“Don’t get it,” Martin whispered.
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t.”
I put my hand on the doorknob lightly, testing its temperature. If it was indeed the devil, I thought I might feel the heat of him through the door. Yet the knob was as cold as always.
Another knock came. The noise made me jump.
“Don’t,” Martin pleaded.
I opened the door and braced myself for what I was about to behold. Standing before me was a boy of fourteen, a bucket in his hand.
“Here,” he said peevishly, holding up the bucket. I struggled to place the boy’s face. Alarm was overriding all memory. “It’s the catfish,” the boy added, already growing impatient. “Your father said you wanted one.”
It was one of Stash Nowczyk’s sons. He had come to drop off the catfish as my father had said he would. Stash Nowczyk had six children, all boys, and few people, including Stash, could tell them apart. Each one looked like the other, flat faced, with wet, blue eyes and a tuft of blond hair. I waved him inside.
“Where do you want it?” he asked, then his gaze snagged on something.
I followed his line of sight with a swelling dread. It was Martin who had caught his attention. He still had the shirt on his lap and the needle in hand.
“What are you doing?” the boy asked in disgust.
Martin floundered for an answer. This boy had only brothers, so seeing Martin sewing was as bad as seeing him playing with dolls.
Martin’s silence was enough of a reply. The boy shoved the bucket at me, sending water sloshing over the sides. “Leave it outside when you’re done with it. I’ll come back for it later.”
The boy slammed the door behind him, then Martin threw the shirt across the table.
“Forget about him,” I said, trying to console him. “Come see the fish.”
“I don’t want to see the dumb fish.”
The catfish thumped its fins against the bucket, splashing water onto my legs.
“Okay,” I said to the fish. “Just a minute. Just a minute.”
“Are you talking to the fish?” Martin asked indignantly, taking his frustration out on me.
I didn’t bother responding. I went into the washroom, put the stopper in the tub, then turned the faucet on full blast. The pipes groaned to life and water came pouring from the spout. I tested it with my finger and it was icy cold. The catfish flapped its fins again anxiously, as if it knew what was coming.
“Okay, okay,” I cooed softly. “One more minute.”
“I hear you,” Martin called from the other room. “You are talking to the fish.”
“What does it matter? It’s a fish. I can talk to it if I like.”
Martin had no retort, so he huffed loudly enough for me to hear.
Once the tub was half full, I lowered the bucket and the catfish darted out into the water. It swam the length of the tub eagerly, fluttering its fins. The catfish was long and meaty, at least the length of my forearm, and it was mottled with orange and brown scales that glimmered with its every move. Whiskers hung from its face, longer than a cat’s, making it seem more like a creature from a storybook than a real animal. I found myself entranced by the catfish, tracing its every turn. After a few minutes, it settled down and stopped swimming and began to hover in the water, gently swishing its tail from time to time.
“Maybe he’s hungry,” Martin said. He was standing in the doorway, waiting for another invitation to look at the fish.
“Maybe. I didn’t think of that.”
“We’re supposed to feed him cornmeal. To clean out his guts. That’s what he said.”
“You’re right,” I answered, acting as though I’d forgotten. Martin was sorry for snapping at me, I could tell. Now he just wanted to get in on the fun. “You want to help me feed the fish?” I asked.
“I s’pose,” he said sheepishly. “If you’re feeding him.”
I found a container of cornmeal on top of the icebox, though it was almost empty. Even though my mother had promised to pick up a new box, she must have forgotten. I hoped that that was where she had gone, but I doubted it.
“How much do you think we should give him?” Martin asked.
“How do you know it’s a him?”
“Because he has a mustache. Girl fishes don’t have mustaches.”
“But all catfishes have mustaches. That’s why they’re called that.”
Martin considered this thoroughly and finally conceded. “Maybe. But he looks like a boy fish to me.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. He swims like a boy is all.”
“Okay,” I relented. “The catfish can be a boy.”
