On her way to work at Plymouth Motors, Zosyia clutched her purse more tightly and silently cursed the bus.

Whoever was lurking inside the polling place was up to no good. The street lamp was too distant to shed much light; she could barely make out the tattered posters announcing the Ringling Brothers Circus and a bingo fund-raiser for Our Lady Help of Christians, which used to be her parish church. Now they went to St. Florian’s, if they went at all.

The Gothic cathedral in Hamtramck was like something transported from Europe. Stunning and solemn in its immensity like an ocean in stone. Zosyia liked to wear her black nipped-at-the-waist boiled wool coat and velvet-feathered hat and put on bright lipstick. Even Wladzio, her husband, enjoyed mass at Florian’s because, he said, the church was like a museum; Wladzio loved museums and libraries almost as much as gardens and forests.

She heard him calmly asking about the sound. “You imagined it, maybe?”

Zosyia pictured an eyeball; she couldn’t bring herself to think about whose eyeball it might be. Now she knew how a bug felt under a microscope.

Though he certainly liked to think so, Wladzio didn’t know everything. Things happened to women at night. Even church wasn’t safe. Or a sodality dance. Not all of the young men there were good Catholics; Zosyia swallowed a bitter laugh. Men enjoyed scaring women; even her sweet Wladek liked to play peek-a-boo games that startled her, and he was a grown man.

The bus. At last.

As she settled into her seat Zosyia thought, Men! Peter Pans. Every one of them. Or worse.
* * *
The next morning, she fixed coffee for Wladzio, who was headed out for the day shift.Zosyia told him what had happened.

“In the polling place?” The outrage in his voice was unmistakable.
For him, voting was a big deal. When he went to the polls, he shined his Cancellation shoes, and put on the suit she’d just finished pressing. Too many people in his family had never voted; others had died for his right to cast a ballot in America. Looking his best was a way to pay his respects.

“Yes, the polling place.”

She thought of the empty wooden structure, not much bigger than the outhouse she’d hated using when she was a small girl living with her parents on East Palmer in the house her father had built.

How his back ached when he’d dug the basement by hand.

Her mother would chip ice from the big block cooling their ice box, put the shavings in a rubber bag, and make him lie on their goose down bed with the shades drawn. Antoni Kowalski was a hard worker, a good father and husband. Zosyia loved him very much; Wladzio did, too. Antoni was the father her husband had lost to immigration laws and a hit-and-run in the rainy dark off Livernois, near the flat on Otis where Wladzio and his mother and stepfather had been living when she’d met him.

Zosyia poured him a cup of coffee and sweetened it with three heaping spoons of sugar. He’d add his own cream. She fixed herself a cup, too, and sat down at the kitchen table with him.

“Yes, the polling place, Wladzio. On the corner, beneath those big trees. There aren’t any homes nearby; it’s like a forest. I’m scared to go back tonight. He knows my schedule. He could be waiting.”

Wladzio poured milk into his coffee, then stirred it and took a sip.

“Well, don’t worry, I’ll wait tonight for the bus with you. Then we’ll see what’s what, OK?”

Her Wladzio was a brave man, Zosyia thought as she drank her coffee, no sugar, lots of milk.

She slept well that morning, past twelve, then fixed meatballs Polish-style for dinner and got dressed for work. She was tidying their small rental house when Wladzio came in. They sat down and ate meatballs and mashed potatoes, with a bit of kapusta she’d made yesterday. Sauerkraut always tasted better the next day. With bakery rye and fresh butter, it was a feast.

Wladzio read the evening paper while she cleaned up. Soon it would be time to walk to the bus stop. Zosyia went to the bathroom and powdered her nose. At the last minute she decided to put on lipstick.

When she came out, Wladzio was sliding a steak knife down his sock. Zosyia didn’t say anything, but she wanted to. He’d been in jail before they’d met and didn’t need any mix-up with the law. Assault with a weapon was different than robbery.

