her voice was gentle and steady—the voice of a kind pastor. She wanted to know the hard facts—how did we meet? Where was Izabela living then? And she wanted the story filled in too—did I know I would stay in Poland the first time I came? How did we address each other? What did we do on our last birthday? And she had a few extra questions for me—would I have less time for Izabela and for myself once I started teaching at the university? Since I had a disability, did I go out alone, or did someone go with me? Both she and Marek apologized for the last question, but I didn’t mind.
Adair Lara, my favorite writing teacher, said that the purpose of a memoir was to express the emotional truth, and this was what the questions on Dorota’s list had really brought into the light. The surface of our life had been pealed back and here was our story, fragile and surprising even to me and with a life all its own. I just wanted to keep talking. Marek had translated sentence by sentence, with the exception of my whispers “I wonder why she is asking this?”, and not until some time later did I learn that even without his help, she’d understood every word. I was surprised, but I knew that having a translator was the rule.
After the interviews, Izabela, Marek and I returned to Dorota’s office together. Dorota seemed happy and a little nervous. “I’ve never done this before,” she said.
I didn’t know what she meant, but Izabela did. “Marek, you do it,” she said.
Marek cleared his throat. “Izabela. Do you promise to marry Lilly-Marie whenever gay marriage becomes legal here which will hopefully be soon?”
“Yes.” Her voice was steady and excited at the same time.
“Lilly-Marie. Do you promise to marry Izabela whenever gay marriage becomes legal here which will hopefully be soon?”
“I do.” And that was that. Independence was on its way.
3. Revolution
Up to now, the visa process had remained a solitary experience. We were thrilled to be considered a family by the emigration office, but we hadn’t thought of what a revelation this would be to someone else. It was our new friends, Marta Konarzewska and Piotr Pacewicz, who helped shape our most recent adventure into its own story. Marta and Piotr were working on a book titled Forbidden Loves. The title referred not to the Madonna song, but to a classic Polish movie, Forbidden Songs, which showed how people risked their lives to preserve songs forbidden by the Nazis. The stories in the book may not have sounded forbidden to us, but to the average reader here in Poland, stories of a Catholic priest and a woman from a small town, a mixed-race couple, a relationship that included transgender people, and even ladies like us, might be considered examples of forbidden romance.
When Piotr and Marta heard about the decision by the immigration office, they were fascinated, and asked if they could include the story in their book. We were pleased -- honored even. But this news was significant for reasons that were more elusive, harder to pinpoint at first glance. Until now we had been the newcomers, strangers, displaced even though we had jobs and a home. When we first got here, I didn’t know that you aren’t charged for calls received on a cell phone, Izabela didn’t know the price of vegetables, and neither of us had friends. For a year we had listened, observed, and tried to comprehend what felt like a new culture even for Izabela in many ways. But now here we were, accounted for on paper, a part of someone else’s project. Gazeta Wyborcza, the national Polish newspaper where Piotr was a vice editor-in-chief, wanted to publish an article about my visa adventure. Everything was becoming possible all at once.
The only person we were worried about was pan Zaremba. He was an important part of the story, but we weren’t sure whether he’d be able to have his name mentioned in print. It was only after telling him about the book that we realized how big a risk he would take by publicly associating himself with the decision about my visa. Apparently, not everyone in the emigration office was so sympathetic. Not only could pan Zaremba and his boss lose their jobs—they could have their reputations so tarnished that neither of them would be able to work in government anymore. Izabela worried about his doctoral exams because some of his professors might not be impressed with his stroke of genius. Still, when pan Zaremba asked us not to write about the decision at all, I felt like gritting my teeth. I wasn’t angry with him—he was the one who had made my visa happen at all. But that didn’t stop me from being frustrated. “I feel like a little kid who’s been given a really cool toy for Christmas but can’t show it to her friends,” I said to Izabela. “I don’t mean to sound like a six-year-old, but it’s not fair. What’s the point if we can’t help create change for other people?”
Apparently, pan Zaremba must have been processing along the same lines because soon he got in touch again and said that yes, we could publish the story, but not to include his name. We understood this and were even relieved to know that he’d be able to safely keep his job and spare his doctorate after he’d been so kind. It was around this time that Izabela and I became friends with him on Facebook, and that was when we discovered that he too was gay. We were euphoric! We had a gay caseworker. How could we ever have thought he was mean? We’re just relieved he isn’t risking his job.
But the next thing we knew, pan Zaremba had a conversation with the authors of Forbiden Loves. “He sounded like a warrior,” Piotr said. Pan Zaremba had told him to go ahead and quote him in print.
“Pan Zaremba,” I wrote on Facebook, “please don’t feel like you need to do this for us. We’d love to have your name next to ours in this book, but we want you to be okay. I hope you’ll think about it really carefully before you make your final decision.” But pan Zaremba stood firm, and even Dorota, our kind interrogator, agreed to be mentioned as part of the story.
4. Homesteading in the Land of Opportunity
Last week pan Zaremba called to let me know the 2-year stay card was ready. He’d rushed it to make sure that nobody could get the chance to halt the process once Marta and Piotr’s book came out. So now I carry a California ID in the back of my wallet, and in front of it, a pink and blue striped card that explains who I am now. My passport can stay hidden at home, waiting for the next adventure, the way it used to in America.
Once, when Izabela was telling her mother about wanting to move to America in order to get ahead, her mother said, “But Poland is America. This is the place with room for chasing dreams.” It didn’t make sense at the time, but since then we’ve come to realize the truth of my late mother-in-law’s words. It’s true that in America, a child from a disadvantaged background might grow up to become a doctor. But this can only happen within the highly regulated guidelines of the American social structure. In Poland though, there is room to carve out your own niche because the country is still being transformed. Izabela and I are privileged to be the first gay couple recognized as a family, even if many people here still consider us an example of “forbidden love.”
On Thanksgiving, about 30 people will somehow squeeze into our apartment. We’ll get the chance to thank Marek and pan Zaremba, and everyone else who has shown us that we can claim a place here too. And if you want to know what pilgrims really look like, search out the famous caseworker with his boyfriend, and the two ladies holding hands, one carrying a pink and blue striped card.
Photo © by Agata Kubis
Today leading writer and cultural icon Izabela Maria Kitunia is contemplating running for the city board, while her little creature Lulu Smoochy Lippington tries to talk reason into her.
Kitunia: I wanna run for the board.
Lulu: You wanna run for the board? The city board?
Kitunia: Yeah!
Lulu: But you’ve always said that politicians are rotten and you had no patience for stupid people and no time. How are you going to find time?
Kitunia: I wanna run for the board.
Lulu: Are you sure?
Kitunia: Yeah!
Lulu: Ok, we’ll put you on the ballot.
