Being Polite

Thank you, Vicky, for sending me the woven mats Grandmother Victoria made. You won’t remember her, of course, but she was the sweetest person you could hope to know. I’ve never understood why your mother named you after her because she died before you were born.

It means a lot to be able to display the weaving when we entertain family. Nobody realised that your mother took them away with her to California. We thought they had been lost in all the upheaval after grandfather died with the house having to be sold and Aunt Bogna moving into a much smaller place.

The old neighbourhood isn’t anything like it was, so it’s for the best that Aunt Bogna is now being looked after in a care home. A young man was shot on the steps of the church, a drive-by shooting, but he didn’t die, though he is still in hospital. Not anyone we know.

No, I can’t give you her address because I only know how to get there by car but all of us take turns visiting. I will say hello to her for you when I see her next.

***

Thank you, Ruth, for sending me a copy of the family tree. I wish you could have sent it while mother was still alive, but at least she saw the first draft when she and Aunt Lucy visited. She would have liked to see how cleverly you have drawn all the branches with the children being leaves and everything. The little robins here and there are a great touch and I love the nest near the top.

I’m puzzled why the leaf on my mother’s branch that should have my name on it is blank. Perhaps you haven’t finished everything yet? It would be great to receive a copy of the final version which I want to frame so I can hang it by the front door and think of all of you when I come home.

It’s so lonely with only the parakeet. I suspect even he feels the loneliness when I’m out. I haven’t found a smaller place yet, definitely don’t need a two-bedroom any more.

Yes, I’ve started to go to morning Mass every day, just like mother did, now that I’ve learned to drive so I don’t have to depend on the buses and can still get to work on time.

Many of the regular customers at Dean’s Photo are still talking about her. Our boss has let me keep on doing her shift, so I work Monday to Friday plus Saturday with a random day off each week when someone else can cover. I like being busy. It gives me less time for sad thoughts.

***

Thank you, Vicky, for wrapping one of your mother’s rosaries so carefully. It has arrived intact so I will pass this along to Aunt Bogna though naturally she already has one of her own.

I’m not sure she’s able to go to church anymore, so praying the rosary will give her some comfort. She can’t read the Bible nowadays because her eyes are so bad.

Yes, she is settling in okay and a few of the others in there speak Polish so they get along fine. Some staff members do, too. I don’t think you should save up for a flight because, to be honest, I don’t think she would remember you that well any more, not having seen you for is it two decades?

Aunt Bogna thought I was my mom when I visited last week. I suspect her mind is drifting into the past, but that happens with old people. You have to remember she is the oldest.

We were all surprised when your mother died, with her being the youngest of all the siblings if you don’t count those that died in childhood or the stillbirths. Times were so much harder back then and nobody could afford the doctor, especially with a large family. I’m stopping after two or maybe three, although I know birth control is a sin.

***

Thank you so much, Ruth, this is amazing. I have framed the photo you sent of mother standing at the head of the picnic table with her four sisters and two brothers seated along the sides. Everyone looks so happy, even grumpy Uncle Casey. I didn’t even know that photo existed.

Please thank Uncle Dan for getting the enlargement made and let me know their new address so I can write him a thank you note myself. I found an old photo of him and mother that I want to send.

I’m so glad Aunt Lucy paid for that plane ticket so mother got to visit all of you before she died. I agree with you, this family photo is a big improvement on the family tree because I can see all my aunts and uncles and they all so happy. I would still like to have a copy when you have added any names that are missing.

I wonder if you’re waiting for your first baby to be born before you finish drawing the tree? You must be so excited. I have a little surprise for you, but it isn’t finished yet. I will send it as soon as I can as you haven’t told me when the baby is due. Wouldn’t it be great if you had twins?

Is Aunt Agnes all right? She normally writes back within a week when I write to her, but I have written last month and this month without getting a reply. I will keep her in my prayers but, to be honest, I pray for all of you every day, just like mother used to do.

***

Thank you, Vicky, for the lovely pastel yellow baby blanket that you made.

I was so relieved that you didn’t use pink or blue yarn as there would be fifty percent chance of it being the wrong color. The matching booties are adorable, though it’s a shame you didn’t make a sweet little hat as well. Your mother used to knit the whole set for all the babies in the family, remember?

