PANDORA’S BOX [ JB Polk ]

I cry so rarely that I once feared I didn’t have the proper lacrimal ducts. No matter how miserable I feel, how low my heart sinks, or how far I am knocked sideways, I can barely shed a tear. I didn’t cry when my dad was killed in a car accident when I was eight, or when Matt, my husband of ten years, decided to leave with Alice, his best friend’s wife. 

But now I realize there is nothing physically wrong with me. I simply learned self-control from my grandmother, Anneliese, who said that crying was not for survivors like us.

“Wearing your heart on your sleeve is for the weak, kiddo," she said to me at Dad’s funeral.

Anneliese is as tough as a walnut and just as hard to crack. So am I. I’ve inherited her resilience, or rather, she taught me to hide my feelings, no matter how often life has rugby-tackled me and rubbed my nose in the mud.

My mother has always complained that I resemble Anneliese more than I resemble her. I felt proud because, besides my grandmother's personality, I share her height, blue-gray eyes, and blond hair, while my mother is a chubby brunette with plain brown eyes rather than honey-colored ones. And while Mom is a softie, Anneliese is unbreakable, no matter the circumstances.

My eyes barely mist over when my mother calls one June morning to say Anneliese has passed away. Somehow, I manage to squeeze out three paltry tears, which plop into the milk and cornflakes as I set the bowls on the counter for Jake and Tim.

"Why are you sad, Mommy?" Jake, the older of the two by five minutes, asks.

"Ughhhh! You're making the cereal taste icky," Tim pouts.

I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand! Cornflakes with salt sound super icky! 

"Oma's gone," I answer. 

"Gone where?" Unlike Tim, who is all emotion, Jake is pragmatic. His first reaction is always curiosity.

"Back to where she came from. The old country," I say.

I promised not to fill my sons’ heads with stories about heaven and hell, angels and devils, and God and his infinite mercy. If my children choose to believe in something—a divine presence, a higher power, or whatever they want to call it—the time will come for them to do so. At five, they are simply not old enough.

That’s another thing Anneliese and I have in common. Or should I now say, "had in common"? We both doubt God's existence.

Anneliese would chuckle whenever the subject came up: "Doubt it, but don't completely deny it, God forbid."

We're not going to the funeral. Mom said Anneliese would be laid to rest the following day. The undertaker explained he could keep her chilled for a day or two, but with the June storms hitting Miami and knocking out power, he recommended a speedy burial, just in case.

Anyway, I’d have to drive seventy miles to Salem with two small kids in an old Ford Fiesta with no air conditioning, then take a seven-hour Delta flight to Miami, where Mom would have to pick me up while worrying that her dead mother was spoiling in a thawing freezer. Instead, we agreed I’d travel once everything was over.

In the meantime, I quietly mourn her at home, where my unruly twins hurl cornflakes at each other and compete in a gross burping contest. As always, Jake comes out on top, leaving Tim teary-eyed.

“Looooo-seeeer," Jake sings, walking off to the lounge to watch SpongeBob on Nickelodeon while Tim howls and begs him to switch to Disney.

I think of Anneliese as I wade through piles of washed socks, underwear, scruffy T-shirts, and shorts in the messy kitchen, with the counter covered in cornflakes, breadcrumbs, and spilled milk. I always think of her as either Grandmother or Anneliese. On occasion, I use the German word oma. Never "grandma" or "granny." Perhaps because of her tough exterior, she was tall and painfully thin, with her ash-blond hair pulled back into a severe bun. Even at eighty-five, she looked flawlessly put together and never wore pants, instead opting for straight black skirts, white blouses, and low-heeled pumps. No foolish aprons for Anneliese, even when she cooked. She was the epitome of an Ice Maiden or a Valkyrie—a demigoddess from Warnemünde on the Baltic coast, where she was born and never returned.

Oma perpetuated the perfect image not only at home but also at the hospital, where she worked as a theater nurse. Mom, who was clearly biased, insisted she was the best nurse in Florida. Because she never lost her composure, all the surgeons competed to have her assist them in complex craniotomies and thoracic aortic dissection repairs, whatever that entailed.

I last saw her nearly three months before she died of breast cancer, which had advanced to stage 4 and spread to her lungs.

"Terminal," she said drily.

"A few months to go, and then it’s curtains for me," she remarked, rolling the "r" in "curtains." The sentence was thick with her still discernible German accent, even after more than fifty years in Florida.

I sat on the edge of her bed, holding her blue-veined hand. 

"Have you brought me the underpants I asked for? Every time I hit the bathroom, my behind is on display thanks to that open-backed hospital gown. I might be on my way out, but I want to make a grand exit! I really hope George, that cute young nurse, doesn't catch a glimpse of my sagging, wrinkled ass!" she said with a cheeky wink. 

