Excerpts

Chapter One I'm following Mom and, using a hoe, I'm covering the holes containing potato halves. Mom's nice. She never says anything when I cover them up wrong, she just gives me a look and I know I have to do it over. The earth is soft. Dad turned it over with a shovel. Now he's doing something over by the fence and Tadzio's tagging along. He's my younger brother. He's ten. He's a neat, cheerful kid. He always wants to arm-wrestle me, but I always pin him. Then he screams that I'm cheating, but I'm not, and that's why he screams. Maybe I should let him win sometimes, but, well, it's not right to cheat. I like him a lot. I took care of him when he was very young. I changed his diapers and fed him his bottle. Now I take care of Zenus. Zenus always sleeps, and when he isn't asleep, he's either crying or smiling. The air smells sweet. It's spring. All day long the sun warms your skin so nicely. Right now it's not so strong because the sun's setting. Our plot of land borders the woods. The woods are dark green and the whole field is dark gray. When the potatoes grow, the field will be green too. All morning I've felt like I have something in my stomach. Same thing yesterday, but not as bad. Someone's squealing. I look up and see it's Zosia. She's running away and Tadzio's chasing after her. Zosia's my sister. There's also Krysia. They're twins. They're five. They always play Chinese jump rope. I also used to jump rope, but I don't do it anymore because I'm too old for that. What's going on over there? Tadzio's approaching Zenus in the baby buggy and dangles a worm over him. Zosia's standing nearby.     From here I can hear her say, "Hey, give it to him, let's see 'im eat it!"     "He's too little to be chowing down meat," Tadzio says. Oh my God, I've been staring and listening too long and Mom's already so far away. So I cover the pits after her, swish, swish, next. Swish, swish, swish, swish. Tadzio runs beside me. Screaming "Score, score!" he jumps over the barbed-wire fence and runs to the top of the little hill. My eyes follow him and my belly starts to hurt and I don't know what to do. Maybe my guts got scrambled. Suddenly it passes. Thank God. A bird is flying in the sky. The sky's blue, the bird's white. Tadzio aims at him with a slingshot and shoots--"Bang, bang!"--but the bird keeps on flying and flying. Nature's beautiful when the sun shines, as long as it doesn't shine in your eyes. Again I've been staring too long, again Mom has gotten far ahead. So I grab the hoe and catch up with her and Mom stands up straight and speaks to me.     "Marysia, do you hear that?"     "What?"     "That."     Oh yeah. Zenus is crying quietly. He must have wet his diaper. I put down the hoe and head over to the buggy, which is standing by the woods in the shadow of the trees. But Zenus is sleeping. I put my hand under his diaper. It's dry. Maybe he was whimpering in his sleep, maybe he was dreaming? Oh well, I'm about to head back, but suddenly something twists in my stomach, and then untwists. I sit right down. I sit down and curl up because it hurts. Something very odd is happening in my stomach. Maybe I swallowed a tadpole in the water and it has now become a frog? Maybe it's hungry and is biting me in the stomach? I hit my tummy with my hand--maybe that'll scare it. It bites a little bit more and then stops. It doesn't hurt anymore. I sit on the grass. There are daisies all around me. I'd like to pick some and make a crown, but I have to go cover the holes. I'm about to get up when I hear a shout. I turn around and look. Maybe it's Zosia, maybe it's Krysia. But no, they're playing Chinese jump rope next to the tree. Someone's shouting deep in the woods. It's high-pitched and sounds like a girl. I get up and walk over to the trees. I'm a little afraid, and a bit curious. I'm in the woods. The trees are thick. It's dark; the sun doesn't reach here. I hear a bang far away. What can it be? I weave my way through the underbrush. I'm on a narrow path. I hear something like a squeal, or a neigh. There's a sort of clomping. I look over and see a huge carriage, all black, with silver stars, drawn by four black horses. It comes straight at me. The horses are foaming at the mouth. I jump aside and glue myself to a tree. I see the pretty face of a girl in the window of the carriage. She's about my age, I think. She has a golden dress on, and on her head a tiara made of pure gold, studded with diamonds. She notices me and wants to shout something, but suddenly a horrid black hand emerges and clamps over her little rosy lips. The carriage goes by. From the back two ugly hairy monkeys, dressed in tuxedos and