The Grave of God's Daughter (10 page)

“Be careful,” I warned. “Or you’ll stick yourself.”

“No, I won’t,” Martin protested, then he let out a hissing wince. He had nicked his finger on one of the pins.

“See,” I said as he sucked the tip of his finger woefully. “Don’t get any blood on the shirt or then we’ll be in real trouble.”

“I just wanted to see how it worked,” Martin mumbled, his finger still stuck in his mouth.

“Then you should’ve asked.”

I slid the shirt around and propped it up on our schoolbooks so he could see the way my mother had started to resew the collar. Martin needed something to occupy him, to take his mind off her hasty departure, and so did I. I took the needle out and used it as a pointer, showing him the little stitches that held the collar in place. I explained how to pierce the material with the needle and how to make a single stitch. To my brother, it was as if I was creating magic.

“How does that little piece of string hold this big thing together? It’s not strong. It’s tiny.”

“Alone it’s tiny. But together with more stitches, the thread becomes strong. Strong enough to hold the collar on for good.”

This was miraculous to Martin, inexplicable. “Can I try?” he asked, excited but hesitant, as if he might not be able to control such magic on his own.

I passed him the needle, smoothed out the fabric and pointed to the spot where he should start the next stitch. Martin took a deep breath and pressed the needle through the underside of the collar. When it surfaced, he seemed almost surprised.

“Not too far,” I instructed. “You want the stitches to be small and strong.”

“Small and strong,” Martin repeated. He scrutinized his stitch, making sure it matched my mother’s. While he forced the needle back through the fabric, creating a single stitch, I tried to recall how I had learned the technique myself. I sorted back through my memory, digging for a moment when I had sat with my mother like this and she had shown me how to draw a needle through cloth and line up each stitch. Then I realized that that moment had
never happened. I had learned by peering over her shoulder while she sewed and stationing myself next to her at the table when she would hem my father’s pants. My mother had never tried to teach me. Instead, I’d learned by watching her when she didn’t know I was looking, or didn’t care. Part of me believed she was aware of what I’d done, that she had agreed to our silent tutorial simply by staying put and letting me look on. I could never be sure and preferred to hope.

“Is that it? Did I do it?” Martin asked, showing me his completed stitches.

“Yes,” I reassured him. “That’s it. You did it.”

A knock sounded at the front door, startling both of us. We rarely got visitors, and my mother’s mysterious departure had set a foreboding tone.

As I got up to answer the door, Martin put his hand on my arm, cautioning, as if anyone or
anything
might be waiting on the other side. The incident with Swatka Pani had unnerved both of us. My lies had become a blight, contaminating Martin too, and Swatka Pani’s words came as confirmation of my sins. The devil knew my heart as well as God, and he had sent a messenger to say as much.

“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 and 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.

I
T 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.