The Prodigal Daughter Page 4

  By the last quarter of 1939, Abel, with the help of a small loan from the First National Bank of Chicago, became the 100 percent owner of the Baron Group. He predicted in the annual report that profits for 1940 would be over half a million dollars.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt—the one with the red eyes and the fluffy brown fur—rarely left Florentyna’s side even when she progressed to second grade. Miss Tredgold considered that perhaps the time had come to leave FDR at home. In normal circumstances she would have insisted—there might have been a few tears and the matter would have been resolved—but against her better judgment she let the child have her own way. It was a decision that turned out to be one of Miss Tredgold’s rare mistakes.

  Every Monday, the Boys Latin School joined the Girls to be tutored in French by the modern language teacher, Mme. Mettinet. For everyone except Florentyna, this was a first, painful introduction to the language. As the class chanted boucher, boulanger and épicier after Madame, Florentyna, more out of boredom than bravado, began holding a conversation with FDR in French. Her next-door neighbor, a tall, rather lazy boy named Edward Winchester, who seemed unable to grasp the difference between le and la, leaned over and told Florentyna to stop showing off. Florentyna reddened. “I was only trying to explain to FDR the difference between the masculine and the feminine.”

  “Were you?” said Edward. “Well, I’ll show you le difference, Mademoiselle Know-All,” and in a fit of fury he grabbed FDR and with all the strength he could muster tore one of the bear’s arms from its body. Florentyna remained rooted to her seat in shock as Edward then took the inkwell out of his desk and poured the contents over the bear’s head.

  Mme. Mettinet, who had never approved of having boys in the same class as girls, rushed to the back of the room, but it was too late. FDR was already royal blue from head to toe and sat on the floor in the middle of a circle of stuffing from his severed arm. Florentyna grabbed her favorite friend, tears diluting the puddled ink. Mme. Mettinet marched Edward to the headmaster’s office and instructed the other children to sit in silence until she returned.

  Florentyna crawled around the floor, trying hopelessly to put the stuffing back into FDR, when a fair-haired girl Florentyna had never liked leaned over and hissed, “Serves you right, stupid Polack.” The class giggled at the girl’s remark and some of them started to chant, “Stupid Polack, stupid Polack, stupid Polack.” Florentyna clung to FDR and prayed for Mme. Mettinet’s return.

  It seemed like hours, although it was only a few minutes, before the French mistress reappeared, with Edward looking suitably crestfallen following in her wake. The chanting stopped the moment Mme. Mettinet entered the room, but Florentyna couldn’t even make herself look up. In the unnatural silence, Edward walked up to Florentyna and apologized in a voice that was as loud as it was unconvincing. He returned to his seat and grinned at his classmates.

  When Miss Tredgold picked up her charge from school that afternoon she could hardly miss noticing that the child’s face was red from crying and that she walked with a bowed head, clinging onto blue-faced FDR by his remaining arm. Miss Tredgold coaxed the whole story out of Florentyna before they reached home. She then gave the child her favorite supper of hamburger and ice cream, two dishes of which she normally disapproved, and put her to bed early, hoping she would quickly fall asleep. After a futile hour with nail brush and soap spent trying to clean up the indelibly stained bear, Miss Tredgold was forced to concede defeat. As she laid the damp animal by Florentyna’s side, a small voice from under the bedcovers said, “Thank you, Miss Tredgold. FDR needs all the friends he can get.”

  When Abel returned a little after 10 P.M.—he had taken to arriving home late almost every night—Miss Tredgold sought a private meeting with him. Abel was surprised by the request and led her at once to his study. During the eighteen months she had been in his employ, Miss Tredgold had always reported the week’s progress to Mr. Rosnovski on Sundays between 10 and 10:30 A.M. when Zaphia accompanied Florentyna to Sunday Mass at Holy Name Cathedral. Miss Tredgold’s reports were always clear and accurate; if anything, she had a tendency to underestimate the child’s achievements.

