Loving Luther

by Allison Pittman

  “No,” I said softly at first, then louder, “no, I’m not hungry at all.”

  CHAPTER 3

  MY INTRODUCTION TO Brehna came with a cold, hard scrubbing, the likes of which I had never before experienced. My skin was left pink and raw, with droplets of blood in places where the scrapes and scratches of a farm cart voyage were torn open with the friction of the cloth. As I learned was the custom with all new girls, my hair had been chopped to little more than fuzz and a foul-smelling oil rubbed into my scalp, intended to kill any vermin that might be lurking. Bald and freshly scrubbed, I stepped into my new dress, identical to those worn by Girt, Therese, and every one of the dozens of girls at Brehna. Black coarsely spun wool, it was the simplest dress I’d ever worn, nothing more than a single seam up the back and a ribbon-tie closure at the neck. No matter the decline of my family’s fortune, my dresses always had some form of adornment. The one Sister Gerda took away had brightly painted wooden buttons, and I wished I’d thought to rip them off, to hide them in Therese’s secret pocket. But I hadn’t, and now the only comfort was to think that some poor little girl—poorer than me—had been given such a treasure.

  This new dress, at least, was clean and warm enough as long as I never stayed too still to notice. My new stockings were well knit and without a single hole, my pinafore and cap crisp, and my shoes sturdy, with wooden soles that made a delightful clack when I walked.

  “It’s so we don’t wander off,” Therese told me. “Only Jesus hears our thoughts, but the sisters hear our steps.”

  It seemed a pity to follow through on Therese’s instructions to rip my new dress, and for the first week, I made no attempt to do so. There hadn’t been much of an opportunity, as none of the girls would play with the girl who had such stinky hair. And because I was unfamiliar with the hallways, I went everywhere in careful, slow, echoing steps. Still, I desperately wanted my locket returned to my possession and begged Therese on several secret occasions to reassure me of its well-being.

  “Just a peek,” Therese would say before opening her slim, pretty fingers to reveal the filigree gold within.

  “Can’t I have it, please? I’ll keep it safe. Under my pillow, or inside my shoe.”

  “It won’t last a week under your pillow, and you’ll wear a bruise into your foot if it’s in your shoe.”

  And so I began in earnest to prepare a place for its return. I wandered near the thistle bushes in the play yard, hoping to snag the fabric, but the tiny branches were too often soft and wet with snow, and the dress escaped unscathed. I walked along the edge of the walls, but the bricks and stones were worn smooth. In prayer, I knelt upon the hem, then stretched myself up, feeling the fabric taut beneath my chin. But it would not rip. Once, I launched myself into a game of catch, whispering to Girt and Therese to hold my skirt as I ran away.

  “And get in trouble for ripping your dress?” Girt said. “We’ll get stripes for sure.”

  Therese also refused. “And you needn’t be so obvious about it. If they think you’re being careless or wasteful, you’ll get stripes too.”

  By now I knew full well what they meant by stripes. Naughty girls—those who whispered during chapel or complained about their food or daydreamed during class—were brought to the front of the room, where Sister Odile waited with a thin black reed. The offending girl would hold out her hand, and Sister Odile would bring it down—whack!—upon the flesh. The sound was sharp, and all the girls winced as if they, too, felt its sting. Afterward, angry red welts rose from the skin. Stripes. One, or three, or five, depending on the offense and Sister Odile’s mercy.

  “The wounds of Christ absolve you from your sin,” Sister Odile would say before and after each administration of the reed. “May these stripes remind you to sin no more.”

  Back home, I had more than once felt the crack of the new mama’s wooden ladle between my shoulders, or just above my ears, or anywhere the crazed woman could find for it to land. Still, it did not bring the lingering pain and humiliation of the stripes. Girls with stripes could not properly hold their spoons and dribbled soup down the front of their aprons. They would have to rely on other girls to comb and plait their hair. Sometimes, after fresh discipline, their chalk pieces would be stained with blood and the numbers tinted pink when they worked their sums on their slates.

