Majda lived down the street from her parents in a rowhouse fronted by the while marble steps that made her city famous.
Like everyone else on the street, she made the washing of those steps part of her daily chores. And there were so many chores. Every day she made the codfish cakes to sell at her husband’s bar, where the regulars in the neighborhood came to forget about the dust and grime they’d picked up alongside the little money they got paid at their jobs.
Majda also had to take care of her parents, older now but unwilling to accept the almost-daily indignities that came with old age. She saw them every day when she’d clean their apartment, as her mother, Agnes, insisted upon absolute cleanliness. Dusting, scrubbing the floors, these were daily chores according to Agnes, who felt that cleanliness was next to, well, if not godliness, then acceptance from those who made disparaging remarks about immigrants like her. Or, she’d pick up their laundry or return the freshly pressed shirts and table linens on which her mother still insisted. But, her father was bedridden and Majda couldn’t understand why he needed a fresh white shirt every day. She would never put such a question directly to her father or her mother, though. She loved and had a healthy fear of her father, and she knew she was his favorite, being the only girl among six boys. She always tried to please him, and when he was well, he would often come to her house and they would commiserate about Agnes’ demands that would forever preclude her from being pleased.
Agnes would still address Majda in Polish when she visited, even though Agnes had been in America for 40 years. No one had insisted that Agnes learn English, and she saw no reason to give up her native language along with everything else she’d sacrificed to come here. And, until recently, her husband had provided well enough so that Agnes did not have to work outside the house.
Majda, though, worked all the time as there was always something to do and she was well-suited for hard work. Her large frame was Clydesdale-sturdy and she pulled the weights assigned to her, both physical and emotional that came with her husband’s business and her home duties.
She grabbed a scarf from the hall coat rack and put it on her head and tied it securely under her chin.
‘I look like an old Polish lady,’ she thought, her plain coat buttoned tightly as it it could keep in her slightly spreading middle-age waist.
She locked the door and went down the steps to the front door. She and her husband, Frederick, rented out the bottom floor of the house because, with no children, he couldn’t see any need for them to occupy the whole rowhouse, and the money from the rent came in handy.
Majda walked down to the end of the block to the house where they’d set up her parents so they’d be close and so Majda could look after them.
“Majda, your father’s restless today,” Agnes said in Polish, as Majda entered the small living room, carrying a wicker laundry basket.
“I’ll go talk to him.”
“See if he’ll tell you what’s wrong. Or, maybe you can tell.”
“How would I be able to tell?” she asked her mother. She wanted to say that Agnes knew what was wrong with her father. He had dropsy and no one could determine the cause of such edema that made his legs like tree trunks. But, she knew what Agnes meant.
Ever since she was a little girl, Majda could “see” things, things that hadn’t happened yet, things—and people—that were not strictly part of this world anymore. Seeing the ghosts of people who had died did not scare Majda, but she felt somewhat embarrassed by it. So, she mostly kept these things to herself because there was no point in scaring other people more than was necessary.
“You were born with a caul over your face,” Agnes told her so many times, explaining that it meant she had “second sight.”
Majda would have paid her no mind, dismissing such talk as old-world superstitions from Poland. But, there were simply things she couldn’t explain and which had no rational explanation. She remembered almost every time something had tapped her on the shoulder from another world, another dimension perhaps. Like the time she and her future husband were walking home from a dance and a gauze-like fog appeared in front of the rhododendron bushes. Gradually, Majda could just make out her recently deceased nine-year-old niece, dressed in white and looking rather angelic, although the child was notoriously rebellious. And an uncle had materialized at the foot of the bed and suddenly the bed sheets were whipped off and an icy breeze blew up in the room. Majda had never liked this uncle and she wasn’t sad when he died. She would tell Agnes sometimes of these things that had frightened her. But, most of the time, she tried not to think about them. She didn’t want people to think she was odd or that she had any special talents. Her father, though, would regard her thoughtfully when he heard about these incidents. And he would say that she had something special, she was someone special. But, Majda was careful to not tempt Agnes’ jealousy by dismissing any references to the relationship she had with her father.
“He won’t tell me any more than he does you.”
“Ach, you could try.”
“Alright, Ma, I’ll ask him.”
When she entered the bedroom, her father barely acknowledged her presence, his eyes closing after he’d looked toward her. In the bed, he looked like a zombie from the waist down, his legs wrapped in bandages that made them appear too big for his body.
“How are you, Papa?”
No answer. She turned to go after patting the quilt on his bed. She closed the door quietly.