"What?!” She glared at the elderly patient in the bed beside her, who seemed to have overheard our conversation and looked stunned.

“I can still have some fun before I take that final stroll toward the light," she said to her neighbor, who turned away from us despite struggling to deal with the drip. 

I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Just like Anneliese! 

"Yes, Oma. Three pairs, elasticated, white, no frills. They will hold up your ass, all right." 

Plastic rustled as she unwrapped the undies and spread them on the bed.

"Jesus wept, Frances! These things are fit for a toothless grandma who's about to kick the bucket, not for a tough cookie like me. I've still got some fight left in me, for crying out loud!" she said, a bit annoyed.

“With these but huggers on, I’ll never make George fall for me," she said, holding up one pair like a celebratory flag and waving it at the neighbor, who was trying to untangle the drip tube from the bed sheets.

Nothing about Anneliese has ever seemed particularly grandmotherly to me. When Dad died and Mom and I moved in with her, she promised to take turns dropping me off and picking me up from school, to help us financially, and to occasionally babysit. But nothing else. She had a life and a job she liked, and she wasn't your typical German oma who cooked ginger lebkuchen for Christmas and knitted jumpers with reindeer. Yes, she was delighted to have us, but we all had to toughen up and assume our responsibilities. 

"Frances is old enough to stay on her own after school, and you, Tilly, must get a job," she ordered, and we obeyed as usual. Because she never asked, she simply told us what to do.

I often wondered how a toughie like Anneliese could have given birth to a weakling like my mother. Tilly is her polar opposite in every way, not just physically, with her plumpness and her perpetual concern about calories and how they settle around her waist. She cries at the drop of a hat, is terrified of thunder and darkness, and nothing makes her happier than making krapfen (doughnuts in German) for Jake and Tim. And if she could knit, I'm sure my kids' closets would be stuffed with sweaters featuring snowflakes and reindeer.

When I was small, there was little hugging and much of what Anneliese called "toughening up."

" There is no such thing as bad weather, liebchen, only unsuitable clothing," she quoted a German saying. True to her word, whether it rained or shone, she chucked me out to play in the garden, ride my bike, or skip rope.

"I failed with Tilly. She's always been a bit of a pushover, even now that she's grown up," she added. 

"But I’m not going to make the same mistake with you. You, Frances, are a trooper. Like me!"

I beamed at the praise.

She was right, of course. She was anything but gentle. She wasn't the kind of grandmother who kissed bruised knees and egos better.

I was seventeen when Dave Carlson dumped me before prom night. When I told Oma I would most likely die of a broken heart, she said, "Nonsense. Hearts are muscles. They don’t break."

She made me wash my face, put on makeup, and go to the prom as if nothing had happened.

I felt closest to her when she took out her antique teak box filled with her "mementos."

"The only thing left from the old country," she explained.

"Real handcraft made from proper materials, not like the plastic crap they now make in Taiwan. My mother bought it in Mandalay, Burma. It’s called Myanmar nowadays. My grandfather was a tea merchant and would take us there on vacation.”

She never passed up an opportunity to teach me something.

The word Mandalay conjured images of oranges and white jasmine, of vanilla and musk. I imagined a country full of tiny, fragile, dark-complexioned girls with almond-shaped eyes, who smelled of bergamot and carried boxes like Anneliese’s in their delicate hands.

Finely carved with ebony and mother-of-pearl inlays, the box was the size of a typical case, perfect for holding a set of cutlery for six. Oma kept the key on a long silver chain passed down from her own Oma.

Whenever she opened it, it felt like venturing into an exotic, faraway land, much like Narnia. Aside from some old papers tied with a red ribbon, which she told me were her birth certificate and nursing diploma, the box contained only a few items, but they were so wonderful to a child!

A pair of girandole earrings (she said it was pronounced "jeer-an-dou-lee") with three green stones at the bottom, the centerpiece slightly lower than the other two. Oma explained that they were emeralds set in gold and let me hold them up to my earlobes. But I couldn’t wear them because my ears were not pierced. 

There was also an exquisite Karl Moritz Grossmann nurse’s fob watch that clips onto a uniform or scrubs pocket, with the dial upside down so the wearer can tell the time. Although it no longer worked, Anneliese kept it as a keepsake from a doctor she admired in her youth.

"He was smart and dedicated to his work. Nowadays, doctors work only for money, but he..." Her voice trailed off.

"He worked for the sake of medicine. Of science!"

My favorite was a sepia photo with serrated edges, taken in Steinhöring in 1938, a year before the outbreak of World War II. It was where she had completed her apprenticeship alongside ten other sixteen-year-olds from the nursing school in Berlin. The girls posed in front of a gray, three-story building with large windows.

