Loving Luther

by Allison Pittman

  My friends’ now-familiar psst! caught my attention, and I craned my neck around the back of the chair to see Therese and Girt straddling a bench, passing a forbidden game of cat’s cradle between them. Wordlessly, they communicated, Are you all right?

  Yes.

  Did it hurt?

  Yes.

  Does it still?

  Knowing I couldn’t disguise the half truth of the answer, I turned my attention to watch the big, fat snowflakes—a final protest of spring—floating in their own lazy silence. Later, when I said my evening prayers, I would remember to thank God for the shelter of this warm room, where one or another of the older girls took charge to poke or refuel the fire whenever a new chill threatened. Outside, the bell chimed another hour gone by. Three o’clock. There would be two more hours, at the very least, until we girls would be permitted to get up, stretch, and splash our hands and faces with water before the evening meal. In the meantime, one side of my face glowed warm, my legs turned numb with listlessness, and my eyelids grew heavy with the effort of watching the perfect, dancing snow.

  “Look.” Therese’s voice exploded into the silence. “She’s sleeping again. I guess some girls just never learn their lesson.”

  A smattering of snickers undercut the silence, until someone had the good sense to whisper, “Hush.”

  Now fully awake, I sat straight up and shot my friend my best withering stare.

  Shut up!

  Therese, however, refused to heed my silent plea and engaged a confused Girt in her stunt.

  “Tell you what,” she said to the poor girl who stared, slack-jawed, the forgotten cat’s cradle limp and dangling from her fingers. “You be Käthe and I’ll be Father Johann. That’s right, just like that. You just sit there and stare up at me looking stupid.”

  “Stop it,” Girt whispered, her eyes darting around the room as if the sisters might jump out from between the wood paneling. “You’re going to get us all into trouble.”

  Therese ignored her completely, opting instead to mimic holding an enormous Bible. She drooped her eyes and somehow took on the persona of Father Johann. “Little girl, have you been snoozing?”

  The other girls, with growing fearlessness, giggled, but not Girt. She continued to stare in silent horror.

  “Now comes the part where you need to give me your hand. Give me, Girt. Roll up your sleeve.”

  “Therese! Why are you being so cruel?”

  “What, cruel? It’s funny. It was funny, wasn’t it, girls? You could hear it swap! clear to the back of the room, I’ll bet. Quite a show our little Käthe put on for everybody, wasn’t it?”

  I remained rooted to my chair, the heat from the fireplace no match for the heat rising within. It grew and bubbled, the moment of shame rising up again before my very eyes. The smirk on Therese’s face obscured any trace of the friend I once knew, and while I might have been too little to defend myself against Father Johann, years of scrapping with my brothers had trained me to identify an assailable foe. With no thought given to the sanctions of the afternoon, I let out a howl that carried every pent-up syllable since the morning prayers. In a flash, I leapt out of my chair and launched myself across the room, screaming foul threats to Therese until the second I was on the girl herself, then over her, raining open slaps against her pretty face.

  “Get off! You little—” And, demonstrating her own skill in combat, Therese locked me between her knees, then flipped the both of us. My arms were soon pinned, but not before I grabbed two handfuls of thin blonde hair, bringing forth a loud, sustained yelp.

  A chorus of our peers encouraged the violence, and I was searching for an open spot to deliver a wood-shod kick when the room filled with the presence of Sister Odile and the normally unflappable Sister Elisabeth.

  “Stop it! Both of you!”

  It was Sister Odile’s voice that cut through the screeching of the girls but Sister Elisabeth who inserted herself physically into the fight. She wrapped her arms around Therese’s shoulders and urged, “There, now. That’s enough,” holding on until I was safe to scoot myself out from under Therese’s weight. When she was near the point of release, though, Therese wrested herself from Sister Elisabeth’s grip and, in a last spiteful move, stomped her foot on the hem of my dress. The sound of the ripping fabric pierced the brief silence.

  Therese and I, newly peaceful in our conflict, looked at one another, and just as quickly as my heart had been torn, it healed to perfection.

  Sister Odile swooped down, taking each of us under an arm. “Look what you did,” she said, twisting her body to bring Therese into view of the damaged dress. “For that, you, Therese, will spend the afternoon mending Katharina’s dress. And, Katharina—” She stopped abruptly, her heightened emotion evident. With little ceremony, she dropped her grip on Therese and went to her knees, bringing herself eye level. “You, little one, have had a difficult day. Have you not?”

  I nodded, feeling the saltiness of my lunchtime broth gurgling at the top of my throat—almost like tears.

  “Well, then. Why don’t you pop into your nightdress and lie down in your bed for the afternoon. Would that be nice?”