Six weeks later Izabela Maria Kitunia is sworn in as an officer of the city board in Dynia, Poland.
Lulu: Now all you have to do is get up in front of all these people, stand on the stage, and make a nice speech, and you can say thank you to the mayor and the people for letting you in.
Kitunia (takes the microphone and looks at the audience): I don’t like it.
It's Saturday before noon. When the courier calls me on the home phone, I tell him to come right over. Then I remember that I haven't ordered anything recently, but it's too late. He'll be here in 15 minutes, and by then we have to come up with a plan.
Two days earlier, sitting in the kitchen with Lilly-Marie's assistant Jo, we tried to be practical about the bank matter. We had already contacted the Helsinki Foundation in Warsaw whose lawyer told us that paragraph 80 was under parliamentary consideration to be either changed or deleted. No one knew how long the process would take.
Even if we decided to take legislation into our own hands and start a private lawsuit, it would be unlikely to see the Constitutional Tribunal striking down the law within the next month.
Apparently, all we could do was cope. Jo checked the public notary fees for a signature authorization; it went for the price of a good coat or a pair of leather shoes. Outside the kitchen window sun rays frolicked in the snow covered garden. We looked unhappily at one another.
"You could set up a bank account online," Jo typed an entry into her mini laptop. "CertBank has an application on its website. It never hurts to try."
The system guided us through the electronic application form. The process, impersonal but welcoming, ended with the info that a hard copy of the contract should reach us within the next three days or so.
Jo looked up from the screen. "They send it through a courier."
Lilly-Marie looked anxious. "Do you have to sign the form in front of him?"
Jo nodded. "It's like you were going to the bank."
We didn't take it into account.
Lilly-Marie's new assistant Jo had spent the last five years in Britain. As this constitutes most of her adult life, her accent and daily habits are as British as they come. The first thing she does upon arriving here is to offer us a cup of tea. Although she tries to convince us that real British people could tell the difference, we are secretly amused by her Britishness and try to memorize, in good spirits, the funniest things she says.
“We were outside and Jo said, 'It's bloody snowing again',” I tell Lilly-Marie, and she giggles: “We were in the car, the snowstorm began, and she said, 'I want to go back to blinking England.”
This one really startles me. “Can you say it in real life?”
"Don't worry, you are halfway through," Jo said as she put the kettle on again.
"I don't know how we can possibly prevent the courier from noticing that I can't see." Lilly-Marie's face became set.
But soon we got our brains in gear. We decided that when the courier called, we'd ask him to return after dark. We'd keep the lights low and pretend that we are drunk. He'd arrive to the sight of three women having a rambunctious party; one of us would reproach Lilly-Marie for having too much to drink; the other would guide her hand; in the ensuing commotion the courier would miss the part that she had no sight.
The weekend after coming up with this plan, we go to the film screening at the humanities department. In an act of bravery, Gdańsk University decided to host an art show on the subject of the persecution of gay men under the Nazi regime. All films accompanying the opening are documentaries related to the infamous paragraph 179 which made homosexuality a criminal offense at the turn of the 20th century in Germany. The law was profusely used by dishonest individuals to blackmail gay men. In the lenient political climate right after Wold War I, gay life flourished in Berlin regardless of the law; however, once the fascist came to power, they used paragraph 179 to collect data about gay organizations, disband them, and lock up gay men in concentration camps. The saddest part was that once World War II ended, gay survivors of concentration camps never received compensation from the German government which claimed that what happened to them was in accordance with the law.
At first we indent to see only one or two movies, but in the end we stay for all of them: the documentary about Magnus Hirschfelt; an educational silent film made to support his lost fight against paragraph 179; and the most recent one, based on the interviews with gay prisoners of the camps. Few of them are still alive; the one who lives in Poland didn't agree to be interviewed.
"All these paragraphs get mixed up in my mind," Lilly-Marie tells me as we walk through the campus to the car. "I hear them saying paragraph one hundred seventy nine, and I think one hundred what? Eighty... Seventy... It feels amazingly close."
I too suffer from deja vues. We live in a country affected by the Holocaust; in the landscape and among the people whose mental makeup carries its history. We have democracy now, but what if the wrong people came to power? Once we are back home, I tell Lilly-Marie that in case we need to hide her, we'll keep her in the small room in the basement.
"Would you really hide me, dear?" she asks. "How would you keep the room from view?"
In the bedroom, the dark is never pitch black; thanks to fancy lanterns outside it is always a little gray.
"When I was in high school," she says, "I wondered about people with disabilities and the Holocaust. All I could find was half a sentence somewhere on line."
I can't bring myself to tell her what I know.
"We'd have a bookcase over the door to disguise a secret room," I say instead.
Within hours we seem to have fallen into overlapping history strands.
"Good. You'd have to give me some pastries to munch on while they look for me." She sighs. "But really, I'd be so worried about you, I'd come out to protect you."
"I know you would," I say.
"Or I hope you'd go into hiding with me. And then we'd flee to blinking England."
The courier should be over any minute since it didn't occur to me in time to give him the wrong directions to the house. It's before noon -- too early for a party, and Jo is not even here yet. I walk upstairs with no plan.
Lilly-Marie is barely out of the shower. I knock on the bathroom door and it occurs to me that when the courier arrives, she must stay put. "I'll start calling you from downstairs to come out. Then you just have to keep saying no, you are not ready."
The bathroom door opens, and my accomplice girlfriend looks attentive. "Why don't I run water when you call me first, so it will be like I couldn't even hear you."
"At some point though, come out onto the hallway; make some racket so it'll sound like you are a real person, not a recording. Talk about whatever, but no matter how much I insist on you coming downstairs, don't."
We barely manage to talk it over when the bell rings. I let the courier in. He is young and pleasant, and I have fleeting qualms about fooling him. He seems the kind of person who goes out of his way to help little kids cross the street.
As soon as the courier takes out the folder with bank documents, I call Lilly-Marie to come downstairs. She starts running water right on cue.
"Come downstairs!" I keep calling. "The man with your bank papers is here!"
I hear her opening the bathroom door. "I can't hear you!" She yells back.
The courier smiles at me reassuringly. "I'll wait."
The point is, I don't want him to wait too long.
"Lilly-Marie, what on earth are you doing?" I walk up a few stairs. "Can't you just come?"
"I can't find my towel! Have you thrown it into the wash?"
I look at the courier with sheer exasperation. "Can't I bring this form upstairs for her to sign?"
He is suddenly alert. "Can I see her passport?"
In an instant, I reach for Lilly-Marie's purse. "Where do you have your passport?" I yell to her.
"In the side pocket!"
