FICTION | Michele Feeney Like Family

FICTION

Like Family

By Michele Feeney

This is the first section of a novel completed during my time at Bennington.

The morning after Cecilia’s last day of school in June 1918, after Papa and Hugh left for the fields and they’d cleared breakfast, Mamusia took the picture of Josef, Cecilia’s oldest brother, off the mantel and put it on the kitchen table. Then she climbed onto the stool and removed the flour sack from behind the heavy pots on the highest pantry shelf and placed the sack on the table next to the picture.

Cecilia knew the flour sack did not hold flour. Instead, the sack, weighted with a few rocks from the stream that ran behind the house and bulked up with dried-out corn husks, was where Mamusia kept private things — hair ribbons for Cecilia to wear at school, a savings passbook Mamusia took to the bank from time to time, a packet of sunflower seeds like those they’d planted early last spring. The sunflower plants had grown tall among the stalks of sweet corn in the garden.

“Foolishness,” Papa had said, when he noticed the bright blossoms nodding among the corn stalks. “A waste of

good money.”

Mamusia poured herself a cup of steaming coffee, and sat down in the chair that had its back to the door, the one where Papa usually sat. She tucked the sack into her lap, then patted the seat of Cecilia’s chair.

Cecilia sat down next to her.

“Do you remember Josef?” Mamusia asked, tapping the picture with her finger.

“Only a little,” Cecilia said. She’d been four when Josef went off to war. In her head, Josef was no more than a shadow in the vague shape of her older brother Hugh. The framed photograph of the stiff young man in uniform — an image she’d seen every day — felt more solid than her memories.

Mamusia held the picture at arm’s length, her head tipped to one side, her expression sad.

“He looks exactly like Hugh,” Cecilia said, and smiled. Hugh, two years younger than Joseph, had stayed home to help on the farm. “Same big ears.”

Mamusia shook her head — she didn’t like when Papa teased Hugh about his ears.

“Is Josef coming home?” Cecilia asked.

“Yes,” Mamusia said. She removed a thick rectangle of brightly colored paper from the sack. The rectangle was the shape of a red brick from their fireplace, but not as thick. As Mamusia unfolded the brightly-colored rectangle, it grew bigger and bigger, until it was a map, like the one hanging from a pole on the wall in Miss Crowley’s classroom. The unfolded map covered most of the top of the kitchen table. Mamusia smoothed the map flat with the same stroke she used to smooth Cecilia’s hair, which Mamusia always said reminded her of the palest and finest corn silk.

“This is the United States,” Mamusia said. Then, she pointed to a state in the middle of the map, and in the middle of their kitchen table. “And this,” she said, “is Kansas. Josef is in Kansas. He is healing.” She marked the spot called Kansas with a heavy black pencil, and said the letters — “K-A-N-S-A-S.”

Cecilia found the mitten shape in the upper part of the map. “It’s Michigan,” she said, tracing the mitten with her finger, then putting her small hand into the shape, fingers together, thumb sticking out. “This is where we are,” she said, wiggling her thumb. “In the thumb.”

Mamusia nodded. “Clever girl,” she said.

“The blue is lakes. Miss Crowley taught us that the word ‘homes’ would help us remember the names, but I’ve forgotten.”

“Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior,” Mamusia said, pointing to each one. Then she folded the map away, put it in the flour sack for safekeeping, and put the sack back in its hiding place.

The summer passed, slow and fast. Weeding was slow; sunrise was fast. Storms were terrifying but fast; the raspberries on the bush outside the kitchen door stayed green and hard for weeks. Cecilia could barely remember being in school, when the chicks had hatched. But then the chicks began to behave like chickens over a single night.

When Josef was free to come home, in mid-August, Mamusia took the map out again. Over a few mornings, Mamusia made a long snaking pencil mark, which she traced over — Kansas to Chicago, then Chicago to Emmett. The train track ran along the north end of their property, and its whistle woke Cecilia in the morning, and, again, late at night. It was the same rushing train that would bring Josef home.

The day of Josef’s homecoming didn’t come until late August, on Cecilia’s eighth birthday. The Pokorski family — Cecilia, Hugh, and her parents — hitched up the horses to the wagon and were there to meet Josef’s train at the station near the grain elevator, even though it was the middle of a perfect haying day. On the way, Papa said they’d catch up tomorrow with Josef’s help, or maybe that afternoon.

When Cecilia saw Josef, her scant memories evaporated. The limping man who lurched off the train, who barely spoke, even to her parents, let alone her, was a stranger. He didn’t look as though he could climb onto the kitchen stool, let alone toss bales into the hayloft.

When Mollie Crowley saw Josef Pokorski and the Pokorski family in the front pew at Sunday Mass, Labor Day weekend, she was surprised. Like many farming families, the Pokorskis rarely came to Mass during haying season at all, and would never have sat right up front in one of the pews with a gold plate to show which family had donated the money for that pew, regardless of the season. Mollie assumed Father Farrell had invited the Pokorskis to take a special seat to celebrate Josef’s return. She was sure of it when she saw Father Farrell beckon Josef to an empty chair on the altar beside the head usher — it was a place of honor.

