Baba Ada’s approach to my training was unscientific — she encouraged a straight spine that looked disciplined but is not technically correct for singing. At an age when most of my peers were still inventing games with plastic horses and sneaking makeup from their mothers’ purses, I was singing Puccini. But the maturity of my voice outstripped my emotions by several years. Inside I was still young enough to want to believe that my babenka always knew best.
Today, though, the short wooden flicks began to irritate me. It was already taking all my attention to focus on the transition from an ascending melodic minor to a descending when my mind kept drifting to the graveyard behind Greta’s house. Each tap of the ruler against my abdomen felt like a gentle reminder: you’re breathing, it said, that must be nice. We started every rehearsal session with at least fifteen minutes of scales, and today there seemed to be no end to them.
Ada switched the ruler to her other hand, and in doing so cracked a nail.
“Matko Boża,” she said under her breath. And she set the yardstick on the sofa while she went to find clippers and a file. In the meantime, I was meant to take a short rest; this was the agreement made through countless sessions of voice lessons — while the cat’s away, the mouse must save her breath. I walked over to the couch and picked up Ada’s ruler, flexing it between my hands. Not very strong. With one swift bend, I snapped it.
Baba Ada rushed back into the room.
“What do you think you’re doing, lalka? Do you think rulers don’t cost money?”
I was ready to start yelling at her. To tell her that her rules were crazy and that my posture was fine and that I was tired. But instead my lower lip began to tremble.
“What happened to Greta’s daughters?” My voice came out in a whisper. “Her other daughters?”
“Oh.” Ada looked surprised, turning the nail clipper over and over in her hand like there was some important part of it she was missing. “You’re worried about that?”
I nodded. Ada walked over to the window and looked out of it, and for a little while I thought she wasn’t going to answer me at all. My anger started to heat back up, but before it could boil over, she spoke.
“Konrad used to pick flowers for them.”
“What?”
“Well, they all did. Konrad and the others picked flowers, and Greta buried the girls in their own little yard and kept them safe.” She turned towards me and looked thoughtful. “Except one. But you know that. It’s part of the story.”
It was true. The girls’ graves, the boys’ gallantry — all that was part of the story. I troubled each piece smooth over time, from Greta’s appearance in the factory door to her fight for the sacred ground of Poland when the war came. Ada told me her mother was a warrior, and that when she was tired she went and lay down with the girls underneath their house, ready to wake up again when the time was right. Safe and protected.
All this should have comforted me. It had, in fact, many times before. But today something nagged at me. The ghosts, who wouldn’t let me go.
“So where’s Konrad?”
Ada just blinked at me.
“And Fil? And Andrzej? Where did your brothers go? Why aren’t they here?” If Greta is safe, I wanted to ask, and you’re safe, why didn’t she save them too?
My baba pressed her lips together, considering. “Darling,” she said. “I think you’re trying to put me off. I think you don’t want to practice your scales.”
I shook my head. She knew that wasn’t true. Her eyes told me so.
“I think you need to go to your room and think about what you’re saying. Maybe when you come back out you’ll be ready to practice again, like a good girl.”
We stared each other down for a moment; then I spun on my heel and ran out of the room. Lying on my bed, I did exactly what she asked — thought about my questions, and thought about Ada’s answers too. All the girls, buried in the yard. All the girls, safe with Greta.
Except one.
It’s unsettling to think that I’m still looking for my lost family all these years later: one more of Greta’s daughters tucked into the soil. I know it’s crazy, but part of me thinks, There’ll be a sign. Ada wouldn’t just leave me. As I step outside the apartment building, my phone rings again from the bowels of my purse, and I think, It’s starting. I answer without even checking the caller ID.
“Lu?” On the other end of the line, John sounds frantic. “Are you all right? I’ve been calling.”
“I’m fine.” I feel a little numb — just John. What did I expect? “I was in the shower.”
I hear him sit down as he says, “Oh,” and can in an instant imagine him exactly. On break from rehearsal, hiding from the elementary school audience in the singer’s greenroom, sitting on the old leather couch. Stirring honey into his midday cup of peppermint tea. His flushed cheeks. The chintzy tinkle of a cheap steel spoon in a microwaveable ceramic mug. He never really liked children before Kara was born, which is one reason his sudden devotion to the image of our perfect family unnerves me. That, and the fact that it can’t last. Once the truth is out, then what?
“Well,” he finally says, “any plans for the day?”
“Yes.” I readjust Kara with one hand, tuck the phone between my chin and shoulder with the other. “Ada.”
“What?” Concern creeps back into John’s voice.
“We’re going to see Ada.” I pause, letting him think I’m crazy. “Bring flowers.” I pause again. “To the cemetery, John.”
“Today? In this?” I imagine him gesturing to the weather, which, from his windowless room, he can’t see.
“We’ll be fine.”
John hesitates.
“Be careful, Lu,” he says. “Be gentle with yourself.”
He has no idea how much loss a person can stand.
Of course, I haven’t lost him yet. So maybe neither do I.
6
Kara’s infant form switches around in every Greta story; she’s bundled up inside them like a tiny egg. In Greta you can see us all, descending from her like wooden nesting dolls. But when I was a girl I thought the view stopped with me. That when my baba Ada braided my hair or led me through scales, I was the last note in the song, the last line in the tale. The little queen our family machine was built to make.
In her time, my mother, Sara, thought so too. I couldn’t know, as a child, what a surprise I’d been to her. All I saw was that she was suspicious of me. That she wanted to keep me close, but didn’t know how to stay.
If she was bored she picked up my hand, so much smaller than hers even I could see it was delicate, and clipped off the raw, smiling ends of my nails. If she was in a good mood, she’d file them down with her many emery boards, each possessing its own subtle use. And she’d pick a candy color she felt suited me and paint my nails until they resembled jelly beans.
“Okay,” she’d say. “Now blow on them. And don’t move. You can’t move until they’re dry because you’ll muck around with something and mess them up.” Then she’d frown. “I’m not doing this over again. So you’d better keep them neat.”
So I would sit. Sara disappeared into her room or out into the day, but I remained perfectly still, to show her I could. When Ada happened by — ten minutes later, sometimes an hour — she would find me in my small wooden kitchen chair, practicing my mother’s frown. My hands would be laid out on the table in front of me, itching on the palms and starting to twitch impossibly, with my fingers each separated by the width of a cotton ball.