Free The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk Page B

polyester trunks run wild, breaking the no diving rule and getting fished out and carried off like flailing puppies. Kamila, Anna, and Justyna are spread out directly across from the lifeguards’ station, perched on a bleacher. The Tęcza Pool’s stadium seating compliments the gladiatorial pageant they are viewing. On the other side of the pool the lifeguards are surrounded by bleached-blond groupies who never dip a toe in the water. They glisten in the sun like a bikini-clad harem.
    “That one, with the curly hair? He looks like Morten from A-ha, doesn’t he?” Anna follows Kamila’s stare, pulling back the outer corners of each eyelid; she looks like she’s doing a crude Chinaman impersonation, but it’s the only way she can see anything beyond a three-foot radius. Her glasses lie in her bag, where they will stay until she exits the pool.
    “
Jezus!
He does, he totally looks like Morten! Take
me
on, baby.” Anna giggles.
    “You’re looking at their faces,
dziewczyny
, and that’s not where you should be looking.” Justyna raises her brows meaningfully.
    “Fe!”
    “
Fe
what, Kamila? A face in the dark is inconsequential, even if it’s ugly. It’s how he makes you
feel
in the dark that counts.” Justynapauses, and to make sure her meaning isn’t lost, adds, “It’s how his
dick
makes you feel.”
    “Jezus!”
Kamila flushes bright pink.
    Justyna smiles knowingly and winks, and Anna winks back, but what the hell does she know? Back in the States, all she and Miguel have done is dry hump. He sometimes managed to slide her underwear down and graze the tip of his penis against her, but she always pushed him away. Miguel wasn’t the one. He had too many pimples, and he wasn’t Sebastian Tefilski.
    “Too many people here today,” Anna murmurs. Kielce is in the midst of an unprecedented July heat wave, and the Tęcza Pool is swarming with folks looking for relief. Everyone looks so Polish to Anna. Nobody is willowy; even the thin women give off a sense of largesse. In a sea of shiny Slavic faces, no one wears sunglasses and no one cares about the fact that their swimwear looks decades old.
    “Look at that one.” Kamila points to a stocky lifeguard in imitation Ray-Bans, whose trunks bulge ominously, even from across the pool. “It looks like there’s a rodent in there.”
    “Ja pierdole!”
Justyna snickers and lies down on the bench, rubbing her concave belly with one hand. Every move she makes, every gesture, oozes sexuality. Anna finds it both mesmerizing and annoying. At the start of the summer, Justyna confessed that she’d finally done it, with a very distant older cousin who was visiting from Lublin. She told them it hurt a bit, but afterward she had felt so powerful that sex was now basically what she lived for. She’d said it so matter-of-factly, as if she were talking about the weather.
    Last summer, Anna had arrived in Poland with indents at her hips, a filled-out bra, and more hair everywhere. Maybe it was her American diet—hormones in the milk or something—but she’d looked positively Amazonian next to Justyna and Kamila. At fifteen, they talked about doing stuff, but they didn’t follow through with it, and that was just fine. This summer, sixteen-year-old Anna feels ready, rip-roaringly ready, to have sex. This summer, she ogles Justyna with envy. Justyna looks like a real woman, and it has nothing to do with her perky bosom. Her face looks different—all of a sudden she’s got bedroomeyes and bee-stung lips. Her short hair looks defiant now, not boyish. Anna is sure it’s the sex.
    “I think I’m getting burned,” Kamila says, pressing on the sides of her nose. All morning she’s been in a foul mood. When they first spotted the bleacher seats, miraculously unclaimed, Justyna and Anna tripped over themselves to stake them. Kamila lagged behind, griping about ultraviolet rays and insisting on a small patch of grass in the shade.
    “Burned? How is that possible? You’re