Josef had been one of the boys in the back of the one-room schoolhouse during Mollie’s first year teaching. She’d faced him down like she’d learned to face off with the bull that often escaped the Gaffneys’ west field. Once, when she was a little girl, that bull chased her with his nose flaring, wet breath spraying the back of her legs. It had been her father who’d taken her back to that field and shown her how to stand her ground,

moving slowly but with assurance, and always leaving a route for escape. He’d said that if she couldn’t run faster than a bull, or a bully, she’d need to look him in the eye.

“Calm, confident and quiet,” had been her father’s mantra.

Mollie had found the same approach held true with rambunctious boys, like Josef had been. She only had to arrange a conference with Josef’s father once — now she couldn’t even remember what transgression had upset her. At the conference, the father’s gritty glare and Josef’s pallor and quick apology let her know what Josef was afraid of — his father. From then on, corralling Josef only took a look. Then, at the end of sixth grade, Josef was gone, working on the family farm. His brother Hugh followed within a few months.

The congregation, silent as Josef made slow progress forward, leaning on Hugh, gave a collective burst of applause when he settled into the empty seat. Josef dipped his chin and looked at the floor; the applause came to an awkward halt. Josef stayed seated for the Creed and the Gospel, like one of the oldest ladies or the mothers with tiny infants. During the homily, Father Farrell said Josef’s was the first of many homecomings to come, a “true blessing.” At Holy Communion, Father Farrell came to Josef, who tipped up his head and opened his mouth like a hungry robin to receive the host. This Josef was not the tall, quick boy Mollie remembered kicking a ball across the dirt playground, darting away from other boys. This Josef was a bunch of bones with a gray face, disguised in a neatly-pressed uniform. The uniform looked to be wearing Josef, rather than the other way around.

After Mass, outside the church, Josef tolerated the hugs and tears of many mothers, celebrating his homecoming as though their own sons had returned, even though the Pokorskis were

Polish with customs and language strange to nearly everyone. Mollie did not hug Josef, finding the others’ sentiment somehow cheap and extravagant at the same time, but did press his hands between hers. He didn’t seem to remember her, and she wasn’t sure she was distinguishing her memories of Josef from those of his younger brother, Hugh — the Pokorski boys ran together in her memory. They’d both left school so long ago. She was surprised to find tears in her eyes as she walked away from the crowd toward her car. The boy hadn’t had much of a childhood, and now it was finished.

Dr. Hart, who treated Josef, said it was the “Spain Flu” — he was fairly certain. “I’ve read about it, like everyone,” he told Mamusia, when Josef began coughing as though he would turn himself inside out, “but I hadn’t yet seen a real case.”

At first, Cecilia didn’t know what Spain was — a place? a food? a person? Then, she overheard Dr. Hart commenting to his nurse, “The war wasn’t enough? They brought this home, too?” So, Spain was a place. Cecilia didn’t remember Spain on their map, but there were so many words and places. And the “Spain Flu” had something to do with Josef’s war. It was something he’d brought home with him, something unwelcome.

Josef passed during a night when it seemed the house was full of noise and movement, a night when Cecilia swam up from deep sleep again and again, but never fully woke up. In the morning, Josef’s picture was back on the kitchen table, and Mamusia was weeping into her coffee. Father was already in the field, like always, and Hugh was “still asleep,” Mamusia said.

That was strange — Hugh was always up with Father.

“Hugh was needed for the burial,” Mamusia added. “The doctor said, do it quick. He was up most of the night.”

“Burial?” Cecilia asked, looking at the face in the picture, then peeking over Mamusia’s shoulder into the boys’ room, where the sheet on Josef’s empty bed was pulled tight.

It was as if the real Josef had never been there.

The day after Josef passed, Mamusia fell ill. The doctor told Cecilia to make a bed for herself in the pantry and stay there. It was atiny room offthekitchen;she rememberedwhen Mamusia had tried to bottle feed a newborn after lambing season, then abandoned, to no avail — the lamb had died, and her father had made fun of Mamusia’s soft heart. Cecilia soon understood Mamusia was very sick — she never even came to check on her in the pantry. She wanted to come out of the pantry, for comfort, but wanted to stay in, for safety. She spent the nights curled in on herself like a single kitten.

In the nights, Cecilia heard the sounds of coughing, not like when she had a cold but more like an angry storm. She heard vomiting that was so much harsher than when she’d had the stomach bug last winter. She heard her brother Hugh screaming with pain in his head. As the days passed, the sounds grew louder. First Josef, then Mamusia, and finally Hugh and Papa. Everyone was sick, and no one seemed to be getting better.

Each time Dr. Hart knocked, she quickly opened the pantry door. He’d always backed far away, and always wore gloves and a mask, which left only his stern dark eyes visible. Cecilia heard in his tone the disbelief that she was still healthy. She always found a basket of food, in exchange for which she shamefully exchanged the chamber pot she’d filled in the previous twentyfour hours, by the pantry door. It was the doctor who gave her the news of Mamusia’s death. That day, the doctor cried with her but didn’t come any closer. Then, a day later, from

behind his mask, the doctor told her that her “other brother” had passed, and she knew that meant Hugh. Hugh had been her only real brother, the only other young person in the house. He’d been up early every day with their father, in the barn or the fields, but still took time to push her on the swing he’d hung in the barn, and to read to her in the evenings.