She bent down to slip on her rubber overshoes, then put on her coat and wrapped the big scarf her mother had knit her for Christmas around her head and ears. She made sure her gloves were in her pocket. She was ready; Wladzio was waiting, a serious look on his face. Without a word, she locked the door behind them, and stepped off the porch with her husband into the night.

“Remember what we decided, Zosyia”
“Yes,” she whispered.

The night sky was shrouded with dense clouds. They walked quietly, side by side. As agreed upon, Zosyia crossed the street bordered by the wooded lots where the polling booth had been set up by a city crew. Wladzio stayed behind. She went ahead and stood at the bus stop. If she heard anything, she would unfurl her mother’s scarf like a banner. He would run up then and try the door on the booth.

* * *

That’s what happened, she thought later, at her locker, before she went on shift. Wladzio busted the door down, just like in the movies.

No one was inside.

Wladzio lit a match and inspected the coat rack, his face lit by the tiny flame like the chiaruscuro in the old masters’ paintings of the Christ child at the Detroit Institute of Arts. “Look, Zosyia. Mice, running up and down, trying to eat and stay warm. Just mice, my dear.”

She pretended to laugh and put on a big smile. What Wladzio called her “million dollar smile.” But she didn’t see anything funny about mice.

Who knew, maybe there was a man who’d decided to stay home tonight and watch “The Honeymooners.” To the moon, Alice, to the moon. But Ralph never did hit his wife and the man would get bored and remember her waiting at the bus by the polling booth.

Just because there wasn’t a man tonight didn’t guarantee anything.

Still, she was grateful for Wladzio’s company. He’d waited beside her until the bus came. Zosyia gave him her cheek and he kissed it, then she climbed the steps and paid her fare.

Now she would punch a clock and put in eight hours on the line building Plymouths while Wladzio slept. Zosyia hoped he had remembered to put the knife back in the silverware drawer where it belonged.

She walked onto the noisy floor. Like acolytes at mass people attended to assembly lines veering off in all directions. Zosyia remembered how the polling booth looked in the early morning light. Like something from a fairy tale, a woodcutter’s cottage, or a hunter’s cabin, not a place where people came to write on a piece of paper and vote for the candidate of their choice.

Democracy. Whatever that meant.

Her vote would not oust the man from the polling booth. It wasn’t like he was in office, though, now that she thought about it, the polling booth itself - rough boards, dark green paint - was like an office. It even had a desk and chair. A single electric bulb dangled from the ceiling. People were handed ballots and went behind a sloppily hung curtain to make their mark. Maybe the man waiting in the dark was voting, too, in his own sick way.

This one, that one, Zosyia thought, as she sorted nuts and bolts onto conveyor belts.

For her, voting was like building a Plymouth she couldn’t afford to buy. Wladzio felt otherwise. But then he was a man.

The night belonged to him, to all men, even though women continued working night shifts like they had during the War. Nurses, factory workers, janitors. Like Wladzio’s mother, Ewa, who mopped floors in the Guardian Building downtown and watched dawn illuminate the river and the foreign land beyond. The marble and the bright art deco tiles in the cathedral-like lobby gleamed as she locked the door behind her and headed out toward Jefferson and the bus to Livernois and home.

People work too hard, Zosyia thought, eyeing the clock. Another hour until her break. She looked forward to swallowing a cup of coffee and grabbing a quick cigarette.

The image of Wladzio curled in their bed beneath the feather quilt his mother had given them for their wedding popped into her head. The room was dark and cold; her husband slept, warm and cozy, beneath the goose down comforter. She wondered if he ever dreamt.

She didn’t remember her dreams often, and then, only nightmares. Maybe these dreams of men with knives out to kill her were the only kind of dreams she had. How would she know? It was the only dream she could remember since that awful night after the sodality dance at Our Lady Help of Christians.

She’d been what? Eighteen, nineteen? The night was dark; there had been so many. Not like Maria Goretti, who was attacked by one, only one, man.

