Annales Bac L : Compétence linguistique

August 28, 1919
Detroit, Michigan
America

Dearest Matka,

     You will not understand this easily, so best I tell you quickly. Now my name is Rose. Do you like it ? I whisper this new name and a summer surrounds me : flowers and larks⁽¹⁾ and quite breezes, and I forget the boat and the people crowded tight against me, squeezing the thoughts out of my head. A new name cannot make your daughter a different person, Matka and all you taught me is mine forever. But now I'm in America, and my name is Rose. It is a happy name. A name Americans understand.
     Stanislaus, reading this letter to Matka, ask her to say my new name. She should feel for one moment what it means to be in America, where everything is new and different, even something so little and so grand as a name.
     The people we know don't have the names they had on the boat. Matka, forgive me, but when I got here they made me Rose, so this is who I am now. You would be proud to see me.
     I plan to become an American as soon as I can. I plan to learn English fast. One day I will have lots and lots of nice things, Matka, and you will have nice things too because I will send them to you.
     Two days here, and already I see how there is so much in America : so much time, so much space. There is everything ! Time to work hard and earn good money, time to tell stories and laugh.
     My name is gone !
     I am here ! I am here !
     With precious love always from your daughter…

November 16, 1919
Detroit, Michigan
America

     Dearest Matka,

     Late at night is the only time my thoughts of you aren't hidden. Overlook my crooked lettering because I'm writing in the dark as everyone sleeps ; only the light from the moon peeks in where the curtain doesn't pull shut. It's never quiet here in America. Across the hall the Jasinski's baby girl cries, boot steps clump to the washroom, a harmonica plays the same song every night, then stops too suddenly.
     The daylight hours are not ours anyway ; they belong to the factory, the landlord, the hallways I can't scrub clean of muddy footprints, the peddler⁽²⁾ whose prices are too high, the butcher with the meat cut ways I don't understand, the teacher at night school and his long sighs and bad complexion, the babies who whimper to be held. Nights have always been for dreaming, so that is when I dream of you, Matka, and everything behind me.
     When I went to say good-bye, you were surrounded by chickens ; you were tossing out their feed. Neither of us spoke. Only the chicken squawked⁽³⁾, as handfuls of food rained down upon them when it was supposed to be just one. These months later, I want to hear your voice, but it's chickens I remember.
     It is like nothing you can think of, to live in America. Even the sun is bigger here, its light whiter. There are so many people, and they talk too fast ; their language is twisted and gnarled, like trees growing in the wind. There are stories here, but I don't know them. I only know the stories you told me, Matka, and I repeat them to myself so I won't forget. The story about the day the rooster⁽⁴⁾ got its crow. The story about the wolves running through the snow and how their tracks filled with gold coins. I think of you telling me those stories, but I still can't hear your voice.
     At night, I feel my American baby growing inside me. My body doesn't want to let go of this baby. This is not the right way to think because again and again this child will find new ways to leave me. There's no end to leaving. Not yet a mother and already I know this.
     My husband learns English words at the factory school. "I am a good American", he can say and write. What he learns he teaches me. He is good this way. We learn together.
     Stanislaus, reading this letter to Matka, please tell her we are fine here in America. Tell everyone we are fine. Tell them to remember us in their prayers. We remember them.
     With precious love always from your daughter…

Pears on a Willow Tree. (p. 9-11), Leslie PIETRZYK, (Granta Books,1998)