“Can we name him?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Then I think his name should be Joe.”
“Joe?”
“He looks like a Joe. Joes have mustaches like that and stuff.”
“All right, Joe it is.”
Martin beamed, then as if on cue, the catfish made a loop around the tub. “See. He likes his name.”
“Yeah, and it looks like Joe’s hungry too.”
As the newly named Joe swam another lazy lap around the bathtub, I sprinkled some of the cornmeal into the water and he started nipping the bits of meal off the surface in dainty gulps. Once the cornmeal was gone, Joe stopped swimming and positioned himself beneath me, waiting for his next helping.
“He must still be hungry,” Martin said. “Maybe you should give him some more.”
Before I could reply, the front door was hurled open. It was my father. He took two unsteady steps into the house and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the cross on the wall. He was drunk, and a lit cigarette was pinched between his teeth. His eyes drooped for an instant, then he blinked himself awake. He scanned the room, searching, then he spotted Martin and me, framed in the doorway to the washroom. His gaze swung to the bedroom door, which was wide open. He was about to ask where my mother was, but stopped himself, clenching the cigarette tighter to keep the question from escaping. Her absence said everything.
Martin and I held our positions. Even he knew better than to test my father with one of his usual inquiries. The silence that inflated in the room resonated like a roar. My father barreled over to the icebox and took out two eggs. He recklessly cracked them into the skillet with the sausage rinds my mother had left, hurled the shells into the sink, then prodded the coal in the stove. My father kept his back to us and seemed to be staring at the eggs, smoking steadily all the while. Every few seconds he would sway slightly, enough for us to see. The sizzle of the frying eggs was the only sound. When he could wait no longer, my father slopped the eggs onto a dish, plunked himself down at the table, and devoured the meal without a word.
Martin looked up at me questioningly. I shook my head, telling him we had to stay put. My father seemed to have forgotten we were there. He was eating his food in a measured way, concentrating on each spoonful diligently, as if testing it for poison. Martin and I had become part of the background, mute and motionless, and I couldn’t be sure what my father would do if we suddenly sprang to life.
Once his plate was empty, my father pushed it away, dropping the spoon onto the dish hard enough to make it ring. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray that was the constant centerpiece on the table and stood up, then almost lost his balance and had to steady himself against a chair. He hitched up his pants, covering for his misstep, then he did the one thing I’d feared since he had walked in the door—he looked at us.
“Get out of there,” he mumbled. “I have to shave.”
Martin and I broke away from the door, clearing room for my father as ordered. He charged past us and I could feel a gust of air in his wake. He shut the door behind him, then Martin let out a long breath.
While my father shaved, Martin and I waited on the edge of our bed, backs straight, fingers pressed into the mattress so we could be ready to hop back up if necessary. The faucet was running a
nd I could hear my father tapping his razor against the basin, knocking it clean. I thought I could even hear the low fizzle of his dragging the razor across the stubble on his face and the rhythm of his breathing. I strained to make out every sound, waiting for the signal that he was done and would soon be opening the door. I was listening so hard that I ceased to see anything in front of me. Though my eyes were open, it was as if I’d gone blind from concentrating so intently.
Martin pressed the side of his hand next to mine. I nudged back, reassuring him. We were both too scared to tear our eyes away from the door to look at each other. I had grown superstitious about things like that. If I didn’t look away, everything would be okay. If I did, that meant something worse would happen. So I never looked away. Never.
The faucet cut off, and Martin and I readied ourselves for my father to reemerge. As we held our breath, I pictured myself underwater, floating calmly, like the catfish. As soon as the door to the washroom swung wide, I felt as though I’d inhaled water. Earlier, when he had first come in, his cheeks were slack, his eyes hazy. Shaving seemed to have filed down his features. Now his face was as sharp as a hatchet. He cleaved the room with his very presence.