Zosyia’s hands kept moving, sorting bolts, nuts, bolts, nuts. The repetition calmed her. Allowed her to remember a bit here, a bit there, but not much. The psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where she’d fled in desperation during the War, said it was like her brain had rebelled against everything.

Maybe he was right. The rebellion within had burned down memory like a house. Her house. Her body. Sacred unto the Lord. If so, God had turned his back on her. Even Mary’s eyes were shut.

More recently another psychiatrist had asked about that night. “Did you like it?” She’d been too horrified to answer.

Like it?

Wladzio had his theories, too, and he tried to listen on those rare occasions when she felt comfortable enough with him to speak about what had happened to her before she met him.

But she could not tell him - or anyone - how she went to bed with him every night and what happened crawled right in beneath the coverlet with them. The man with the knife was snoring beside her. Her husband. She tried to hide how she felt; she was a good actress, everyone said so. She didn’t think Wladzio knew the revulsion and fear she felt each time they made love.

And she did love him; but all pleasure had died in her, and, so, she was robbed of this, too.

Her mother’s face that night came to her as she stood in the harsh factory light sorting hardware for doors and trunks. Chassis, too. All of it, so tiny really, when she thought about it, was what kept that Plymouth together as you sat behind the wheel, confident, your foot on the accelerator.

Nuts and bolts. The basics. The horrified look on her mother’s face came into sharp focus.

Tying her babushka beneath her chin she’d announced, “I go to priest,” and walked out the door, leaving Zosyia, in the bathroom, in shock, stunned, and attempting to staunch the bleeding surrounded by the clean rags and the teakettle of hot water her mother had assembled before she left..

The shame of that night had never stopped. The young men who’d raped her after offering her a ride home were never seen again. Though, at Father Walkowiak’s insistence, Zosyia had gone to the weekly summer dances for a month or more after that awful night and stood outside the door near where the usher took tickets. She’d kept her vigil. Friends of a friend, she’d trusted them. Now she jumped at the scurry of a mouse.

Time for break, Zosyia realized as her relief walked up. The line never shut down. Nuts and bolts forever and ever amen. She turned toward the man slightly and flashed a cheaper version of her million-dollar smile as he stepped forward. Zosyia walked briskly toward the bathroom, then slugged a cup of coffee, and took a couple quick drags on a Lucky Strike. And back to the nuts and bolts again, until a 30 minute “lunch” around 3 a.m. She’d get a donut and sit and drink a couple cups of coffee, inhale a couple cigs.

After lunch, the last few hours of the shift dragged, nuts and bolts swimming in front of her like metallic piranhas devouring the lives tending them. Her life. Still, Zosyia knew she shouldn’t complain. The money was good.

She and Wladzio were saving for a house. The one they were renting on Charest was too cold in the winter; the old coal stove didn’t throw out much heat. They wanted to buy further out where new housing was going up fast. Warrendale, on the west side.

Wladzio remembered the area when it had been farmland. He’d helped build some of the first houses that had gone up before the War, right after he’d arrived in this country from Poland, before the doors of the state penitentiary at Jackson had closed shut on him for almost a decade. He talked about seeing deer in cornfields; pheasant, too. “That’s where we’re headed, Zosyia, just as soon as we have enough money for the down payment.” He wanted a garden, roses, peach trees. Children.

Once, she’d wanted to be a nurse missionary and go to China. See the Great Wall and jade palaces with her own eyes. Save the lives and souls of heathen babies. Now her life, her soul, her baby - all beyond reach or redemption - like her dreams of China. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened to her if she hadn’t met Wladzio that New Year’s Eve during the War at Dom Polski’s. As devastated as she’d been, Wladislaw Pacierzski was a life raft. Like a pair of wolves who’d each managed to bite their way out of a steel trap, they’d licked their wounds together.

Nuts and bolts. Nuts and bolts. The minutiae and monotony of the line numbed her like ether.

