Being Polish American
Feasts of Love
by Lou Ann Pleva
Waiting out a blizzard that took me offline, I followed an unusual writing prompt - A Refrigerator - which flummoxed me. At first feeling it was a boring, odd choice for a literary magazine to suggest, I nonetheless made some attempts that left me, well, cold. Then I tried to remember the old brand, long defunct, that my Polish Granny had. The more I thought of it, the more I missed her, my everyday friend who died when I was 15. I tend to see the world through her eyes, can often hear her voice commenting on our brave new world. Writing about her refrigerator was hardly mundane, it sat me in her kitchen once again and I saw for the first time the most astounding view of her. It was the hub from which she expressed her spirit in every facet of her life as mother, grandmother, neighbor, Catholic, customer, friend. The writing showed me the arc of her life. Her life entire. It was a beautiful sight.
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It was the only refrigerator she ever owned. When my Granny Elsie graduated from the icebox that required a block of ice delivered by a man driving a horse-pulled wagon, to one that plugged into the wall, she never bought another. It was stout and rounded and constant, just like her.
She came from Poland very young and worked in a sweatshop sewing dresses, long before and long after her arranged marriage at 14 to a boy who already had eight years in the coal mines at 15, with five years of education between them. In a span of six years God gave them four babies but took back two of the girls.
Yet, every time she saw me, which was nearly every day, she greeted me jubilantly, “Luancia, dear heart and gentle people! What can I give ya?” I’d reply, “Nothin’ Granny.” and she’d sniff, “Den take nottin’ and go.” So, I’d always take something and stay; a glass of sun-brewed tea, a piece of fried chicken nicely chilled, eaten at her table beneath the picture of The Last Supper. All attention went to the food before us, earnestly blessed with the Sign of the Cross and “Bless us Oh Lord, and these, Thy gifts...” concluding with a quick prayer to the day’s saint, written in Polish on the church calendar thumbtacked to the cellar door. “Saint Jude, pray for us.” Fridays and Holy Days of Obligation were distinguished on the calendar with a blue fish, showing which days were merely meatless, and those needing Mass and fasting. What went into and came out of the Refrigerator was planned and adhered to accordingly. Should one forget, remembering that morsel in the Saturday confessional was expected. There was one Great Sin the well-fed church fathers in Rome failed to list, but my Granny stood vigilant against and that was Wasting Food, a phrase so repugnant it could not be uttered or heard without a turn of her head, a grimace, as if she’d been struck.
The Refrigerator had one door with a latch handle that needed a good pull to break the suction, and a tilt-out bin beneath for Saltines, fresh hard rolls or raisin bread from the bakery. The freezer held two metal ice cube trays and meats wrapped in butcher paper and tied with twine, and needed a monthly de-frosting with steaming pots and an icepick. No magnet, penny postcard, decoration, or dust ever on it. Sometimes a tin of Licorice All-Sorts or Pastel Pillow Mints sat atop, out of temptation’s reach. There was a light socket, but no bulb, as light, Granny insisted, was unneeded. Peering inside for more than five seconds could invoke a half-joking threat of a spanking. “Wasting the cold, hm? It’s padupie I’ll give ya!” though I never saw the fabled cat-o-nine-tails.
The contents were always fresh ingredients for simple meals. Nourishment. Glass bottles of raw milk, cream rising in the necks, retrieved each morning from the tin box on the front porch. Salted butter in a block. A ceramic bowl of fresh eggs. Boiled eggs in another, Xs penciled on the shells. A small tin of ground coffee for her Green Stamps electric percolator, saved for company. “Instant fer me is good enough.” Frequent rice puddings, layer cakes from scratch for bake sales, birthdays, or bereaved families. Jars of pickled red beets with hard-boiled eggs and onions. Horseradish, sauerkraut, green-tasseled carrots, dill pickles whose juice was drunk. “Good for da blood!”
Leftovers were draped in cheesecloth on cracked dishes, chipped bowls. “Oo, such a shame, but good still for in da Refrigerator.” Hunks of kielbasa, a nice ham spiked with cloves, sometimes a bleenie or two, a square of babka, a golumpki, a few kishki. But never pierogi. No such thing as leftover pierogi. Pierogi were eaten up so completely, the plates joyfully licked clean of melted butter and fried onions. Granny’s apron bounced with laughter as she delivered another steaming plateful, kissing my head. “Vioca”, her ‘tiny piggy’, she’d say, pleasing us both entirely.
She attended every bite, as women did, watchful should some salt need sprinkling or milk replenished. “Are you enjoying, hm?” Nothing delighted her more than hearing voluble burps. “Dis is not bad manners, dis is Good Food!”
In spring, the Refrigerator held Lenten fish, fresh-caught rainbow trout, lamb-shaped butter for the Easter table and delicate, dazzling pysanki eggs painstakingly crafted with her own vegetable dyes and melted wax designs drawn with matchsticks, broom straw and sewing needles. In summer, it nearly burst with huckleberries, strawberries and raspberries picked from the hillside near Grandpop’s grave and in autumn from mushrooms and chestnuts from the same paths. Early winter, it held venison from a generous neighbor’s hunt. Near spring, extra cubes of Fleishmann’s yeast for Paczki Tuesday’s coveted glazed doughnuts before the Lenten fast. My Dad once tried bribing better grades from the nuns with them, but failed.