baring their teeth, reach their ugly paws toward me, but I crouch so they can't reach me. They're gone. It's quiet. Something shines on the path. I squat down. There's a diamond lying there. It probably fell off the girl's tiara. Or maybe from her ring? Maybe she threw it to me so I'd have a souvenir and wouldn't forget. So beautiful--like the whole sun is hiding in there and shining. I hold it in the palm of my hand to admire it. Someone's moaning. It's coming from the same direction the carriage came from. I walk down the path, holding the diamond in my hand, getting more and more scared. What am I about to see? The moans grow louder. Finally I reach the place they're coming from. A young man lies there moaning, a spear piercing his stomach. He can't get up because the spear has nailed him to the ground. Beautifully arranged golden curls circle his face. He has on a red tunic embroidered with gold, yellow tights and beautiful red shoes. A broken sword and a feathered hat lie beside him. Oh, what terrible pain he must be in. Gripping the spear, he wriggles his body, like he's trying to climb up ... He sees me. He begs pitifully, "Little girl, please help me. Pull this out of me, I can't do it alone. Please, pull it ..."     I'd like to help him, but I can't. I don't know why, but I can't move. I simply can't move. I feel ashamed because he might be thinking I don't want to help him, that I'm bad. But how can I help him when I can't move? I'd like to tell him that, but I can't even move my lips.     In great pain, he pleads, "Little girl, I beg you, pull it out of me. Grab it and pull! Grab it and pull! Grab it and pull! Come on, little girl, grab it and pull!"     But I can't do anything. Nothing--literally nothing. Nothing, nothing. All I can do is close my eyes; at least I can do that. I open them once it's quiet again. I see the young man climbing the wooden shaft of the spear, which is bent like a bow. The spear starts to tilt and the young man falls on his side. The sharp blade of the sword is suddenly sticking out of the ground. The young man is no longer moaning. He's dead. A red ribbon slowly trickles out from under him. It flows down the path to my bare feet. I'm standing in the puddle of blood and I can't move. The red streams climb up my leg like little vipers. A ridiculous girl is standing in the forest shouting hopelessly. The girl is me.     "Mom!" I shout. The road swings away. Tadzio was chasing after us, but he got tired. Mom's pedaling and I'm sitting in the cart attached to the bicycle, on top of the empty potato sacks. Oh, here comes a car. It's getting closer. There's a man and a woman inside. They look at me and pass us. The sun shines to my left; it's low. To my right you can see shadows in the road--of the bike, of the cart, of Mom, of me. Mom's head flickers against the tree trunks in the road. They're cherry trees.     I'm lying in bed. I have a bunch of cotton stuffed in my undies and I don't feel like sleeping. Until today I was a little girl. Maybe that's why I'm so tall, the tallest in my family. I'm five feet six. After me comes Dad, five feet one. After him comes Mom, five feet on the nose. After them, Tadzio and the girls. And last is Zenus. Dad's skinny but strong. Stronger than Mom, but he weighs half as much. Mom's very fat. Dad keeps saying she looks like a keg of beer. Mom says by the time I've had as many kids as her, I'll be that way too. And our neighbor from the frame house, Mr. Kaminski, is about six three. When he and Dad stand by the fence and drink beer, Mom laughs and says, "Marysia, look what we've got here, what a fine pair of boozers."     Mr. Kaminski likes a good, stiff drink. So does Dad, but he says that he doesn't drink at work, because if he did, he'd have fallen off the roof years ago. That's because Dad tiles roofs. A while back he used to do that full-time, but for about three years now he's been working at the coal mines in Walbrzych, then tiles in the afternoon when he gets off work. Thanks to the mine, we have a new apartment in Walbrzych in the Piaskowa Gora development. I haven't been there yet, but Mom went and told us it's really neat and there are even three rooms there. One is large, and two are teeny. There's also a kitchen, a full bathroom and a half-bath. Mom's very happy about that because if someone wants to use the toilet, he won't disturb someone who might be taking a bath. I suppose it's the same at our house, because the outhouse with the heart-shaped hole in the door is near the currant bushes, while the pump is on the other side by the storage sheds. Dad's having the hardest time leaving the rabbits behind. Mom's