  “What’s the problem, Miss Tredgold?” asked Abel, trying to sound unworried. With such a break in routine he dreaded the thought that she might want to give her notice. Miss Tredgold repeated the story of what had taken place at school that day.

  Abel became redder and redder in the face as the story progressed and was scarlet before Miss Tredgold came to the end.

  “Intolerable” was his first word. “Florentyna must be removed immediately. I’ll personally see Miss Allen tomorrow and tell her exactly what I think of her and her school. I’m sure you will approve of my decision, Miss Tredgold.”

  “No, sir, I do not,” came back an unusually sharp reply.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Abel in disbelief.

  “I believe you are as much to blame as the parents of Edward Winchester.”

  “I?” said Abel. “Why?”

  “You should have told your daughter a long time ago the significance of being Polish and how to deal with any problems that might arise because of it. You should have explained the American’s deep-seated prejudice against the Poles, a prejudice that in my own opinion is every bit as reprehensible as the English attitude towards the Irish, and only a few steps away from the Nazi’s barbaric behavior towards the Jews.”

  Abel remained silent. It was a long time since anyone had told him he was wrong about anything.

  “Do you have anything else to say?” he asked when he had recovered.

  “Yes, Mr. Rosnovski. If you remove Florentyna from Girls Latin, I shall give my notice immediately. If on the first occasion the child encounters some problem you choose to run away from it, how can I hope to teach her to cope with life? Watching my own country at war because we wanted to go on believing Hitler was a reasonable man, if slightly misguided, I can hardly be expected to pass on the same misconstruction of events to Florentyna. It will be heartbreaking for me to have to leave her, because I could not love Florentyna more if she were my own child, but I cannot approve of disguising the real world because you have enough money to keep the truth conveniently hidden for a few more years. I must apologize for my frankness, Mr. Rosnovski, as I feel I have gone too far, but I cannot condemn other people’s prejudices while at the same time condoning yours.”

  Abel sank back into his seat before replying. “Miss Tredgold, you should have been an ambassador, not a governess. Of course you’re right. What would you advise me to do?”

  Miss Tredgold, who was still standing—she would never have dreamed of sitting in her employer’s presence unless she was with Florentyna—hesitated.

  “The child should rise thirty minutes earlier each day for the next month and be taught Polish history. She must learn why Poland is a great nation and why the Poles were willing to challenge the might of Germany when alone they could never have hoped for victory. Then she will be able to face those who goad her about her ancestry with knowledge, not ignorance.”

  Abel looked her squarely in the eyes. “I see now what George Bernard Shaw meant when he said that you have to meet the English governess to discover why Britain is great.”

  They both laughed.

  “I’m surprised you don’t want to make more of your life, Miss Tredgold,” said Abel, suddenly aware that what he had said might have sounded offensive. If it did, Miss Tredgold gave no sign of being offended.

  “My father had six daughters. He had hoped for a boy, but it was not to be.”

  “And what of the other five?”

  “They are all married,” she replied without bitterness.

  “And you?”

  “He once said to me that I was born to be a teacher and that the Lord’s plan took us all in its compass so perhaps I might teach someone who does have a destiny.”

  “Let us hope so, Miss Tredgold.” Abel would have called her by her first name, but he did not know what it
was. All he knew was that she signed herself “W. Tredgold” in a way that did not invite inquiries. He smiled up at her.

  “Will you join me in a drink, Miss Tredgold?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rosnovski. A little sherry would be most pleasant.”

  Abel poured her a dry sherry and himself a large whiskey.

  “How bad is FDR?”

  “Maimed for life, I fear, which will only make the child love him the more. In the future I have decided FDR must reside at home and will only travel when accompanied by me.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like Eleanor talking about the President.”

  Miss Tredgold laughed once more and sipped her sherry. “May I offer one more suggestion concerning Florentyna?”

