Lori Romero's Pick:
"This story unfolds beautifully as it explores the quest for authentic expression between a grandmother and granddaughter."
My grandmother is playing the matchmaker. She has been telling me about Zygmunt, the son of her lifelong friend Janusz. My grandmother, Janusz and his wife have discussed our getting together.
She and I are taking a shortcut to the grocery store. The path here is overgrown and hard to follow. She knows this way better than I do, but sends me ahead of her. I think she does it so that she can laugh at me when I don't turn where I should. We walk up a gentle slope, past acacia trees and wild rose bushes. A snail crunches underfoot.
It's early June, and after a week of rain the sun has finally emerged. The rain has misted the bushes and flattened the grass, and the water soaks through my shoes and jeans as I brush by. The rain has also brought out pretty, yellow-shelled snails that are stuck together. I feel as though I'm in the wild.
Janusz and his wife live down the street from my grandmother. We had to cut through their yard to get to this path. Their German shepherd, the one the sign on the fence warned us about, eyed us from the porch but didn't get up.
I'm not sure why she's trying to fix me up now. I'd love a romance, but my grant is ending this month, and I'll be returning to the United States at the end of summer.
Another snail crunches underfoot. After the fifth time, it occurs to me that the snails want to be stuck together. Even snails can find love, I think. How pathetic that I need my grandmother to fix me up.
I try to avoid stepping on them, but every now and then I hear a crunch under my foot. Those tangled in the grass are hard to see.
My grandmother continues to tell me about Zygmunt and his family. Zygmunt is my age, he's tall, and he tends horses in Germany, she says. Janusz is a butcher; once last summer I stopped by their house to buy blood sausage. Janusz's father was my grandmother's godfather.
Just as I begin to think, "Well, maybe I could meet him," the path abruptly ends at the asphalted road.
She hesitates. "The only problem is that Zygmunt is already married," she says. "He met a girl in Krakow and fell in love with and married her. They were married in the Church. But she left him."
Now I'm really unsure why she wants us to meet. Does she see a happy ending for me and a guy who's already married?
"Maybe the next time he's home from Germany you can meet him," she says.
"Maybe," I answer. Now I hope our paths don't cross.
She must sense my uncertainty about meeting Zygmunt. "I'll miss you when you're gone," she says.
We're both already preparing ourselves for the end of summer: she's dreading not having her granddaughter with her daily, and I'm dreading the job hunt awaiting me back home.
So it's no surprise that I don't realize that she doesn't really care about my love life. She thinks that I would stay in Poland if I had a Polish boyfriend. If his parents live down the road from her, so much the better.
Neither of us says what we really want. My grandmother never comes out and asks me to stay longer in Poland. And I can't break her heart and tell her it's time for me to leave.
We walk in silence the rest of way to the store. Here and there we sidestep a snail that, venturing out of the grass, was splattered across the asphalt, and is now shriveling in the sun.
Yolanda Steiman spent the 2001-2002 school year in Poland. She's working on a memoir about that year; "Mating Season" is one essay from that collection. These days she works as a technical editor in Columbus, Ohio. She's been published in Transitions Abroad and The Columbus Dispatch.