I sense the courier's brain busily processing. We are making him do something he's been advised against a hundred times at his job orientation. I find the passport before he can change his mind. He looks at Lilly-Marie's picture, at her visa, then back at his form. Apparently there is no trick he could possibly imagine. All he sees is a typical family situation. A nice girl all tangled up getting dressed on a Friday morning. At last, he loosens up.
"Her passport and visa numbers match the numbers I have here." He points to the document. "Make sure she signs with her full name - here, there, and initials all the pages."
I rush upstairs, and we make more fuss with signing the pages. I believe the courier deserves to have a glimpse of Lilly-Marie for all his trustworthiness before he leaves. The light on the staircase is low, but my girlfriend hesitates about coming into view.
I return with the signed contract. The courier doesn't return my smile, but he lets me have our copy.
After he's gone, I run upstairs to see Lilly-Marie, and we can't believe that it worked.
The following day we call Jolanta Kramarz in Warsaw. I first notice her name in the Helsinki Foundation lawyer's note. One paragraph mentions the woman who won a lawsuit against a supermarket chain Carrefour when they didn't let her enter the store with a guide dog. The lawyer quotes this as a successful example of challenging the status quo. I google her and find out that Jolanta is the president of Vis Maior, the foundation she created to support the rights of people who can't see.
"Paragraph 80 is about to be repealed," Jolanta asserts what the Helsinki Foundation lawyer told us."It's just passed through the Senat. If the president doesn't veto the change, it will be gone. However, any legislation needs six months to be implemented." Lilly-Marie and I are huddled in the living room with the phone on speaker between us.
"The majority of people without vision are used to discrimination and cannot imagine their lives any other way," Jolanta says. "However, they all complain about the bank law."
"Good," Lilly-Marie nods.
Jolanta doesn't feel comfortable speaking in English, so I translate what she says and leave time for Lilly-Marie to ask questions.
"The law particularly affects couples where both people have no sight," Jolanta continues in her warm, self-assured voice. "Because the law makes your signature invalid, so there always has to be a third party involved."
"How do you manage the foundation then?" Lilly-Marie asks.
"Many institutions avoid this problem by not putting people without sight on the board. Our foundation however, has only people with no vision or limited vision in decision-making positions. Whenever we go to an office and sign documents, clerks advise us to bring a sighted person along. But we return and do the same thing again."
At times, I must interrupt Jolanta to translate. As she talks, I'm afraid I'll lose or obliterate certain things due to their awfulness.
"It isn't only a legal hindrance," Jolanta continues. "It's a social issue as well. When I appeared in a TV program, I was supposed to sign a release. The TV people handed the document to a sighted woman who accompanied me to sign. They were surprised when my companion proceeded to read the document to me."
I notice Lilly-Marie fidgeting next to me.
"I understand that you wanted to speak about the banks," Jolanta says.
We decided not to mention our most recent development with CertBank and focus on Citibank instead. We have already written to Jolanta about how Citibank demanded that Lilly-Marie produce a plenipotentiary to bank with them.
"Many banks and other institutions expect a person without sight to have a plenipotentiary," Jolanta says, "even though Polish law doesn't require it. The legal responsibilities are designed to be shared equally on paper; however, once a plenipotentiary is established, no one pays attention to the person without sight anymore."
Caught up in translating, I can't even react.
"Last year I bought an apartment, the wanted to established a plenipotentiary for me as well! Only when I threatened them with the Helsinki Foundation, did they give in. The general consensus is that a person without sight shouldn't buy an apartment on her own."
Lilly-Marie looks sick.
"The person who negatively affected the situation of sightless people," Jolanta continues in her clear, even tone, "was the president of Związek Niewidomych, the Union of People Who Can't See. Some time back in the 90s, he defrauded large sums of money. He was eventually charged and claimed he didn't know what documents he signed."
"He should be shot," Lilly-Marie mutters.
"Basically, he took advantage of the already existing prejudice in this matter," Jolanta says. "The court believed him and he was let off with a warning."
Jolanta seems used to public speaking. A psychologist by profession, she became interested in law as as a tool for affecting accessibility. She has a vision of people without sight promoting their own representatives in the Polish parliament. She is dismayed to hear that there are no such politicians in the US Congress. Her most recent project is to create Academy of Leaders through her foundation in Warsaw, to teach networking skills and train future representatives for parliament.
Jolanta also wants to apply legal pressure to institutions. This, she believes, should happen with the banks.
"Paragraph 80 existed for so many years and no one paid attention to it. People without sight opened bank accounts with no problem," Jolanta says. "Only when it became known, did the banks begin to abuse it."
"Why would they do this?" Lilly-Marie asks.
"It's quite a recent phenomenon. They have just grown meaner. Out of all of them, CertBank is the worst."
Instead of translating, I gasp. "CertBank?"
"Although their internet website is the most accessible, they have already refused to open bank accounts for at least two people without sight."
I make myself translate this despite my brain going numb. "Refused? Just like that?"
"A person without sight fills out the application on line. Then a courier delivers a bank contract to her house..."
"Right," I say.
"A courier is obliged to report anyone without sight trying to open an account."
"Oh," Lilly-Marie squeezes my hand.
"Even if such a person signs the document in front of a courier, she never gets to open an account. As to the third person, CertBank opened her account and then blocked her access to her own funds!"
We try to sound interested but detached. "Really?"
"And she had two salaries coming to her account! In the end, CertBank settled with her outside of court and gave her a small reimbursement."
Jolanta seems particularly happy to hear from Lilly-Marie. She wants to know about everything: laws, accessibility, the perception of people without sight in US society.
"People here often ask me how issues such as mine are perceived in the West," she says. "I tell them that even if I faced just as much discrimination in the West, the point is to fight."
After the conversation ends, we sit on the couch for a while without moving.
"So our kind, helpful courier was in fact obligated by CertBank to report you," I say. "How dreadful."
"I was sorry I didn't want to show myself to him," Lilly-Marie says. "But I feared that if I had my face at the wrong angle, he'd guess something was wrong and tell me to come down."
"You begin to sound like a Jew," I notice.
"Why?"
"I remember hearing about this in many stories from the war, like a refrain." We sit in the living room facing Edward Munch's poster; it shows a woman vampire bending over her victim. The painting exudes the fear of the feminine but it has good proportions. "Someone would be afraid to come out into the light because their face would appear at the wrong angle and someone else might guess they were Jewish."
A few days later, I receive an email from Związek Niewidomych, the Union of People Who Can't See. I must have emailed them before speaking to Jolanta, but I'm glad to hear from them because their email answers another one of our concerns. Paragraph 80, the email explains, applies only to documents establishing new legal entities, like bank accounts. But it doesn't apply to all instances when a signature is required to confirm somebody's identity, such as picking up mail at the post office.
In addition, it is comforting to find out that we haven't actually broken the law by signing the contract with CertBank.
