My Name Means Faith

Sunlight poured from the floor-length lace curtains and danced on my grandmother’s face, etched with the roadmap of time. Her bony hands clasped her mug as she sat wistfully looking out to her balcony, as the hum of summer, tourists and church bells echoed through the breeze of the open door. For being in her nineties, she looked incredibly child-like, filled with wonder as she smiled at something and nothing all at once.

Her large hazel eyes suddenly locked in on me in all earnestness as she hunched over towards me and asked, “Should we have the priest come over?”

I had heard this statement many times before, so it did not faze me. In fact, this extremist Catholicism was one of the many reasons why my father had spent two years of my childhood not speaking to his own mother. She had told him that everything bad that would ever happen to me would be because I was never baptized. He, for his part, had wanted me to make my own choice as to what beliefs I wanted to follow - and so he refused. I suppose it only made sense for my grandmother to be so devout given all she had to endure and overcome throughout her life.

I lingered in my response as I studied the look on her face. I shook my head, and with a wink, half-jokingly replied, “Babciu, I’m a witch, remember?”

She chuckled and sighed as she reached behind her to open a cabinet door overflowing with glassware. “I think this calls for cognac,” she proclaimed, with a devilish grin. Her voice oozed comfort and warmth like the amber our city is renowned for. It was only noon, but here, that did not matter.

I took the two intricately textured and colored glasses to rinse in the kitchen. I passed by the main bedroom - the same one where my uncle and father were born and raised, and where later on, my cousin Linda and I grew up. 

When we were young and sharing the room, she would whisper:

 “Don’t look out the window, Baba Yaga will get you!”

“Who?”

“Baba Yaga - she is an old witch with a crooked nose who lives in the forest in a hut. She eats little children - just pretend to be asleep and she will leave you alone.”

I let out a scream and tightly gripped the covers as I threw it over my head.

That same summer, I had been against my wishes taken to a two-week sleep-away camp deep in the Polish countryside. One night we had been rounded up from our tents and led into the woods by our counselors, all in long cloaks and masks. We were then separated and instructed to individually find part of the way back to our group alone by using our senses. In the pitch dark, I slowly put one foot in front of the other, keeping my hands in front of me as I went. I kept walking down a path in complete silence, until suddenly the wind seemed to shove me forward as I tripped over a tree branch. Looking up, I saw something faintly glowing in the distance as the wood creaked around me. I inched my way towards the light, which flickered with

a strange sense of familiarity.

The light appeared gradually through the trees, warm flickering ribbons of gold against the cold blue-black of the forest. As I moved closer, branches tugging at my jacket sleeves, the faint outline of a cottage emerged. Moss and tangled roots were illuminated by the wooden doorway, where bundles of various herbs hung, filling the air with an earthy aroma. I trod carefully up the uneven rickety steps that led me up to a sagging porch where a mortar and pestle sat neatly perched by the door.

I hesitated, but the stillness was interrupted by the sudden beating of wings, as a dark blurred figure rushed past my eyes and perched itself on the porch ledge. The crow fixed me with its beaded stare and raspily asked me for a seed. I found one sitting neatly in the mortar and gingerly handed it to the crow with trembling hands. It delicately took the seed from my outstretched palm, tilting its head as if studying me as it said with a voice sharp and hollow:

“You may enter - but know, you will be asked the same question many times. The final answer matters.”

“What do you mean? Who lives here?” I responded.

The crow looked back one last time but did not respond, as it stretched its wings out and vanished into the night sky. I considered turning back, but the door cracked open as I was about to do so.

I entered upon a small living space that was overflowing with jars and books and animal skulls. Two leather sofa chairs were placed beside a low fireplace, with a circular table between them. There sat an elderly woman, with knuckles like roots and snake-green eyes that pierced through

the soul.

“Come in, child,” she said, with a voice so soft that the ambient sounds of the fire seemed to grow around her.

“There is some tea brewing in the pot, please bring that here and pour a cup for me and for yourself,” she continued.

I stood frozen for a moment, my pulse hammering in my ears as I debated if this was a scheme to poison me - but my body decided to follow her command, and I did as she asked. I carried over the steaming ceramic pot covered in a tea cozy, and dutifully poured the old woman’s cup first to the brim, followed by a second. I placed the pot on the table and sat down quietly.

“Look into the cup. What do you hear?”

The surface trembled in the candlelight.

I frowned, staring at the reflection. “Don’t you mean what do I see?” I responded.

“No,” she said softly. “Listen.”

I acquiesced to her request and looked down once more. “Silence.”

“Wrong,” she replied boldly.

Suddenly, everything went dark - upon opening my eyes, I was on the ground sprawled across the tree trunk, but this time the light was a flashlight of one of my counselors. I heard hushed voices around the corner, and reunited with my group.

Shortly after finishing high school, I got a call that someone I had grown up with had been shot to death in a case of mistaken identity as she was waiting to be driven back home in East Palo Alto. The culprits had been on a killing spree and were not apprehended. We wore pink in her honor and released a hundred balloons into the sky. Sitting alone in a bare room at night, I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower and wept for weeks. I convinced my best friend Patrick to recreate our own tunnel moment.

 “I know just the place,” he said reassuringly.

We drove to Oakland and blasted the radio as we zoomed through the long narrow entrance at

full speed, half of my body hanging out of the window. My hair was in my face and everything

blurred around me as we, just like the characters in the book, became “infinite.” The wind and

bass blared in my ears as I suddenly heard:

“What do you hear?” in a tone I had nearly forgotten.

“Death. Injustice.”

“Wrong.”

I opened my journal one day to a blank page, and wrote - “What do you hear?”

“Isolation. Sheer, utter exhaustion.”

No.

I quit my jobs and went abroad for the better part of a year, where I stayed and studied in the

U.K. I had the adventures of a lifetime. I said goodbye to the lifelong memories and friends I

made along the way, as we sat on the edge of the White Cliffs of Dover as we watched the sun

set with France on the horizon. We got completely lost that day, but that didn’t matter here.

I attended concert after concert where the air was filled with young pop idealists covered in sweat, glitter, and optimism. I met Kim Petras - a singer-songwriter from Germany. Her team sent me an advanced stream of her upcoming independently released album. I decided to take a drive to the tunnel, once more, and listen to a song there.

I sped through as her song “Brutalist” came on.

There was a building there

And it was brutalist

And it was beautiful

It was my favorite

But it’s not there no more

Because they tore it down

They really ruined it

My phone pinged, and a notification came up, pausing my musing.

Kim Petras sent you a message:

“happy graduation my loveee.”

I sobbed happy tears, this time. The song’s lyrics twisted and warped into a hum as I drove through.

“What do you hear?”

“The end.”

 And as Charli xcx said - “You can’t dread the end, when it’s over.”