"LET'S GO or we'll be late, kurwa!"
I heard my mother shouting and muttering from the other room.
"Kurwa, ta dziewczyna zabiera mnie do grobu."
("Damn it, this girl is going to send me to an early grave.")
I didn't like my grandmother.
I know how heartless that sounds, but I had expected more.
Maybe it was because she never really looked at me when we met, or because her eyes always seemed to search for something in me—and never found it.
Or maybe it was simply because she had never treated me the way a grandmother should treat her granddaughter.
No warm embraces. No loving words.
Only that stern, examining silence.
And yet here I was, standing in my tiny room in a cramped apartment in Poland, getting dressed for her funeral.
I only had a few days left here.
In two days, I would fly to the United Kingdom.
My visa was tucked carefully between the pages of a book on my desk.
A ticket to a better future.
A ticket out of this life.
I had fought hard to get into university.
While others spent their free time enjoying life, I had studied.
While they went to parties, I stayed up late writing essays—headphones on, trying to drown out my father's shouting and my mother's sobbing.
I had worked, struggled, pushed myself through school—because deep down, I knew that nothing here belonged to me.
Except the desire to leave.
And now, just before I could finally escape, I had to attend the funeral of a woman who had never made me feel welcome.
I pulled on my black sweater, stepped into my shoes, and walked into the living room.
My mother sat by the window in her wheelchair, a coffee cup in her hand.
Her black dress hung loosely around her frail frame. Her eyes were tired.
"Are you ready?" she asked quietly.
I nodded.
Behind my father's bedroom door, all I could hear was loud snoring.
Of course. He had drunk himself to sleep again last night, like always.
I was glad he wouldn't be coming.
"Let's go," my mother said, and I grabbed the car keys.
I wheeled her outside.
The air was cold. The sky, gray.
I didn't know if it was just the funeral weighing on me—or the strange feeling that this day would change my life.
I opened the rear passenger seat, pulled out the ramp, secured my mother in the disability-adapted car, and climbed into the front.
The old Fiat smelled of stale smoke and cheap perfume.
I started the engine and drove.
The streets were still wet from the night's rain.
"She always said you were different," my mother suddenly said, not taking her eyes off the window.
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "What do you mean?"
"Your grandmother. She said… you had too much of the West in you. Too much will. Too little obedience."
I wasn't sure if that was a compliment or one last insult.
"Maybe she was right," I murmured.
We passed the old cemetery, with its crumbling stone wall and rusted iron gate.
The dead lay here like stories no one told anymore.
The chapel was small, built from dark stone.
A few relatives had already gathered outside—faces I only recognized from faded photos or long, humid summers I'd rather forget.
As I stepped out, a gust of icy wind hit me.
I tightened my sweater around me, got my mother out, and walked toward the chapel.
Inside, it smelled of wax and mildew.
The coffin was closed.
Dark wood. Plain.
No flowers, no pictures.
Only a single wreath with a ribbon that read:
"Bound in silence."
My mother sat up front, next to my uncle and aunt.
I sat all the way in the back.
Last pew.
Alone.
No one spoke to me.
No one acknowledged me.
It felt like my grandmother had made sure—even from the grave—that I wouldn't belong.
She had always blamed me.
Said I was the reason.
For everything.
For my father's madness.
For my mother's suffering.
For the curse that broke this family.
I was a mistake.
An accident.
A child never meant to exist.
I had been five when I watched my mother jump from the fourth floor of our apartment building.
He had threatened her. Again.
She was pregnant.
He screamed that he would kill me if she didn't get rid of the child—my unborn brother.
That day, her body didn't just break on the outside.
Something inside her died.
She survived. Paralyzed.
But the child did not.
My brother.
He never got to take a breath.
And yet, I was grateful.
That she lived.
That I still had her.
I understood her.
God, I understood her.
My father?
A bastard.
A monster.
An alcoholic who beat her, broke her, ruined her—again and again
And I was his shadow.
His legacy.
Sometimes I wondered if I had any right to leave.
To abandon her in this state, with this fear.
But my uncle—her brother, not that devil of a man—had promised to take care of her.
Until I finished my studies.
Until I earned enough.
Until I could save her.
I lifted my head.
Forced myself to look up from the floor.
I didn't want to cry.
Not now. Not here.
And then it happened.
The priest was saying a quiet prayer.
Silence fell over the chapel.
And my gaze landed on her.
A woman.
Up front.
Dressed in black like the others.
And yet…
Something was off.
Her posture was too straight.
Her face too still.
Like a statue among flesh and blood.
As if she wasn't really here.
But her eyes…
She barely moved her head.
Yet her gaze found me.
Direct.
Piercing.
Like a cold breath on my neck.