The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk

stopping, the kind of relentless downpour typical of early spring or late fall but that has no business ruining a perfectly good summer night. The boys sleep like bums on the floor, while the girls sit up on the wooden benches, taking turns keeping resentful watch over their belongings. Kamila wishes she were back in Kielce, under her afghan, reading a book.
    “Why didn’t we stop them from drinking all that beer when the bus broke down?” she whispers, worried about waking the other innocent campers, not her slovenly, fucked-up friends.
    “ ’Cause we’re not their mommies. Relax, Marchewska. This will make a good anecdote for you someday. You’ll be a hero back in Kielce, as the lone virgin amongst the savages, keeping vigil in the wild!” Justyna laughs loudly.
    Kamila ignores the insult and furiously whispers, “Be quiet! You might wake someone up and they’ll—”
    “They’ll what? Come over and rape us all?”
    It’s no use with Justyna; nothing gets the girl down. Kamila activates her wristwatch’s neon light. It’s already past midnight. She frowns and sighs. “Anyway, I’m not the ‘lone virgin’ here, not by a long shot—not that it’s anyone’s business. I’m only saying this out loud right now because they”—she points toward the comatose boys lying on the floor—“can’t hear a word. Besides, why is everything with you about sex?”
    Anna glances at Kamila and shakes her head. Anna, who always wants to be on everyone’s good side. She seems to think that her greatest tragedy in life is that she’s caught between two worlds. Two worlds! Can’t her dear friend see what a blessing that is?
    “Everything with me is about sex because everything
is
about sex.Perhaps a week stuffed into itty-bitty tents with a few happy drunks will finally make women out of you two.”
    Kamila shakes her head. Her friends were not happy drunks. They were drunks that hurled empty beer cans all over the place and grabbed you by your waist too hard.
    Somehow, in the morning, the tents get pitched. The guys wander off in search of a snack shack that will sell alcohol at eight A.M. It’s a balmy morning. Tent mates are chosen and most of the girls change into their bathing suits and head to the water. Kamila stays behind. She sits on a blanket looking out onto the lake, the same lake that her little brother drowned in. She fumbles in her backpack for her journal, a small black notebook adorned by a collage of torn-out pages from books and quotes from her favorite poets. Kamila’s going to be a junior in the fall at Kielce’s fine arts high school. Her father wants her to be an artist, but even though Kamila has spent all her semesters weaving tapestries and copying paintings of fields and valleys, she has a secret dream. Kamila wants to be a writer, like Anaïs Nin, like Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, whose poem “The Lady Who Waits” is copied by hand a dozen times throughout her diary.
She waits, she looks at the watch of her years, she bites her handkerchief impatiently. Beyond the windows the world pales and grays … and maybe it’s too late for the guests to arrive
. Every time Kamila reads it she feels like Pawlikowska is calling out to her.
    One day, she wants her journals to be read by girls like her. She wants her words to strike a nerve, but thus far her own poetry feels mawkish and lacking. Kamila closes her eyes and waits for inspiration to strike her. When she feels droplets on her legs, she looks up and sees Anna, wet from head to toe, grinning at her as she plops down on her stomach.
    “It’s heaven.”
    “What is?”
    “The water, the trees, us in the midst of it.
Jak w raju!
All of it, it’s all heaven. And I never want to come back down to earth again.”
    “Why? Is Kowalski flirting with you?”
    “Nah. He’s all about Justyna. By the way, she’s this close to taking off her top. She’s trying to convince everyone to skinny-dip! In broaddaylight!” Anna cracks up and