The following week Kasia began teaching undergraduate classes again. Friday evening she returned beaming. Two of her students were Polish, born here in America, though they had gone to some kind of Polish after-school-school for years. There they’d received the Polish grammar education that children learn in order to properly master the language. Once they saw Kasia’s name they switched to perfect Polish themselves and asked what town she was from; one even had family close to Kasia’s own.
Half an hour later Kasia stopped me in the kitchen.
“Hang on. It’s weird that Katie’s never mentioned her hometown. Wouldn’t that be the first thing you’d say?”
I agreed. It was the first thing I asked about whenever I met another Brit.
All she had ever said was “Galicia.” That was the historic region she studied for her research, sure, but this was a rather general—and outdated—regional label. It was like a Brit saying they grew up in “East Anglia,” or an American in “Alta California”—you never would.
Kasia’s students’ accents were perfect, but Katie’s hadn’t been when she’d replied to me. Kasia had heard it from the restroom. She had also found it weird at the time, and then, like me, hadn’t known how to broach it, how to admit it openly between us.
Katie probably didn’t speak Polish. Maybe she hadn’t lived or been born there either. But how was this even possible? What?!
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