Chapter 1: The Skowronski Girls

It was an usually warm June day in 1909. The wide spectrum of spring colors had slowly given way to the deep green of summer. The oak and walnut trees lining the street had gained back their leaves and a warm, dry breeze had encouraged the young neighborhood kids to start up a serious game of hide-and-go-seek. A small group of adolescent boys skeptically observed the childish games, more concerned about checking out the local girls and generally just showing off.

No wonder they slowed down their pace as they approached the rich girls house. Dimitri had had eyes on Tola for quite a while. School had only sporadically been held in the past months and only on her trips to the general store and on milling day had he been able to see her and once even struck up a little conversation. “Is it true what they’re saying? Are you really planning to make for America?” “I dunno”, Tola responded. “My folk’s just been arguing about stuff all the time and I don’t really know what’s going on.”

Since then Dimitri’s trips past Tola’s house had increased. He was able to talk his friends into taking that route down to the creek and last autumn his dad had let him run the grain down to the mill. Exciting as it was to casually walk by her house, Dimitri became increasingly confused by her intransigence. She just wouldn’t budge from her house. Just last week he’d told Vera, Tola’s 11 year old sister, to get her to meet him at the field adjacent to her house.
Since the beginning of May, the mood inside the Skowronski house had turned from the usually gray to almost black. Tola, Vera and Edith were hardly allowed to leave the house. Since the school was closed and the mill was not particularly busy, the girls hardly had anything to do. Tola was basically banned to her bedroom. Since the “event” in May her father had rarely spoken to her and Mama had become still as a bird, only managing to give curse orders to the girls about their daily chores.

With the way Papa reacted and Mama’s silence, Tola felt as if she’d been responsible. She’d heard of such things before. Her best friend’s mother had also lost a child when her belly had been awful big. She’d even been told of a lady who died after losing a child before the birth. It was very weird though. She heard her Mom call a few times before she found the courage to go into her bedroom. Lying there on her bed she looked like she’d been wandering days through a winter storm. Her skin was  pale as paper and her checks were sunken in. Her mama hardly said anything, mumbling only about America and that they’d soon be able to go. At first she didn’t know what she was gonna get out of the trunk next to the bed. Tola was quite surprised that her mama was able to get up and open the large wooden box, once carefully built buy a skilled carpenter’s hand. It was as if the blood in her head wanted to rush into her neck and her throat into her stomach when she saw the tiny body wrapped carelessly in a blanket.
“Don’t ever tell your father what I’m about to tell you!”, Clara whispered. “It took more slugs than I figured. So I think I’ll need a while to recover. Papa thinks it happened ‘cus I was sick and he should continue to think that.”
Papa ran the mill as he did the household - with an iron fist. Since the fighting had stopped, times had gotten no better. The town was decimated, men under 50 were hardly to be seen, hunger was in the air. To the grace of God the last harvest had gone well and Jan Skowronski had done his best to make the most of the situation. In all of Stanislowow there were only two mills. The other mill was owned by Jan’s brother-in-law and his hadn’t survived the fighting quite as well. In fact, only with Jan’s help had the Mirislowow family been able to get their mill running again. With this semi-monopoly, Jan had been able to keep the prices at pre-war levels and was one of the few in town with a stable income. Whoever had access to horse and carriage preferred to make the 20-kilometer run over to the next village. Prices were lower and the miller there allowed most customers to operate the mill themselves, freeing them of additional fees.

Clara was rarely seen in the mill. In fact, her presence there was not particularly desired. She took more to keeping the books, running the house and watching out for her girls. She was a strong-willed, stubborn, yet beautiful woman of 35. For the most part she kept her long brunette hair in a bun, only letting it down in the evening before going to bed. Tess – her mother preferred calling her Tess, her father keeping to the more formal Tola - was allowed to come in and brush her hair, a tradition that helped form or symbolized their especially close relationship. Clara’s rather small, light blue eyes were framed by high, protruding cheekbones and small jawbones that housed a certain, intense determination. Most people found her to be quite friendly. With all the traffic coming and going from the mill she’d have plenty of opportunity to  chat with the townsfolk and served as a sort of information hub. The ladies would talk mostly of their loss; husbands, sons, relatives, friends. Not a single family in Stanislowow had been spared direct loss. If it weren’t a father or husband, son or brother it was at least a cousin or uncle. The pain, the sorrow, the feeling of utter loss was one thing that these women had in common, a thread holding them together. Whether it was envy or anger, the fact that Clara still had a husband was one thing, aside from her relative wealth, that set her aside from her female neighbors.

Clara Skowronski was not a large woman and didn’t have the characteristic brawniness of the typical polish farmer of the day. Her hands, revealing her bourgeois background, had long, fine fingers and soft, smooth skin which had not been used for daily milking, rowing(??), shoveling, sowing and harvesting of a farmer’s life. She had come from and married into a family of millers. She completed primary and secondary school, learned mathematics, accounting, science and had basic skills in German and French.
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Never having had a very close relationship to her father, being forced by her father to stay at home increased her scorn. She’d spend her afternoons practicing on the violin and gazing out the window, hoping to catch a glance of Dimitri.
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The departure came so quickly that Tess and her two sisters hardly had time to tell their friends. Tess luckily had saved the album she’d been given for Christmas two years ago. I long, thin book with red, satin covers and thick paper designed for painting and sketches. During short visits her friends wrote their farewell greetings and some even drew or painted something.

Jan had agreed without much resistance to Clara’s decision back in December when she presented it to him. He truly didn’t believe she would go through with it but after the miscarriage she made it very clear to him that she was leaving. Jan didn’t consider for a moment to go with them. He was a successful businessman, was born and raised in Stanislowow and couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to risk moving to the New World.
Clara had saved up enough money for her ship fare and the rest would come from the family savings. The hardest part for her was to explain to her second child, Emily, that she would not be able to go immediately with them. Clara only had enough for three fares and Jan demanded that one of the girls stay to take help take care of the house. Clara explained to her that she would be back in one year to get her, once they had settled down in Detroit and saved up some money. It was the look in Emily’s eyes that almost tore Clara apart and made her cancel the trip. She took on a lost, distanced look. She didn’t cry or complain or seemed terribly depressed. It was that detached, dejected look that threw her mother off.

With two large suitcases and a sack on her back Clara was able to carry most of the load. The two girls were also able to carry their load by themselves as they all departed for the train station.