The Grave of God's Daughter (25 page)

Fury flexed in my father’s cheeks. In one swift motion, he stood up and pushed back his chair, nearly hurling it to the floor, then stomped to the washroom. He paused at the door.

“Leonard Olsheski is dead,” my father announced, eyes tight on my mother. “Didn’t know if you’d heard.” Then he slammed the door to the washroom.

My mother blanched, her eyes glazed and she wavered on her feet. She was about to faint. Her knees buckled and both Martin and I jumped from our seats, but she caught herself on the icebox
and went sliding down a few inches before the sleeve of her dress snagged on the handle, dragging her to a stop.

“Are you all right?” Martin asked, frightened by what he’d seen.

She steadied herself on the sink, putting her back to us, then nodded and straightened her dress.

Martin glowered at me. My lack of surprise at the news had given me away. He’d figured out that I’d lied to him earlier. Angry, he folded his arms and dropped into his seat, angling his chair away from me.

I mouthed the word
sorry
to him, but he wouldn’t acknowledge me.

My mother set the dishes out with trembling hands. She kept her head low. “Put your school things away,” she muttered.

Martin snapped his book closed and snatched up his pencils, making a show of how hurt he was. I nudged my books together with my knuckles, trying to keep my hands inconspicuous as my mother continued to lay out the knives and forks.

“I’ll do it,” Martin snorted, grabbing my books as a favor to me, but mad nonetheless.

My mother leaned over to put out a plate of bread, then paused. The tips of my fingers were resting on the table’s edge, leaving the purplish mounds of bruised flesh in full view. She blinked at the welts, trying to comprehend them, then she must have realized how I’d gotten them.

I inhaled, anticipating her admonishments, but my mother continued to set the table, taking out the jug of milk, a coffee cup for my father. I waited, hands exposed. Though she’d seen the bruises, I was tempted to lift my hands into the air and present them to her again. I wanted to get whatever she was going to do over with. How
ever, my mother went about preparing supper without comment. She seemed unwilling to look at me rather than unable.

Martin returned to the table and pulled his chair even farther from mine, closer to my father’s.

“Did you wash your hands?” my mother asked him. She was frying two eggs for my father’s breakfast.

“I already washed them.”

“Oh. Right.”

My father came out of the washroom shaking water from his hands. He hadn’t shaved as usual. He was too drunk to remember to do so. He hauled his chair up next to Martin’s, then fumbled at his shirt pockets in search of his cigarettes.

I jumped up from my seat, saying, “I’ll get them.”

I came back with three single cigarettes to keep him from noticing the missing money and quickly dropped them onto the center of his plate, then slipped my hands behind my back to keep him from seeing the welts as well. My father gazed at the plate full of cigarettes, bewildered.

“That’s how many you usually have at dinner,” I said.

He was puzzled but not sober enough to care. The matches remained on the table from when I’d used them to light the stove. They were closer to Martin, who handed them to my father.

He struck one of the matches with ease and lit his first cigarette. He took a hearty drag and patted Martin on the head again for getting him the matches. “You’re a good boy.”

S
UPPER WAS A MUTE EVENT
. While the rest of us poked at our food, my father ate fast and ravenously. In one hand he held his fork, in the other a slice of bread, which he used to sop up the eggs and shovel them into his mouth. When he’d finished each piece of bread, he’d pause to take a drag off his cigarette then resume eating. He was done in minutes. My father lit his last cigarette and headed for the outhouse. He tracked two muddy footprints on the floor on his way back in.

“I’ll get your lunch,” Martin offered, grabbing the tin from the icebox.

“’At’s a good boy,” my father said in a singsong as he pulled on his coat, still very drunk. “You sleep well,” my father told Martin. “And say your prayers. Don’t forget. You won’t forget, will you?”

Martin eagerly shook his head.

“’At’s a good boy. Never forgets to say his prayers.”

My mother folded her arms, a sign for my father to leave. He took the hint and was gone. Afterward, Martin spotted the muddy footprints and put his feet next to them, happily comparing his small feet to my father’s.

