“See, she likes it,” Ragsoline said, though it was unclear if he meant me or the mare.
“Well, we should get going,” I said.
Martin was disappointed but acquiesced after a final pat on the horse’s hip. “Can we visit you and your horse the next time you come to town, Ragsoline?”
“Of course. We’d like that.”
“Us too,” Martin said, taking my hand, the one I’d been petting the horse with.
“Good day then, sir and madame,” Ragsoline said with a tap to the brim of his hat, then he took up the horse’s lead and headed on down the street calling out “Ragsoline” as he went, his voice echoing off the cobblestones.
“See,” Martin said once Ragsoline was out of earshot.
“See what?”
“That wasn’t bad.”
“No, Marty,” I said, letting him win. “That wasn’t bad at all.”
THAT AFTERNOON when Martin and I arrived home, we shucked off our muddy boots and left them next to the door the way my mother always insisted we do. My father, on the other hand, kept his boots on all the time, muddy or not.
The faucet was running in the washroom. My father was shaving.
“He’s home!” Martin shouted, unable to contain his excitement. “I’m going to tell him about the horse.”
He went to the door of the washroom but knew better than to open it. “Guess what?” he called, putting his mouth to the jamb and talking into it. “Today we touched a horse. We asked Ragsoline and he let us pet his horse.”
“Don’t talk to that nigger,” my father ordered, his voice booming from behind the door. “And don’t touch his damn horse neither.”
The door to the washroom flew open, sending Martin jumping back so he wouldn’t get hit.
“You understand?” my father demanded, wiping shaving cream from his neck with a towel.
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t you let him go near that nigger either,” my father said, eyeing me.
“Yes, sir,” I said, echoing Martin.
My father went to the icebox and pulled out a bottle of milk. He poured himself a large glass, nearly emptying the container, then sat down, leaving the bottle on the table, unconcerned that it would soon get warm.
“Tomorrow one of Stash Nowczyk’s boys is going to bring us over a catfish,” my father told us between gulps. “Been catching them in the river by the bucketful and they’ve got more than they need. But we’ve got to keep it in the bathtub for a few days and feed it cornmeal to clean out its gut before your mother can cook it.”
“Why?” Martin asked. His questions were not as welcome with my father as they were with me, something Martin was well aware of, though he simply couldn’t help himself.
“Because,” my father snapped. “Catfish are bottom feeders. They eat all the garbage from the bottom of the river. Do you want to eat that too?”
“No,” Martin said sheepishly.
“When the boy comes by, you take the fish and put it in the tub with fresh water. You got it?” he said to me.
“Yes, sir.”
He checked his watch, then swallowed what was left of his milk and put on his coat.
“Where are you going?” Martin asked.
“Work. Where’d you think I’m going?”
“But—” Martin began, then I shot him a cautionary glance. It was long before my father needed to be at the mill, but my mother would soon be home. He was trying to leave before she got back. From my look, Martin figured that out as well. His expression faltered yet he remained silent.
“Put that milk away,” my father said, then he left.
AT SUPPER my mother was especially quiet. She prayed over her food, as did we, but hers was a fervent whisper. Afterward, she poked at her food and finally pushed it away half eaten. Martin and I kept eating and pretended not to notice. He was reading his book with the lamb on the cover, something my mother normally wouldn’t have allowed at the table. That night she didn’t seem to mind. Her silence was palpable and I scoured my mind for something to say, something that would draw her back to us.
“Tomorrow we’re supposed to get a catfish,” I announced. “One of the Nowczyks is bringing it.”
My mother stared off as if she were processing the statement, letting it sink in. “I’ll buy some cornmeal then,” she said after a long pause.
Those were the only words she spoke for the rest of the evening. She took our plates and her own and left them in the sink, then retired to the other room without saying good night. Martin glanced up from his book to watch her go, then turned to me, his small face peeking over the top of his book. Before he could ask any questions, I took the book from his hands.
“Why don’t you read to me, Marty.” I pulled my chair close to his, put my arm over his shoulder, and held the book out in front of us so he could read in the shelter of my arms.
To keep his mind off what had happened, I made my brother read the tale of God’s lamb until he was falling asleep at the table. Martin was already in his nightclothes, so when he could no longer keep his eyes open, I led him to the cot, laid him down, and watched him drift right to sleep, then went into the washroom to change into my nightclothes. I had a cotton nightdress, but because it was so cold in the apartment, even with the coal stove burning, I usually wore the sweater from my school uniform over it.
Once I’d pulled the sweater over my head, I inadvertently found myself staring eye to eye with my own reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. My hair crackled with static and a few strands stood out, floating buoyantly in the dry air. I surveyed my face as if it were a map. The curves of my cheeks and the sloping bridge of my nose seemed unfamiliar to me, my own features foreign. I was a stranger to myself. I didn’t look like my mother, that had always been obvious, but I bore little resemblance to my father either. His forehead was wide and high and constantly furrowed while mine was short and narrow and split by a widow’s peak. His eyes were big and persistent, as though nothing could escape even his view. My eyes were deep set, the lashes dark. Meeting my own image in the mirror was like catching someone staring at me in the street. Before long, I felt compelled to turn away.
