Chapter 13: Opening Day

Sokol's opened at seven on a Saturday morning, and by six-thirty the line went around the corner.

Babcia had told her church.

The church had told the Polish deli, and the deli had told two cousins in Berwyn.

A food writer I had never met had posted a photo of my tart with the words, Go. Now.

I stood behind the counter in a clean apron and could not feel my hands.

"Breathe," Marta said, bagging rye.

"I'm breathing."

"You're breathing like a person who's about to be sick in a pastry case."

Piotr had hung the sign himself the night before, gold letters on green glass.

SOKOL'S. He had not said anything about it.

He stood by the door in his work jacket, his burned arm in a clean bandage.

He let people in two at a time.

The first customer was a woman in her seventies in a quilted coat, who ordered a poppy seed roll and a plum tart.

She ate the tart at the counter, standing up, and then put a hand on her heart.

"My mother's," she said in Polish. "My mother's."

"It was my grandmother's," I said.

"Then your grandmother was a saint."

"She'd be happy to hear it."

I cried a little into the register.

By nine o'clock we had sold out of rye.

At ten-fifteen the line parted, and Lena walked down the middle of it.

She wore a camel coat and sunglasses.

Behind her came a young man in a lanyard, holding a phone up at chest height.

He was filming.

"Hal!" Lena said, loudly, with her whole warm hostess voice. "Look at this! Look at you!"

The room quieted.

Marta set down the bread knife.

"He's with a food site," Lena said, gesturing at the phone. "I wanted to come say congratulations in person. We're all adults. No hard feelings."

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