Free The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk

wander the desert for a few decades when he’d committed murder? He had delivereda much more severe sentence for a simple misunderstanding over an apple.
    Justyna stares at Father Bruno, wishing he’d hurry up, but he meets her eyes askance with a sympathetic smile and plods on. Perhaps his stutters have nothing to do with priestly inexperience and everything to do with Justyna’s clingy dress.
    “
Ciociu
, I have to go to the bathroom.” Justyna looks down and sees her niece grasping her thigh. Her scrawny legs are twisted like pretzels.
    “Tell your mother.”
    “I can’t.” Cela points to Elwira, who is now squatting on the ground, weeping openly.
    “Well, then hold it.” The coffin is being lowered now and she knows this is her cue to walk over and drop a flower into the hole, a final farewell. But she can’t bring herself to do it, and not just because she didn’t buy flowers.
    Cela tugs her skirt again. “I can’t!” Her whisper is frantic now.
    “Be quiet, okay?” She watches as her niece’s oval face crumples and contorts, and then suddenly it goes blank.
    “I pee-peed,” whispers Cela, her chin trembling.
    Justyna kneels down and whispers in her niece’s ear, “Don’t worry,
kotku
, it’s raining. We’ll tell these idiots you just fell in a puddle.”
    Later that night, after
Babcia
Kazia has taken the kids to spend a few nights at her apartment in Szydłówek and after every last mourner has left, an eerie silence fills the house. Elwira goes around dead-bolting all the doors, and muttering to herself like a madwoman. She tries to secure the broken balcony doors upstairs by dragging a bookshelf against them. Kielce is a small enough city, that’s what the cop Kurka had told her seventy-two hours ago. There are only so many places to hide, but Filip has evaded the cops thus far. He could be on his way to Italy by now, or he could be skulking in their back garden.
    Justyna finds Elwira in the living room, staring at the television.
    “I wish
Tato
were here.”
    “Do you?” Justyna asked, and they both knew the answer. Their father was gone, gone since the days his beloved wife lay dying in herlittle room on the third floor. He hadn’t even been at Teresa’s bedside when she took her last breath: he’d been passed out drunk at Uncle Marek’s house. Right now, their father would be useless anyway. Bogdan Zator couldn’t deal with death, of any kind.
    Suddenly, it seems like there is nothing to do, now that the final resting place has been occupied and the bloodstains have been wiped up. For the time being, Damian has stopped asking about his father’s return. He’s thrilled to have a few days off from school. At the burial he asked her what was in the box, and Justyna corrected him: “Not
what
, Damian—who,” but she did not elaborate. Of course
Babcia
Kazia insists that Justyna is damaging Damian further by not telling him outright.
    Elwira breaks the silence as if they have been long in conversation. “So, yeah, I can’t believe Ania Baran called you.”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s been a few years, right? You missed her premiere. I forgot about that.” Two years ago, Anna Baran was in Poland to celebrate her starring role in a big Hollywood movie—something with corsets and horse-drawn carriages. A lot of their friends took the train to Warsaw for the big event and Anna had offered to pay for travel if they couldn’t afford it. In Anna’s interviews she told the journalists that the premiere wouldn’t mean anything if her Polish friends and family wouldn’t be there. But Justyna didn’t go. The fact that her mother was dead and that she had a five-year-old on her hands had been reason enough to skip a reunion; but there were other reasons too, and so Justyna had steered clear of Anna Baran and her newfound celebrity.
    “It’s actually a good movie, Justyna. You should check it out. I totally cried at the end.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I fucking need now. A