After I brushed my teeth, I realized I had to go to the bathroom. The sensation sent a surge of panic through me for a single, piercing reason—it meant I would have to go to the outhouse. Nightfall brought the rats up from the river where they lived in the pipes that drained waste from the steel mill, the salt plant, and the town’s sewers directly into the Allegheny. Under the cover of darkness, the rats came out to scrounge for food, and each night they would invade the outhouses on Third, tunneling in under the floorboards in search of any morsel or scrap. I made it a practice not to drink anything with dinner so I wouldn’t have to enter the outhouse after nightfall, but the pressure below my belly left me no choice.
I slid on my coat and boots and peeked out the front door. Though people were often seen going to the outhouses in their pajamas, I was shy. The thought of someone seeing me in anything other than my regular clothes was nearly as frightening as the rats.
It was cloudy, yet the moon was bright enough to see by. The wind had died down but the cold night air was severe enough to prickle my skin within seconds. To reach the outhouse, we had to cut between the apartments, along a narrow path that led to an even tinier alley where the outhouses were lined up at the rear of the apartments, each flanked by rows of laundry lines. All the sheets and clothes and towels that were hanging out to dry on the lines hung still, iridescent in the moonlight.
I gently kicked the door to the outhouse and shook the handle. That was supposed to scare the rats away. I pounded on the door once again for good measure.
“Okay, if you’re in there, please leave,” I whispered, hoping that if the rattling wood wasn’t enough to scare them off, maybe a human voice would.
The interior of the outhouse was pitch dark. There was no light, no window, only a ledge for a candle, which I didn’t have. The stone sla
b that served as a floor was slick with mud. A wooden seat with a hole cut in the center served as the toilet, but the wood was often wet, so I never sat down. As I hiked up my nightdress and prepared to squat over the hole, a pale gray rat scurried across the floor, unintimidated by my presence.
A shriek caught in my throat. My brain seized the noise before it could escape. If I screamed, the sound would wake everybody on the alley and I would never hear the end of it from my mother or, for that matter, from anyone else. Fear kept my feet glued to the floor even as the rat edged closer to sniff at my boot. It sat up on its hind legs, drawing in a scent, then on reflex I punted it aside and threw open the outhouse door. I barreled down the pathway and whipped around the corner and into our apartment.
I hurled my boots from my feet and was about to climb back into bed when my bladder reminded me of why I’d gone outside in the first place. There was no way I was going back to the outhouse, but my stomach had begun to ache. I was trembling from the fright and the cold, which made the need to urinate even more urgent. I scanned the room, searching for some sort of inspiration, and my eyes caught on the kitchen sink. Martin was asleep just feet away, so I opted to go into the washroom instead.
A single bulb was the only illumination in the washroom and it was controlled by a pull chain that was long gone and had been replaced by a length of twine. I stood on tiptoe to tug on the light, then quietly closed the door behind me and studied the basin, unsure of exactly what to do. The white porcelain stood out against the sink’s rusting underbelly. The tiny teacup of a basin was hardly built to accommodate an adult pair of hands let alone someone sitting on it.
I hoisted up my nightdress and pushed myself up onto the sink’s edge. The porcelain was like ice on my skin, but that made it easier to go. Relief swept over me. My heartbeat slowed and my muscles began to relax. Then, without warning, the door to the washroom opened. It was my mother. She was in her nightclothes and robe, long strands of hair framing her face. Her expression upon seeing me was pure shock.
“What are you doing?” she demanded as I clambered off the sink, desperately yanking down my nightdress.
I couldn’t explain myself. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. She looked beyond me and into the sink.
“I had to. I couldn’t go outside. There was a rat. I’m sorry. I couldn’t…” I was stammering, near tears, and a drop of urine was slowly running down my leg.
My mother was staring at me as if she had never seen me before, as if I were an uninvited guest who had barged in on her. She snatched a rag from behind the tub’s faucet and hurled it at me. “Clean yourself up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I—”
“Don’t you ever do that again. Ever. And clean up the mess you made.”
She left, shutting the door behind her resolutely. Then the tears came and wouldn’t stop. I ran the water to wash away any trace of urine from the sink and scrubbed the basin with soap and the rag she had thrown at me. I scoured the sink for what seemed like hours, rinsing it again and again until my hands throbbed from gripping the rag. When I allowed myself to be finished, I looked up and found my reflection in the mirror again. My eyes were red from crying and my face was flushed with the heat of my mortification. Not only did I fail to resemble my family, I now failed to resemble even myself.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, both my mother and I tried to act as if nothing had happened, but I still couldn’t bring myself to look at her directly. To make matters worse, my father hadn’t come home again. Martin kept a constant vigil at the window waiting for any sign of him. Even when my mother ordered him to the table to eat his breakfast, Martin positioned his chair to face the door and could hardly concentrate on his food. My father never arrived. We got ready for school and my mother prepared to go to work as usual. She tied on her apron, a plain linen one that Father Svitek had purchased for her, then wrapped her hair up in a thin, flowered kerchief.
