Julita Slaski-Davis

Quick Facts

• Role: Contemporary matriarch and moral pressure point; foil to her daughter
• Age: 76; lifelong marathon runner with “no-nonsense gray hair”
• Occupation: Venerated district court judge; insists on her title, “Judge Slaski-Davis”
• Family: Daughter of Hanna Slaski (born Alina Dziak); mother of Alice Michaels; grandmother to Eddie and Callie
• First Appearance: At the hospital after Hanna’s stroke
• Key Dynamics: Generational clash over women’s work and caregiving; struggles to connect with autistic grandson Eddie

Who They Are

Bold, exacting, and relentlessly competent, Julita Slaski-Davis is the novel’s embodiment of control—someone who believes order, achievement, and the right title can keep chaos at bay. She is a judge who measures worth by professional rigor, a mother who resists softness, and a daughter who has built her identity without access to her true past. Her presence sharpens the story’s questions about what success costs, what love looks like when filtered through stoicism, and how buried histories shape even those who never hear them. Julita’s arc threads the theme of Family Legacy and Intergenerational Connection: she must confront the silence around her origins to understand herself—and, finally, to let her guard down.

Personality & Traits

Julita’s exacting exterior is both armor and creed. She prizes evidence over emotion, efficiency over tenderness, and public impact over private presence. Yet the very rigidity that distances her from family also protects a deeply felt, rarely expressed capacity for love.

• Ambitious and status-conscious: A “venerated district court judge” who corrects anyone who omits her title. Even in crisis, she insists on “Judge Slaski-Davis,” revealing how profoundly her identity is tied to work and respect.
• Critical and judgmental: Alice observes their talks are “equal parts social nicety and criticism.” Julita disdains Alice’s choice to be a stay-at-home mother and snaps at Eddie’s echolalia—most memorably echoed back as, “Stop doing that, Eddie.”
• Pragmatic, even icy: In the hospital, she demands clear medical facts, dismisses staff she deems incompetent, and refuses to indulge Hanna’s garbled messages as anything but post-stroke confusion.
• Secretly sentimental: Alice uncovers an attic “Museum of The Slaski-Davis Family,” carefully curated with keepsakes. Julita’s private hoarding of memories exposes a tenderness she will not perform publicly.
• Fiercely independent, second-wave feminist: She interprets female fulfillment through career autonomy and treats Alice’s financial dependence on Wade as a betrayal of what “foremothers fought” for.
• Disciplined and vigorous: The image of a seventy-six-year-old marathoner with “no-nonsense gray hair” signals self-mastery, stamina, and a refusal to yield to age—or vulnerability.

Character Journey

Julita begins as the novel’s immovable object: a mother who critiques rather than comforts and a daughter who filters crisis through procedure. After Hanna’s stroke, she treats her mother’s attempts to communicate as neurologic noise, not narrative. When Alice decides to travel to Poland, Julita’s anger—“So you’re just going to leave me here to deal with all of this?”—betrays her deepest fear: being left alone with a failing mother and a lifetime of unanswered questions. The truth that emerges in Poland redraws Julita’s life map: her father was Saul Weiss, not the man she assumed; her very surname rests on [Tomasz Slaski]’s (/books/the-things-we-cannot-say/tomasz-slaski) sacrifice. Her message to Emilia Slaski becomes an act of re-naming and gratitude, a declaration that the lives taken and spared were not wasted. In the Epilogue, Hanna’s death cracks Julita’s composure wide open—the “animalistic” cry is grief unmediated by reason. By the end, she can stand with family on Polish soil, allowing lineage—not résumé—to anchor her.

Key Relationships

• Alice Michaels: Julita and Alice love each other but clash over values: professional ambition versus domestic devotion, control versus care. Crisis forces cooperation, and in working side-by-side they unearth a grudging respect—Julita sees the discipline in Alice’s caregiving; Alice glimpses the fear that fuels Julita’s severity.

• Hanna Slaski (Alina Dziak): Julita’s bond with her mother is fierce but filtered through the theme of Communication and Silence. Raised in the shadow of secrets, Julita misreads Hanna’s last attempts at truth as confusion. Only after learning Hanna’s real name and wartime trauma does Julita understand how silence protected—and impoverished—their relationship.

• Eddie Michaels: Julita struggles with Eddie’s autism, wanting behavior she can manage by rules and reprimands. His echoing of her scolds reflects her back to herself, forcing a reckoning: love cannot be earned by performance metrics, and connection requires flexibility she’s unaccustomed to offering.

Defining Moments

Julita’s turning points reveal how her obsession with control yields—slowly—to inheritance, empathy, and grief.

• Hospital confrontations (see Chapter 1–5 Summary): Her disputes with staff and dismissal of Hanna’s messages establish her rule-bound worldview. Why it matters: It frames her arc from certainty to listening.
• “The Poland argument”: “So you’re just going to leave me here to deal with all of this?” slips out, exposing fear and dependence. Why it matters: The outburst humanizes her, revealing love disguised as anger.
• Learning the truth about Saul and Tomasz: The revelation of her paternity and Tomasz’s sacrifice collapses Julita’s self-story. Why it matters: Identity shifts from profession and performance to legacy and gratitude; her message to Emilia seals that change.
• Grief at Hanna’s death: The raw, “out-of-control” wail shatters decades of composure. Why it matters: It’s the first time Julita lets feeling outrun control, honoring love without apology.

Essential Quotes

“Alice, you are incredibly late.” This chilly opener showcases Julita’s default setting: performance over tenderness. Tardiness is not merely rude; it signals a lapse in standards. The line instantly places Julita in the role of judge—at home as in court—and previews the mother-daughter power dynamic.

“Good isn’t my mother having to speak through a damned iPad app, it’s frustrating enough that we have to use the rotten thing for Eddie. How long will this last for? How are you going to fix it?” Julita turns grief into a solvable problem and, tellingly, measures “good” by normalcy restored. Her frustration with Eddie’s device bleeds into her impatience with Hanna’s communication, revealing how disability and illness test her faith in control and competence.

“It’s Judge Slaski-Davis.” Insisting on her title mid-crisis isn’t vanity alone; it’s a lifeline. When everything else feels precarious, professional identity is the one credential she can still enforce. The line distills how Julita equates respect with survival.

“I suppose she taught me that some things just can’t be replaced.” This rare moment of softness acknowledges limits: not everything broken can be “fixed.” It gestures toward an emotional education Julita resisted but ultimately receives from Hanna’s life—and loss.

“Just tell her that Saul Weiss, if that’s who I knew as my dad, did not waste a second of the life he was given. Neither did Mama. Make sure that Emilia knows that the sacrifice her brother made was not wasted.” Here Julita reframes lineage as responsibility. The cadence—firm, declarative—sounds like a verdict, but it is really benediction. By honoring Saul, Hanna, and Tomasz, she claims a heritage of resilience—and finally speaks the love she has long kept disciplined into silence.