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after dark, when Kalina still hadn't come back, that Hania became fully aware that she had no way of contacting Wiktor and Ania, that she didn't even know where they were, and she didn't know when was an appropriate time to get really worried, call the police, etc.
    "Maks," she tried, "is it usual for Kalina to stay out this late?"
    "I don't have to answer your questions." He was watching television and he didn't turn his head in her direction.
    She stepped in front of the set, blocking his view very effectively. "Is it usual for Kalina to stay out at this hour?"
    A sound like a tea kettle boiling over. Then, "Yes."
    She moved away from the television, breathing a sigh of relief. If it was usual she'd probably come back.
    Maks had his chin on his fist and kept his eyes glued on the set. He added, "Course, I can't tell time."
    Fortunately, it was only a short while later that Kalina came back. Hania considered speaking to her––"it would have been polite to inform me of your intended absence, etc."––but decided against it. To what end? She'd just get through the next two days, and then her uncle would come back and she would––what? Go back to America, or move to a hotel, or look for an apartment? One of those things, anyway. She wouldn't stay here with these…these children from hell. And now she'd just have something to eat and go to bed. The idea of sleep sounded extremely inviting. By the time she'd finished off the leftover pierogis and the leftover bread and was ready for bed, the children had retreated to their rooms and were asleep. Well, that was one good thing. They seemed very self-sufficient.
    She slipped on her nightgown and turned out her own light. The room was enveloped in soft blackness and the floor was warm beneath her feet. It would be so nice to lie down. She crossed from the wardrobe to the bed in the dark, pulled back the cover, and made a sort of wallowing dive for the center of the sofa bed in the hopes it wouldn't collapse with her. It didn't collapse, but what was that horrible, that viscous, slimy stuff all over the sheet? Feeling revulsion in every fiber she tried to escape, but it stuck to her. She rolled from the bed and the sheet came with her, clinging to her nightgown. Stifling a scream, she pulled at the cloth with panicked fingers and a beating heart and flung it from her. She stampeded to the light and snapped it on.
    Butter. It was butter. Someone had spread butter all over the bed.
    Maks!!! She felt like shrieking. Come here and clean this up!!! She controlled her rage with difficulty. It occurred to her that that was exactly the sort of scene he wanted. Well, he wasn't going to get it.
    Inwardly fuming, she lay down again on top of the covers.
    So, all right, she realized as she began to calm down, there wasn't really anything personal in it. Maks was angry with the world and he was taking it out on her. Maybe Maks had good reason to be angry, she didn't know, but why, oh why, had she come here? How foolish she had been. Her father hadn't had much of a job to persuade her to come. She remembered now, when he had called about Babcia, what she had felt. There had been a little sorrow for her grandmother, a little chagrin at the passing of a stage in life that would never return, but more, there had been the desire to return to Poland, to meet what she had always thought of as "the other half of the family," to see if she couldn't in some way make them her own, let them fill up the emptiness of her own social existence, to flee for a moment from the boundlessness of her American life back to the rootedness of her earliest years. Ania and Wiktor––they'd always been kind enough to her on previous visits. A little condescending perhaps––no, actually, very condescending––but she had tried not to remember that, and anyway, wasn't it normal enough, in adults toward a teenager? Now, she had thought, maybe there would be contact, mutual ground, liking, acceptance. She would