sorry too. As for me, I'm really happy we won't be raising rabbits in our new apartment. Dad won't be killing them anymore. We won't be taking Tabby with us, because cats get used to a certain place, and besides, Mom says, she wouldn't have taken him anyway, because he'd probably pee in our new apartment. Mrs. Kaminska will be feeding him. And we have no idea what's going to happen with school. I have less than three months left in elementary school. Same for Tadzio and the third grade. We had been going to school in Krzeszow. It's less than two miles away. And now ... what's going to happen now? From our place it's twelve miles to Walbrzych and there's no direct bus. Dad goes to the coal mines on a bike, but he's a grown-up. The thing is, we haven't even got any other bikes, just Dad's. Dad said we shouldn't move to Walbrzych until summer vacation, but Mom said we should do it right away because squatters might break into the new apartment with an ax and by the time we got there they'd already be living there and wouldn't want to let us in. Dad offered to live there by himself for the time being, and the rest of the family could hook up with him when the school year ends. But Mom knows what's what. First thing you know, Dad's buddies would find out and turn the apartment into a hangout for drinking, and sleeping with women with VD.     It turns out that on Monday after work Dad will enroll us at a school in Walbrzych. I sure hope they take us. Maybe they won't want to so close to the end of the year. But maybe Dad can explain things and tell them about those squatters. Our new furniture's already there. A wall unit and a fold-up couch. I haven't seen them yet because they were packed up in cardboard and plastic in the storage shed. The day before yesterday Dad and Mr. Kaminski brought them down to Walbrzych in a truck. I really wonder what the apartment looks like. I'll be living in one room with the girls, with Dad and Tadzio in the second one, and Mom and Zenus in the third. Or, the girls in one, me and Tadzio in the other, and Mom, Zenus and Dad in the third. Mom hasn't decided yet. She says this, that and the other thing, always changing her mind. Then Dad laughs and says, "Like a kid in a candy shop ..." See, that's the thing. Here, we fit into one room with a small kitchen, but there, we can't fit into three rooms, a kitchen and a hallway. We're sure going to have a lot of room to run around, though.     So I'm lying around, and all of a sudden I look down: I've got my thumb in my mouth again. Yuck. The minute I forget about it, I stick my right thumb in and start sucking on it like a pacifier. Everyone laughs at me--such a big girl and she sucks her thumb. I always swear never to do it again, and then I look down and I have it in my mouth. Zosia and Krysia, they're so small, but they don't suck their thumbs. Dad says he's going to smear it with cat shit, and then I'll really be in trouble. Each morning Mom tells me to show her my thumb, and if it's white and clean, then she yells at me for sucking it. Now I always wash all my fingers carefully at night so that in the morning you can't tell the difference. But even then, you can always tell if one's been sucked on.     Rats.     The sun has gone down and my folks aren't here yet. There were so many potatoes to plant and I'm here just lounging around, not helping at all. I'm sure Tadzio's covering the holes for me. I wish he was doing it well. "You got it wrong here, and here too!" I wish Mom could see that. "Ha, I'm gonna call her and show her how you did it!" But Tadzio just laughs and sticks out his tongue. When we come down in the fall to collect them, there won't be a single potato there: the holes weren't covered right. Not the ones I covered--those will be fine. "Look, Tadzio," I say, "this is how you should cover them." I take the hoe and show him. I look over and Tadzio's standing on the hill shooting at us with his slingshot. Taratatatat . I lie dead on the meadow and a bird sits beside me. It's white and blurry. I ask him, "What do you want?" He has something in his beak. He spits it out and flies away. It's shining. I stretch my arm out. The little light gets away and goes down into the ground. So I go after it. I crawl down on all fours into the mole's tunnel. Deeper and deeper into the darkness, underground. Again I see the little light. Someone's snoring very loudly. Here in a little room of a mole's family, the daddy mole's snoring on the cot. The mother mole is washing her fur over the washbasin, and over there, a girl mole is sucking her paw in her sleep. Two small baby moles are standing by her and whispering.     "Something tells me she's going to die soon."     "What are you talking about? Why would she have to die?"     "Grandma died, and for what? For no reason at all."     "She was old."     "And Marysia got bitten by a snake."     "Tadzio didn't find it."     "Because it bit her and escaped."     Dummies. They don't realize their older sister's just become a woman. I'm like Mom now. This is what God arranged with women so they could have children, so the human race wouldn't die out. I'll have children someday too. A boy and a girl. The boy will be called Pawelek and the girl Zuzanna. It's Monday now. Seven twenty-seven in the morning. No, that's impossible, because it's Wednesday. That's just what my watch says. I got it last year for my name day from my godfather. It's gotten the day wrong several times now. But as far as minutes and hours go, it's never been wrong. I'm standing at a bus stop and I'm waiting for the number 8 bus. There are lots of people around. They're waiting, too. Some have umbrellas because it's raining. I have on a see-through raincoat with a hood. It's kind of warm and pleasant out here, although my legs are a bit damp. Last night was the first night we spent in the new apartment. Mom told us to remember what each of us dreamed, because dreams in a new place always come true. She dreamed that she was arguing with Mrs. Kaminska from our old frame house in Jawiszow, which is very odd because we're never going back there. Zosia dreamed about a hen. Krysia dreamed she ate porridge with milk and sugar and raspberries. Tadzio didn't dream of anything, but he never has dreams. I had a dream, something really beautiful, but I've already forgotten what it was, because when I woke up, I wanted to sleep a little longer so I could dream about it a little more, but when I woke up again, it turned out I didn't remember anything from that dream. Something about ... No, I don't remember. Too bad, because it was really beautiful.     And we don't know what Dad dreamed, because everyone else was still asleep when he went to work. It's a quarter to eight already. I'm on a bus and I'm really nervous because I'm afraid I'll be late for school.     "Excuse me," I say. "I'm going to Maria Konopnicka Street. Where do I get off?"     "I don't know," the woman responds.     But another woman hears my question and says, "The stop after next."     "Thank you very much," I say. I smile at her and curtsy. The woman smiles back. The bus stops. Some people get off, some get on. The doors close with a hiss. I move closer to them. We start moving again. Something has splashed me. It must be from someone's umbrella. In three seconds it'll be twelve to eight. I don't know, maybe I'll make it. It's all because I'm not going to the same school as Tadzio, who got into the local school in our neighborhood. But there is such an overload of kids in the eighth grade there that Dad's foreman, who is on the parents' committee, found me a place in elementary school number 3 downtown. He told Dad it's the best elementary school in all of Walbrzych. From now on I'll be attending class 8A. I'm very curious about my new classmates--both girls and boys. When I went to school in Krzeszow, I didn't have a single close friend. I had one in the fifth grade once, but she left with her parents for Canada and never sent me a postcard, even though she promised.     The bus slows down and stops. The doors open, I jump out, straight into a puddle.     I was the only one to get off here. A woman is going down the street.     "Excuse me," I say. "Where is Maria Konopnicka Street?"     She points to the other side of the street. I run across, and once I'm on the sidewalk, I realize that I forgot to thank her. Oh, here's Maria Konopnicka Street. Boys with book bags walk by. I run after them.     "Excuse me," I say, out of breath. "Are you going to school number 3?"     One of them laughs and says, "Are you nuts? We're skipping school."     "So where is school number 3?" The boys point to the place that I came from. So I say, "But this is Maria Konopnicka Street."     "That's also Konopnicka Street," they say. "Two miles and you'll be at school."     I run back in that direction. It's six to eight. I'm not going to make it. I run across the street. I look around ... there's no Konopnicka Street, only a dug-up square, full of puddles. But the street definitely continues on the far side of the square. I walk--it's muddy everywhere. I hope I don't fall down. I'm not going to get through--I have to circle around. Girls with book bags and umbrellas are passing by right then.     I yell, "Girls! Do you know where school number 3 is?"     "We're going to school number 3!"     They're walking, not rushing at all. I step out of the mud and join them. We cross the street together and we walk in the same direction that those boys went in, the ones who said they were skipping school.     "What grade are you in?" I ask the girls.     "Third grade," they reply.     "Just like my brother," I say.     "I'm a fourth grader," one of the girls offers.     "Do you get good grades?" I ask.     "I'm the best one," says the one with a red bow and red umbrella. "I made the Honor Roll."     "I made it too," says the other.     "But you got a B yesterday," says the one with the bow. We reach the school building. It's very large and there are lots of carved figures on the side of it. The girls take off; only one stays with me.     "I made the Honor Roll last year," she says. "But this year my dad died and I didn't make it."     We go in. Wow, what a large school. There's even a coatroom, but I don't know what to do, so I huddle in the corner. I take out my slippers and put them on my feet, wrap my muddy shoes in my raincoat and put them in my book bag. The bell's ringing. I run up to a lady who's shouting at kids to hurry up.     "Good morning," I say. "Where is class 8A?"     "And where did you drop in from?" The lady's surprised.     "I went to school in Krzeszow, but now we got a new apartment down Walbrzych way ..."     "Run to the third floor," the woman says. So I run. Here it is. There are so many hallways. Where do I go? There? Or there? Or maybe there? I sit at the last table in the row right by the wall. I don't know what notebooks to take out because I don't know what class it is. My cheeks are hot and my mouth is dry.     Here's what happened.     I enter the class and bang into some guy. He and I fall down. I get up, pick up my book bag, and he sits on the floor, feeling his teeth.     I say, "I'm very sorry."     He says, "Fuck off!."     Everyone laughs. I go to an empty desk and sit down. Someone says, "Hey, you, you sure you're not in the wrong place?"     I raise my hand and some girl stands over me. "Bogusia sits here," she says. "Get lost." I get up and she sits down. I'm standing, looking around.     I say, "Is there a free seat somewhere?"     "There's one here," I hear.     I look--and it's a fat red-faced boy. He points to a seat and I sit down beside him, but the boy who I crashed into gets up from the floor, comes over to me, hits me on the head and says, "Wait a minute, I sit here." I get up and he sits down.     "What are you doing, fatso?" he says. "Are you in the mood to pick up girls?" The fatso laughs and others laugh with him.     One girl says, "Look what fashionable tights she's wearing! Spotted ones!"     I look at my legs and my tights are splattered with mud. It's from when I stepped in the puddle. I'm standing and I don't know what to do. Everyone's looking at me. "Listen," someone says, "there's a free desk in the back."     I go there and sit down.     So now I'm sitting. The teacher's already here; he's quite young. He reads something and yawns. It's fairly quiet in the classroom. One of the girls raises her hand. She clears her throat. The teacher lifts his head and looks at her.     "What?" he asks. "Isn't it a little bit early to have to go to the bathroom?"     "It's not that," she answers. "But there's a strange girl sitting here." She points her finger at me. So I get up.     "What are you doing here?" the teacher says.     "I'm enrolled here."     "I know nothing about this."     "My dad enrolled me," I say. "He told me I was supposed to go to school number 3 on Maria Konopnicka Street. To class 8A."     "What are you saying?" the teacher asks. He cups his hand and puts it to his ear. "Louder!"     Everyone's laughing. My mouth is so dry I can't say anything else.     "Come closer," the teacher says. "Sit next to Klaudia!" I take my book bag and look around to see where I'm supposed to sit.     Then the girl who drove me away from her bench stands up and says, "But teacher, Bogusia sits next to me!"     "Why don't I see her?"     "Because she's in the hospital."     "Klaudia, answer this question for me then," the teacher says. "How can someone be in the hospital and be sitting next to you at the same time?"     "But this is her place."     "That was her place. It was ! Now her place is in the hospital. Got it?"     The teacher turns to me and says, "You sit next to Klaudia, and the two of you, don't bother me if you don't want to end up in the hospital with Bogusia. So--what are you waiting for?"     