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.