  “Certainly,” said Abel, who proceeded to listen intently to Miss Tredgold’s recommendation. By the time they had finished their second drink, Abel had nodded his approval.

  “Good,” said Miss Tredgold. “Then, with your permission, I will deal with that at the first possible opportunity.”

  “Certainly,” repeated Abel. “Of course, when it comes to these morning sessions, it may not be practical for me to do a whole month without a break.” Miss Tredgold was about to speak when Abel added, “There may be appointments that I cannot reschedule at such short notice. As I am sure you will understand.”

  “You must, Mr. Rosnovski, do what you think best, and if you find there is something more important than your daughter’s future, I am sure it is she who will understand.”

  Abel knew when he was beaten. He canceled all appointments outside Chicago for a full month and rose each morning thirty minutes early. Even Zaphia approved of Miss Tredgold’s idea.

  The first day he started by telling Florentyna how he had been born in a forest in Poland and adopted by a trapper’s family and how later he had been befriended by a great Baron who took him into his castle in Slonim, on the Polish-Russian border. “He treated me like his own son,” Abel told her.

  As the days went by, Abel revealed to his daughter how his sister Florentyna, after whom she had been named, joined him in the castle and the way he discovered the Baron was his real father.

  “I know, I know how you found out,” cried Florentyna.

  “How can you know, little one?”

  “He only had one nipple,” said Florentyna. “It must be, it must be. I’ve seen you in the bath. You only have one nipple, so you had to be his son. All the boys at school have two….” Abel and Miss Tredgold stared at the child in disbelief as she continued, “…but if I’m your daughter, why have I got two?”

  “Because it’s only passed from father to son and is almost unknown in daughters.”

  “It’s not fair. I want only one.”

  Abel began laughing. “Well, perhaps if you have a son, he’ll have only one.”

  “Time for you to braid your hair and get ready for school,” said Miss Tredgold.

  “But it’s just getting exciting.”

  “Do as you are told, child.”

  Florentyna reluctantly left her father and went to the bathroom.

  “What do you think is going to happen tomorrow, Miss Tredgold?” Florentyna asked on the way to school.

  “I have no idea, child, but as Mr. Asquith once advised, wait and see.”

  “Was Mr. Asquith in the castle with Papa, Miss Tredgold?”

  In the days that followed, Abel explained what life was like in a Russian prison camp and what had caused him to limp. He went on to teach his daughter the stories the Baron had told him in the dungeons over twenty years before. Florentyna followed the stories of the legendary Polish hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and all the other great figures through to the present day, while Miss Tredgold pointed to a map she had pinned on the bedroom wall.

  Abel finally explained to his daughter how he had come into possession of the silver band that he wore on his wrist.

  “What does it say?” demanded Florentyna, staring at the tiny engraved letters.

  “Try to read the words, little one,” said Abel.

  “Bar—on Ab—el Ros—nov—ski,” she stuttered out. “But that’s your name,” she insisted.

  “And it was my father’s.”

  After a few more days, Florentyna could answer all her father’s questions, even if Abel couldn’t always answer all of hers.

  At school, Florentyna daily expected Edward Winchester to pick on her again, but he seemed to have forgotten the incident, and on one occasion even offered to share an apple with her.

  Not everyone in the class, however, had forgotten, and one girl in particular, a fat, rather dull classmate, took special pleasure in whispering the words “Stupid Polack” within her hearing.

  Florentyna did not retaliate immediately, but waited until some weeks later when the girl, having come in at the bottom of the class in a history test while Florentyna came in at the top, announced, “At least I’m not a Polack.” Edward Winchester frowned, but some of the class giggled.

  Florentyna waited for total silence before she spoke. “True. You’re not a Polack; you’re a third-generation American, with a history that goes back about a hundred years. Mine can be traced for a thousand, which is why you are at the bottom in history and I am at the top.”

