Cossacks, she thought. In the old country, one still heard the old stories, the streets paved with gold and the food waiting for such as yourself; oh, the war had not changed that in the least. Now the Voice of America was heard in the old country—she had a letter, smuggled out, from her own second-cousin Marfa, telling her all about the Voice of America—and that was only another trap. They wanted to make you leave your own land and your own country, and come far away to America and to the United States, so that you would have no friends and you would be defenseless.
Then you could not help yourself. Then you had to do what they asked you, because there was no other way to eat. There were no friends to feed you dinners or to allow you room in a good house. No. There was only the case worker with her reports that took the last bit of privacy away from an old woman, and left her with barely enough money to remain alive.
"Get a job," they said. "Tell your son to get a job. He is young and strong and healthy."
Certainly! But the United States is not a place in which to work. The United States will give you money. This fact she had from her uncle Bedrich, who had come to the new country years before, and who had written many letters back to his family before his death in an accident.
Should she, then, work? Should her own son, her own Rudi, be forced to work out his time of youth? Surely a little privacy was a small enough thing to surrender for freedom and ease?
But that they should ask for you to surrender it ... Cossacks!
Mrs. Wladek stood up carefully—her old bones creaked, and she could feel them creaking. She looked around the tiny living room, covered with dust. One should have the money to hire a maid. But the case workers had never understood that. Young things, of course they knew nothing of the troubles facing an old woman.
An old woman needed a maid.
She laughed briefly to herself at the idea, and realized at the same time that she had been hiding her own thoughts from herself.
Today was her appointment day, and the new one would be there, blond and young and smiling at her with the innocent face. There was something wrong with the new one; she could see that. In the old country there were stories—