The doctor had ordered the nurse to give her ether. The nurse who had shoved the baby back inside her because the doctor wasn’t there, but out celebrating Christmas Eve somewhere in the snowy city. Her baby had died with its cord wrapped around its neck. Placenta previa, they’d intoned. Zosyia knew what it was better than they did. Oh much better, mister. Their firstborn child, a boy, had been buried in a small, cardboard coffin, not much bigger than a cigar box, in an unmarked grave at Mt. Olivet cemetery. No one would let Wladzio open the box even once to see him.

His death had been her punishment twice over. Once for the rape, then again for saying yes to Wladzio before they were married. The baby had been born eight months later. Christmas Eve. Christ’s birthday, her baby’s death day. Only last year. She wanted to rip her hair out. Grab the knife from the man in her dreams and stab herself in the heart. She didn’t deserve to live.

Wladzio wanted another child. How could she say no? They were trying again.
God must hate her; she was such a sinner, violated, rotten. To the core.
She couldn’t even pray to the Blessed Mother; she’d been raped at a dance held in her honor. The Virgin.

There was no one she could trust. Not even herself.

Nuts and bolts. Bolts and nuts. The rhythm of the line soothed her; only that brought relief, and only briefly.

She remembered what her mother, Mary Kowalski, had said when the baby was born dead.

“This is a punishment. Yours, Zosyia. You must pray to His mother and the saints for forgiveness for your sins.” They’d knelt down together and recited a rosary. But prayer didn’t make Zosyia feel any better.

God had abandoned her and she despised Him. She could never tell her mother about her loss of faith, but prayed only to make her happy, for she loved her mother, who had looked forward to her youngest daughter’s first child. Maria Matusiak Kowalski loved children, her own, her grandchildren, her neighbors’ sons and daughters, and their grandchildren, many of whom she’s helped bring into this world.

Midwifery skills had come naturally to Maria; she had no formal training. Still, the neighborhood women sent their husbands for her when their time came. Maria would solemnly wash her hands with the lye soap she made once a month in a big cauldron outside in the back yard beneath the crab apple tree, tie her babushka on her head, pick up the big leather bag packed with what she needed Antoni had made for her, and follow the man out. Hours later, or the next day, she’d walk through the door, tired, but her eyes would be shining with happiness.

The assembly line went on and on, a road to nowhere, time devoured in exchange for money.

Zosyia wanted a chance at happiness again. Wladzio had high hopes, especially now that the War was over; she would not dash them. She’d can the sweet peppers, the peaches and tomatoes he’d grow, and pickle cucumbers, too. There would be a fruit cellar, cool and dark, with wooden shelves Wladzio would build for her. Beneath the electric bulb the Mason jars filled with the fruit of their labors would glow like another currency.

For several days, almost a week, really, before that Christmas Eve their son was born dead, Zosyia had been fixing special dishes for the traditional Christmas Eve or Wygelia supper they had planned to share with her parents after midnight mass. Their first Christmas as a married couple was very special. She felt like Mary, somehow, redeemed by the grace of God and the child growing in her, soon to be born, the best Christmas present she could wish for.

She’d made poppy seed cake and bigosh, and helped her mother roll out pierogi dough and stuff globki. There was a ham, too, a gift from the union at Ford’s where Wladzio worked. Zosyia was putting pineapple rings on it when her water broke.

The holiday fare became refreshments for mourners at the brief wake held the day their baby was buried. December 27. Zosyia was still in the hospital. Wladzio brought a plate of food to her later that night and quietly described their son’s funeral earlier that day; she couldn’t swallow a bite.

When the priest and the organist visited their house that January 6, Epiphany, to write “KMB” above their door in chalk, invoking the protection of Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar - the Three Wise Men - for the upcoming year as was traditional in a Polish home, Zosyia was afraid Wladzio would do something everyone would regret, his eyes were so wild, flashing with pain and sorrow. And anger, too. She could almost hear what he was thinking. “Fools! Your mumbo-jumbo doesn’t work! I know.” Those last words were a howl inside her head.