"A maternity and recovery ward for young German mothers," Anneliese explained.

The nurses wore black uniforms with white smocks and black caps to keep their hair in place at the backs of their heads. They lined up, with Anneliese, the tallest and slimmest of the ten, in the center.

“It was wonderful to be young and pretty," she smiled at me wistfully.

"Those were exciting times, liebchen. Meaningful times." 

When I arrive in Miami, the storms are still wreaking havoc on the power grid. Jake and Tim are grumpy after the long flight and refuse to go to bed because they napped on the plane.

"Don't worry," Tilly says as they settle into her kitchen, each with a chocolate ice cream, their hair still damp from the shower.

“I’ll keep them busy. You go up to her room. I thought you’d like her teak box. She asked for it in the hospital, but she was unconscious when I finally took it with me. I’m sure she’d love you to have it."

I tell the boys to behave—no burping contests today! Before I reach the landing, I hear one long, disgusting belch and peals of laughter from the kids and their grandmother.

The box sits on Anneliese’s dressing table. The key is in the lock, the chain swinging like a silver serpent. As I lift the lid, I am flooded with the same sensation I felt as a child: I am stepping into an exotic, slightly forbidden realm.

I sit on the bed and start taking things out one at a time. Age has tattered the edges of the yellow paper, folded for years. The fob watch is silent, without a heart-like tick-tock. The earrings disappoint me today - the gold is covered with a patina of time, and the emeralds don’t sparkle. Their essence has vanished, along with the soul of the person who wore them.

I tip the box over, spilling its contents onto the black-and-blue cotton coverlet. One is a sepia photo of Annelise with her nursing colleagues. In fact, there are two other photos I hadn't seen before, both printed on stiff paper in shades ranging from soft caramel to deep, rich brown.

One portrays a tall, stylish soldier, smiling a gap-toothed smile at the camera. He is hauntingly charismatic, proud of his well-tailored uniform, and embodies authority while instilling a bit of fear. Two lightning bolts blaze on the collar patches. He wears a peaked cap adorned with a spread-winged eagle, casually tilted on his head.

The other image shows the same man and Annelise standing side by side. He is dressed in a white doctor's coat. She wears the same nurse's uniform she wore as an apprentice in Steinhöring. He reminds me of Nibelung from Wagner’s opera. She, as always, is an elfin Valkyrie. Both impossibly beautiful. Both incredibly Arian.

I can tell the photo was not taken in the maternity ward because Anneliese is older and has more careworn features. I flip the picture over. The date at the bottom reads January 1, 1945. Below, in smaller letters, it says Auschwitz-Lager Zwillinge Programm, which I know means the Auschwitz Camp Twins Program. I remember the man's name—or rather, what people called him after the war—from a documentary I watched a few years ago: Todesengel—the Angel of Death. As a medical doctor, he took advantage of his position in the concentration camp to advance his research on heredity, especially among identical twins. Another frame from the documentary comes to mind. Two little girls in striped pajamas, scarves covering their heads. They expose their thin arms, each bearing a 6-digit tattooed number. 

The man and Annelise smile, smug in their belief that, as my grandmother once said, they were working for science, not for money.

I feel my stomach somersault, making it hard to keep my dinner down. I want to escape, but there is nowhere to go.  I can't go downstairs, where Mom is playing with my boys. My darling twins, or meine lieblinge zwillinge, as Annelise used to call them. But I don’t want to stay here either, in the room of the woman I thought I knew. The woman I know I still love.

I cannot stay another moment in the presence of the box that holds Anneliese’s secret. Like Pandora, who opened a jar filled with sickness, death, and fear, I have opened a box brimming with unspecified evil. As in Pandora's case, it is no longer watertight. The truth is out, no matter how ugly it may be. 

I finally gather crumbs of courage, stuff the papers, the photos, and the rest of Anneliese’s "mementos" back into the box, then lock it with the key, which I put in my pocket.

I walk down, my steps heavy, my shoulders slumping under the weight of a secret I'll never reveal. 

The kitchen is alive with laughter. Tilly chases the boys, and whenever she catches one, she tickles him until he bursts into giggles. They look happy and innocent in their ignorance.

When she looks up at me, her gaze penetrates the fabric of my soul.

"Is everything all right, darling?" she asks, her dark, round face filled with concern.

I say nothing, rush toward her, wrap my arms around her, and sob, drenching her sweater with tears.  

Polish by birth, a citizen of the world by choice, and neurodivergent by fate. First story shortlisted for the Irish Independent/Hennessy Awards, Ireland, 1996. Since she went back to writing in 2020, more than 170 of her stories, flash fiction, and non-fiction have been accepted for publication. She has recently won 1st prize in the International Human Rights Arts Movement literary contest and was shortlisted for the 13th Teresa Hammel contest.