"Flouting Paragraph 80 is not a criminal offense," I share my most recent insight with Lilly-Marie. "It belongs to the Civil Code."
Jolanta confirms this further at our most recent conversation.
"You are under no legal obligation to reveal that you have no vision," she tells Lilly-Marie. "There is no law that makes you do this."
Still, due to CertBank's reputation, it feels like we are winning.
There are certain rituals that go along with getting settled in any new place. In Poland, one of these consists of getting your zameldowanie, a piece of paper issued by City Hall showing your official place of residence. Getting this thing was a breeze—pop into City Hall, and a few minutes later here I am, officially a resident at Izabela’s family home.
Another ritual involves opening a bank account. Before trying to open one for me, Izabela had done some in depth research. We needed a bank with an automated phone system, English-speaking representatives and, preferably, one that issued checks. We eventually gave up the check requirement when it became clear that in the process of the democratic transition banks lost interest in them.
Citibank looked like the perfect solution. Izabela banked with them too, and had only good things to say about the people who worked in our small, local branch. They seemed friendly on the phone, and I looked forward to all the mundane banking tasks which had bored me in the States, but here would provide me a measure of independence I craved. I had only been in Poland a couple weeks, but already I was missing the simple freedom of being able to speak for myself in public. I couldn’t wait to start banking right away.
As Izabela had promised, pani Marta at Citibank was the perfect mix of friendliness and professionalism, the kind of banker who could walk you through a complicated lone application without a hitch. If Izabela and I ever thought of opening a joint account, or buying another house, I planned on working with her. It was only after chatting away for ten minutes in English when we hit a snag.
“I don’t know whether we can accept your signature since you can’t see,” said pani Marta, “at least, not without getting it notarized.”
“Notaries are expensive here,” said Izabela to me. She turned to pani Marta, “Are you sure this is required?”
Pani Marta had a quick conference with her supervisor. She returned, seeming anxious. “I’m so sorry to be telling you this, but I’ll have to ask you to come back tomorrow if that’s convenient. My boss doesn’t know the answer to the signature question either, and I’ll have to make some phone calls.”
I could see she was embarrassed.
“But you could read me the documents,” I said. “That’s how they do it in the States, and it works fine.”
She took a breath about to talk, and I felt that something was brewing. In the end, we agreed to meet at 1 the next afternoon.
As soon as my assistant Ola and I walked through the front door of Citibank the next day, Pani Marta rushed out to meet us. She must have been keeping watch and sounded as if she wished she could usher us right back out again.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” she said. “I was hoping to reach you to tell you there was no point inconveniencing yourselves by coming in.” Her tone shifted from frantic to apologetic as she talked.
Then she switched to Polish, speaking to my assistant at length. Why was she doing this? What made her forget her English all of a sudden?
“Pani Marta is saying that Citibank can’t accept your signature,” Ola translated at last. “To have an account here, you would have to sign a release in front of a notary, giving someone else permission to sign your bank documents for you.”
I felt disoriented. All of a sudden I was facing an alternative: either I'd be dependent on the whims of someone else for the rest of my life, or I'd never have a bank account. There was no question I'll choose the latter. But this decision instantly set me apart from everyone else, bankless and alienated. I'd be walking down the streets and looking normal; and no one will guess that I'm a different species.
An alien or not, it wouldn’t do me any good standing here. Feigning composure, I turned to pani Marta. Maybe Ola had translated wrong. Maybe I’d missed something. Pani Marta would tell her news to me.
“So you’re saying that in order to bank with you, I would have to visit a notary, with someone else, and give her permission to sign everything related to my account? And I’d have to bring that person along every time I came in here. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
I paused. “And even if someone did agree to this, would the bank pay for the notary?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
When Ola and I got home and told Izabela the news, she called the bank to confirm. Pani Marta, who had been kind until now, finally turned shappish saying that such was the law in Poland and there was nothing she could do about it.
The law? So it wasn't just the whim of Citibank. I had known I’d meet with new challenges in Poland, but that premonition didn’t make what Citibank had said any less surprising. The question of whether my signature is valid had never been raised before, and, as I knew full well, would never pass the scrutiny of the many disability rights groups in America.
But here paragraph 80 was meant to trip me up. If this was Polish law, it meant that I really couldn’t have an account anywhere. So what would happen when I got a job? There would be tricky to explain this situation to a boss.
Izabela then spoke to the banks manager, who, to our relief, was supportive, and appalled at the situation. He suggested that we write a letter of complaint addressed to him, which he would send on to Citibank’s main office in Warsaw. The next day, I did just that.
In my letter, I started from the beginning and treated the unpleasant experience as a story. I told Citibank I had chosen them because they could assist me in English; I explained how the armory of the notaries and the plenipotentiary came into view instead; I concluded by telling them why my having an account there wasn’t feasible as long as these policies were in place.
I also included the information that after examining paragraph 80 of the Civil Code, the law upon which Citibank’s policy is apparently founded, I discovered that a plenipotentiary is not, as Citibank stated, required by the Polish government for me to maintain a bank account. Instead, the law only necessitates that an individual without sight, upon opening an account, must have her signature notarized.
In the end, I requested that City Bank reconsider its policy regarding customers without vision. I said: "Though it may have been designed to protect a customer who cannot see, it leaves the same person legally incapacitated in terms of her own money. It also invites financial abuse of her by the person serving as power of attorney. Furthermore, the policy, in my case and in that of others I am sure, is outmoded." I said that as a self-supporting, productive member of society, I was entitled to exercise my own discretion with regard to money as any other working person would. Again, I requested that Citibank reconsider.
The bank manager had told us to expect an answer within three weeks to a month. When, after five weeks, we still hadn’t heard anything, we wrote again. We also sent a letter to the Helsinki Foundation, who handles cases of discrimination. It was only then that Citibank in Warsaw, who must have decided I might not have given up, picked another bank, or left the country, got in touch.
The woman who called my cell phone said that the bank had sent a reply to my letter, and that I could expect it within two days. I thanks her and wished her a happy holiday. Christmas was less than a week away, and this banking debacle wasn't personal.
When I arrived home that same afternoon, Izabela told me Citibank had phoned the house too.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I thought back. No, I hadn't given them our home phone number.
“They phoned to talk to me,” said Izabela. “I told the man he needed to talk to you and he said, ‘but didn’t you sign the letter too?’ I told him that yes, I had signed the Polish copy as a translator, but that this was your financial business and he should speak to you. He said, ‘I need to speak to her?’”
I couldn’t help laughing in spite of the situation.
“Next time,” I said, “you should tell him that no, speaking to me won’t work, he should just communicate in Morse Code. That aught to make things easier for everybody.”
Another ten days passed before the promised letter arrived.