  I determined early on that stripes were given to silly girls, weak girls, and I vowed never to merit my own. So when I spotted a weevil tunneling in my porridge, I said nothing, only fished it out with my finger and wiped it under the bench. When Ilse, a fat, mean older girl who always smelled of sweet onions, poked me in the side repeatedly during Vespers, I remained stoic and still, even though the girl’s prodding left a blue mark between my ribs. More than anything, I paid rapt attention during all of my classes, though I rarely understood what the sister at the front of the room imparted. But I quickly latched on to what I did understand—the simple bits of addition during arithmetic, the phonetic familiarity of letters in reading—and found my mind building itself up. I mimicked the other girls in my answers and begged Girt and Therese to tutor me during the quiet moments before sleep.

  Sunday morning Mass meant two long hours listening to Father Johann drone from behind the massive pulpit. The tone with which he spoke of God’s love and mercy was equal to that which he used to warn us of God’s judgment and condemnation, making me wonder if he were truly an authority on either. Only the language—German or Latin—separated his words from those read from the Holy Scriptures, and because my Latin was still so rudimentary, I spent the entirety of the service swinging between boredom and confusion. Sometimes I would let my feet swing too, as they came nowhere near to touching the floor, but on those occasions I would get a warning jab to my ribs from Girt or Therese, and I would bring them to a stop, envying their eventual sleep.

  Months had passed since my arrival, how many I didn’t know because I had little reason to measure time. I only knew that my hair had grown to be its own cap of short, soft curls beneath the now-dingy white one. Father Johann read from the Holy Gospel of John, and I tried with all my might to picture the words on the page. But too many distractions hindered my efforts, not the least of which was Father Johann’s wobbling jowls, carrying each syllable with flapping imprecision. I closed my eyes to shut out the sight, and in the darkness saw the letters forming. Scrambled, unscrambled, finally matching the phonetic cadence of the priest.

  “Kt.” It was a singular sound, ticked from Girt beside me, meant to capture the essence of my name and draw my attention from the darkness. I opened my eyes to Sister Odile launching herself from the high-backed chair beside the altar and descending upon me—not stopping until her face was nose-to-nose with mine.

  “Katharina von Bora. Do I need to find a nursery so you can take a proper nap?”

  I didn’t know what to do, as it was strictly forbidden to speak during Mass, but I could hardly choose not to answer Sister Odile. Quickly, I calculated the severity of the two sins, deciding that the nun, by proximity alone, posed the greater threat. I hoped to mitigate my offense by keeping my voice to a slip of a whisper, something Sister Odile hadn’t bothered to do.

  “No, Sister.”

  “Come with me.”

  The command sounded nothing like the invitation of that first night, when Sister Odile folded me into the abundance of her lap. Still, I obeyed, standing, then taking one wooden footstep after another. Clearly she meant to lead me out of the sanctuary, to administer my stripes without further disruption of worship, but Father Johann bade us to stop, and we stood at the altar for all to see.

  Humiliation burned my cheeks, as the congregation consisted of not only the other girls, who would clearly understand my plight, but people from the surrounding village as well, who would think me a simple, wicked girl. Perhaps I overestimated the empathy of the other girls because I heard them snickering, stopping only under the combined threat of Sister Odile from the front of the room and Therese’s glance over her sh
oulder. Soon I was standing with nothing but a wall of black in front of me, shielding me from the glare of the priest behind it. I looked straight up, noting briefly that Sister Odile’s nostrils curled toward each other like two cavernous kidney beans.

  “Do you find the words of our Lord to be boring, Katharina von Bora?” She posed the question with as much kindness as I’m sure she dared.

  “No, Sister.”

  “Has our Lord not provided you with a comfortable bed to sleep on at night?”

  “He has, Sister.”

  “Then why were you sleeping just now?”

  I wiggled my toes in the tips of my shoes, hoping to distract my knees from knocking. “I wasn’t sleeping, Sister. I was listening.”

  “Listening, were you?” The nostrils flared before she hazarded a glance over her shoulder at Father Johann. “And why were your eyes closed?”

  How to explain to this woman who knew everything? I pictured the inside of Sister Odile’s mind, all the words hiding behind her eyes. Perfectly spelled, long sentences folding over on themselves, hopping from language to language, with ciphering and history and catechism in between. How would she ever understand the jumbled-up nest of thoughts in a little girl’s head?

