“Now You Can Rest” by Magdalena Bartkowska

My refrigerator is a repository of items that are not what they claim to be. A sour cream container, for example, might hold a cylinder of liverwurst from the Polish deli. A large square bucket promising cream puffs will actually deliver a generous portion of hunter’s stew, with sliced kielbasa and dried plums submerged in savory sauerkraut. I pull out a red-and-white tub expecting cottage cheese but am greeted instead by the rancid smell of spoiled gołąbki; the tub got shuffled around to the back of the fridge and I completely forgot about what was inside. Anger swells in my chest. Yet again, my mother has given us way too much food.

When I complained once to a close friend, she said, “Are you kidding? I would love it if my mom did that. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with the grocery shopping or cooking.” I shook my head. She didn’t get it. For me, a girl whose mother cut her meat and breakfast ham sandwiches into neat little triangles well into middle school, it was hard to accept the cartons crammed with frozen pierogi and chicken breasts (“But they were on sale at Big Y!”) and leftover Sunday dinner, without being overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy. 

I know, I know—it’s the way she shows her love. She really does fit the stereotype of the Polish grandmother. Two o’clock dinner at my parents’ house is immediately followed by coffee and a spread of desserts which is quickly succeeded by supper, at which point everyone is practically in a food coma and can no longer adequately protest when she spoons second helpings of vegetable mayonnaise salad onto their plates. 

Before my therapist taught me about boundaries—and perhaps even more important, that it’s healthy and perfectly all right to set them even with your own mother (especially with your own mother!)—I’d get so annoyed she wouldn’t take no for an answer that on occasion I’d snap at her, angry not only that she wasn’t listening to my protests but also that she made me regress from the emotionally intelligent adult I believed I was right back to the role of the petulant child. 

Then, of course, as her shoulders sagged and the inevitable look of hurt clouded her face, my annoyance would be replaced by guilt. I had made my mother feel like a little girl who’d done something wrong. Why couldn’t I just shut up and be grateful for the damn food? 

~

My parents brought my sister and me to the U.S. in 1990, when I was seven years old. Growing up, I heard the stories of life in the seventies and eighties in Gdańsk. Food rations. Long, snaking queues. Store shelves empty save for a few bottles of vinegar. But to me, these were merely words, shards of a past so far removed from my own reality as to render it completely null. I didn’t remember the world into which I was born, two years after the Solidarność strikes, and almost one year after the day when army tanks rolled through the streets of every major city to signal the imposition of martial law in the People’s Republic of Poland. I didn’t remember any of that.

My mother has always been reticent in providing details. At any mention of her life in communist Poland, a shadow would cross her face, a faraway look would enter her eyes.  

“All night in line, just to get a bit of ham for Christmas…” She’d shake her permed head and sigh. Then she’d get up from the table to wash her plate and mug, while I stared at her hunched back, finding it hard to believe that the Poland I remembered—and knew from the summers I spent there after we left—was the same Poland she was describing. After all, my mother did always have a flair for the dramatic exaggeration; whenever I allowed my anger at her over some perceived slight to spill over, she’d clutch her heart, inhaling sharply, daring me to go ahead, give her the heart attack already. Then I’d be sorry. 

In those days, when I was a teenager who dyed her hair black and wrote love letters to boys who lived on the other side of the ocean, she knew I wanted to move back. I suspected she was trying to make things sound worse than they’d really been just to dissuade me. Hadn’t my early years been, for the most part, the epitome of an idyllic childhood? Sunny days on the playground in front of our twelve-story blok, making babkas in the sandbox or playing a knife-throwing game with my friends. In the grass by the rose gardens, weaving dandelion wreaths while chewing bubble gum that had been wrapped in Donald Duck comics. Heading home to eat bread spread with mayonnaise or red currant jam (homemade by our country relatives), and maybe whipped egg yolks with sugar for dessert. 

Like I said—idyllic. 

