I wish I had something new to show you — a rough draft of a scene, a short story — but I have been exiting and polishing for so long that I haven’t written anything new …
Wait! I could show you an edited, polished scene! This is the beginning of Prodigies, the book I currently have out in queries:
I peered out the window of the train as we sped toward the Krakow train station, and I understood why the Polish government chose Krakow as the site for the Prodigy Assembly. I noticed more history in the town than I saw in all of the United States. Old-looking churches with intricate, weathered facades nestled against modern buildings with brutally straight concrete lines barely softened by budding street trees. I felt the city as a breeze, but with a hint of sharp edges. Just like chamber music — light and delicate until the cellos muscled in.
I held onto the architecture as something real because nothing else about this trip seemed to be. How likely was it that a high schooler would be offered an all-expenses trip to Poland to showcase her (and others’) talents? If I thought about it hard, I would begin to doubt this adventure, so I turned myself back to sightseeing.
I worried on the train because of something my mentor Dr. DeWinter told me, that there were far fewer black people in Poland than in the US. The train bore this out — as the only black person in my car, I noted a few curious stares. The train eased into the station; the sullen teen who had ignored me the whole trip started to stir, murmuring something in Polish as he tried to glance around me at the window.
“Tov Krakóv Goovneh?” he muttered in my direction, glancing over his sunglasses. I could barely figure out what the boy meant, so I reassured him that we arrived at Krakow Głowny. He wrinkled his nose at my answer but headed toward the train exit after shouldering his battered army backpack and his skateboard. Just another skater boi, posing as a jaded man past his teens.
I grabbed my suitcase and viola and followed him out of the train. Outside the station, I stared at the taxi line hoping to find a cabbie with just enough English to tell me how to get to my destination. As I dithered, I felt a breeze slip by as the skater blew past me and murmured, “Good luck” in English. Shithead.
A cab stopped before me, with a dark-haired, pale man behind the wheel.
“Palac Pugetow,” I said as he jumped out and helped me load my luggage in the trunk.
The cabbie corrected me with an amused smile. “Palace Pugetov?”
“That’s the one,” I shrugged.
We climbed in the taxi.
“Do you know how to say ‘hello’ in Polski?” the cab driver asked.
“Isn’t that ‘dezien dobry?'” I ventured. That was how I’d pronounce ‘Dzien dobry’, anyhow.
“Close,” he chuckled as we climbed into the car. His pronounciation sounded closer to ‘jean dobry,’ but not quite.
A whirlwind taxi ride later, the driver dropped me off at the offices of Palac Pugetow. I realized that it wasn’t so much a palace as a massive building of French Renaissance style like I’d learned about in history class. It stood tall and white with grey accents like a avant-garde wedding cake, surrounded by tall straight poplars marching in a row. I walked up the stairs into the main entrance, and spied a sign on one room labeled “Biuro Zarzadu”. I grabbed my cell phone and plugged the words into my translation app and came up with “Management Office”. Out of curiosity, I pressed the icon for the pronounciation in Polish, and it sounded like “byuro zarzandu” as pronounced by someone with marbles in his mouth. I knew I couldn’t pronounce it that way, marbles or no marbles. So much for that goal of learning Polish.
I walked into Biuro Zarzadu without knocking. My mistake — every person in the office stared at me from grey metal desks. I hoped they stared because I had done something gauche rather than the fact that I sported a brown complexion.
“Shim mocha sludgewich?” a middle-aged woman with incredibly pale skin and blonde hair smiled as she stepped up to the old wooden counter. I shook my head and glanced at the door.
“Oh, yes. American?” she asked, still smiling. “May I help you?”
“Oh, yes, thank you! My name is Grace Silverstein, and I’m looking for the prodigies — “
Again, the four people in the office — three women and one man — stared at me again. “Prodigies?” the helpful woman asked.
“The Minister of Culture invited me here?” I breathed.
A beat, then another, and then “Oh, yes, I’m pretty sure you’ll find them at the Second World offices, down the hall, third door to the right.”
As I thanked them and walked out, I felt a prickle at the back of my neck.