  “Yes, Sister Odile.” I tried not to sound too eager, though already I could feel the cool, welcome comfort of the pillow. The room would be cold, but it would be quiet. A better quiet than the sitting room. An alone quiet.

  “And,” she said, her voice once again filled with towering authority, “Therese will mend your dress and deliver it to you before supper. Won’t you, Therese?”

  “Yes, Sister Odile,” Therese said in a way that only those who didn’t know her would find to be sincere.

  CHAPTER 4

  THERESE HAD STRIPED hands in the morning, and a close inspection showed traces of her blood near the perfectly mended patch. I felt a new weight on my shoulders when I put the dress on that morning—not only that of the locket, which I knew to be hiding somewhere in the hem, but the burden of understanding my friend’s sacrifice.

  “I will be your friend forever,” I whispered in her ear as we stood in line for the washbasin. When my turn came, I brought her with me and lifted the pitcher to pour clean, fresh water into the basin for her hands.

  “You won’t,” she said, patting her face dry with the towel.

  “What do you mean? Of course I will.”

  She waited while I washed my own face, then led me away from the line, back to her bunk, where I helped by tying the ribbon at the back of her dress.

  “We won’t be here forever, silly. You’re from a noble family. You’ll go home eventually, if you decide not to take the vows. You have that choice. I don’t.”

  “What do you mean? They can’t force you to be a nun.”

  “No, but I want to be. With all my heart. I have no other family.”

  She sat on the bed and I sat behind her, brushing her white-silk hair until it shone before plaiting it. “Neither do I, really.”

  Therese risked the pain of tugging to snap her head around. “Ungrateful. Of course you do.”

  “Not that really care about me. Why else would I be here?” I held the brush aloft, not resuming until she turned around again.

  “Do you know why I’m here, Käthe?”

  “Same as any of us, I suppose.” Truthfully, I hadn’t considered anybody having a story much different from mine. Girt, I knew, was here from some sort of family obligation. A donation of land, and the life of a daughter, given to the Church as an offering. I too was an offering, in hopes that my absence from the home would bring God’s blessing upon it. Therese, however, never spoke of her family, which made me think it was as ordinary as the rest of ours. I kept my eyes trained on the pretty nape of her neck, ready to disappear behind her story.

  “I’m not like any of you. My family isn’t like any of yours. Not my mother, anyway. She was a prostitute. Not even she knew who my father is. I knew my grandparents, though. Her parents. She used to send me to their house when we didn’t have any money, and I wou
ld beg them for food, or a blanket, or anything we could sell.”

  “Why didn’t you live with them?”

  “Because I loved my mother. I couldn’t leave her alone. Not even after she . . .”

  Therese bowed her head, and I let the braid go slack in my hand. “Did she get sick?”

  “We were going to go live with my grandparents finally. And have a home and everything, when . . .”

  I felt the pain emanating from her shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “She died. I was with her, just the two of us in our little room. I was sleeping right next to her, and when I woke up, she was dead.”

  Our dormitory was emptied of the other girls, eager to get their breakfast. Only Girt remained—Girt, who must have known this story already, because she sat on the other side of Therese, barely touching the girl’s striped hand. “Tell her,” Girt said. “Tell her about the angel.”

  “A man came into the room that first night. He put a chair in front of the door and sat on it. I heard men on the other side—Mother’s men—pounding and calling her name, but the door didn’t budge. And I could somehow hear him speak, but he never said a word.”

  “Did he have wings?” I asked. By now the brush sat in my lap, forgotten.

  Therese shook her head. “No, but he was the biggest man I’d ever seen. Taller than the door, stronger than the walls. His clothes were ordinary but clean. He touched my skin, and it burned, here.” She stretched out her arm, and I saw the faintest pink swipe on her flesh. “I climbed up into his lap and slept for two days. Then he stood up, moved the chair. The landlord pounded on the door, looking for the rent. My grandfather was with him, but the man? He was gone, and even in those moments I started to forget about him. It’s like he stayed hidden in my mind until my grandfather brought me here.”

  “How do you know he was an angel?”

  “Because he was handsome. And clean. And no man who ever came through our door was either of those things. And most of all, he didn’t frighten me. He didn’t try to—” she took a deep, shuddering breath—“do things. To me, like the other men did.”

  I had no idea what kind of things would cause such pain in memory, but I dared not ask.

  “My grandparents brought me to their home, but they were too old to raise me. Another nun I knew, Sister Heida, brought me here. I think of myself as an offering to atone for the sins of my mother.”

  Girt took over the braiding of Therese’s hair, tying the end with a scrap of black ribbon, then tucking it up under her cap and tying that, too.