~

I was well into my thirties before I began to comprehend the environment in which my parents grew up, got married, and started a family. I’m embarrassed to admit how little I knew about Polish history. But it wasn’t something I could learn about in my small, Catholic grade school, where we took copious notes on Columbus and the Pilgrims and the American Revolution, and, when we were assigned research reports on other countries, Poland wasn’t even on the list of possible choices. There are so many details I’ve had to fill in for myself. Then there’s the very fact of my Americanness. Of course we Americans are known for our general ignorance of the wider world; we live here in our safe little bubbles, completely oblivious to what true political instability looks like, and how it translates into real life. At least those of us who are privileged.   

I’m thirty-nine now, and so far, the worst thing to have occurred in my life is the pandemic. In its early weeks, when the shelves of grocery stores emptied (those gargantuan American stores that, thirty years ago, gave my mother headaches with their grotesque plethora of choices), I said to my parents that it must remind them of those long-ago days back in Poland. My parents’ chuckles seemed to say, Isn’t this whole thing just the cutest, Americans panicking over a few empty store shelves that we very well know will fill up again in a few weeks.

Everything is relative. My friends and I, hunkering down in our homes, got together over Zoom calls to lament the state of the world. We drank wine and laughed at toilet paper shortage memes while tendrils of dread snaked through our bodies. When we were too weighed down by all the uncertainty, the social distancing, our kids’ meltdowns over remote learning, we ordered takeout and binged on Netflix. 

In communist Poland, when food was rationed and all the store shelves shone with emptiness, there was no takeout. There was nothing to binge on except maybe vodka. 

~

A few years ago, I started writing down memories of my childhood behind the Iron Curtain. An insatiable need to know more followed.

I Googled. Ordered books on inter-library loan. Pushed beyond the discomfort of asking my parents questions about their past and asked. Sat across from them on their screened-in porch, taking notes as the summer breeze rustled the leaves outside.

And it was then that my dad told me a story I’d never, ever heard before—a tale of trudging through snowy fields with his stepdad and neighbor, lugging suitcases of contraband.

I leaned forward on the porch swing, my mouth slightly agape.

“But the best part,” my dad said with a twinkle in his eye, “was when we were waiting at the bus stop, standing there with those suitcases, and we noticed two ZOMO patrolmen walking around.”

He laughs about this now. He certainly wouldn’t have been laughing back then. ZOMO, in Polish, stands for Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej—paramilitary police formations known for their brutal and lethal tactics during the communist era in Poland.

When I picture the story my dad told me that afternoon, I see my father, my grandfather, and Pan Janek with those suitcases, trying to appear nonchalant. Maybe one of them checks his watch or cranes his neck over the other travelers milling about on the sidewalk to see if the bus is coming yet. Perhaps their eyes take in a sign that someone painted in big white letters during the night on the wall across the street: “TELEVISION IS LYING!” Suddenly their hearts jump into their throats as they spot the two men in camouflage uniforms: members of the Citizens’ Militia, out on patrol to make sure their fellow comrades are not breaking any of the Party rules—such as transporting contraband. 

Maybe my father whispers, “Cholera jasna.” (The Polish equivalent of “damn it” and the strongest language I’ve ever heard him use.) Pan Janek laughs nervously and tells his two companions to act natural, like they’re returning from a trip to the countryside visiting family and nothing more. Dziadek Stasiu takes out his pack of cigarettes, his hands shaking as he tries to strike a match. 

Then the bus lumbers up and the men quickly board it, their hearts hammering as they collapse into the worn seats. As the bus pulls away, they catch a glimpse of the ZOMOs ambling down the sidewalk, rifles slung over shoulders, eyes roving over the thinned crowd. My father draws the stale bus air into his lungs. The contraband is safe.

You may be thinking, just like I did, that the suitcases were full of important documents, or perhaps items to be sold on the black market. Maybe this is why my dad laughs at the memory now. See, the men really had been out in the country. They’d gone to see Pan Janek’s cousin, who lived on a farm where the previous day, a pig had been slaughtered. 

The suitcases were full of pork. 

