deemed young Hania as the most dispensable member of their family and sent her off to America in a preemptive defensive move. I had concocted my own mystique about teenage Hania, with her feisty character and sheltered ignorance of political realities—and my fertile imagination had elaborated on the possibilities. For a calculating family, she would have been a vulnerable candidate, easily persuaded to embellish stories about her friendship with the Romanov princess.
Hania was a passionate young woman imbued with a vital mission and destiny that only she could fulfill by fleeing Poland. I had to rationally weigh the historical information I found against Mother’s melodramatic re-enactment that had captivated me during childhood.
However, what I never doubted about young Hania was her formidable courage against adversity. Mother’s stories had become real to both of us. With every retelling, we viscerally suffered and mourned the decimation of the entire Olsezski clan. Mother described them rendered like slaughtered animals on political killing fields. Her insistence, that not a single member of her family had survived the Bolsheviks, was supported by evidence. I would never encounter a single member of Mother’s family—there were no visits, no letters, no communication of any kind from Poland. According to Mother, the Olsezski estate and gardens, every vestige of abundant wealth was stripped, destroyed or redistributed by the Bolsheviks. The legacy of Olsezski wealth was imbedded in mystery. How else was Mother able to purchase a sequence of large properties in America that provoked the endless gossip among Dad’s relatives? Had a fortune of hidden jewels indeed been sent along with young Hania? No matter that my factual research unearthed questions that could never be answered, what I knew for sure was that my mother had been a courageous survivor. Of what, exactly, would remain an unsolved mystery.
•
In America
I had no one to help me understand how young aristocrat Hania from Poland had become the tyrannical boarding house owner in Hartford, Connecticut. Mother refused to join other “foreigners” taking English classes, instead she taught herself a patois of Polish-English. Mother was infamous for bursting out in unexpurgated Polish during fits of anger with boarders. Not surprisingly, I liked to eavesdrop. And I understood Polish very well—a secret I kept until I was nearly six years old.
One day when Dad’s relatives were visiting us, sitting and sipping cups of hot tea in the family parlor, Mother suddenly left the room. What had alerted her? Driven by curiosity, I followed.
Lurking outside the kitchen, I spied Mother lambasting a pitiful boarder. Mother shouted, “Pies krew!”
I snickered loudly because I knew “dog’s blood” was a really bad curse word in Polish. Mother didn’t miss anything—when I laughed at her swear word, she knew I understood Polish. Her punishment was swift. Mother marched me back to the parlor and pushed me to the center of the room to face all the relatives.
“Stand straight!” she ordered. “Danusia so smart, she show how good she know Polish.” She turned to me. “So, you tell something you know very good in Polish. Loud so they hear!”
No way could I repeat the curse word. I thought of only one thing that might not get me in even more trouble—a tongue twister that I’d memorized from listening to a Polish boarder repeating it again and again. It was a real good one, so difficult to say quickly that even native Polish speakers had trouble: “Stól z mieszanymi nogami”—a table with mixed-up legs. The relatives were impressed and tried to repeat the tongue twister. But not a one of them was as good as me. Mother’s eyes began to sparkle as she listened to me besting the relatives. I could tell she wasn’t angry anymore. Revealing my secret would make it harder to eavesdrop, but it was one of the few times in my young life that Mother showed her approval of me.
Mother was too stubborn to learn how to read and write English. I was stubborn, too. I refused to learn how to read and write Polish, and no matter how fluent I sounded, I remained Polish illiterate. In truth, neither Mother nor I had much tolerance for other people telling us what to do.
I wondered if we had something else in common. As a child, I often felt lonely. Had Mother, too, felt lonely with no one to help her adjust to a new life in America? She’d been pampered and sheltered in her youth—what could have prepared her for future adversity and isolation? I had questions, but getting the truth from Mother was no easy business.
On one of her quiet days, however, I plunged in and asked her, “Mamusia, how did you get from Ellis Island to Hartford?”
She turned her back to me and walked to the stove. No answer.
I tried again. “Did you have a job?”
Mother perked up and turned around with a smile. “I get work in photography studio,” she said, her voice filled with pride. “They hire me to paint black and white photographs and make them look like expensive color portraits.”
Later on, I’d reflect on Mother’s privileged background. How ironic that as a young pampered girl learning something seemingly impractical—like painting flowers in Old World Poland—helped her as an orphaned refugee find work in America.
I pressed on to learn more. “How did you meet Tatush?”
Her eyes softened. “Ach, he is coming to photography studio for making official family picture.” She flashed a coquette’s smile. “When boss ask if anyone speak Polish, they come to back room where I am painting and send me up front, for make sure customer order most expensive color portrait.” Apparently Juzo impressed young Hania with his job as assembly line mechanic at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company in East Hartford. “Was good money then, many Polish immigrants want jobs—not many get them.”
“Did you fall in love?”
“Few months later, we marry.” No details.
I couldn’t imagine my parents as a young and tender couple. As a wife, Mother was tyrannical and showed my dad little affection. As a young mother to my sister Edith and the mysterious Holden Girls, she was harsh and drove them away. Edith was the only one who came back for more, although rarely. Mother’s relentless “gifts” of leftover dinners and over-ripe apples were confusing in light of her otherwise miserly affection. Later there would be other gifts to strangers, many of them life-changing.
Dad and Mother as newlyweds, ca. 1919
Edith, Mother, and Dad, ca. 1923
Schooldays Inspection
My upstairs closet was a lonely wasteland. One metal rod separated two sections into ugly and pretty. The ugly side held wire hangers and my horrid school clothes. The pretty side had nice wooden hangers. On one, hung my soft chenille bathrobe that kept me cozy every morning and night. On another, my pink satin dress, size Junior-Large, trimmed with a meager row of lace along the neckline. Even when I had no real place to go, I’d put on that dress, stand in front of my bedroom mirror, and imagine I was a beautiful princess.
Three pairs of shoes didn’t take up much room on the closet floor. One pair of scuffed school loafers squatted next to muddy olive rain boots. Behind them sat a tightly closed, chocolate brown shoebox from G. Fox & Company. When I lifted the lid and spread open the tissue paper, a glossy pair of black patent Mary Jane’s made me giddy with pleasure. Every week I rubbed a gob of Vaseline over the leather until my fingers were reflected in the glistening surface.