The doctor doesn’t think I’m having twins, thank goodness, but everyone tells me that sometimes doctors are wrong about such things. You wouldn’t believe how huge I am, but I refuse to let Tony take a photo of me because I have never looked so fat!

I’m sorry you were worried about Aunt Agnes. I guess she was struggling to know what to say.

We had a big family picnic the other day and as we were sitting in the garden, we started to discuss the situation, although Aunt Bogna wasn’t able to join us.

Since I’m the one who has still been writing to you, being polite because of your mother dying, we all agreed that I should be the one to explain, though this is the most difficult letter that I’ve ever had to write.

It’s so awkward because nobody knows what you know and what you don’t know.

Basically, none of us think you should write to us now that your mother has died. You must have found paperwork relating to this, so it’s unfair that you’ve persisted in trying to stay in touch.

We don’t want to hear from you anymore because you’re adopted. So, you aren’t really family, if you get what I mean. That’s why I didn’t put your name on that leaf. You don’t belong. That’s why I didn’t give you Aunt Bogna’s new address despite how you kept asking. And my parents don’t want you to have their new address. What would be the point?

At least that will save you postage when next Christmas rolls around and all the bother of buying birthday cards to send. On your low salary, I’m sure every penny counts. 

Nobody has ever figured out why your mother adopted you rather than getting married and having her own children like normal people.

But that’s the choice she made. And we can’t do anything to change it. When you left town with your mother the month that the Apollo mission landed on the moon, we were all relieved because you were never one of us.

Please, if you could still make a little hat for my baby, I would really appreciate it and will send you another thank you note, of course, but beyond that, I don’t see any point in continuing our correspondence.

All of us wish you the best and hope you do find a husband soon as you won’t want to be alone all your life like Aunt Bogna was. You are quite welcome to keep us in your prayers if you like because your mother always did. God Bless.

***

Vicky stands in line at Kinko’s with confused feelings and her birth certificate folded up in an envelope.

It is taking forever because nobody ahead of her wants anything so straightforward copied.

She takes the precious document out of the envelope, feeling a need to make sure her mother’s name is on the birth certificate after that last thank you note from Ruth.

Then, when it’s finally her turn, Vicky panics and says, “Sorry, I forgot something.”

She exits Kinko’s and plunges into Winchell’s Donuts next door. She chooses a hot chocolate and an Éclair which was her mother’s favourite and sits down at a table for two in the corner where she used to sit with her mother sometimes for a shared treat.

Carefully, she puts the birth certificate in its envelope on the opposite side of the table so she won’t mess it up with spilled cocoa or a smudge of chocolate. She was in such a hurry to get it photocopied that didn’t think of protecting the document.

Vicky only saw her birth certificate for the first time after her mother died but it raised more questions than it answered, especially without the letter she desperately hoped to find that would explain everything. Of course, her mother, like most people, had not expected to die.

As she nibbles the Éclair and sips the cocoa, her mind goes back to the root cause of her lack of information about her origins. At eleven years old, newly arrived in California, when she won too many poker games with Aunt Lucy’s grandchildren, Penny and Harold, on the first day that she played with them, they had taken revenge. First by accusing her of cheating and then by telling her she was adopted.

She can still feel the shock all these years later, but she kept a poker face with her cousins, of course, just as her maiden aunt had taught her while passing on her expert knowledge of the game. She held back the tears until mother was driving home. 

She could recall clearly how mother assured her that she was not adopted. The cross-my-heart promise to explain everything when as soon as she turned eighteen. This was postponed to twenty-one and eventually to thirty.

When Vicky was only a few years shy of that age, her mother died from peritonitis of the colon because they could not afford (and her mother, thinking it was a stomach bug, repeatedly refused) to consult a doctor.

Licking some chocolate from her finger, Vicky came to the conclusion that providing a photocopy of her birth certificate would make her mother a liar in the eyes of the family. And worse still, it would tarnish her memory with the guilt and stigma of having a baby without a husband which must be why mother made up the story about the adoption in the first place.