“So despite the shortages, you would have gotten in trouble for securing more food for your family?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at the absurdity.  

My father nodded. In the neighboring backyard, children shrieked as they jumped into their pool. 

“What would have happened if the patrolmen had asked to see your luggage?”

“Most likely they would have confiscated it.”

“And locked you all up,” my mom added, standing to bring our empty coffee mugs and plates with cake crumbs into the kitchen.

Tatuś laughed. “At least for forty-eight hours.”

~

Curfews. Disconnected phone lines. Soldiers shooting protesters in the streets. This was my parents’ reality.

When the pandemic started, I was in my mid-thirties—roughly the same age as my mother when she queued up all night for that bit of Christmas ham. 

I picture her. Shivering in the long line of grim-faced neighbors as gray morning light creeps in between the bloks. Opening our small fridge and racking her brain for how to make something out of nothing. Watching through our fourth-story window the traffic rounding the bend in the road as she waits for her husband, delivering unsanctioned pork in a suitcase, to come home. Trying not to think about what might happen if he gets stopped by the ZOMOs. 

~

It’s funny how we might look at something our whole life but never really see it. 

Today when I drop off my three-year-old son at my parents’ house, I walk up close to a small tapestry that has been a part of my landscape since my earliest memories. When we lived in Gdańsk, it hung on a wall next to shelves holding Kashubian mugs. Here in America, it hangs in between the kitchen doorway and a black entertainment center with mirrors and glass. (The Kashubian mugs are now on the fireplace mantel across the room.) 

Three large crosses, back to back, loom over shipyard cranes on a background of purple. Four years ago, I learned that the crosses are a monument to the fallen shipyard workers of the 1970 protests in Gdańsk. Unveiled in 1980, it was the first monument honoring victims of communist oppression to be erected in a communist country. 

I finger the tapestry’s rough wool. “Where did you get this?” I ask my mother.

“That? Oh, at the annual Dominican Fair in Gdańsk, I think.” 

There’s a small bronze pin in the upper right corner. Upon closer inspection, I make out the letters bleeding into one another: Solidarność.

“So where were you on the day the 1970 protests began?” I plow ahead.

My dad is sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open, a Polish soap on in the background. Kuba, our father has a mistress. He’s having an affair! It was a Thursday, my dad tells me. He picks up a bite-size piece of a liverwurst sandwich, slowly bringing it to his mouth. (Having suffered a stroke five years ago, he’s the one who now gets the cut-up food.)

My mother is leaning against the stove, arms crossed. They were both working in the city of Sopot, she says. “The trams were down. I remember my coworkers and I had to walk for over two hours to get home. But other than that, in Sopot things were pretty peaceful that day.” 

I want to know more. I want to dig further. I want to walk next to my twenty-one-year-old mother—a freshly minted bride who will get pregnant with my older sister the following month—as she makes that journey home on December 14, 1970, and know what she was thinking and feeling while two cities away, the riots were breaking out. 

“It’s a good thing the militia didn’t stop you on that sidewalk,” my father says. “In those days, they used to beat people in crowds for no reason.”

My mother nods. Looks down at the floor. Shakes her head. “We lived through a war. Your sister lived through a war, too. You, you haven’t lived through a war. You’re lucky you don’t know.”

~

Later, in the café where I go to get work done every Wednesday and Friday, I open my laptop and, while waiting for my egg and cheese and bacon croissant, I Google, Gdańsk 1970 protests. I scan the articles, trying to imagine having to live through those dystopian events. The sudden drastic spike in food and fuel prices right before Christmas. Workers taking over a police car to announce a general strike. Widespread fighting. Arson. Police rounding up random workers and brutally beating them, even if they hadn’t been participating in the protests. Machine guns shooting into crowds. People run over by tanks. At least forty-four killed. A thousand wounded. An eighteen-year-old who never made it to work at the Gdynia Shipyard, but whose body, instead, was carried by protesters on a door panel through cordons of police and tanks. Zbyszek Godlewski. Symbol of the bloody massacre.  