As he strode into the bedroom, Martin and I tracked him with our eyes, then we were forced to wait again as he changed his clothes for work. The muffled sounds of cloth rubbing against cloth and a faint hiss of zipper drifted out of the bedroom, followed by footsteps. Martin and I re-braced ourselves.
My father stalked out into the main room, put on his coat, and grabbed his lunch pail from the icebox without even a glance. When he reached the door, he wheeled around to face us. He stared at Martin and me for an endless moment. Then he turned and left. Once the door was shut, Martin dropped his head onto my shoulder, exhausted.
IT WAS A FULL HOUR before my mother returned. Martin and I were sitting at the table, homework long finished, too drained to do anything but stare at our closed books. When the door opened, we both jumped.
My mother entered and glanced at us furtively. It must have appeared as if we hadn’t moved since she’d left. Her eyes darted to the coal stove where the empty skillet lay, proof that my father had already come and gone. The stew pot had been boiling, but neither Martin nor I had noticed.
“I’ll set out supper,” she said as she removed her coat, guilt softening her tone.
By then, the coal was running low in the stove. The room had to have been cold, but Martin and I hadn’t felt it. We were too numb to be cold.
My mother shoveled what was left of the coal into the base of the stove, stoking the fire so it would be high and hot, something she normally wouldn’t do. She usually saved some coal for when my father got back from work, enough that the apartment would be warm for him. I couldn’t tell if she was stoking the stove to spite him or to apologize to us.
An hour of sitting in the cold apartment had stiffened my muscles, and when I stood to set the table, my limbs burned.
Another reminder, I thought. No sin goes unpunished.
Like the run-in with Swatka Pani, I took the stinging in my muscles as a sign. The fire of each of my lies was coursing through my veins. In desperation, I turned to the wall where the Black Madonna had been. The empty wall shouted back at me as if to say, You are alone in this.
I laid out three plates for supper and Martin followed behind me, setting out the spoons. My mother ladled some stew into each of our dishes, purposefully putting the sausage rinds onto our plates instead of hers. I wasn’t sure if this was another apology or if she felt like she didn’t deserve them.
We ate our dinners sluggishly. Each mouthful was a struggle to chew. Staying awake took a sheer force of will. I could have fallen asleep there at the table, yet I kept my guard up, anticipating an attempt from Martin. He wanted to ask my mother where she had been, and though he was worn out, I guessed he still might try.
The soft chime of our spoons against the plates became a melody, one that lulled me off my watch.
“What’s wrong with Mrs. Koshchushko?” Martin asked, eyes fixed on my mother. He was trying to draw information from her with a sidelong question.
“What do you mean?” She was either honestly confused or being cagey.
“Why does she act the way she does, always crying?”
My mother leveled her eyes on Martin, head tipped knowingly low. She had guessed his game. “I wouldn’t know,” she replied. Her voice was smooth and solid. She had put an end to the duel right there.
When Martin opened his mouth again, I pushed his knee with mine. It was over.
We finished our meals, and I cleared the dishes. My mother washed them and I took my position beside her to dry them while Martin prepared for bed. This was the one chore I looked forward to. It was always the same. My mother would scrub each dish, run it under the faucet, shake the water off and pass it to me, then I would pat it dry with a dishrag. There was a rhythm to the routine, a togetherness. For this and this alone, she seemed to need me.
Once we were finished, I stacked the dishes in the cupboard while Martin finished brushing his teeth, then he stationed himself in the doorway to the washroom, biding his time until my mother was unoccupied. She washed her hands, then began folding the drying rags into neat squares. Martin could wait no longer.
“We got the catfish today,” he proclaimed.
“Oh?”
It was hardly the enthusiasm Martin had hoped for. He was trying to cheer her up, to drag her out of her distant mood, but it was like trying to shake somebody out of a deep sleep. My mother was too far away to wake.