Surprised by how nervous I was when Izabela finally brought the letter in from the mailbox, I folded my shawl over the back of the kitchen chair.
Whenever I get particularly nervous, I force myself to think of something funny about the situation. There had been a girl named Emma in my class at school whom we hadn’t liked because she was a tattle tale. Her mom had worked at Citibank, so whenever we passed the place as kids, we all made silly, kid-like comments. “Okay,” I told myself. “This letter is nothing to worry about—it’s just a piece of mail from the place Emma’s mom works—no big deal.” Sitting at the table, Izabela opened the letter and began to read:
Dear Madame, we respectfully inform you that in accordance with Bank Law, the contract regarding the bank account has to be signed in the written form.
In addition, it is necessary to explain that according to the Civil Code, when a person who cannot read has to give a statement of will in writing (which, in this case, is the bank account contract), it has to be given in the form of the public notary act.
As a result, Citibank in Warsaw offered to sign a bank contract between the bank and the person with no vision under the public notary act.
There also exist a possibility of establishing a plenipotentiary by a person who cannot see, who, in the name of the patron, will sign a contract with the bank under the public notary act. This means that a person who cannot see can endow the plenipotentiary with the right to sign a bank contract without giving him access to the account itself.
We hope that these solutions will satisfy your expectations.
Sincerely, signed and dated December 14, 2009
At first, I was too stunned to catch the meaning of the words. Luckily, I wasn't alone. Izabela held me, sat me down, and handed me hot spiced cider pouring it into my favorite, depression glass cup. I studied the rough and smooth texture of its flowers, glad that this beautiful thing had come all the way from California.
It was ten minutes before I was able to channel what we had read. The letter contained two important facts. First, Citibank had lied. In person, they had insisted that the plenipotentiary would have to continuously sign documents related to the account, Here, they claimed that it was only a matter of signing a single bank contract. Second, and most crucial, they defined me as illiterate. Now, I know that talking computers and audio books are new inventions, relatively speaking. But Braille has been around for over a hundred years. I have read Braille since the age when other kids started reading print. Within minutes, I laughed.
“Well, Izabela, sorry to tell you—you have an illiterate for a girlfriend!”
Izabela tucked the letter into the special Citibank folder. "I wonder how you got a Master's in English."
One day in the middle of January I packed before sunrise to drive to my mother's house. I took a set of keys she had given me in the summer, but unsure if they would work, I also took pliers and a crowbar with me. I had been calling mother for a while and dismissed a vision of her and her little dog turn into icicles amidst the clutter of her living room. When in the end she picked up the phone on Monday, she didn't sound good at all.
"I wish I could just go to the hospital and lay down there," she said.
For my mother, fiercely independent at 83, this was surely the sign of something going wrong.
"Then let's," I said.
But when prompted, she declined to give it more thought. She couldn't leave. "Who's going to look after the house and the dog?"
By the evening, she was ready to give in. "Take me away from here. Take me away," she repeated, "as soon as you can."
But it snowed heavily throughout Monday, and reports of cars driving off roads and trains stuck on their tracks abounded. On Tuesday morning the status of intercity roads was uncertain, and I still had to teach. I went to retrieve her on Wednesday morning.
Before leaving, I called my mother's preferred cab driver and reserved him around noon. The drive was sunny, smooth, and uneventful; snowploughs having done their work, men in orange vests took their turn to shovel icy gruel off the paid highway. Once in Gniew, my mother's crummy town, I left my car in the parking lot and moved to the friendly cabdriver's car. I felt safer not having to deal with this alone. Surely no snowploughs ever cleaned the dirt road to mother's house.
The keys fitted the locks, and once we located the balcony door, our entrance was smooth. I was relieved to see mother standing upright to greet us, even if she looked like a shipwrecked mariner. I couldn't tell the exact temperature in the house, but I preferred not to take my coat off. When I went to the main entrance, I saw foodstuffs -- eggs, butter, bread, and mushroom croquettes, all frozen-solid on the staircase. We quickly packed mother's coats and sweaters, and the driver took her down the stairs. Her dog, a fluffy unruly mutt joined us. Once back at the parking lot, I took on the whole circus: my shell-shocked mother, the Ikea bags full of her stuff, and the dog with a bad eye infection. As neither passengers nor cargo had any recent experience of washing, we drove down the highway in a stupefying stench.
Once home, by the evening I managed to talk mother into changing her clothes; four days later I washed her hair over the kitchen sink, to the accompaniment of her cries, and within days she regained her retired queen's looks. The little dog never made inside; I took it to the dogs' shelter. Whatever was wrong with my mother, I had no doubt it would be as much as I could handle. For the first day or two she seemed fine, and I requested a home visit from the local clinic only to be on a safe side. The doctor ordered blood tests first, and the nurse visited the following Tuesday. In the meantime, we enjoyed being together.
Mother instantly liked Lilly-Marie, and the sentiment was reciprocated. "She is so beautiful, so gentle," mother would sing the praises of my girlfriend each time we entered the living room turned mother's bedroom. "She's so cool," Lilly-Marie chimed. "Krolewna, little princess, little queen," mother chanted. "You are the krolowa, the big queen," Lilly-Marie would respond. She was delighted to learn that mother's name, Jadwiga, really came from a medieval Polish queen, the only independent female ruler in a dull chain of kings. They crossed over the language barrier with my help as a translator; in time, mother recalled a few English words and Lilly-Marie gladly threw in a few Polish ones. At last, they created some kind of parlance.
"Ona rozumie everything," Lilly-Marie would praise my mother's intuition.
"I understand," my mother would confirm in English.
At other times they would succumb to silence, holding hands and gazing at each other in pleasure and wonder.
"So you are going to live together," mother asked and waited for me to confirm. I nodded. "You have the beauty and talent. And you are going to write books."
The latter was said mostly to me, but so far mother knew only the "beautiful" aspect of Lilly-Marie. We all exuded happiness, and mother relaxed into her new role of my private agent.
I recall having a childhood fantasy of rescuing my mother from dangers; now at last it had come true and mother acknowledged me as her savior. Each time I entered the room, she thanked her lucky stars. "You are a Messiah," she'd tell me, "who led his people over the Red Sea." At other times she mixed Old and New Testament and made me into both Mosses and Christ, crossing religious divisions. Lilly-Marie had her place in this new theodicy, too.
"You are a Messiah, and she is young," mother informed us.
"Since your mother's arrival," Lilly-Marie observed, "we've become one Iza-centric household."
But I answered this would never happen without mother becoming first enchanted with Lilly-Marie's grace and refinement.
"Iza is going to take care of us both," mother told my girlfriend who eagerly nodded. "She is going to keep us safe through the winter."
Only when I managed to improve her looks over the weekend, mother grew anxious.