  “I want to see the letters,” I said at last, speaking as the thought formed. Another trickling of laughter cut short. “We don’t get to look. Only listen. But someday, if I can, I want to open the Scriptures for myself and read. And understand. I want to remember what the words sound like, so I can help the image on the page and the memory of the sound find each other.”

  Now there would be no stemming the tide of the girls’ amusement, and I heard laughter coming from the pews at the back of the room.

  “Girls!” Sister Odile shouted. “Girls!”

  Her authority extended beyond her pupils, for not only did they finally stifle themselves to silence after she clapped her hands three times, so did the rest of the congregation. The girls, I knew, had been reminded of the sharpness of the striping reed. In fact, Sister Odile’s palms were similarly pink from effort and warm when she touched my cheek, yet that gesture hinted of mercy in front of all those watchful eyes.

  “That is a noble explanation for a silly idea.”

  “It is nonsense,” Father Johann intoned, dashing all hope for grace.

  If I was going to get stripes, it would be for a worthwhile offense. My spine straightened into something stronger than the reed that surely awaited, and I looked beyond the mountain of Sister Odile to the man who stood behind her, holding the tome of Scripture as a shield.

  “It isn’t nonsense.”

  Behind me, at least eleven girls responded in a single gasp. Behind them, the people of the town echoed their shock.

  “Sister Odile.” Father Johann’s face flapped in indignation. “Do you sanction this manner of impudence?”

  “We do not, Father.”

  “Then I insist the girl be chastised. Immediately, before her rebellious spirit takes root.”

  “Here?” Sister Odile said, taken aback. “In the sanctuary?”

  “Where better to practice a lesson of obedience than in the house of the Lord?”

  Sister Odile appeared to be shrinking before my very eyes. “I don’t have—what I mean to say is, I’m not prepared.”

  Father Johann laid the Bible on the rough-hewn podium and clambered down the steps. “You sisters and your silly sticks.” He shouldered Sister Odile out of his path and grabbed my arm, turning it and pushing up the sleeve, exposing the soft white flesh above my wrist. “Were you sleeping during the reading of the Holy Word?”

  “No.”

  “You were listening then, eh? Paying close attention?”

  “Yes.” I took no comfort in the truth, especially once I caught the malevolent glint in his eye.

  “Then prove it to me.”

  I looked up, then over to Sister Odile, searching for help, but the nun was glaring at the priest who held me.

  “Say it!” He jerked my arm, making me fear it would be pulled off at the elbow. “Say the word. Say the sounds, as you remember them.” His lips, thick and twisted into a sneer, gathered bits of spittle. “Can you?”

  Too frightened to respond, I could no more speak than fly. Father Johann’s grip tightened once again before—in a gesture that inspired a curious new fear—he brought his hand to his mouth, extended his tongue, and raked it along the first two fingers of his right hand. Then, with the gold of his ring flashing like lightning, he brought the fingers, whiplike, to my exposed flesh. Immediate, red-hot pain rose to life on my skin, tinging it pink. This was nothing like the slaps and spoons of the new mama. This turned me into something raw.

  “Say it!”

  When I didn’t, the sting came again. Pain layered upon pain, and I winced in Father Johann’s grip.

  “I’ll ask you yet again.” His tongue extended, the tips of his fingers near to touching it, and something broke loose within me.

  “Ego sum . . .” The words formed an unfamiliar shadow in my mouth, and I knew if I looked at Father Johann, they would disappear entirely. I fixed my eyes on the cloudlike pink wound above my pulse. “Ego sum,” I repeated, “via, et ver—veri—”

  “Veritas,” Sister Odile prompted.

  “Ego sum via, et veritas—” I wanted so badly to remember, not only to stay the hand of Father Johann, but because each word lessened the sting of my flesh.

  Sister Odile prompted, “Et veritas et—”

  “Ruhig, Schwester.”

  Father Johann’s admonition could not hold back the flood of memory, and my lips spilled it forth.

  “Ego sum via et veritas et vita.”

