The Grave of God's Daughter (24 page)

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My brother was so calm, his argument simple, collected.

“Martin, we’re not supposed to steal. It’s not right. I don’t care if you take the book out every day for the rest of your life, that doesn’t make it yours.”

“Why not?”

“You didn’t buy it. You didn’t pay for it.”

“But I’m the only one who uses it. I think that makes it mine.”

This is all your fault.
My thoughts resonated like strings being plucked.
This is all your fault.

“Martin,” I said, facing him sternly. “Don’t take the book again. Please don’t. What would God think?”

“I think God would want me to have the lamb book.”

I strode off in frustration, moving fast enough to dislodge Martin’s hand from my pocket. He ran to catch up. “It’s about Him anyway,” he defended.

“Martin, I don’t ever want to see that book in the house again.”

He was horrified at the thought. “What? Why?”

“I just don’t.”

“That’s no answer.”

“It’s enough of one.”

“What if I promise to check it out next time? You can make sure I haven’t stolen it. Please. Don’t say I can’t read the lamb book.”

“No, Martin.”

He ran ahead and got right in front of me. “Your face is different. I saw it when you came to get me. You were crying.”

“I wasn’t crying.”

“Liar.”

I pushed Martin, nearly knocking him to the ground. “Don’t call me that.”

He scowled, shocked, and righted himself. “If you’re lying, then that’s what you are.”

“I said don’t call me that.”

“Then say you were crying.”

“Fine, I was crying,” I shouted. “Does it make you happy?”

“No, but I don’t want you to lie. You can lie to everyone else. But not to me.”

I laughed aloud. By then, I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t
not
lie anymore.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I can’t laugh and I can’t lie. That doesn’t leave me much else to do, Martin.”

“Yes it does. Tell me why you were crying.”

“No,” I yelled. Martin backed away, genuinely scared. I had to say something and I knew what it would be. Another lie.

“I fell when I was making my deliveries. I fell on my hands and hurt them even worse.” I proffered my sticky, blistered palms as proof.

Martin examined my hands. “We could put bandages on them like you put on…” He kept himself from mentioning my father’s accident.

“Mr. Goceljak gave me some. He told me to put them on at night, in secret, so no one sees.”

“I can help you. We can do it under the covers. She won’t find out if you take them off before she wakes up.”

Martin was so glad to hear what he thought was the truth that it made my heart feel as blistered as my hands.

“W
HAT TOOK YOU TWO SO LONG
?” my mother asked as we entered the apartment. She was sitting at the table, her feet propped on a chair, massaging her calves.

“I was at the library,” Martin told her. “I was reading this book and I forgot what time it was.”

Hearing Martin lie again should have made me wince like before. That time, it was more like a pinprick, sharp and then gone.

“And where were you?” she asked me. I could see her flexing her toes beneath her stockings, spreading them wide, then curling them inward.

“I was there. I was doing my schoolwork. I didn’t know how late it was.”

“They don’t have clocks at school anymore?”

Martin and I swapped glances in the uneasy silence.

“I made her stay. I wanted to finish the book before we left.”

“That book you’ve got right there?” My mother nodded to the book he was carrying on top of his textbooks. There was a tautness to her question, like she was testing us.

“Yes,” Martin replied.

“If you finished it, then why did you bring it home?”

“It’s the one I like, the one I always bring home, the one about the lamb.”

“You and that lamb book.” My mother slumped deeper into the chair, as if she’d lost interest in the topic, and started kneading her right shoulder with her left hand. “Put some tea on, will you?” she asked.

While I filled the kettle, Martin unloaded his books on the table. I gestured for him to set out mine as well. It would be too difficult for me because of my hands.

“I thought you said you finished your homework,” my mother said to me.

“No, I said I was working on it. But I didn’t finish it. There was a lot today.”

Carrying the kettle the short distance from the sink to the stove was a torture, punishment for the lies I’d just told my mother, I assumed. I switched on the burner, but there was no flame. “It won’t light.”