  No one in the class ever referred to the subject again. When Miss Tredgold heard the story on the way home, she smiled to herself.

  “Shall we tell Papa this evening?”

  “No, my dear. Pride has never been a virtue. There are some occasions on which it is wise to remain silent.”

  The six-year-old girl nodded thoughtfully before asking: “Do you think a Pole could ever be President of the United States?”

  “Certainly, if the American people can overcome their own prejudice.”

  “And how about a Catholic?”

  “That will become irrelevant, even in my lifetime.”

  “And a woman?” added Florentyna.

  “That might take a little longer, child.”

  That night Miss Tredgold reported to Mr. Rosnovski that his lessons had proved worthwhile.

  “And when will you carry out the second part of your plan, Miss Tredgold?” Abel asked.

  “Tomorrow,” she replied, smiling.

  At three-thirty the following afternoon Miss Tredgold was standing on the corner of the street waiting for her ward to finish school. Florentyna came chattering out through the gates and they had walked for several blocks before she noticed that they were not taking their usual route home.

  “Where are we going, Miss Tredgold?”

  “Patience, child, and all will be revealed.”

  Miss Tredgold smiled while Florentyna seemed more concerned with telling her how well she had done in an English test that morning, a monologue she kept up all the way to Menomonee Street, where Miss Tredgold began to take more interest in the numbers on the doors than in Florentyna’s real and imagined achievements.

  At last they came to a halt outside a newly painted red door which displayed the number 218. Miss Tredgold rapped on the door twice with her gloved knuckle. Florentyna stood by her side, silent for the first time since leaving school. A few moments passed before the door opened to reveal a man dressed in a gray sweater and blue jeans.

  “I’ve come in response to your advertisement in the Sun,” Miss Tredgold said before the man had a chance to speak.

  “Ah, yes,” he replied. “Will you come in?”

  Miss Tredgold entered the house followed by a puzzled Florentyna. They were conducted through a narrow hall covered in photographs and multicolored rosettes before reaching the back door, which led out onto a yard.

  Florentyna saw them immediately. They were in a basket on the far side of the yard and she ran toward them. Six yellow Labrador puppies snuggled up close to their mother. One of them left the warmth of the clan and limped out of the basket toward Florentyna.

  “This one’s lame,” said Florentyna, immediately picking up the puppy and studying the animal’s leg.

/>   “Yes, I’m afraid so,” admitted the breeder. “But there are still five others in perfect condition for you to choose from.”

  “What will happen if nobody takes her?”

  “I suppose…” The breeder hesitated.”…She will have to be put to sleep.”

  Florentyna stared desperately at Miss Tredgold as she clung to the dog, who was busily licking her face.

  “I want this one,” said Florentyna without hesitation, fearful of Miss Tredgold’s reaction.

  “How much will that be?” asked Miss Tredgold as she opened her purse.

  “No charge, ma’am. I’m happy to see that one go to a good home.”

  “Thank you,” said Florentyna. “Thank you.”

  The puppy’s tail never stopped wagging all the way to its new home while to Miss Tredgold’s surprise Florentyna’s tongue never wagged once. In fact, she didn’t let go of her new pet until she was safely back inside the family kitchen. Zaphia and Miss Tredgold watched as the young Labrador limped across the kitchen floor toward a bowl of warm milk.

  “She reminds me of Papa,” said Florentyna.

  “Don’t be impertinent, child,” said Miss Tredgold.

  Zaphia stifled a smile. “Well, Florentyna, what are you going to call her?”

  “Eleanor.”

  Chapter

  Four

  The first time Florentyna ran for President was in 1940 at the age of six. Miss Evans, her teacher in second grade, decided to hold a mock election. The boys from the Latin School were invited to join the contest, and Edward Winchester, whom Florentyna had never quite forgiven for pouring blue ink over her bear, was chosen to run as the surrogate Mr. Wendell L. Willkie. Florentyna naturally ran as FDR.