  I felt his grip go slack, my wrist a mere twig within, but I dared not pull away. Only when he released me did I take a single step back, stopping when I felt the wide, welcoming robes of Sister Odile.

  Father Johann resumed his place behind the pulpit and opened the Bible, his face wiped clean of any expression that could be construed as malice or mercy. He opened to the page marked with the length of silk ribbon and unceremoniously read: “Ego sum via et veritas et vita. Nemo venit ad Patrem nisi per me.”

  He closed the book, the collision of pages echoing in the sanctuary now stunned into silence, and stared me down once again. “Tell me,” he said, smirking, “do you know what that means?”

  I shook my head. I already knew the consequences of truth. “No, Father.”

  “Well then, my child,” he said, looking down at me as if I were a stray dog in the kitchen, “you would have done just as well to have slept.”

  After the service, those from the village spilled out to their homes while we girls filed silently into the dining room to sit at the long table and be served a simple dinner of flavored broth and bread. As the bread was the last of the week’s baking, it would need to be soaked in the broth in order to eat it. At Girt’s wordless instruction, I broke my bread into chunks and allowed them to float and bob on the surface of the broth, scooping them up with my spoon once they’d been soaked through. I pretended they were dumplings and that somewhere beneath them, morsels of meat awaited a similar fate. Besides the cool water in the pewter cup, nothing else was offered.

  “It’s to keep us weak,” Therese had whispered the first Sunday. “So we won’t have enough energy to want to play.”

  “And to keep us hungry,” Girt added, “so we won’t be lulled to sleep.”

  The initial sting of Father Johann’s punishment had all but dissipated, leaving behind a curious ache like nothing I had ever felt before. I longed to push up my sleeve to see the condition of my skin, but not here. Not at the table, where the other girls who had snickered could see.

  The only sound came from the occasional bump of a pewter spoon against a wooden bowl and the sniffs from those with constantly running noses. We stood in one accord when the sisters came in to join us and didn’t sit again until instructed to do so by one soft syllable muttered by Sister Odile.

  W
hen I sat, my feet dangled in the open air above the floor. On any other day, Sister Gerda would snap, “Stop swinging those feet, Katharina von Bora! Or you’re likely to walk yourself down an invisible path to the devil.”

  Sister Gerda would be proud today. My feet hung still as a stopped clock, and I ate my bread and broth only to be spared further chastisement for the day. When the last drop trickled down my throat, I rested my spoon upright in the empty bowl, drank my water, and sat with my hands folded in my lap, head bowed.

  Thank you, Father in heaven, for this food.

  When all the girls were finished, Sister Odile’s quiet instruction that we should go to the common room dismissed us. Almost noiselessly, we vacated the long benches that ran the length of the table and took small, shuffling steps down the corridor, muffling the usual clatter of our shoes. Giggling and lighthearted playfulness had no home on the holy afternoon. The undercurrent of silly on Sunday, stripes on Monday tugged at the edge of every girl’s mind. Now there was a new revelation: that stripes could happen on Sunday, too. Or something like them. Maybe something worse.

  The discomfort of silence was somewhat softened by the pleasance of privilege in being allowed to spend the afternoon in the sitting room. Unlike the dark classroom or the ever-dank dining hall, the common room had an entire wall with four windows stretching nearly from the floor to the ceiling. Upholstered sofas and chairs were grouped throughout, giving the impression that, were it not a Sunday afternoon, the room might be buzzing with conversations. Instead, it swelled with the sound of little girls shifting and sighing. The only acceptable activities were needlework or copying psalms onto the blank pages of a prayer book.

  That day, I climbed up into what had quickly become my favorite chair, one with a faded floral upholstery over the arms. It faced the windows and kept one side of my face turned toward the brown stone fireplace. Once settled, I inched the sleeve of my dress up to my elbow, revealing an arm that had turned into a calico of bruising with multiple shades of blue and purple. In the center, a clear imprint left by Father Johann. Gingerly, I placed my own fingers in the imprint, trying to imagine what it would feel like to strike anything with such force. It didn’t hurt anymore—not much, anyway. What pain remained found its home in my mind and memory, lingering long after I pulled the sleeve back down to my wrist.