The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk Page A

flips to her back, squinting up at her friend.
    “Uh-oh. You look sad. Are you upset I didn’t show up yesterday? Was it that bad?”
    Kamila shrugs her shoulders and closes her book. “It’s not that.”
    “Oh, Kamilka, don’t be sad. I bet Emil will realize what a fool he’s been and come riding up here on some white horse and steal you away.”
    “Don’t patronize me, Anna.”
    “Kamila! You’ve got to stop this! Stop pining and start living. Look around you. This isn’t 1892, okay? It’s 1992. Poland is finally free! And
we
have options too,
dziewczyno
! But you have to be in the moment.”
    “I
am
in the moment. And this moment sucks.”
    Anna laughs. “The moment is ripe, my friend. I wish I never had to go back to New York.”
    “Oh my God, you’re crazy. New York is a gilded city. Everything is modern and ready to burst there. It’s like fireworks. Here? It’s like everyone is taking a perpetual nap in the name of ‘tradition.’ It’s old news. It’s Lolek getting wasted on some poison he brewed in his own bathtub and pissing in front of my grandmother’s doorway.”
    “Nah. New York is dirty.”
    “Well, at least you have air-conditioning on public transportation.”
    “
Dobra, dobra
. I guess the grass is always greener, but New York makes you feel alone. Besides, you wouldn’t like my New York friends. I don’t even know if I like them. They don’t know what it’s like to work for anything.”
    “And Lolek does? And Kowalski? They’re on the freaking dole! I wish we could trade lives, even for a few days.”
    “Listen, one day I’ll fly you out to New York and you can make up your own mind. For now, let’s just enjoy this. We’re sixteen and it’s summer. The possibilities are, like, fucking endless. Now read me a poem!” Anna grabs Kamila’s notebook and starts flipping through it. Anna is probably the only person in the world, aside from Emil, who is privy to Kamila’s secret aspirations.
    “Don’t get it wet,” mumbles Kamila.
    “Soon you’re going to be a famous poetess and I’ll make you write my Oscar speech. Pinky swear.” Anna holds out a pinky and Kamilaholds out hers, and they intertwine, just like Anna taught her a long time ago.
    “Peenky sweer.”
    “Now let’s go swimming. The water’s divine,” Anna proclaims in a Joan Collins-y voice, and hops up, her long legs pumping as she runs back toward the lake. Kamila watches her get smaller and smaller until she looks like a little fish, diving in headfirst, breaking the surface. Kamila crawls inside the tent and curls up into a ball, wrapping her arms around her own torso. She pretends they belong to someone else.
   
Justyna
Kielce, Poland
    Justyna ignores the gooey sediment on the bottom of the lake, trying not to notice how her toes sink into what feels like piles of cow shit. The moon is full, casting a silvery shadow onto the still water. In the distance she hears Lolek singing the words to Dr. Alban’s “It’s My Life.” He’s wasted and the foreign words slur and slide into one another, so it sounds like complete gibberish. Justyna inches closer to Kowalski.
    A small part of Justyna was surprised that her mother allowed her to go on this unsupervised trip. In June, Justyna got kicked out of school, permanently. The history teacher caught her giving Lucjan Popiel a hand job in the custodian’s office. When the door creaked open and
Pani
Jesienowska walked in, Lucjan was just cumming. “What in God’s name?” she shrieked. Justyna wiped her hand off and looked up at her teacher. “I believe God’s name for it is spunk.”
    A two-hour-long meeting followed between the principal of the school, Justyna’s mother, and
Pani
Jesienowska. The school had a laundry list of Justyna’s misdemeanors: hooky, failing grades, graffiti in the girls’ bathroom, the time Justyna punched a girl who was rifling through Justyna’s book bag, about to swipe a very expensive L’Oréal lipstick. “This