Spinning Silver

Chapter 2 shifts perspective to focus on Wanda, who knows her own share of suffering. Her father is an abusive alcoholic whose frivolous spending causes even more hardship for her family when her mother dies after complications from a miscarriage. Her mother and her dead siblings are buried under the mysterious white tree on their property. The tree grows stronger by killing anything planted nearby, leaving the surrounding ground barren and useless except as a gravesite. Because the tree is all white, it belongs to the Staryk, a magical winter fairy race known for their cruelty. Wanda and family cannot cut the tree down due to fear of death. As Wanda says, “So all we could plant there was the dead babies” (14). As the winters grow longer and harder, Wanda’s home life grows worse, and she turns to sleeping in the goat shed with her two brothers, Sergey and Stepon, for warmth. One night, cold and numb, she sees a light near the white tree and follows it. Entranced, she nearly makes her way to the Staryk road, but the white tree knocks her down, jerking her out of her trance as she hears voices telling her to run home. Wanda attributes her rescue to her mother’s spirit, which she believes to be in the tree.

Wanda does her best to avoid beatings by doing her father’s work, but as she grows into her teens, her beauty catches the neighbors’ attention. Tall, blonde, and busty, she fears that her father, Gorek, will soon sell her into a marriage for the right price. Wanda sees that as a short life filled with misery: “I didn’t want to make a row of dead babies and die” (18). When such a fate seems imminent, Wanda seeks help from her mother’s spirit in the white tree. Two days later, Miryem arrives to demand payment on the loan. Though she is small, Miryem does not bend to Gorek’s shouting. Instead, she demands that Wanda come and serve in her household lest she call the law upon Gorek for refusal to pay his debts.

Wanda determines that she will work very hard so that Miryem’s family will want to keep her, delaying her father’s ability to sell her into a marriage. To her surprise, she is not only thanked by Miryem’s ill mother, but she is also given a plate at dinner. As she leaves, she overhears Miryem and her mother discuss her father’s debt as it relates to her employment. When the older woman muses that given how well Wanda works, the debt would likely be paid soon, Miryem corrects her and explains that with the amount Gorek owed, even with the fair rate for Wanda’s hard work, it will take four years to pay it off. Wanda is elated, as this means she is temporarily safe from dying in the birthing bed: “Four years! My heart was glad as birds” (20).

With the advent of spring, Miryem’s mother recovers and announces that they will visit her father’s house. Recognized as a good moneylender, Miryem basks in her grandfather’s validation. He offers her advice and lends her money to grow her business. When her grandmother protests that such a trade is not appropriate for a girl, her grandfather answers that “gold doesn’t know the hand that holds it” (23). When they return home, Miryem’s father, Josef, is downcast, even though they “hadn’t gone hungry for months now” (23). Though she was told she did not have to work with Miryem gone, Wanda remains dutiful every day. In light of Wanda’s work ethic and her grandfather’s advice, Miryem offers Wanda a proposition—she will double Wanda’s pay if she serves as a debt collector, paying Wanda directly once her father’s debt was worked off. Wanda agrees gladly.

Wanda realizes that at double the pay rate, she will work off her father’s debt in two years rather than four. She shrewdly plans to work the full four years he expects and earn money for herself without him being any the wiser, relishing the thought of “six silver kopeks of my own” (24). As she begins collecting debts without hesitation, she reflects, “I didn’t mind going to stranger’s houses and knocking and asking them for money. It wasn’t me asking, it was Miryem, and it was her money, and she was going to give some of it to me” (25). Keeping a close eye on Miryem’s dealings, Wanda learns basic math; observes the exchange rates between pennies, silver, and gold coins; and grows curious as to how Miryem sets accurate prices for the goods she takes in trade.

Miryem’s home of quiet affection is strange to Wanda, whose own home is silent, cold, and rife with violence. During the harsh winter and even through spring, her family goes hungry, even with Wanda’s one good meal a day. Given Sergey’s growth, Wanda wonders if he’s been poaching in the forest. Ultimately, she does not care, as she has no love for her brothers. She doesn’t even think the word “love,” which she considers “buried with my mother. Sergey and Stepon were only more of the babies who made my mother sick. They had not died, but so they had made even more work for her and now me” (28).

Still, Stepon does love Sergey, so he frantically retrieves Wanda from work when Sergey falls ill. Furious at the prospect of losing a meal to tend to a brother she does not love, Wanda soon realizes what has happened—Sergey has poached a white rabbit. Since all white animals belong to the Staryk, the punishment for poaching is death. Sergey lays perfectly still and unresponsive except his continued breathing; “there was frost all over the paths and ice creeping out of the edges of the creek. So then I knew the Staryk had caught him hunting and had taken his soul away” (30).