"I'm going to the hospital for tests soon, and what will happen then?" she reproached me, leaning on the living room table. "Who's this woman, the doctors will ask. They'll all be after me."
Unsure of how serious she was, I pointed out that there will be mostly women doctors there. But mother didn't seem to care.
"They always wanted to rape me," she said.
Sunbeams, reflected in the snow outside, kept leaping at us from the window. I was stunned by how lucid she seemed. "Who did?"
"The men were always after me. Once I worked in this clinic in the countryside. I hitchhiked from one village to another. A man stopped, took me into his car, took me into the woods, and had his way with me. Another time I was on a cruise and this man dragged me into his cabin."
"But that must have happened much later, in the eighties." I noticed, and she nodded.
"We were drinking that night with another doctor and my sister was there, too," mother continued. "I hoped she'd wonder where I was. But she didn't notice anything."
"Did you know this man?" I asked.
Mother used to go on cruises to Sankt Petersburg not to visit, but bring home Russian gold. Gold rings could be bought at the price of the angora sweaters she carried in her suitcase. She was then just over fifty. Her passion for cruises stopped suddenly; thus ending her brief career as a smuggler.
"I didn't know him at all." Her voice grew soft. "These were not hostile, big drama rapes. I was not beaten up. These were friendly rapes. Men liked me and wanted to have a piece of me. It was in their nature."
I shot her my I-doubt-it look. If anyone was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, it was my mother. She was good-looking, with a statuesque figure and the kind of beauty which was supposed to command respect; in addition, she had brains and was fun to be with. Why couldn't they admire her at a distance?
She shrugged, exasperated. "There was always someone on my back."
Over the weekend, instead of gaining strength, mother appeared to be losing it; when the doctor visited on Thursday, she could barely sit up. The doctor, a serious lady in plain, square glasses, prescribed further hospital tests. She pointed to the growth on my mother's back the size of a tennis ball.
I noticed it too while giving mother a sponge bath at the sink but didn't think much of it. Old people tend to have strange buildups on their bodies. But I worried about the return of her cancer from 2002 and noticed she was barely able to eat.
More concerning, however, was the strange development in her legs. Within the next day or to, she was no longer to sit up or even turn in her bed. I called the dispatchers early on Sunday and insisted she'd be taken to the hospital at once. The paramedics were doubtful.
"On Sunday we come only for emergencies," one of them said, "and this doesn't look like one."
The scariest part of becoming an old person is that at some point people may assume your ailments are just "part of aging." When I told the paramedic that only a month earlier mother was
fully independent, he said, "I have no reason not to believe you" in a tone signifying disbelief.
In the end, the disgruntled paramedics had no choice but to drive us as requested. The immediate blood tests proved my anxiety to be well founded; mother had developed a serious kidney inflammation. She was instantly hooked up to IV-drips, and all her other tests took place in the following days.
Still, if had lost the power to move my lower body, I hope someone would notice. I'm still of an age when people become concerned if something suddenly goes wrong. But when on the forth day of mother's stay at the hospital I asked the young doctor why mother's legs were numb, she gave me a shocked look.
All dots connected once mother's more extensive tests arrived. The tumor had spread like a belt and leaked into her spinal cord. The paralysis must have begun a week or two before she arrived at our house, and, if anything, had its origins in my mother's scorn of any medical intrusion in her life. Her past chemotherapy having ended in full recovery, mother never visited a doctor since. She dismissed the idea of check-ups and regular tests. About to reproach myself that I didn't press her any harder, I spoke to her best friend, pani Stasia, who lived in Gniew and whom mother visited for dinner at least every other week.
"I tried to reason with her many times," pani Stasia said. "But in the end, I had to hide from her that I was seeing a doctor myself lest your mother try to talk me out of it. Why do you need a doctor? she'd say. What will he do for you?"
Mother spent two weeks at the general ward, with four other patients in the room. She submitted to often strenuous tests without disputing them; a good soldier, she understood that medical procedures don't have to be pleasant. She praised the nurses, whenever she had a chance, and to the doctors she told the stories from the time when she roamed the countryside a member of a Medical Transport Unit and then worked as a doctor in this same hospital.
"I'm changing gender," she declared every time I proceeded shave her, which made the patient in the opposite bed rock with laughter.
Being afraid of changes, she feared her transfer to the oncology department; once there, she relaxed and again seemed to enjoy her stay.
Now she had only one roommate, a kind dressmaker thirty years her junior. Mother took pains to remind her to not walk or eat too fast. When we visited together, mother was pleased to see Lilly-Marie wearing a butterfly brooch. It was the brooch Lilly-Marie wore on the day they first met, encrusted with zirconias. Girlfriend and mother share the same sense of fashion.
"We should have Iza buy you a red hat," mother informed Lilly-Marie, and remembered to advice me before we left, "Watch out for her, so she wouldn't trip in the snow."
The more comfortable she felt, the more she inquired about her little dog. I also told her that he was doing great and that his eye had completely healed, which please her to no end and could even be true. The shelter worker told me the little dog was going to visit a veterinarian the following day.
There is something about this particular cancer that makes me hear the echo of my mother's words. Now indeed there is always someone on her back, as if the cancer could serve as a metaphor for a rapist. In my mother's life story, these two seem interchangeable. Could it be that this was why she refused to see a doctor? She wouldn't submit her body to strangers; she resisted unwelcome intrusions. Now that she had a choice, she could say no.
But it could also be her belief that she was immortal which prompted her to dismiss such mundane chores as medical tests and preventive care.
Or else, she trusted her the good luck that protected her against all odds. After all, she didn't end up an anonymous victim in the forest. Her pursuer, after the fact, kindly drove her to the desired location.
I may also be seeing things, but I can't help noticing a connection between my mother's twenty year stay in a more and more dilapidated country house and her lifelong flight from potential suitors. Her foul surroundings and never changed clothes kept them at a safe distance.
As to the men with more honorable intentions, she turned down a few marriage proposals still in her seventies.
My charming, companionable mother was so good at setting up her protective boundaries she managed to shut out people like me who wished nothing but to appreciate her. But now she is defenseless at last.
When she visited in the summer, she enjoyed going out for cappuccino and pastries in town. She seemed to appreciate sleeping in a clean bed. In fact, this is where she spent most of the first three days of her stay. On the forth day she got up and started cleaning my windows. I came to helped her, and we washed the whole row. On the fifth day she put an end to her visit. It was nice, but she had nothing to do.
"I'm not sick to spend all day in bed," she said and demanded that I drive her back to Gniew.
I tell this story to Lilly-Marie and she asks sanely, "What was your mother doing there all day?"
"I don't know," I say, and then I notice I do. She struggled.
