Page 41 of Where the Waves Kiss the Shore
She couldn’t hear the rest of the statement as her grandmother was too far from the mic, but her voice, while much frailer than Kasia remembered, still brought a chill to her blood.
“Babcia says to please speak your mother tongue.” He’d already switched to Polish.
After some shuffling of the camera, Kasia could see both her parents, her grandmother, and Stefan sitting uncomfortably on dining chairs, looking as though they’d never made a Zoom call in their lives. She did a double-take when she saw her grandmother. Her once strong, stern features were now slack, and her eyes lacked the glint that had once terrified Kasia.
“How are you all? Have you enjoyed Christmas together? Where are the girls?”
Sometimes, she found words didn’t come as quickly as they used to. She only spoke Polish with her friend Helena in Dublin or on these excruciating calls her brother insisted she take part in.
“Anna and Beata are getting ready for bed. We promised they could talk to you when the adults are done.”
She’d prefer to talk to her nieces, but she’d do her duty first.
Her mother moved her chair closer. “Kasia, you look thin.”
Her voice was laced with worry, so Kasia tried not to take it as a criticism. “I eat well, Mama. But I work hard.”
“Are those Americans still taking advantage of you?”
She shot a glare at her brother and checked that the door to the office was securely closed. Tierney wasn’t the type to listen at doors. Getting her to listen to anything was hard enough. “I have a good employer. The daughter of the family is here helping me, and I’ve now got a few weeks without guests.” Damn, she hadn’t meant to tell them that.
“So, you’ll be coming to see your family, then?”
“Please come home, Kasia.”
“The girls would love to meet you in person.”
“Hold on.” She held up her hand to stem the flow of demands and pleas. “It’s in my contract to remain at the hotel even when it’s closed, so I can’t just take time off. We have a lot of refurbishments to do before we reopen. I can’t make any plans, sorry.”
“But you said your boss was there with you. Can’t she stay while you come home?”
“I’ll need to talk to her about it, but I can’t guarantee anything.” It was easier to say that than tell her family she had no intention of visiting.
“Katerina, why do you not want to come home?” her grandmother wailed.
She looked at the woman who had ruined her life, suddenly so frail and powerless. “I’ll try, Babcia.”
An empty promise to a woman she had no desire to ever see again seemed to placate her parents, and the conversation went smoothly after that, the highlight being the chat with her nieces. She hung up feeling less stressed than after previous calls.
She reflected on her relationship with her family until she was disturbed by a knock, and Tierney peered around the door.
“Hey, did it go okay?”
Tierney’s interest in her life was still a novelty, but it felt good to share. “Yes, thanks. As good as can be expected.”
Tierney dropped into the chair next to her. “Wanna talk about it? No pressure if you don’t.”
“My grandmother’s getting very frail. It feels wrong to fixate on how she treated me, but I can’t let it go.”
“Joey told me a little about how you were forced to leave home at a young age. No one could be expected to put that aside easily.”
Kasia was surprised Tierney knew anything about her life. “It wasn’t just the way she treated me. She made my parents andmy brother take her side. I was barely seventeen, thrown out in disgrace with nothing.” She checked to see Tierney was still listening; she’d pulled her feet up onto the edge of the chair and rested her chin on her knees.
“She must be quite the personality.”
Kasia was surprised at how right it felt telling Tierney about the details of her life. She knew she’d soaked up some of her family’s shame, but Tierney wasn’t judging her, and she wanted to share, just as Tierney had talked about her own family issues on Christmas Day.
“When I was a baby, my dad was arrested for belonging to a trade union, and he was held as a political prisoner for five years. My grandmother dropped everything to move in with us to allow my mum to work and support us. When my dad was released, she stayed, and they never challenged anything she said. I worshipped her too, until I came home from college and announced to my family that I had a girlfriend.”