My mother sighed. “Try it again.”

I did, but still nothing. “It still won’t light.”

“Get a match,” she said. Normally, she kept a box of long matches on top of the coal stove to light the fire with; however, the carton was empty.

“There aren’t any left.”

“Try your father’s cigarettes. There’s a pack next to the bed.”

I hadn’t been in my parents’ bedroom in a long time. We weren’t forbidden to go in, not verbally, yet Martin and I rarely ventured beyond the doorway. Sometimes we would peer in, though we rarely crossed the threshold.

The bedroom seemed different, darker. There were more shadows. The bed was less kempt. The blanket was pulled up to cover the sheets below, but it was as if my mother was only making her side. My father’s side was rumpled. The pillow seemed deflated and it hung out from under the blanket.

“Did you find them?” my mother called.

A pack of cigarettes sat on the chair next to my father’s side of the bed. A shirt hung from the back of the chair, which filled out the shirt like a set of shoulders. Tucked in one side of the pack of cigarettes was a paper book of matches. Beneath it was a five-dollar bill.

There’s real money to be made at a dogfight. You could double your money.

For us, five dollars was a vast sum. If my mother found out my father had been keeping the bill in a pack of cigarettes, and hiding it from her, she might not have forgiven him.

We’re not supposed to steal. That’s what you told Martin.

“Be quiet,” I said, trying to douse the thoughts with my voice.

“What did you say?” my mother called out, growing impatient.

“Nothing,” I answered, then I took both the book of matches and the five-dollar bill from the pack. I hid the money in the pocket of my skirt and rushed out of the room.

“I found them.”

“Then put the kettle on.”

“But the stove?”

My mother’s face drew in, angry. “I’ve been on my feet all day. You can see that, can’t you?”

“I’ll do it,” Martin offered. “I can light matches. I know how. I’ve seen—”

“Your sister’ll do it.”

My mother talked me through the process of relighting the pilot light without turning to watch me. She was too tired even to swivel her head. “Put on the burner,” she directed. “Now strike the match.”

I got the burner on, but fumbled with the match, my hands thrumming with pain. Once I had one match free, I struck it against the pack, but it wouldn’t spark. I tried again and again with no luck. The match began to buckle.

“What are you doing?” my mother demanded. “Light the match.”

“I’ll do it,” Martin repeated, restlessly moving in his chair.

“Sit down,” my mother told him.

“I am sitting down.”

“Then stay there.”

“It won’t light,” I said, still desperately dragging the match over the pack.

My mother mumbled a few words. All I could make out was something that sounded like,
You will be the death of me
.

“Give it here,” she ordered.

I was about to hold out the pack to her but she would have seen my hands.

“No, I can do it. Really, I promise I can.” I pulled out another match, held my breath, and flicked the match head along the pack. It ignited with a tiny spark. “I got it.”

“Hold it up to the burner.”

I tilted the match to the stove and a lick of flame sprang into the air, sending me backpedaling.

“You left the burner on. That’s why it caught so high,” my mother stated flatly. “Won’t make that mistake again.”

I shook out the match and put the kettle on. “Anything else?” I asked.

“You sound like somebody’s maid,” she said.

Martin folded his lips in to keep from defending me. My mother was staring off at the other end of the apartment, as if her eyes were jammed, her neck stuck in place.

I stood at the stove, behind her and out of view, until the water in the kettle rattled, then I took the kettle off the burner before it
could blow. I poured her a cup of water and dropped in a tea bag so I wouldn’t have to do it at the table, then slid the cup toward her elbow so she wouldn’t notice my hands.

“A spoon,” she said, as she sifted in a tiny bit of sugar from the bowl on the table.

I did the same thing with the spoon, setting it down slightly behind her.

“And the milk.”

She dunked the tea bag in and out of the cup, wound it around a spoon, then poured a few drops of milk into the tea, precise despite her exhaustion.

“Put the milk away or it’ll get warm.”