Luckily, I found the Second World offices, behind an austere door on which a polished bronze sign read “Druga Swiatowy Renasans” with a masterful male hand holding up a globe. When I looked closely, I saw a star-shaped cufflink at the wrist. Shades of Soviet Realism, I thought, remembering a lecture on Russian history sprinkled with art. My translate app yielded a translation of “Second World Renaissance”, which meant I arrived at the right place. This time I knocked on the door —
A frazzled woman with curly black hair, dark eyes, and a black dress that flattered her white skin answered my knock. “Oh,” she gushed in accented English, “you must be Grace Silverstein, yes? I am Dominika Vojchik, and — Nastka, not right now, I’m busy talking to the young lady!” A dark-haired child of about nine who tugged on her mother’s arm ran into the other room, and Dominika led me there, to a small waiting room.
If these were the prodigies, there weren’t too many of them. As I glanced around an opulent sitting room, all dark antiques and dark red upholstery and Oriental rugs, I saw the aforementioned Nastka with her long, coal-black hair and a dress like Dominika’s; a worn-looking blonde woman with curly-headed twins who sat in their chairs wide-eyed; and an Asian woman sitting next to a black-haired young boy who tapped at a smartphone. I assumed she watched over her son..
Dominika stood in the middle of the room and raised her voice, speaking in English. “Hello, I am Dominika Vojchik, and I am the coordinator of the Prodigy Project, where we wish to develop friendship between our countries through cultural exchanges. We have a — uh, small program right now, as you can see, but we thought that we would expand it if our initial forays succeeded.” She punctuated her speech with sharp hand gestures; the blonde woman whispered to her children, presumably to translate.
I waited for introductions —
“So, I would like to show you around the place, which has an amazing amount of history … “
We stood and stretched and followed Dominika out of the room. I looked at the mother of the two blonde children. Her eyes darted around at the sitting room, the rest of us, and particularly at Dominika.
“The Puget family originally came from France, hence the name Puget — ” which Dominika pronounced in the French manner as she walked us down interminable halls with carpets, dark wainscoting against pale cream walls, and doors, many doors. “In the 1800’s, Benedict Joseph de Puget became a member of the Polish nobility and the family settled down in Poland to do business. The Palace was designed by Joseph Kwiatowski for Baron Konstanty de Puget and built in 1874-5 in the Parisian Neo-Renaissance style.” I suspected that Dominika read off the plaque next to her to get the history, but I couldn’t read the Polish on the plaque.
The Asian boy jostled up next to me and whispered, “The current name of this place is the ‘Donimirksi Palace Pugetov Business Center’. Less impressive.” Just as quickly, he slipped away to stand by his — mother? Chaperone?
“I will now show you to your rooms –You will stay in private suites in this building on the next floor. We assigned each of you and your families a suite; your luggage has been placed there. I will pick you up at 1700 to discuss the assembly tomorrow night.”
Thankfully, I located the elevators.
I sat on the bed in my airy white-on-white rooms, staring through the bedroom door to a sitting room that looked just like the photo on the brochure I had received.
At least the room fulfilled my expectations. Not so the shaky appearance of this assembly I had been invited to.
Nobody had met me at the airport. I myself figured out, with help from a conductor, which train I needed to take. The black-haired woman with the staccato hand gestures appeared to be our lone host. And we hadn’t been allowed to introduce ourselves. I had never seen such a disorganized event in my life, and I hoped that our orientation fared better.
Then I heard a knock on the door. I freaked out — I don’t know why, just the strangeness of the situation. I decided to ignore the messenger until they gave their name and purpose — and then they did exactly that: “Please, I’d like to talk with you. It’s Luitgard Krause.”
I opened the door to the blonde woman and her two cherubic tots. I let them in to the sitting room, where the mother — Luitgard — sat in the overstuffed chair and her children, who were no more than seven, sat on the floor next to her. “This is Erwin, my son, and Mitzi, my daughter.” Erwin eyed me up and down sternly, then relaxed. Mitzi nodded at her mother, and walked up to me. “What’s your name? You have pretty hair.”
“Why thank you, Mitzi. My name is Grace Silverstein.”
“Are you one of them?” asked Erwin from his perch in the chair
; Luitgard bent over to shush him.
“One of whom?” I asked him just as I heard another knock on the door. Erwin shook his head, suddenly pale.
“May I come in?” I recognized Dominika’s voice and accent. Then she let herself in to my locked room.
My spine prickled and I felt lightheaded. Dominika had access to my room? Why? I spied a chair I could move in front of the door at night.
I couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness.
Words Like Me 