I get up and sit in Bogusia's place. Klaudia scoots her chair toward the wall. "Excuse me," I whisper to her. "What subject is this?" She doesn't answer. I look around to see what books and notebooks are lying on the desks so I can figure it out, but there's nothing lying around anywhere. The teacher opens his grade book and leafs through the pages.     The girl sitting in front of me turns around and looks at me. She has large dark eyes and shiny short black hair. She's very pretty. She whispers to Klaudia, "Aren't you going to introduce your new friend to me?"     Klaudia shrugs her shoulders and snorts. She doesn't say anything. The dark-haired girl smiles at me and says, "My name is Eva. What's yours?"     "Marysia," I say, and smile back.     "Beautiful name. Where did you come from? Surely, from Paris. Am I right?"     "No. I lived twelve miles from here, and now we've got a new apartment down Walbrzych way ... and ..." I don't know what else to say.     "Down Walbrzych way?" Eva repeats my words slowly and makes a face like she's eating something delicious. "Hmm, 'cause, you know, you have such a beautiful dress on, I felt sure it was straight from Paris."     She sticks out her hand and feels the material of my sleeve with her finger. It's true. I'm wearing a very nice dress. Mrs. Kaminska got it in a package from the West and sold it to my mom, and then later our neighbor Marysia, Mr. Krzysiek's wife, altered it to fit me. I smile at Eva and say, "It might be from Paris because it came in a package."     All of a sudden, bang! The teacher slams his hand on the table. He looks at us and asks, "What is this? A lesson, or gossip?"     "So far, just gossip," Eva replies. "See, we were talking just now about our famed Polish postal service. Because our new friend here got a dress from Paris in a package. Only, judging by the cut of the dress, this package must have been lying around the post office for at least ten years."     The girls all start giggling. The teacher raises his finger.     "It's nothing to laugh about," he says. "Strange things happen in this country--things that philosophers and other philomaths had never dreamed of. Imagine ... but there's nothing to imagine, these are facts. Last year I got a package from my cousin in Australia. I opened it, and of course there were all kinds of things inside. Among them, a tiny classy crock with a bright checkered top. What could it be? My wife's English is perfect, and she said it was raspberry jam. So, heck, I thought to myself, at least once in my life I'll gorge myself on raspberry jam from Australia, although who knows whether raspberries grow there ... I twisted off the lid, I looked in, the jam was half-eaten, and you could still see the traces of someone's fingers in it."     The teacher laughs and the class echoes him.     "And my dad," some guy says. "He got a package too, from America. The letter said he was getting twelve pairs of men's underpants. There wasn't a single pair in the package."     "So your dad was a little surprised?" the teacher asks. "I would be too."     "We got a package from West Germany a month after Christmas and everything in it was rotten."     "Same here!"     "Our uncle from Canada sent us a package of clothing, but there wasn't any clothing inside, only an old coat, and even that was from Poland, because the label said Minsk Mazowiecki."     "Quiet. Be quiet!" the teacher says. "If we all start to list who did get what, and who didn't get what, we would be talking till our dying day."     The teacher stretches and yawns. He looks out the window and says, "Boy, is it pouring. So, guys, what're we going to do now?" He looks at me and motions to me with his finger. "You--the new one--come to the blackboard. We'll hear your confession."     I get up and go to the blackboard. I take a piece of chalk. The whole class laughs. The teacher does too.     "Are you planning on drawing us something?" he asks.     "Well, I could," I say quietly. They're laughing again, they're still laughing at me.     "Quiet," the teacher says. And then: "What are you going to draw?"     I shrug my shoulders. How am I supposed to know?     "If you don't want to," the teacher says, "then don't draw. No one's forcing you. But why the chalk?"     I don't know what to say. I set the chalk down on the rim of the blackboard.     "How about telling us your name?" the teacher asks.     "My name is Maria Kawczak."     "Oh man!" someone says, and the whole class starts to laugh.     "Kawczak pulled one over on us," someone else says. "That's his sister."     "She sure isn't my sister," says the guy I bumped into. "I don't even know her. There are tons of Kawczaks in the world."     "Most of them are in Shit Lanka," someone squeaks. Everyone laughs again. Bang, the teacher slams his hand on the desk. Things quiet down.     "I remind you, citizens, that this is a school, not a circus," the teacher says, and he asks me, "What was your time in the sixty meters?"     I don't answer. I don't understand what he's asking.     "What school did you go to?" he asks.     "To elementary school in Krzeszow," I say.     "Didn't you run there at all?"     "We ran."     "No one timed you?"     "I don't know."     It's quiet in the classroom. The teacher's not saying anything either. Everyone's looking at me. I'm standing and the buzzing in my head's getting louder and louder. The teacher nods his head.     "So," he says, "did you do the high jump?"     "I did."     "How high did you jump?"     "I don't remember."     "Show us with your hand." He raises his hand to the level of my head. "That high?"     "Not that high," I say.     "Maybe this high?" The teacher leans out from behind his desk and touches the floor with his fingers. Giggles everywhere. I'm standing there and can't think of anything. Someone's saying something, something's saying something in my ear, like buzzing, but who and what ... How am I supposed to know when it's just murmuring and buzzing?     "Show us with your hand," the teacher says. "Don't you know how to stretch out your arm?"     "Sure I can." I stretch it out. There's a long ruler on the teacher's desk. He's gonna smack my hand with it. He's gonna take it and smack me. Oh my gosh, he's gonna smack me right away. It's better if he doesn't get up; it's not right for the teacher to come to me. I should go over to him. I go up to him with my palm turned up. Why is everyone laughing? Why isn't the teacher picking up the ruler, even though I'm waiting and waiting and my hand is shaking ...?     I hear crying. Someone in the class has started to cry. It's not me. The teacher turns away from me and looks elsewhere. Everyone's looking where he's looking. I look there too and some girl is crying violently at a desk in the middle row.     "What happened?" the teacher asks. No one knows. "Kasia, what happened?" he asks, louder.     The girl's weeping, her hands covering her face. All you can see is her hair. Blond. Falling in curls. Long. All around her. Suddenly she gets up. Her chair falls with a crash. She takes her book bag, walking toward us, toward the teacher and me. She passes us, still crying. Her eyes flicker as she looks at me. They seem familiar. Have I ever seen them? Probably not in real life, maybe in a picture ... Maybe I dreamed them up?     She's walking fast toward the door. Her skirt is down to the floor, wide, bright, like a Gypsy's, like a fortune-teller's. Floating in the air are her hair and a large scarf, black with yellow flowers. She covers her shoulders with it. The door slams and she is gone.     No one says anything for a long time. Then the teacher says to me, "What are you doing standing around? Sit down." I go to my desk and sit down. "What happened to her?" the teacher asks.     Eva, the dark-haired girl sitting in front of me, says "You know" and taps her finger against her temple. The teacher sighs.     "Okay," he says. "Let's end this foolishness. It's time for a lesson. Get up!"     Everyone gets up. I do too.     "Stand by your desk," the teacher says. "Attention! Bend your knees, hands up, stand up, hands down. Let's begin." Now I'm in physics. Last class of the day. I already got an F. I didn't know anything. Everything flew out of my head; the teacher wrote comments in her grade book. In Krzeszow I got an A in the subject.     This is the most horrifying day of my life. No one talks to me during the breaks. I go down to the second floor and stand by the window. Little kids from the first grade are running around right next to me. I don't know what's going to happen to me in this school. Klaudia moved away from me to the edge of our desk. I heard her telling Magda that someone here has fleas. She must mean me. What did I do to them? They're seeing me for the first time in their lives. Is it because I knocked over Kawczak at the beginning? Or because he answered me in such a mean way? Why was I in such a hurry? Because I didn't want to be late. Starting tomorrow, I'll leave the house earlier, around seven. How was I supposed to know it would take so long for the bus to come?     