Still, obstacles always seem to kick start my mother. When I tell her about the extend of her cancer and that it cannot be surgically removed, she isn't dismayed in the least.
"I just spoke to the doctor," I say. "Do you know that two vertebrae in your spine are completely destroyed?"
I assume she welcomes such information having once been a doctor herself.
She looks serious for a moment and then smiles with a gusto of a roulette player. "There are enough bones in my body left."
"Do you know they are giving you morphine for pain?"
"Ah, a morphinist." She looks pleased.
On New-Year’s day, I made a quick, momentous decision. I announced, on Facebook, that Izabela and I were engaged. I had had my Facebook profile only five days, and by New Year’s day, it already boasted thirty friends. Each time I came across a new friend request—a former professor, a friend I’d lost touch with, I felt a whoosh of exhilaration. Here I was, all the way in Poland, and I was in touch with more amazing California people than ever. Now I too was imbibing the magic of Facebook.
Equally exhilarating was the conversation Izabela and I had had the previous midnight. It all started with the wish she made exactly one year ago. “In 2009,” she said right after the midnight toast, “I want to get a job so I can propose to you.” Since then, the job had appeared, but what about the rest of the wish? I reminded her of it and she laughed. “Do I still need to propose?” she said. “We’re together already.”
“Of course you do.” I knew what she meant. We had already achieved a bond that included layers neither of us could have imagined one sparkly New Year’s Eve ago. Aside from dance, most of our time had been spent one on one. A year ago even being together seemed impossible. Meanwhile, we had traveled together, moved across the world together—built a life together from nothing and on our own strength. An engagement would be sweet and special, but it would mainly be an affirmation of the connection we already had—an engagement for engagement’s sake. Not only wouldn’t we be getting married any time soon, given the expense of a wedding, but in Poland, it wasn’t really an option. Still, to a Christian girl from Oklahoma like me, having your beloved actually propose is a big deal.
“Okay,” she said. “After moving to Poland, and spending a lot of time with me, would you still consider the possibility of some day marrying me?”
“I would be delighted,” I said in mock surprise, throwing my arms around her.
On New-Year’s day, preoccupied by late Christmas presents, doing things around the house, and making long distance calls, we didn’t give the engagement another thought. It was only when we sat down in Izabela’s study and opened up Facebook that it popped back into my head. “What should I post for all these people?” I asked Izabela as we admired the postings all our new friends had on their walls. “I know!” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. “We should tell them we’re engaged!” This was perfect. It was a holiday, everyone else was posting messages about all the fun they were having, so why not? Now we were a legitimate, serious couple. Within hours, however, I realized that posting this firework on Facebook might have some fallout I hadn’t anticipated.
It turned out that I managed to hurt and shock two of my best friends. One asked why I hadn’t mentioned it to her earlier when we talked, and whether she needed to start planning a trip to Iowa or Vermont—some state where gay marriage is legal. The other said that she would have liked to be told before I made a public announcement. Of course, I couldn’t blame them; in fact, I felt like a bad friend. Still, I didn’t see any reason for alarm. “It’s no big deal,” I kept telling them. “We’re not getting married any time soon.”
“But why did you feel the need to announce it on Facebook?” one of my friends asked. “An engagement is a big deal.”
The announcement was starting to niggle at me. I was telling everybody what it didn’t mean, that we weren’t getting married tomorrow, but then what did it mean? If it was really, as I kept saying, no big deal, why did I, we, feel the need to make a production of it? I started by asking myself what the engagement meant to us. It meant that we were a couple to be taken seriously, a couple who planned on staying together. If we had been in the states, especially California, announcing our engagement to reinforce our seriousness might not have felt necessary. But here in Poland, it isn’t only that gay marriage is illegal—gayness is made invisible.
In the highly cultured, Tri-City area where we live, there are no gay establishments. Social interactions, especially those involving dance, are actively heterosexual. I’m not saying that everyone in Poland is homophobic—far from it. As Izabela once said, we could kiss in front of the mall in the center of town and nothing would happen. Since then, in fact, we did. Some straight people don’t even notice Poland’s homophobia. “Why were you afraid to come out to me?” a new friend asked. “Of course I wouldn’t have cared—nobody cares here anymore.” But Poland is still heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, and homophobia is encouraged. This means you have to be careful whom you come out to.
If I were a straight woman, I could tell everyone I came here to get married and they would talk about how brave I was to come here for love, how romantic our story is. At first though, Izabela and I told almost no one, outside our university friends, that we were a couple. Telling a plumber could mean that you end up with a bathtub that leaks worse than before. Telling a beautician could cause her hand to accidentally slip, piercing your ear too low. A homophobic assistant might spill tea in your laptop, or lead you a little too near a moving car in a parking lot. We figured it was better to be safe than be stubborn about stating our relationship.
In the end though, not speaking up got tricky too. “Why did you come to Poland?” my students, my assistants, and strangers on the street would ask. I said any number of things… that I had come here to teach abroad, that I was getting married, that I couldn’t get a job because the American economy was so bad. This worked fine in some cases, especially when people thought Izabela was my perspective mother-in-law, which made us laugh. But some responses were more sinister. One assistant I hired resented accepting even our grocery list from Izabela, seeming to think her not part of my family, but my housekeeper. Another assistant decided that Izabela had brought me here in order to help with the bills, since university professors here aren’t so well paid, and we live in a ritzy area. She also suggested that maybe Izabela was a lesbian predator who had brought me, a poor girl with a disability, to Poland under false pretenses. I hated hearing Izabela vilified in various ways. Both women asked prying questions about how much money I gave Izabela per month for household expenses, whether she had a husband, and whether she considered me her pseudo daughter.
Sometimes, Izabela has introduced me as her przyjaciolka, a Polish word that can indicate either a best friend or a girlfriend. This word is common in the gay community here, and is safe because it’s ambiguous. On the flip side, it can be misinterpreted, particularly in our case, especially because of the difference in our ages. Besides, ambiguity is not our first choice. As for me, I’m proud to identify as Izabela’s girlfriend, and proud of the reason I am here.
Beforehand, we didn’t anticipate the affect of omitting or skirting around such a crucial piece of information, but it crept up on us. Not only were there awkward questions, but our relationships with most people felt strangely dishonest. It was isolating, saddening to feel that people didn’t understand the commitment that had caused me to move to a brand new place, that shaped our new life. By the time New Year’s rolled around, we were ready for the whole world to hear us loud and clear, and we hoped narzeczona, the Polish word for fiancé, would do it.