“We named him too,” Martin explained. He waited for her to ask him more but she didn’t, answering only with a nod. “His name’s Joe,” Martin went on. “Because he’s a boy and all. So we decided on Joe. Because it’s a boy’s name.”
Another weak nod was all my mother could manage. Her thoughts were elsewhere. Martin finally gave up.
We all went to bed early. My mother disappeared into her bedroom shortly after supper and never came out, leaving Martin and me alone to listen to the dying embers crumbling in the coal stove. Side by side in our single bed, we tossed and turned for a while, neither able to get comfortable or find sleep despite our exhaustion. We were facing away from each other, me to the wall, Martin to the room, when he whispered to me, “So what was it like?”
I rolled over, but still he kept his back to me. “What?”
“Working?”
“It wasn’t so bad really,” I said, unsure how to put the day into words.
“What did you do?”
In his small, plaintive voice, Martin was really asking for a bedtime story, a tale he could fall asleep to. I snuggled up behind him and told him everything, each and every detail that I could remember, from the color of the bicycle to the size of Mr. Beresik’s dogs. I narrated the story of that day until my brother drifted off to sleep.
A WEEK PASSED, but the warm tide of spring refused to arrive. Winter stubbornly held on, clenching Hyde Bend in its gray grip. We awoke each morning to find frost lingering on the windows. Every night was heralded by a fast-falling sunset, then trumpeted by blustering winds. There was neither the luxury of snow nor the relief of sunshine. It was a middling, bothersome sort of cold, the kind that kept the laundry from drying on the lines and that hardened only the top layer of mud on the alley. Though the weather was caught in a dreary limbo, my world had begun to fall into a rhythm.
Each day after school, I would take Martin to the library, where he would stay until I was finished with my route for Mr. Goceljak, then I would sprint straight to the butcher’s shop to pick up my deliveries. Mr. Goceljak would welcome me with a load of wrapped parcels and unlock the bicycle for me, usually remarking on the cold and cursing it for not having the good sense to know when enough was enough.
“All right then,” he would say, then he would bid me a safe ride and return to his work. Once he’d gone, I would hide the bicycle in the field and run to each of my stops. I visited h
ouse after house in my boy’s costume, and nobody ever questioned me or suspected I was anything other than what I seemed. Sometimes even I lost track of myself in the costume. The saggy pants hid my knobby legs and the cap concealed all but my nose and lips. I could have been anybody. No one looked at me on the street, though I was used to that, only now it was as though I was fooling them, and it made me feel powerful.
Those days, I ran so much that I began to think I was faster than the bicycle could be, but I still dreamed of riding it. I attempted to shave more and more time off my routes in the hope of having an opportunity to practice with the bicycle. However, there was one thing that held me back. Since Mr. Beresik lived the farthest away, I left his delivery for last, and I often found myself lingering at his house longer than I should have. Every visit started out the same way. As I approached the hill to his house, the dogs would begin to bark in the distance, announcing my arrival. The whole pack would be waiting along the pen’s perimeter when I got there, barking and leaping against the fence in a frenzy. Then Mr. Beresik would appear on the porch to greet me and the barking would break off instantly.
Mr. Beresik always seemed pleased to see me. He would walk me around the fence, pointing out each dog and describing its various weaknesses and attributes, listing its lineage and rattling off its wins. There were more than thirty dogs in the pen, but he could nevertheless recite with encyclopedic clarity the details of every match each dog had fought. He spun the fights into epic sagas, complete with the drama of defeat and the shining glory of victory. He could gesture to a certain dog, then snap his fingers and that dog would trot over obediently. The dog would sit perfectly still while Mr. Beresik pored over its pelt, pointing out each battle scar and explaining how the dog had gotten it. He would lift their collars and run his finger along the healed bite marks, regaling me with the traits of the dog that had inflicted the wound. Some were scrappy and fast, others oxlike and brutish. The scars were hard fought, and Mr. Beresik took honor in each and every wound.
The Grave of God's Daughter Page 9
