The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk Page B

latest incident just proves to us, again, Mrs. Zator, that your daughter has no respect for the educators here, nor for the institution itself. Although she’s never been caught, we suspect she’s cheated her way through her last two years here. Justyna’s lack of interest, integrity, and effort lead us to believe that she couldn’t care less about us, and so we too have stopped caring about her. Your daughter is no longer welcome here.”
    Teresa just nodded and walked out; she couldn’t argue with Justyna’s track record. She briefly thought about filing for an appeal—LucjanPopiel got off with a two-week suspension, which Teresa secretly thought was more than unfair. She sat on the steps outside the school, chain-smoking for twenty minutes and thinking about when she got pregnant at seventeen and the bastards at her school had kicked her out. She had bigger plans for her own children, but Teresa had made a fine life for herself despite her lack of diplomas, and Justyna could too. There was no use crying over spilled milk; she had a high-school castoff on her hands and aside from giving Justyna a good thrashing, there was nothing Teresa felt she could do. It was time for her daughter to get a job. She’d go home, smack Justyna upside the head, and place a call to her friend Janka over at the new supermarket in town.
    When Justyna’s mother told her the outcome of the meeting, Justyna had tried to keep the relief from registering on her face. Inside, she was thrilled. The charade was over. She would no longer have to pay Tobiasz Tedoroski to write her essays for her, she would no longer have to waste time penning tiny cheat sheets. It was no accident that the subjects she was passing, geography and chemistry, were taught by the two male professors who were defenseless against her miniskirts and pushup bras. She wrote off the rest of her teachers as cunts, jealous and disgruntled, high on power trips. Education came in all forms anyway. The nerds at school, the ones who memorized and studied ad nauseam, the ones who recited facts on cue, they were the ones who stuttered and cowered through life. Once you graduated, who the fuck cared what an isosceles triangle was, or when World War I began? How was such ancient shit relevant? Justyna believed success relied heavily on simple charm, a forceful personality, and the skill of lying in the pursuit of grander dreams. So, in other words—fuck school. Both her parents had been high-school dropouts and look at them now. A year ago, the Zators bought a modern three-story house in the suburbs of Sieje, past the
zalew
, just a few kilometers from downtown Kielce, and somehow worlds away from their cramped apartment life. Come September, Justyna wouldn’t be scouring flea markets for used textbooks; she’d be standing behind the till at the Super-Sam, gossiping with the other cashier girls, and that was fine by her.
    At the start of the summer, Teresa made halfhearted attempts atpunishment: no allowance, no partying, and an early curfew. But Justyna, being Justyna, broke all the rules, lied, whined, or just laughed at Teresa’s threats. By the time the camping trip came up, Justyna didn’t even have to beg. “Just don’t drown,” Teresa cautioned.
    “Watch out, I hear there are snakes in this water.” Kowalski grins in the dark. “In fact, I think there’s one trapped in my underwear right now.”
    “What kind of snake?” Justyna whispers as she glides closer to him.
    “A python.”
    Justyna dissolves into giggles, vodka swirling in her brain and swimming in her veins. “You sure it’s not a baby eel or something?” Kowalski grabs her hips under the water and roughly pulls her toward him. Their torsos smack against each other, slick and goose-bumpy. “Well, there’s only one sure way to find out,” he growls.
    Justyna reaches for him. His dick feels slippery in her hands, thick and massive. He pulls her bikini bottom to the side but it takes him three tries