By the time she finished her Éclair and hot chocolate, carefully wiping her fingers on the little napkin and disposed of the empty cup and wrapper in the waiting bin, Vicky had made up her mind.

She refused point blank to dishonour her mother’s memory even though that was the only way to stay part of a family she had cherished all her life. They didn’t want her, so she had to somehow stop wanting them.

Over the next week or so, she dutifully crocheted a pastel yellow baby hat with the leftover yarn. She avoided thinking about the circumstances. Instead, as she hooked every stitch, she prayed for the baby, sometimes wondering whether it would be a boy or a girl. She desperately tried to ignore the fact that she would never know, never be sent a photo, never have a letter from any of her relatives again.

Vicky posted the tiny hat to Ruth. When the thank you note arrived promptly, she tore the envelope to shreds rather than open it to read. She watched the blue parakeet bob his head up and down as he stared into the tiny mirror which had rainbow beads strung across it for him to slide back and forth.

Early the next morning, which was a Sunday, she tried to fit all the tiny pieces together on the kitchen table. Frustrated and in two minds, she swept them up and threw them all away again.

When she made herself some French toast, she crushed the empty eggshells and dropped them on top of the torn fragments, knowing that would repulse her from trying to reassemble them. She loved eggs for breakfast in various forms but hated even the idea of slimy egg white.

About to go out the door to Mass, she took down the framed photo of her aunts and uncles sitting at the picnic table with her mother smiling down at them all. For a split second, she thought of the rosary mystery of the Assumption when Mary rises up to be crowned the Queen of Heaven. She smiled, thinking mother would appreciate being associated with Our Lady.

Vicky stashed the 8x10 in a drawer before leaving. Maybe she would cut out just her mother smiling and add that to the reunion photo album. Mother had used a lot of film to get all those photos to keep the memories of that once in a lifetime occasion which included Ruth and Tony’s wedding.

As she walked to church, she finally understood why she had not been invited when Aunt Lucy paid for mother’s plane fare, even though mother said they could scrape together enough money for her flight.

It was not just because somebody needed to stay at home to look after the parakeet for that week. That was only an excuse probably fabricated by Aunt Lucy.

While waiting in another line, this time to receive the thin white wafer for Holy Communion, Vicky began to take on board the awful notion that those aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins had only been being polite, grudgingly accepting her because her mother adopted her, nothing more than that.

She remembered her confusion that one morning when she saw her mother hand over to Aunt Agnes not only a tin of Campbell’s Tomato Soup for her lunch but some money as well.

When she returned to the pew and knelt, she couldn’t focus on praying because she was thinking of Tante Martha and Onkel Fred, her German godparents who were not blood relations.

When she thought of her childhood, actually, it was their house that almost always came into view:  the apple tree that she helped to plant in the backyard that soon outgrew her, ping pong with Uncle Fred in the basement and long bike rides and the stories he told. Aunt Martha helping with her homework and praying the rosary together. Inventing stories with her godfather while they played with the train in the attic whose engine was named after her, the endless games of checkers and Chinese checkers, his attempts to teach her chess.

Vicky crossed herself and sat back in the pew because she couldn’t focus enough to pray right now. She was going to write to her godmother as soon as she got home. Her godparents had moved to Florida a couple of years after Vicky and her mother travelled to California. Such an awful pity that they had gone in opposite directions from the Midwest, but her godparents had relatives in Florida.

She resolved that the money she had already started to saves up to visit the four aunts and two uncles and dozens of cousins, she was going to put toward flying to visit Tante Martha although the distance was twice as long so it would cost a lot more.

Only her godmother, sadly, because her godfather, though fit and well and cycling and swimming every day, died of a heart attack only a year after his retirement.

Tante Martha would be lonely, so she would be glad of a visit. Vicky understood better now what loneliness could be like. They would hug when they met, hold on tight and probably cry a little, but that was only to be expected. It would be a different house, a mango tree in the garden rather than an apple tree, but she felt sure staying with her godmother would feel like coming home.

From now on, if anyone asked, she had an aunt living in Florida and that was it. A very precious aunt as well as being her beloved godmother, the very sweetest person you could ever hope to know.