My mother got up from the table, went into her room, then came out in her nightdress and robe. She strode into the washroom, then the water began to run.

If she draws a bath, this time she’ll do it.

I found myself being drawn to the door. I pressed my ear to the wood.

This time she’ll do it.

“What are you doing?” Martin said, reprimanding me. “What if she opens the door?”

I hushed him with my finger, a gesture he took as an insult.

“Get away from there,” he said, both warning and pleading at the same time. Martin came over and grabbed my hand to pull me away from the door and I hissed in pain.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

I held my palm to my chest but kept my ear to the door. For a few seconds, the pain was deafening. I strained to hear if the water was still on, then came the distinctive creak of the faucet being shut off. I hurried away from the door just as my mother drifted out of the washroom. Her cheeks were dewy with water. Wet tendrils of hair clung to her forehead. She had merely been washing her face.

She slipped into her bedroom in a fog. After she closed the door, Martin called out, “We won’t forget to say our prayers. Don’t worry. We won’t forget.”

Before bed, we said our prayers sitting instead of on our knees. I held my hands together as close as I could without them touching while we perched on the edge of the cot, hastily humming the prayers in unison. Afterward, Martin pulled the blanket back so I could crawl in, more out of habit than courtesy.

“The bandages,” I said, remembering. I retrieved the roll from my coat and checked on the money. When I’d changed into my nightdress, I slipped the five-dollar bill out of my skirt and into my coat pocket, hiding it with the quarters Mr. Goceljak had given me. Together the money remained safely hidden.

I held out the bandages to Martin. “Can you do it for me?”

“I said I would.”

He took to the task with adult diligence. I explained to him how Mr. Beresik had wrapped my hands, and Martin followed my instructions, winding the bandage on in small passes, lining each layer up as closely as he could.

“Is it my fault?” he asked softly.

“What?”

“Leonard?”

“No,” I told him, though I couldn’t be sure. “It’s not.”

Martin was gauging my tone, hoping to believe me. “I don’t know.”

“There’s nothing to know.”

He started on my other hand, then the roll of bandages slipped and unfurled out along the floor in a white line, carving the apartment in two.

Martin leaped up from the bed to collect the bandages. “Did I ruin it? Is it ruined?”

“No, it’s not ruined.”

“But now it’s dirty.”

“It’s just a little dust.” I shook out the bandage. “See, it’s all better.”

Relieved, Martin set back to work, carefully tucking each of the ends in when he was finished. “Did I do it okay?”

The bandages looked as good as when Mr. Beresik had applied them, tight and precise, perhaps even better. I admired my hands, proud of what Martin had done.

“Better than okay.”

“Really?” He was pleased.

“Maybe you could be a doctor someday,” I said, then I recalled what Mr. Goceljak had told me about the priest, how he could have been a doctor, how he could have gotten himself out of Hyde Bend.

Martin warmed with the compliment. “Maybe.”

He held the blanket open for me, then bundled it around us and tucked me in. “She’s different still,” he sighed.

“I know.”

“Is it going to be like this from now on?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope not. I don’t like it like this.”

I wanted to tell him that things would change, but my voice would betray me. Martin would hear my lack of conviction. At least, that was what I told myself.

M
ORNING CAME, ARRIVING
with an impatient sun. Even with the blanket pulled up over my face, the sun streaming in the window was unrelenting.

“Are you awake?” Martin asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“He should be home by now.”

“Uh-huh.”

He huddled closer and made a tent out of the blanket. We lay there with the sheet touching the tips of our noses and curving around our foreheads. “She’s usually awake by now,” he huffed, sending up a stream of air that fluttered the sheet.

“Uh-huh.”

“Should we wake her?”

“No.”

“What should we do?”

Mr. Beresik would be expecting me. I had to get ready. I had to leave. “I have somewhere I need to go today.”

“Where? It’s Saturday.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t take you.”

Martin gave a little snort because it was another one of my vague excuses. “Then what are you going to do with me? Leave me here?”

“Why not?”

“Then I’ll be alone.”