Tears flood my eyes. George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” floats down from the café’s speakers.

I Google, Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970.

Fallen. As if they’d tripped instead of gotten murdered by the armed forces of the Polish communist state.

~

When I pick up my son later that afternoon, my mom hands me a plastic shopping bag. (Only one this time? Wow.) Inside is a loaf of freshly baked bread and a cream puff container. Tomato soup, my mother informs me. The bread, of course, has been expertly cut into equal-sized slices. I say dziękuję and kiss her on her Nivea-cream-smeared cheek. 

~

 There are parts of my mother I will never know. As much as I try, I cannot fully grasp what it’s like to raise children while the world all around you shifts, burns, presses you down into the ground until you are paralyzed with dread, but still you get up and you stand at the stove sautéing onions because your younger daughter loves sautéd onions.You stand at the stove cooking warm salted milk soup with noodles because that’s what your daughter has asked for. You grate carrots and apples to go along with her serving of schabowe, and slip onto her plate the leftover egg fried in the same oil as the pork cutlets. 

And when she’s done and wants more, you give her your portion, too. 

~

Last fall, while my toddler was napping and my older two kids were at school, I took out the cream puff container from my fridge. This time, it contained bigos, that delicious hunter’s stew of sauerkraut and kielbasa and dried plums. I heaped a large portion of it onto a plate. Buttered two slices of my mother’s bread. Made tea. Outside the windows, yellow and ruby leaves swirled down from the trees in the autumn drizzle. 

I sat down to my Polish feast, my mouth already watering. First bite. Eyes closed. Taste buds exploding in sweet, ambrosial pleasure. 

Bigos is one of those foods that doesn’t travel down to only your stomach, oh no. It gets in your bloodstream, I swear. Its heartiness and warmth infuse you, down to the deepest part of your bones. Bigos melts away everything outside of that one magical moment when the tender melange of flavors is dissolving in your mouth. It whispers to you, It’s all right. I’ll take care of you. Now you can rest.

Halfway through my meal, it hit me—so hard I had to blink back tears. From out of nowhere and perhaps for the first time, a heavy truth lodged itself right in between my lungs. 

Someday, I won’t be able to do this. 

Someday I will eat the very last serving of my mother’s bigos, the absolute best bigos in the whole world, most likely without even knowing it, and then what? No one else’s bigos will ever come close. And even if I do get my mother to write down the recipe so I can finally learn how to make it myself, I’ll never be able to emulate that perfect taste. Never will I experience it in my lifetime again.  

The future portions of bigos from my mother are finite. Just like the rest of it, all of it. Someday, a tub of sour cream in my refrigerator will be only that. There will be no more surprises. 

And yet, despite knowing this, despite knowing that one day I’ll take out that sour cream from my fridge and be undone by the grief knocking me down in that moment, I’ll probably still have to fight annoyance at my mother sometimes, like when she tries to thrust too many bags of food into my hands as I’m leaving her house, or when she gives each of my kids an entire bag of Kit Kats for Halloween instead of just one candy apiece. I’ll probably still inadvertently upset her with my American boundary-setting. But perhaps, just perhaps, I can allow myself to believe that these things will occur with less frequency now.

For the time being, I savor every single bite of my mother’s bigos, recognizing the whisper inside me.  

It’s all right. I’ll take care of you. Now you can rest.

Featured art: “Pampushky” by Julia Stankevych

Magda Bartkowska was born in Gdańsk, Poland and raised in western Massachusetts. Her writing has been published in The Tishman Review, Wow! Women on Writing, and The Journal of Expressive Writing. Currently, she is working on a coming-of-age novel exploring how identity is pieced together at the intersection of immigration and girlhood, in a world that attempts to tame the wild out of girls at every step of the way. You can find Magda on Twitter @MagdaBart8 and at www.magdalenabartkowska.com.

Julia Stankevych is an artist in the Ukraine who specializes in food and Impasto painting. Her work can be found at etsy.com/shop/JuliaStanArt