A touching tale of intergenerational dialogue and inherited shame
Mum looked at my plate, expertly assessing how much lunch I’d eaten.
‘Maybe you’re pregnant?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Even if you are, it’s what, two months till the wedding, so what can you do. Better if you were married, mind, but me and your dad’ll be happy nonetheless.’ She stroked my hand. ‘Tell me the truth, you can tell your mum anything. And we don’t need to tell folk, happen no one’ll figure it out. When I was carrying you, my belly was like this, just a little ball. How I worried, and you came out just the right size, with the dumpiest little legs…’ She sighed. ‘But the labour, sweet Jesus… You’re not? How come you’re so pale, then, and off your food? You’re not trying to slim down again? Believe me, I see how you eat. A banana doesn’t count as food, I can hear your belly grumbling. How will it look in the photos, with you all shrivelled like a corpse? Who am I even cooking all this food for then…’
And she cooked constantly. I liked to watch how, with her heavy hands – the kind that might be called ‘wrecked’ – she rolled out rounds of dough on the wooden pastry board, sprinkled them liberally with flour, laid them one on top of the other and cut them into strips, then piled them up again, and chop, chop, chop, shredded them into dainty little noodles. With the passing of time and the influx of daily responsibilities, Mum’s dough rounds became increasingly sloppy, her noodles thicker, until finally, she stopped making them altogether because it wasn’t worth it, how hard you have to work, who has the time, the littluns’ clothes need washing, and the flavour’s no different, the shop-bought ones taste better, even. By way of protest, my dad didn’t eat the noodle soup for two Sundays in a row, but when it was served again on the third Sunday, he broke his strike and helped himself to seconds, all the while muttering crossly about lazy old biddies. When we kids got older, Mum had more time and one day she made noodles again, but Dad, who by then had grown used to the additives, didn’t like the taste anymore.
‘Don’t eat if you don’t want to,’ she said to me. ‘When you’re poor enough, you’ll eat what you can get.’
The plates clanked; the perfectly thin threads of machine-sliced pasta slid into the kitchen sink, clogging the drain. A knife clattered against the baking tray – Mum was cutting apple pie, praying under her breath in sync with the TV.
‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word. Hail Mary, full of grace… Here, eat this at least.’ With a softer expression on her face, she passed me a piece of pie, the pastry puckered with fork marks.
I had told her the truth, almost whole. I hadn’t said that sometimes when I looked at Tomasz, I couldn’t find a single thing we had in common, or that Tomasz didn’t get my sense of humour. And certainly not that there was more to life than surviving, that it’s possible to understand one another in half a glance, that your mouth can go dry, that a sense of safety is merely a starting point, not a goal in and of itself, that you can’t award someone points just for not being a drunk or a thug. I had told my mum a version of the truth that I hoped she would understand.
Translated by Kate Webster
A touching tale of intergenerational dialogue and inherited shame
Translation rights: Krystyna Bratkowska, nisza125@gmail.com
Oida by Marta Michalak is a quietly powerful debut novel that interweaves the voices of three generations of Polish women – Jadzia (the grandmother), Teresa (the mother) and Magda (the daughter-narrator) – each shaped by her own era, dialect and social reality. Set against the backdrop of a small-town upbringing and the challenges of moving to the big city, the novel offers a sensitive exploration of identity, belonging, and the simple yet profound act of speaking one’s truth.
Magda, saddled with a mortgage and a childless, loveless marriage, finds herself caught between her rural roots and cosmopolitan ambitions. She grapples with the embarrassment of her regional accent and a persistent sense of alienation in the urban environment. Meanwhile, Teresa, intent on having the last word, clings to folk beliefs and her own interpretation of maternal wisdom, and Jadzia, who barely finished primary school, embodies stoicism and the unarticulated sacrifices of her generation. But Oida – a dialect word meaning ‘shame’ – transcends generational divides. Michalak’s prose is rooted in local Mazovian speech, rich in warmth, humour and unvarnished authenticity. Through the rituals of cooking, shared stories and frank dialogue, the novel becomes a celebration of the spoken word and a reclamation of the female voices often silenced by class and tradition.
Part of a growing trend in contemporary, female-centred fiction with a strong sense of place, Oida will resonate with readers drawn to stories of intergenerational relationships, rural-to-urban transitions, and the nuanced power dynamics of language.
Kate Webster
Selected samples
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First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