“No, you won’t. She’ll be here. She doesn’t have to work today.”

He rolled his eyes. “You can’t leave me here with her. What if she doesn’t wake up?” He meant if she didn’t wake up for a long time. Martin realized what he’d said. “You know what I mean.”

“Martin, please. I can’t take you.”

“I won’t have anyone to talk to or any food or anything. It’ll be terrible.”

“You have the lamb book to read and I’ll make your breakfast.”

He folded his arms sullenly. I didn’t want to take him with me to Mr. Beresik’s, but I didn’t want to leave him with my mother either. I couldn’t be sure which would be worse.

“All right, you can come.” Martin clapped and I shushed him. “But you have to do exactly what I tell you. Understand?” He nodded emphatically.

We hurried into our clothes and I made us sandwiches and put them in one of our school tins.

“We’re having lunch for breakfast?”

“Martin.”

“I like lunch. Lunch is fine.”

I retrieved the balance of the quarters from behind the sink. In total, I had one dollar in change, plus the five-dollar bill, which made six, six whole dollars. Holding the money in my hand felt dangerous, risky. The quarters slid over one another, clinking, sounding their presence. I put the coins in my pocket with the bill. That tiny weight seemed as if it could have thrown my whole body off balance.

We made the bed and were about to leave when Martin asked, “What’s she going to think when she sees that we’re gone? Isn’t she going to get scared?”

“I didn’t think about that.”

“Let’s leave her a note.”

“A note? What’s it going to say?” We’d never left a note before and, more important, we had no place to go—not school, not church, and certainly not the river. Martin was already getting a piece of paper from his school pad. He sat down and carefully printed out the note in perfect, block letters:
My od bawic sie.

The note read: “We went out to play.”

This lie was like a waft of air. It didn’t sting or twinge. Lying had become like everything else, like blinking, like breathing.

We sneaked out of the house, then both of us started to run though there was no reason to. I was leading, running down Third, past Swatka Pani’s house and beyond. Martin was keeping up, the lunch tin swinging back and forth in his hand, but he soon slowed.

“I’m hungry,” he panted, lopping to a stop.

“We’ll eat soon. I’ve got somewhere I have to go first.”

“Where?”

“The butcher’s shop. I need my clothes.”

“But you’re already wearing your clothes.”

“You’ll see.”

Mr. Goceljak was carving down a pig’s leg on the block when I tapped on the back door. He waved me in with his knife.

“I must be nicer than I thought if you want to come see me on your day off.”

“I came by because…I mean, I wanted to know if it would be all right if I borrowed the clothes.”

He was confused. “What do you need them for?” My reticence left him room to guess. “Going up to Walt’s, eh?” Mr. Goceljak was working the knife’s blade close to the bone and the flesh was slumping off in a thick sheet. “Well, just be careful with that money. You worked hard to earn it, but it’ll only take you a split second to lose it.”

I hadn’t considered losing, only doubling my money like Mr. Beresik had described. The prospect of having all of the money taken away almost made me change my mind on the spot.

“I’ll be careful.”

“That your brother out there?” Mr. Goceljak asked.

Martin had his face pressed to the door, then he ducked down and scrambled away.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t look much alike.”

“Everybody says that.”

“You taking him too?”

“I have to. I couldn’t leave him at home…alone,” I added.
“But I’m going to make him stay outside, down the road. I won’t let him come in.”

Mr. Goceljak nodded approvingly. “He’s too young for it. Come to think of it, so are you.”

He wiped the knife on his apron. He’d gotten all of the meat he was going to get from the leg. The bone gleamed white. “You can change out in the shed if you like.”

I took the pants and cap down from the peg where I’d hung them.

“Good luck then,” Mr. Goceljak offered.

Martin hurried away from the door and pretended to be admiring the bicycle when I came out.

“He saw you,” I said. “I told you to stay out of sight.”

“I just wanted to look in a little.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to?”

“Yes,” he conceded.

“If you do it again, if you disobey me when I tell you to stay hidden, then I’ll take you home. I’m not fooling, Martin.”

“All right.”

“Promise.”