The baskets kept coming even after they took the last body, her father’s. She didn’t know where they’d taken the bodies or whether there were prayers of any kind, like she and Mamusia had said over the lamb that passed, now buried next to the back garden. Whoever was delivering the food rang the farm bell in the yard — the same bell Mamusia had used to announce dinner. She always ran to the front door, but all she ever saw of the people making the deliveries was raised dust as their farm wagons travelled back down the lane. Sometimes, the basket held a “kindness” — that’s what Mamusia called small gifts. Once, an extra sweet, another time fresh mint for her water, and once paper and charcoal pencils, which Cecilia used up in a day.

Every few days, Dr. Hart returned to the house empty of everyone but her, and knocked, then waited at the bottom of the porch steps.

Each time she answered, he looked surprised she was still healthy. One day, standing at the bottom of the porch steps, he said, “We’re still waiting for word from your people in Chicago.”

“I don’t know any people in Chicago,” Cecilia said, remembering that Josef had stayed an extra day there when they were tracing his path, but not knowing who he’d seen.

“The priest wrote to the Polish parishes. We’ll see if anyone turns up.” “So am I to stay here?” she asked. “Until someone answers? Alone?”

“I am sorry —

” he stammered, and shuffled his feet. “My wife….well, she has babies of her own, and is terrified of the flu.”

“But I’m not sick,” Cecilia said. “Please.”

“She doesn’t know I’m here,” the doctor said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “No fever? You’re not hot?” he asked, holding out his hand as if to touch her forehead, though he was several feet away.

She didn’t want the doctor to come closer — it was Mamusia she longed for. Or perhaps whoever was taking time to pack the sweet baskets. She put her hand to her own forehead — cool — and shook her head. Then the doctor left.

She washed each afternoon on the porch, using the hand pump to lift water up from the cistern. Like the doctor, she disbelieved her continuing good health, but it remained. She was eight years old. She could take care of herself, even when the thunderstorms she so feared made the tin roof rattle overhead. She counted the beats of the thunder, as Mamusia had taught her to do, and the storms always passed, usually quicker than she would have thought possible.

By the time Mollie overheard the two ladies talking outside the post office, the Mass where the community had celebrated Josef’s return was four weeks past. It was late September and she had worked and worked to compress what she’d planned for September and October into a single month — her goal was to catch up by November 1st.

She had posted a handmade sign about school re-opening on every storefront door in the village. Placing a sign at the post office, then picking up their mail, was her last stop. Once she got in the car, she could take her mask off — it was trapping

perspiration in a thin wet line across the top of her nose and her breath smelled rank.

The Michigan governor left the decision of whether to open schools to each community, their community left the decision to the town council, and the town council delegated the decision to Mollie. Could she keep the children apart? Would she alert them at the first sign of trouble? What precautions would she take to cleanse and sterilize the classroom? Did she have a plan to keep the children safe?

Hadn’t she always had a plan to keep the children safe? At age thirty-two, with over fifteen years of teaching experience, didn’t they trust her? Didn’t they think she’d do her homework? Didn’t they think she could maintain order in the schoolhouse? It seemed the task of proving herself might never end.

The signs she’d posted directed that children wear masks on school grounds, stay home if they had any fever, and be prepared to wash carefully and often. School would start Monday, October 10. Thank God the Pokorski family mostly kept to itself, and all the hugging on Josef after Mass hadn’t seemed to transmit the disease to anyone — if it had, they’d surely know by now. With no cases since their deaths, the children would be safe, as long as the families followed her instructions. There was no more time to waste; she was already a month behind.

The two chatting ladies were right behind Mollie as she positioned the last sign on the post office door. Neither lady was wearing a mask, which made Mollie wonder what she would do when families resisted her request. She’d have to have masks ready in the classroom for children to wear — no point in fighting with parents. One more extra thing to do before the start of school — perhaps her mother could make masks. There were plenty of fabric scraps in the sewing room — good, thick

cotton would be best. Mollie began to step out of the way so the ladies could pass, leaving them a wide path into the building.

“Never mind, dear,” one said. “We can wait while you finish that. No hurry.”

Mollie nodded. She knew her mask would muffle her voice if she spoke.

The ladies continued their conversation a few feet behind Mollie’s back. One mentioned that Cecilia Pokorski had been left behind in the Pokorski family house for almost thirty days. She was only eight years old, the other said. Then, “Poor little soul, it’s not right.” “I’m to drop a basket of food this afternoon — I’ll put in some treats,” the other said, “and some fresh milk.” “Poor little soul,” was the last thing Mollie heard the two women say, as she brushed through the door to the mailroom. Again, it seemed they were speaking in unison. She used her key to open the little gold letterbox she shared with her mother and took out three envelopes — a letter from her sister-in-law to both of them, a letter from the Michigan state government that was probably her teaching certification for the 1918-1919 school year — she’d been watching for that — and a flyer about a new tractor model for her father, John, now two years gone from heart trouble.