The Grasinski Girls. Mary Patrice Erdmans

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      Ethnicity in the Belly of the Family

      It’s not something I think about, but it’s with me every day of my life.

      Mari

      AT ONE POINT in the middle of this project, one of my aunts pulled me aside and confided, “You know, there’s not much that’s Polish about us except the name Grasinski, and that isn’t really Polish, it’s Russian.” Other family members pointed out that our bloodlines are predominantly German. Johann Fifelski, rumored to have been born out of wedlock, would have been a Von Wagonner had his father the lord married his mother the peasant. Instead, the single mother’s surname got passed down, and with it, Polishness. Or so the story is told. Johann’s great-granddaughter and granddaughter-inlaw wrote a detailed Fifelski history that never mentions this bloodline slippage. But my aunts and my own sisters have all heard this. The story that we come from aristocracy through illegitimacy is a rewarding fantasy of origin that helps us to accept our class position while at the same time reminding us that class and status do matter. In this case, status was linked to ethnicity because the lord was German and the peasant Polish.

      Not only are we German, but we’re supposedly Russian as well. Mari believes she is mostly Russian; Nadine acknowledges Russian bloodlines (she sells her crafts under the label “Vineyard Couture, made by Nadja,” using a Russian spelling of her name); and Caroline, the most “practicing” Polish American of the sisters, laments, “I’m not even sure they were Polish. That Grusczynski, he could have been Russian, ’cause you see that name a lot on the Russian side, and could even have been Russian Jewish or something a little bit in there, I mean. And then my dad is German, too, because his mother was pure German, you know, Grandma Anna was pure German. And then on the Fifelski side, they say there was a lot of German and then Polish [laugh].” The older sisters support their claims to Russian ancestry (and perhaps even that they were Russian Jews) by noting that the priest wrote their father’s name with a “y” (“Grushinsky”) on his baptismal certificate (evidence of his Jewishness is found in a Catholic ceremony?), that their father spoke some Yiddish words (they remember the word shiksa), that their brother “looked Russian,” and that their mother Helen told them that their grandma and grandpa Grusczynski had Russian blood (yet, in the same breath, they tell me that their grandma Anna Tice Grusczynski was “pure German”).

      The confusion in part relates to the political morass of history: because Poland was annexed in the 1790s by its more powerful neighbors Prussia, Russia, and Austria, the emigrants who left before Poland regained its independence in 1918 were not Polish nationals. The Grasinski sisters vaguely understand this. This ambiguity of borders allows them more freedom to construct their myth of origin, though they would never think of themselves as actively constructing their ethnicity. They confess to blood-mixing and lineage confusion because they understand ethnicity as a descent identity—something that is passed down the generations, that is “given” to them.¹ Polishness is in the blood; they feel its primordial pulse in their toes tapping to the accordion and their fingertips moving over the shiny amber beads of the rosary. Mari finds her Polishness “in my face, my legs, and my mannerisms.” Nadine says the Grasinski Girls may be more Russian and German, but they “still got that Polish blood.”²

      Their reputedly thin Polish bloodline is more than offset by their thick Polish heritage. They were raised by ethnic Poles. All records indicate the Fifelskis, Chylewskas, Zulawskis, and Grusczynskis were Polish Roman Catholics. They came from the Prussian partition of Poland and spoke Polish; their gravestones were written in Polish; they moved to a Polish rural community in the United States, were part of a Polish Roman Catholic parish, and taught their children that they were Polish.

      Leaving aside bloodlines, Fran makes a more sociological argument for why “we are not Polish!” The Grasinski Girls don’t “do” Polish things, she says: they don’t follow many Polish traditions, cook or eat much Polish food, speak Polish, belong to Polish organizations, or visit Poland. Compared to her friends who are actively Polish, she and her sisters fall short.

      Do you keep Polish traditions? I ask Nadine. “Not that much. I guess Polish traditions to me would be having the opłatki, getting blessed food for Holy Saturday.” Do you do those things? “No, not really. Sometimes.” But she “loves Polish food,” especially “the sauerkraut and gołąbki and some of the Polish things.” Yet even though she edits the first draft, insisting I include that she “enjoys cooking this way,” she seldom does—in fact, only on Christmas, and then not every year. Nadine finally concedes, “Aaah, not that many Polish customs.”

      And yet, she said, “I love being Polish, I love Polishness.” All the Grasinski Girls expressed a similar affection for being Polish. While they may not “be” or “do” Polish in terms of bloodlines and behavior, Polishness still gives them something. So, what does it give them? What does ethnicity mean to third- and fourth-generation women of European ancestry?³

      . . .

      ME: Once you got married, you had the Erdmans name, so no one really knows that you’re Polish.

      ANGEL: No, but I tell everyone I’m СКАЧАТЬ