Maria Jastrzebska

I’ll Be Back Before You Know It

I thought the month of February would never end. No stars, no clarity. Just wind pushing the clouds and trees and fences. All month I dreamt about my father. Waking up I’d imagine his train pulling out of Warsaw nearly half a century ago - just in time as the uniformed official ran along the platform shaking papers at him. Zygmunt was there as well, both of them pretending it was just a business trip. I tried to imagine the expression on my father's face as he gazed out through the train window.

You and me, we made up the night before I left. I wished we’d done it sooner. Sadie hopped downstairs in her pyjamas, laughed at me wearing my big black coat so I hugged her tight, even though I wasn't going to be away for long. You kissed me, drove me to the station, but wouldn’t lend me your gloves when I realised I’d forgotten mine. It wasn’t until much later you said you’d wanted to hang on to every thing, even that spare pair of brown, suede gloves you keep in the side pocket of the car.

Santa Maria Maggiore

People are tired of miracles. These days only children believe the mystery of rose petals scattered on this day each year from the rafters, unaware of the snow machine waiting outside. Even so had it been any woman other than The Virgin, Liberius might not have believed her. Would not have crept out of his palazzo one August morning, the Roman sun already hot on the stone steps; no mist, not a single cloud. Telling no one in case his dream was just that, in case it all came to nothing, not even rousing his servant as he slipped out.

Imagine him now after a restless night, unable to wait any longer. Waking too early yourself, walk among the pink oleanders past Bruciano agenzie internali scrawled on terracotta walls. Imagine the look on his face. There it is laid out before him so white it hurts his eyes, falling from a clear sky as if in formation. It covers the ground with the exact outline of the broad nave and its adjoining chapels, the proportions of the arch which leave enough room for high altars. Shimmering in the sun the idea itself - the very idea of it - of the church he would build, its blueprint in snow.

1 (A Tape-Recording of My Mother's Voice)

I hear her telling my father not to interrupt, in the next breath she urges him to tell his story, which he never does, correcting her instead. In the background there is the grandfather clock beating out the half-hour and my voice coaxing them both to speak. Muffled sounds of the microphone being moved closer, knocked. That’s before I abandoned my great scheme of recording our family history. Oral history - I’d read about other people doing it.

The tape lasts only a few minutes and consists entirely of the two of them squabbling contentedly. ‘That’s not how it was, go on then tell it yourself.’ Their voices low - there's some foreign bloke for you on the phone my friends used to say and I'd always know it was her. I listen to the tape once and then I put it away. My father's voice a background rumble. My mother's voice nearer, almost close by: soft as the fox furs she wore once, rough like smoke in your throat, a caress of light from a long dead star.

2 (On The First Anniversary of My Mother’s Death)

He says it won’t hurt. I don’t really care. That’s why I took the appointment, might as well get it over with. It’ll come out easily. But it doesn’t. He has to tug and twist, injecting my mouth; more and more anaesthetic, reaching deeper in. Has to keep removing the bloodied little batons of gauze, exchanging them for clean ones. Will it be much longer?

Until finally, after I’ve read and reread the Smile for Health poster on his pale green wall, sweating a little by now he shows me the tooth - triumphantly as though he’d helped to give birth. My tooth is whiteish like a thin radish pulled out of the earth, yellow as bone; a skull shrunken to hideously minute proportions; my reliquary, its roots crowned in blood. Mr. F asks me if I’d like to keep it.