Despite her lack of sympathy for what she considers Sergey’s own fault, Stepon’s grief urges Wanda to help. She begrudgingly carries him to the white tree and tells her mother that he is ill. In response, a piece of bark curls off the tree. Wanda peels off the strip of bark, uses it to make tea, and forces it down her catatonic brother’s throat. He vomits and recovers, leading to a change in the family’s dynamics. When Wanda bears her father’s wrath for his sake, Sergey repays her by bringing out a washing tub and boiling water for her use. From then on, the siblings share their food and help one another.

A year later, Miryem’s business is thriving. She visits her grandparents once more, bringing her grandfather’s investment back to him—a purse full of kopeks to be changed into gold and put into the bank. Miryem’s pride grows with the validation of her grandfather and his guests, despite her mother’s continued shame that Miryem must “harden to ice” to keep them from poverty (37). In keeping with her grandfather’s advice to “let [Wanda] feel that her fortune rises with [Miryem’s],” Miryem begins paying Wanda her half-penny a day (38).

The family grows concerned when Wanda announces that the Staryk had been outside the house; the tracks show they had looked in the window. Miryem’s mother suggests that they hire Wanda’s brother for protection at night. At first Miryem dismisses the idea, as a farmer could not stop the Staryk from raiding the house, but her mother explains that it is not about protection from the Staryk but from the townsfolk and their anti-Semitism. When Miryem disagrees, her mother explains how only two years prior, the Staryk had raided towns their size outside of Minask. They had overlooked the Yazuda village where there was a Jewish population. The locals decided it meant that the Jews had made a pact with the Staryk, “and now there are no Jews in Yazuda” (42). Miryem’s mother cautions, “Do you understand, Miryem? You will not speak of the Staryk coming to our house.” (42). Miryem agrees to hire Sergey to keep Wanda from telling the townsfolk.

Initially, Wanda does not want Sergey to be hired because she does not want to share the “magic” she’s learned from Miryem—mathematics and writing. However, she has bonded with her brothers over the last year and so relents. Carefully, she shares with Sergey that they can be paid without their father knowing. The plan is simple: tell their father that the debt will be paid in three years if they both work; meanwhile, they will save their pay and hide it beneath their mother’s gravestone. When the three years are up, they will take their savings—a gold zlotek—and run away with Stepon.

Despite Sergey’s assurance that the night was quiet and uneventful, Wanda finds tracks showing that the Staryk came in the night. She plans to cover their tracks so that Miryem does not fire Sergey for negligence, but then she sees evidence that they had paced outside behind the house while everyone slept.

Wanda tells the family about the new Staryk tracks. Though they are alarmed to be receiving such attention from the Staryk, Miryem brings Wanda to town as if nothing is wrong. She brings expensive Vysnian dresses to the market’s dressmaker, hoping discussion of the fine work of new big city fashions will deter talk of the Staryk road moving closer to town. When the townsfolk want to buy the dresses, Miryem briefly considers selling them beneath their value in the hopes of buying some goodwill so they will not speak poorly of her family if they find out about the Staryk. She realizes that this was the same motive behind her father’s behavior—“Suddenly, I understood my father better” (52). She sells the dresses to a tax collector for a zlotek (gold piece) each, despite spending only a kopek (silver) on them herself. When she returns home with her profits, her father sighs, “Well, my daughter really can turn silver to gold,” speaking the words “as if he was sorry instead of proud” (53).

It snows too hard for Wanda to safely travel home, so she stays the night as the snow builds outside. When they sing together, Wanda asks if it is magic. Miryem’s father, Josef, explains that the song is a hymn to God, prompting Wanda to ask whether it would be able to stop the Staryk from returning. Josef explains, “God does not save us from suffering on this Earth. The Staryk afflict the righteous as well as the sinful, just as do illness and sorrow” (54).

They hear a loud knock at the door, which could only be the Staryk. When Josef opens the door, they see the tracks toward their house and a small, white leather bag sitting on their stoop with six silver coins inside. Miryem’s mother realizes the implications first: They want Miryem to turn the silver into gold. Miryem recognizes the predicament is her own fault for bragging about her ability to do so while in the woods. Her parents remind her of her gold in the bank vault in Vysnia. She resolves to go to the bank, implying that she will use her hard-earned gold to buy her safety. When Wanda asks whether she will give the Staryk her own gold, Miryem answers firmly, “No, I won’t give them a thing. They want silver turned to gold, so that’s what I’ll do” (58).