“But do you really think people there will get it?” my best friend asked, “even if you tell them you’re engaged?” I told her I didn’t know. What I do know is that the word “engaged” on my wall makes us feel stronger, more secure in relation to the world. We aren’t broadcasting our news to everyone— my students still think Izabela has a mysterious son somewhere whom I’m supposed to marry, and Izabela didn’t correct the hospital nurse who thought she was my mom. Still, the word narzeczona, when we can use it, and in either language, will stop people in their tracks--get them to look a little harder—make them read the writing on the wall.
I don't know how successful we are going to be with our dancing plans, but a week before New Year's Eve we began to practice again. Since I'd made notes on almost every step we thought we were never going to forget, we managed to reteach ourselves all of what we used to know about West Coast swing, most East Coast swing moves, and every bit of cha-cha and salsa that we had ever mastered. We even reconstructed our ochos learned at the introductory Argentinian tango class we took in San Francisco last year. Thus prepared, dressed to kill and glamorized, we went to the New Year's Eve event advertised by the local salsa school.
The school was run by champions in less known Latin dances, and we planned on approaching the man we hoped would become our dance teacher. In addition, this was the only place that didn't charge hundreds of złotys for the New Year's Eve party; quests were expected to arrive with their own food and some dancing skills.
Although our teacher didn't need to be perfect, we still hoped he would be as charismatic as Zoe and worthy to replace her, at least temporarily. But Mr. P proved to be socially clumsy. With the music playing in the background, he came to our table to greet other guests, students from the school, and I waved him over.
At the sight of Lilly-Marie in her midnight blue dress and a silver mist shawl, he looked quizzically at her and addressed me in Polish: "Nie widzi?"
I froze and nodded but failed to say that although Lilly-Marie indeed didn't see, she certainly heard and wouldn't appreciate being omitted from the conversation, particularly when it concerned her.
Then he spoke to her in English: “We have another student who is...” He noticed me flashing my eyes at him, stumbled, and concluded: “...another student just like you.”
Lilly-Marie's face suddenly flattened and took on the quietude of a sea before the storm. Mr. P didn't mean to say that another student was just as beautiful and sophisticated, or just as sociable, witty, and easily-mannered, or just as well read in contemporary American literature, or just as enamored of sequined dresses and drop earrings.
From what I'm learning about living with disability, nothing is just as bad as being marked -- reduced to this one aspect of your self.
I don't recall what Lilly-Marie said in response, but later on, whenever this man attempted to talk to us again, I'd see her pull back. Later on, when the dance began, he came over to suggest a simple dance routine he thought we might like.
“Try this instead,” he said to me. “It's easy."
"We are doing night club 2 step," I told him.
He asked what it was, and I said, amazed, “They dance it in clubs in California.”
"Ah," he said and swiftly slunk back to the DJ podium.
“What did he want?” Lilly-Marie asked a second after Mr. P left us alone.
“Do you remember barn dance? He was showing me the basic step of the barn dance and wanted us to try it.”
“What? He touched you. He put his hand on yours.”
We were on the dance floor and the music was loud. I assumed he didn't want to startle me. “He just wanted to talk.”
“So what? He could have talked to you without touching you.”
Whenever things become out of balance, nothing is more beneficial than Lilly-Marie extending her protection over me.
Earlier at the party we had met a colleague of mine, Gosia, an adjunct in the institute of British Lit. She was a kind-hearted, thirty-something single woman. While we had eaten dinner at home and brought only a few chocolate cookies and a bottle of wine to the party, she set out miniature hen egg salad and herring in raisins, in quantities sufficient to serve a platoon. We accepted her invitation to join her at the table. She also arrived with her own bottle of tequila, a bag of sliced limes, and an intention to get sloshed right after midnight.
In this, she wasn't alone; other guests too brought serious alcohols, and the table was soon stocked with XL-size bottles of whiskey, bourbon, and scotch. For the first two hours or so everybody kept eating and imbibing, the dance floor remained empty, and it seemed as if the actual dance would never begin. When it did, right after midnight, the DJ was done playing anything but salsa, which became kind of boring after a while. At least for us who are used to alternating styles and proud to come up with a few fitting steps to any tune.
When Gosia heard that Mr. P wouldn't work out for us, she quickly brushed him aside and advised us to contact Monika, a woman who co-owned the school and whose English was so much better anyway.
I exchanged a few emails with our prospective new teacher. She seemed fine with the gay thing and the idea of teaching in English. Because in the meantime we had a mother drama, we met with Monika in the beginning of February.
The day was cold, which was nothing new, and our trip to see mother in the hospital took longer than we expected. Afterward, I steered us right to the taxi stand. Once ensconced in the back seat, I considered the driver's suggestion of a shortcut. We had to drive by the empty lots most likely already sold to supermarkets to arrive in the center of town. But instead, the road dead-ended, and we followed the sidewalk cutting through snow-covered fields, tunnels and overpasses, which, to my consternation, must have been built in the last twenty years of my not living in my hometown.
At last we arrived at the dance school. We walked to the second floor by a series of hallways and staircases which had the allure of dreamlike scenery from a cult movie. The dance studio door opened to the an entryway painted a livid purple. The receptionist ushered us toward a black loveseat, but as soon as we sat down, Monika, the director of the school appeared. She wore cabaret stockings, black boots, and a minuscule black skirt put on just so she could say she had one. On her forehead, wisps of black hair were tightly plastered to her scull, Lisa Minelli style. She reminded me of a tropical bird which, due to an unexpected evolution, could wear only black. I sensed the admirable control she had over her looks, her clothes, and her surroundings.
We sat facing her from the other side of her director's desk. When we began to describe our needs, she cut in.
"You wouldn't want to study competition cha-cha," she said. "I'd suggest you learn Cuban-style cha-cha which allows your body to move more naturally."
To tell Lilly-Marie that something, like a hair dye, would make her look natural, is the surest way to put her off. On my end, any attempts to make me act natural would have made me feel too nervous to appreciate them.
Still, we had nothing better to do than to continue explaining ourselves. We told Monika that although we wanted to learn competition style dance, we weren't astute dancers; in fact, it took us a long time to learn a new step. In the end, she seemed to get the idea. When we asked about the price, she said it was the same she charged for one person, 150 złotych per hour. Now, my university salary is 2280 zł per month. A class in one-on-one English conversation costs 50 zł. The cost of heating the house in the winter as harsh as this one runs up to 1000 a month.
"How long is your hour?" Lilly-Marie asked in a flash of prudence.
"45 minutes," the teacher leisurely replied. "The same length as a university class."
As soon as Monika left the room to bring our coats, we quickly reached an agreement, and when she returned we told her we couldn't afford her.
She was mildly surprised but suggested one of the teacher in her school who liked teaching ballroom and whose lessons were more reasonably priced. We returned through the hallucinogenic hallway into the cold.
"I'd rather we set up cameras in our living room and ask Zoe to teach us via Skype," I told Lilly-Marie on our way back.