“You’re going to get him, right?” Martin asked.
My mother took her time to respond. “No,” she said. Her voice was bitter, but her expression wavered. I couldn’t tell if it was from disappointment or resignation.
“But—” Martin began.
“Get your things,” my mother ordered, cutting him off. “I have to be at the church early today.”
Martin waited for me to back him up, but I dodged his glance and busied myself making our bed. He accepted that his argument was a lost cause and did as he was told. After I’d finished making the bed, I noticed my mother gazing at the spot where the Black Madonna had hung. Her lips were moving in silent prayer and she was blinking hard to keep from crying. It was the one time I’d ever seen my mother close to tears, and it would turn out to be the first of only two occasions in my entire life that I would ever witness such an occurrence.
My mother walked us to school at a brisk clip and left us on the steps of the schoolhouse without a word.
“I think she’s lying,” Martin declared.
“Lying about what?”
“I think she is going to the Silver Slipper. She just doesn’t want us to know.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because. She’s like that.”
Part of me wanted to believe that my brother, in his seven-year-old wisdom, was actually right, that somehow, because of his age and innocence, he had the ability to sense whatever truth my mother was attempting to conceal. Perhaps my mother was on her way to the Silver Slipper as we spoke. Perhaps she would march into the tavern and drag my father out of the bar or make a scene until he was too embarrassed to stay. We would never know. Maybe it was better that way.
I considered telling Martin what had happened the night before in the washroom so he’d understand why I hadn’t taken his side that morning, but I was too ashamed to do so. That shame had lodged itself in my stomach and lay there like a brick. In the aftermath of my disgrace, I had forgotten what awaited me that afternoon. It was my first day as Mr. Goceljak’s delivery boy. That sudden realization cleared the shame from my mind and made way for a pang of dread that was as potent as pain.
“What’s wrong?” Martin asked. “You look like you forgot something.”
“I did.”
WHEN THE SCHOOL DAY was done, I hurried to Martin’s classroom and waited outside for him. The instant he came out, I grabbed his hand and began hauling him down the corridor.
“Where are we going now?” he asked. “Back to the butcher’s shop?”
I hushed him, glancing around to see if anyone had heard. “I told you that’s supposed to be a secret. And no, you’re not coming today.”
“Then where am I supposed to go? Home? I’m too little to be left alone on my own.”
“That’s why you’re not going home.”
I led Martin to the school’s library, and once he realized where I was taking him, he ceased complaining. The library remained open for an hour and a half after school, but it was uncommon for children to go there. Most went home or out to play. Given the opportunity, Martin would have stayed there all night if he could have.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Sister Teresa isn’t going to let me stay here without you around.”
“She will if I say Mama asked me to ask her.”
“But she didn’t ask you to ask her.”
“But Sister Teresa doesn’t know that. And you’re not going to tell her. Right?”
Martin hemmed his lips, uncomfortable.
“Just look at all of those books, Marty. Hundreds of them. Just waiting to be read.”
The school’s library was a narrow room with two study tables in the center, and it was lined from floor to ceiling with books, some teetering from the tops of shelves. For Martin, it was a paradise.
The library door was open and he leaned in, tempted. “All right. But I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“You won’t. Not if you don’t say anything.”
Sister Teresa was the oldest of the nuns still working at the school. Due to
a bad hip and her ever-worsening senility, Sister Teresa was relegated to the library, where her main job was to check out books, a task that only involved pressing a rubber stamp to the back page of each selection. The real labor of retrieving and reshelving the books was left to the other nuns who came in early in the morning and straightened up. As I entered the library, I prepared myself for what I was about to do—I was going to lie again. Given that I’d already lied to Mr. Goceljak about being able to ride the bicycle, it consoled me to think that this lie was necessary, but only slightly.
Sister Teresa’s eyes were closed. She was napping. “Sister Teresa,” I said. She gave no response. “Sister Teresa,” I tried again. She stirred.
“Oh, good afternoon,” she said in Polish rather than English. “I must have nodded off.”
“That’s all right, Sister. I’ve brought my brother in. My mother was wondering if it would be okay if he stayed here until the library closes. I’ve got to help her at the rectory and there’s no one else who can watch him.”
Sister Teresa and all of the other nuns knew who Martin and I were because they knew what my mother did. Anyone who did anything for Father Svitek was beyond reproach in their minds, so I had little doubt that Sister Teresa would not deny me this favor, especially since I said I was going to be helping Father Svitek as well.
“Of course, child. The boy will be fine here with me. But he’s not loud or a troublemaker, is he? I can’t have any troublemakers in here.”
“No, Sister. He won’t make a sound.” Martin was watching me from the door. He’d heard my lie and put on a perturbed scowl. “Isn’t that right, Martin?”
“Yes, Sister,” he replied grudgingly.
“What did he say?” Sister Teresa asked, clearly deaf.
The Grave of God's Daughter Page 5