“Well?” said her mother.
“Well, nothing. He didn’t even speak or know I was there.”
“He’s getting worse. He’s hardly awake these days. The doctor says it won’t be long.”
“Did he really say that, Ma?”
“Yes, yes. Even with my poor English, I know what he meant.”
Majda was well aware of Agnes’ penchant for exaggeration, and the futility of arguing against it. She also knew that Agnes’ understanding of English was far greater than she let on. She scooped up the laundry basket, empty now since she’d put all the clean clothes away.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“If we’re still here.”
Majda waved her hand in a gesture that could have meant dismissal or resignation.
Back home, Majda busied herself with her own washing and ironing. The afternoon moved on slowly as Majda pressed pillowcases, hypnotized by the thunk, thunk of the iron, until she realized with a start that it would soon be time to package up the codfish cakes for the bar and make something for herself and Frederick for dinner.
Between the thunk, thunks of the iron, though, she thought she heard another kind of thudding noise and put the iron on its stand to listen. She stood still, not sure it was possible to hear what she thought she was hearing.
But, yes, there it was. Thund, thund, thund. Someone was coming up the narrow stairs to her door. Someone with heavy footsteps. It couldn’t be the tenants below as they were working and anyway, their step was light and quick when they paid the rent every month.
Suddenly, there was a knocking at the door.
Bang, bang, bang, an angry knocking that she thought might break the door down.
“I’m coming. I’m coming.”
She unplugged the iron just to be sure.
She opened the door not knowing what to expect except someone who was mad about something.
Dead air greeted her and surprise grabbed the anger that she’d had ready to meet the too-loud visitor.
She looked down the stairs. Empty. She walked down the steps and out onto the street, looking up and down, and thinking that no one could have escaped so quickly between the time she opened the door and when she went down the street.
She shook her head and went back up the stairs to deal with the food preparations. Still, she thought about what might’ve happened, what it could have been. She couldn’t come up with any explanation.
The next day, when she went to her parents’ house, she was tempted to tell Agnes, but she hesitated.
“Go on in to see him,” her mother said.
She opened the bedroom door to find her father propped up against several pillows. He was awake, Majda saw.
“Hi, Papa, you’re awake.”
But, in the look he gave her, she saw something like terrible reproach.
“The next time I come to see you, open the door for me.” Then, he closed his eyes.
Majda stood there, her mouth open and her spine like jelly. She thought immediately of the day before and the mysterious visitor who didn’t materialize. She wanted to say that she had opened the door, but she couldn’t speak. If it was her father who had come to see her, then she realized that his spirit was capable of moving, even if he wasn’t. This was not something she had ever encountered and the knowledge made her body feel like it would not support her. She wondered if the window that his spirit could claim was so slight, that she had missed the opportunity. She backed out of the room.
“What’s wrong? You look terrible. Is he worse?” Agnes fretted that her interpretation of the doctor’s words had come true and her husband was gone.
“No, no, he’s fine. But, he just said the strangest thing to me. He hasn’t gone anywhere, has he?”
“Oh, don’t be crazy. He can’t get out of that bed and you know it. What do you mean by that?”
Majda told Agnes about what her father had said. Agnes looked at her and took Majda’s hands in hers.
“Jesus, Blessed Mary, and Joseph. How could that be?”
Majda’s father died the next day, without ever speaking another word. But, in the years following her father’s death, Majda, long after both of her parents were gone, would often tell the story of how her father had somehow sent his spirit to visit her. She no longer saw strange things and she grew to miss it, and so enjoyed now telling the stories of the things that used to embarrass her. Or, maybe it was that now, in her old age, she could claim her special relationship with her father without fear of angering Agnes.
Her family members rapt, and Majda no longer afraid of what they might think, would enjoy building up the suspense as she told it. She always saved the story of her father for last, as, even all these years later, she could not explain how a living person’s spirit could move through a world so unporous in its dedication to facts. As her many nieces and nephews gathered around her table (for she never had children of her own), she would caution them all.
“Remember, always answer a knock when you hear one, even if you think no one is there.”
—
Mary McAllister is a writer and a visual artist who keeps trying to retire, and yet, keeps working for no good reason.
Her essays and poetry have been published in Fathom, Lifespan, Gypsophila, Oddball, A.C. PAPA, and Of Poets and Poetry. She has also produced a play.
In her professional life, Mary worked for more than 25 years for the Johns Hopkins University as a writer/editor and continues to work for freelance clients around the world.