Hour after hour, Martin and I sat with her at the table as she drank the whole kettleful of tea, repeating the same process of preparation, time and time again, as though trying to hypnotize herself.

Night fell and we waited for my father to arrive. I was steeling myself for the moment when I would have to see him. He hadn’t recognized me at the Silver Slipper, but I had seen him and I had seen what he was a part of. I reread the same sentence in my grammar text over and over, unable to understand it and unable to move on.

Footsteps sounded outside the door, then singing. It was my father. He was belting out a song and fumbling for his key.

“Mariska busia dac,”
he sang.

Mary give me a kiss!

He rattled the key in the lock clumsily, bolting it, then stumbled into the apartment.

“Momusha nie pytac.”

Don’t ask your darling mother.

He struggled to take off his coat, thrashing himself out of the sleeves and singing all the while. His work clothes were more soiled than usual. He hung his coat on the hook, but it fell and he left it where it lay. When he realized we were all staring, he ceased his song.

“What? What is it?”

“Your clothes are filthy,” my mother said.

“No, the Germans—” Martin began and I elbowed him under the table.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” my mother sneered.

The mill was an easy place to get hurt. Men had their fingers crushed and wrenched their backs regularly. Injuries were a daily occurrence. Going to work drunk only made the mill more dangerous.

My father bristled at the word
killed
and appeared to sober up momentarily. “Feet up. Must be nice,” my father shot back at her. “I’m hungry,” he said, slapping his stomach. “You hungry?” he asked Martin and me.

With a jerk, my mother pushed out the chair she had been resting her feet on, almost toppling it. The chair legs raked across the floor and came to a groaning stop right in front of my father. He grinned as if it were a magic trick and plunked down in the chair, far from the table or Martin and me, and I was grateful for that small distance.

My father tried kicking off his boots, but the laces were too tight. Each attempt sent sprays of dried dirt raining down on the floor. He tried shaking off the boots, yet they wouldn’t budge. His frustration grew and he growled under his breath, furiously pulling
at his boot. My mother refused to turn away from the sink to witness the commotion. To compete, she made a racket of taking out the stew and putting it on the stove. She knocked the pot heavily against the burner and clanked the dishes as she took them down from the shelves. The cacophony made the apartment quake.

“Damn it,” my father snapped.

Martin hopped up before I could grab him, knelt at my father’s feet, and picked the double-knotted laces loose. My mother glanced back to see what had quelled the noise, in time to watch my father patting Martin’s head as he freed one boot, then the other.

“Wash your hands again before you come back to the table,” my mother said, addressing Martin.

My father slid off his boots and left them where they lay. “You’re a good boy,” he slurred as Martin got up to go to the washroom.

“You too,” my mother said, reminding me to wash my hands as well.

When Martin and I were safely inside the washroom, he whispered, “Close the door.”

“I can’t, not all the way. They’ll think we’re up to something.” I left the door slightly ajar. “Why did you want me to close it?”

My father’s voice sprang up. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he yelled, responding to something my mother must have said to him softly, so we wouldn’t hear.

“That’s why.”

The hiss of my parents’ hushed voices, barely restrained, seeped through the crack in the doorway. I turned the faucet on high to muffle the sound, then Martin lowered it, trying to listen
in, but all we could make out were a few curses from my father. Martin and I took turns at the sink. At first, washing my hands made them feel a little better, yet the cold water soon hurt more than it helped.

“I don’t think my hands can get much cleaner,” Martin said.

“Mine neither.”

“Do you think they’re done? I can’t hear them anymore.”

Our parents’ voices had blurred with the rushing water. Then came another staccato curse from my father.

“No, I don’t think they’re finished, but we can’t stay in here forever.”

“You want me to go first?” Martin asked.

“No, I’ll go. Just sit down as quick as you can and don’t say anything.”

The second I opened the door, my parents halted their argument. My mother spun back to the stove and my father, who had stood up, sat back down. Martin and I pulled our chairs in close to the table and my father followed suit.

“Don’t you think you should wash your hands too?” my mother sniped.