Christmas, however, was ignored in Granny’s house and though I never dared ask why, it must have concerned the rarely mentioned hard years, when angels came for the twins. She would need to be coaxed to cross our adjoining yards on Christmas Eve, to share the oplatek wafer and blessing of the Wigilia meal, and eat a little something before hurrying to her empty house, her private thoughts.
But by New Year’s she’d recuperate and set about stocking the Refrigerator with oranges, tangerines, lemons, pineapples and apricot nectar. Simmered with spices, served hot laced with whiskey (her singular concession to alcohol) her Boilo was bottled for the men who worked in the harsh cold weather, who delivered her coal, a sick neighbor, the priest.
Through the warm months she bought from local farmers who slowly drove their trucks around the neighborhood, calling their shoppers, each with his own signature melody. “Po-ta-TOES! To-ma-TOES! Saa-WEET corn!” My Granny’d slip her embroidered coin purse into an apron pocket and step out to the trucks to haggle prices. “Oo, fifteen cents a peck? So dear.” What if the radishes could be had from the next truck or the Acme for three cents less? The farmers patiently waited. They knew the women’s surnames and stories, and inquired after the health of one if she hadn’t been on her porch in a while. Still, each piece of fruit, each head of cabbage, grown five miles away and harvested hours earlier by people as conscientious as she, was inspected closely before being gathered in her apron and my arms. Nothing inferior or overpriced went into her Refrigerator. Nor did too much. She’d reconsider buying a thing if she knew a neighbor down the block was partial to it.
She distrusted banks severely. She abhorred debt and accepting charity so she refused both, but withholding charity was yet another form of waste, a Sin of Omission. Her previous home by the train tracks two blocks away bore markings on the gate, symbols of generosity carved by men reduced to riding boxcars and asking at a stranger’s door for food and not being refused the dignity of a potato or piece of bread, a kind word or promised prayer. She knew too well that all you worked for and needed could disappear. When I performed some small chore, she’d press a nickel into my hand. “Up to the church ya take for a candle to light, hm? Give tanks for All We Have.” The nickels I got for returning soda bottles could be spent on penny candies from Whelan’s candy store but Granny’s nickels stayed in my pocket and passed the store and walked into Saint Stanislaus church with me.
She taught me how to crochet beautiful, colorful rugs on her back porch swing. Old nylon stockings and other fabric scraps were freshly dyed in a wooden tub, washed in the ringer washer and dried on the clothesline, then cut into strips, tied end-to end and wound into skeins that she deftly worked with a wooden crochet hook. “Do just like dat.” Leaving me trusted to continue as she hummed to the kitchen, her skirt swaying, her crocheted slippers making a shushing sound across the painted porch and through the screen door. From the Refrigerator she’d fetch a cold Hershey bar that she bought by the bagful for us for our sit down work. “Now we’ll each have by a piece, hm?” We’d work and swing in the pink of summer evenings, heaven’s preview.
Early in what proved to be one of her last years, she summoned my Dad. “Michael, come and take up to da store your Mudder, hm?” He drove toward the market, but she wanted the appliance store, “Just to see what’s what.” Without preamble she stepped to the counter and quietly said, “I’ll have da automatic washer-dryer set, please. And da blue recliner chair, please. And dat color television set, please.” pointing to the deluxe floor model with solid state components. The top of the line. My father feared she slipped a mental cog. “Mudder! What the heck are ya doin’?” My Dad’s questions and protests were met with a silence that was her rightful prerogative.
Unhurried, she laid out her cash on the counter, adding aloud until an astronomical sum, nearly a thousand dollars, was properly stacked. She insisted that the salesman recount it before writing her receipt in the salesbook and after inspecting her carbon copy for accuracy, she tucked it away in her pocketbook and gave her address for immediate delivery. The salesman and my Dad exchanged whaddayagonnado looks and shrugs.
Not until she was home and out of her church coat and hat and back in her apron would she give any answers. She carried her pocketbook to the kitchen, wordlessly opened the Refrigerator, bent and reached to the very back of the darkened bottom shelf, lifted a large mayonnaise jar, into which she added the few dollars remaining from her excursion. She screwed the lid back on and replaced the jar. My Dad looked utterly undone. He flung open the Refrigerator door, retrieved the jar and opening it, discovered the mayonnaise had been cleaned out and the label left intact to conceal several thick, rubber band-wrapped wads of cash, her life’s savings. She put a finger to her lips, ordering my secrecy.
Facing him squarely, she said matter-of-factly, “Michael. Dis is da best place for money, no? God forbid da house should burn, but not in dere, hm? And some robber, some no-good-nyik, would never tink to go lookin’ in da Refrigerator.” Then a smile to me. “Now. My Luancia. What can I give ya?”