I talked with my homeroom teacher. She is young and pretty. She asked me about everything. She was surprised that I switched schools two months before graduating from junior high. I told her it was because of the new apartment, that Mom's afraid of squatters. Then the teacher laughed, stroked my head and left. She's nice. If she'd taught physics, I certainly wouldn't have gotten that F. Our physics teacher is impatient, and if you don't answer her quickly, she starts yelling right away, and when someone yells at me, I get tongue-tied. The physics teacher's last name is Zelenow. The homeroom teacher teaches biology and her name is Mrs. Turska.     I already know the last name of the girl who sits in front of me, the dark-haired one whose first name is Eva. It's Bogdaj. The fat kid that talks through his nose and shares his desk with Kawczak is Ziebinski. There's a girl in the row next to the window who is even fatter and taller than Ziebinski. She has breasts like balloons and during the breaks always chases after this one boy named Zenek. Like Zenus. When she catches him, she twists his arm and tortures him. He tries to break loose and kick her, but she always jumps out of the way. They all call her Nag, but she doesn't mind. She always chases Zenek. He's two heads shorter than her. He has a high, squeaky voice and shouts, "Buzz off, Nag, or else I'll kick you so hard you'll regret it!"     "You just try!" she says, coming up from behind and grabbing his neck.     There are lots of pretty girls in our class. They dress nicely too. They tend to wear black tights and tight denim skirts. Some wear them short and some wear them long, to midcalf, with a slit in the back.     But the prettiest girl is Eva Bogdaj. She also wears a short denim skirt and black tights, and a baggy, loose-knit black sweater. Her tan is gorgeous. She sits in front of me, so I'm always looking at her. She also looks nice from the back. She's always wiggling around in her chair. Sometimes I see her face from the side. She bites her lower lip a lot. I like to think back to how she smiled at me during the first class. She has a beautiful smile.     She's kind of nervous, but whenever she says something to someone, she calms down right away. Her whole body stops and only her lips move.     She likes to put her hand on the back of her neck. She always strokes herself right at the nape of her neck. Her fingernails are long and shiny, like they've been painted with clear polish. On her smallest fingernail she has a pretty gold star. I never saw such a beautiful girl, maybe in a movie on television or in a beauty pageant.     She hasn't spoken to me since she complimented me on my dress. Sometimes she turns around and whispers to Klaudia. Klaudia's tall and skinny. She has long straight hair and she always slouches. She wears jeans. When she writes something, she sticks the tip of her tongue out. She has very pretty handwriting. I can see from here how Eva Bogdaj writes--fast but sloppy. The girl sitting next to her is Magda. She has a pretty, pudgy face with dimples and ash-blond hair down to her shoulders. She and Klaudia pal around with Eva during the breaks. Eva says things and they laugh. Eva walks like she's dancing, like a ballerina on TV. She has a nice body--she doesn't look like a girl who's still in elementary school.     The girl who started to cry during the first hour and never came back to class is Kasia Bogdanska. When they call the roll, Eva Bogdaj always comes first, and then Bogdanska, and when they call her name, someone always says she's absent. When the homeroom teacher called the roll, Magda stood up and said that Kasia ran out of the first class. The teacher said "Again?" and sighed. Then Magda looked at Eva, and Eva looked at Magda, and they smiled. Interference of light?     That's Marlena Pyzik stuttering in front of the blackboard. She's about to get an F. A car honks outside. It gets quiet and then starts honking again. Mrs. Zelenow makes an odd face.     "Very nice," she says to Marlena. "Sit down." Marlena returns to her desk. The teacher takes the grade book and says to the class, "Stay seated and remain quiet. The bell is about to ring."     She leaves. We're left alone. It's starting to get louder: everyone's packing their books and notebooks. Because this is our last class.     One boy, I think his name is Krempicki, calls from the window, "Hey, guys, hurry, it's her lover!" After a moment, almost the whole class crowds around the windows.     Someone says, "Fuck, he's really bald!" Eva gets up and throws her bag over her shoulder.     "Let's go," she says to Magda and Klaudia. "What are we waiting for?" They leave. The whole row next to the wall is empty. I'm the only one sitting there. There's a commotion by the windows. The boys are wrestling. I pull a mirror from my pocket. I fix my hair and put the mirror away. [Chapter One Continues ...] Copyright © 1999 Doubleday, a division of the Bantam. All rights reserved.