Someone a couple of lines over had shut their operation down and the alarm was screeching. The foreman and the shop steward ran over, worried looks on their faces. It was none of her concern; she continued her sorting.

At this time of night - early morning really - Zosyia could almost imagine she was a heroine in a fairy tale. If she successfully completed this task then she’d break the curse, win the prince, save her swan brothers, right awful wrongs, like the Goose girl and her poor horse, Falada.

Other times - like now - she gritted her teeth until the last whistle blew and walked out into another gray dawn to catch the Conant bus home. She’d transfer at McDougal, then stop by the bakery and pick up fresh bread, poppy seed cake, and a dozen paczeks, too. What was she working for if she couldn’t splurge now and then if she wanted to? She’d poach a couple eggs for breakfast, slice poppy seed cake, brew coffee, put out a plate of paczki.

Dawn was a thin strip of reluctant light in the east. Night still ruled the sky. The first rays of sun would be a long time coming to the polling place, maybe never. The elms had no leaves this time of year, but their branches were thick and low and blocked the light. The dark green shack squatted beneath the shadow of the tall trees like a toad.

Zosyia inhaled the yeasty odor of her freshly baked offerings. Maybe she’d tell Wladzio about her missed monthly; give him something to dream about while he was at work. Then again maybe it was too soon to say anything.

She was still under the wicked witch’s spell still and could not speak; she’d remain silent, until...that was the part she didn’t know. How long must she be mute and why this had to be so. Once, before the horrors of that night after the dance, long before she’d met Wladzio, Zosyia had stopped her machine at the U.S. Rubber plant near the Belle Isle Bridge and started a wildcat strike. Twelve workers joined her. Others tossed them sandwiches through the open windows of the factory. Everyone slept on the machines. That had been something worth all the effort. They got their union. Where was that brave young girl now?

In the middle of the small of her back, Zosyia felt that prickly sensation she’d get when someone was staring at her, but she didn’t turn around; she wouldn’t give Mr. Nosy Eye the satisfaction.

Suddenly, she remembered how Gretel had shoved the wicked witch inside the big tile oven like Wladzio talked about sleeping on during the cold, snowy winters in Poland. How many children had died before that brave girl killed the witch and rescued her brother. Her baby! Poor, dead boy. And how many others?

Always, there were more questions than answers. Sometimes she felt the unanswered questions piling up, a looming mound of loose dirt, earth in danger of collapse. Just one scream given breath would bury her.

The sun was a tarnished silver medallion when she spotted the light inside their house. Wladzio was up, waiting for her. Her step quickened and she felt rocks and clods of soil beneath her feet, though the solid cement of a city sidewalk rang with the muffled iron sound of her heels.

Still, everything rested on the earth, Zosyia thought, as she pulled the front door open. Layers of rock and soil and hot metal. The molten core. Life. Like in that Diego Rivera mural at the Art Institute. Trying to make sense of it all. Animal, vegetable, mineral, human. Machine. The assembly line depicted on the north wall.

The layers of grief like the earth beneath her feet: plant, carbon, coal, diamond. A dinosaur bone or two.

Wladzio’s father, also named Antoni, had excitedly shared with his family how the great Mexican muralist had sketched the scene at the factory that day with his pencils. Wladzio took Zosyia to that museum and pointed out the portrait of his father wearing safety glasses and a pork pie hat.

He’d died just a few blocks from the flat they called home, on the pavement he’d been promised was gold, his skull crushed by a hit-and-run. Antoni Pacierzki had been a lead miner in Missouri before the salt mines at Ford Motor and that ill-fated January night when he’d died in the rain on Livernois Street.

Now his son had his arms around her. She felt a purple seam of rock beneath her feet. Her life at this moment was like a river of amethyst and tourmaline.