  “So, you see—” Therese’s great, blue eyes filled the space between us—“we can never be friends forever, here. Not for our whole lives.”

  By far, the best hours of every week came at two o’clock, after dinner and outside play time. While all the other girls went to the big classroom to spend an hour in their copybooks, I went for catechism in preparation for my first Holy Communion. This meant time alone, being trusted to walk the long hallway that took me through the school building, across the courtyard, and to the chapel. Even better, I was allowed up a narrow, winding stone staircase, at the top of which a small room nestled in the rafters.

  The first time I’d come under the guidance of Sister Gerda, who’d clutched my hand and muttered, “Come on, you! I’m not leading you to any gallows.” But who could tell where the blind old nun was going? The sound of my wooden shoes punctuated the particular scraping step of Sister Gerda, who all the while grumbled about taking in such young girls.

  “Not even a proper Catholic,” she said as her gnarled hand trailed along the wall, measuring. “Too much to ask that they come knowing the sacraments? Why not drop a dozen unbaptized babies at the gate?”

  She stopped talking when we came to the staircase, then uttered a perfunctory watch your step without implying that she cared one whit whether I made it to the top or tumbled down and down.

  Every inch of the fearful trek proved its worth, however, once I ascended the top step and found myself in a cozy attic room. The rafters were bare, the windows low along the slanted roof, and a layer of sweet straw covered the floor. The furnishings consisted of two wooden stools and a small table. It looked for all the world like a bird’s nest, and on that first day, Sister Gerda handed me over to Sister Elisabeth, the bird within.

  Now allowed to make the journey on my own, I walked with decorum through the school, marching in the great echoing stone hallway that led to the church. I tried to create a rhythm with my shoes as I ascended the steps, kicking my toe against each one—twice—before stepping up to the next. Then, at the top, Sister Elisabeth would be waiting.

  Sister Elisabeth wasn’t like any of the other sisters at Brehna. For one thing, she was pretty. Soft brown eyes, narrow nose, and a smile that revealed perfect, straight, clean teeth. I knew well the beauty of Sister Elisabeth’s teeth because, in a second characteristic that set her apart from the other nuns, she smiled wide, and often, greeting me every day with, “Why, hello, Katharina,” as if my arrival were some welcome surprise. Most fascinating, though, were her hands. Beautiful, delicate, with nails that looked like flower petals had floated on a spring breeze and attached themselves to the tips. Surely Sister Elisabeth did her share of labor, washing up and scrubbing down, cooking and sweeping and all the good work of maintaining the house of the Lord, but her hands held the quality of a fair maiden hidden in a turret. On the rare occasions when she appeared outside of our nest, she always moved softly, swiftly, as if a proper gust of wind beneath her habit would send her into swirling flight.

  This afternoon, I popped my head into the room to find Sister Elisabeth waiting as usual, perched on her stool. Instead of her usual chipper greeting, however, she remained silent, her welcoming hand stretched out from within its black woolen wing.

  “Sweet Katharina,” she said, and in the next second, I was folded within that arm, feeling Sister Elisabeth’s cool cheek against my own. “Have you quite recovered from your tussle?”

  “Yes, Sister Elisabeth.”

  “And that other? Let me see.”

  Understanding, I stepped back and raised my sleeve. Two days had passed, but even in the dim light of the attic room, the mark of the priest’s touch remained clearly etched in the flesh, surrounded by a bruising yellow cloud.

  “He was wrong to have done this.”

  The sting of shame flared up anew, just as sharp as the pain that was by now, thankfully, nothing more than a memory. Emboldened by the promise of an ally, I fought against the threatening tears.

  “You should have seen it right after. You could even see the wrinkles from his fingers.”

  Sister Elisabeth smiled, salving the lingering hurt. “What a brave girl you are. And so smart, too. I was very proud of you. I just wish I could have done something—”

  “I’ve memorized the Apostles’ Creed,” I said, wanting to change the subject before my courage disappeared. I pulled myself away and settled on my own wooden stool, trying to match Sister Elisabeth’s manner of soft authority. “Shall we start there?”

  “Why the rush?” Sister Elisabeth fished behind her, produced a linen napkin, and unfolded it to reveal a small, dark cake. I could smell the spices emanating from it, and my cheeks tingled for the taste. With the cake nestled in her lap, Sister Elisabeth brought forth a small crock pitcher, which she declared to be fresh milk, a treat I hadn’t tasted since leaving home. She poured a measure into a pewter cup and set both on the table before me.

  “Now we’ll begin. Who made the world?”

  “God made the world,” I said, anticipating the taste of cake.

  “And who is God?”

  “God is the creator of all things in heaven and on earth.”

  “And man?”

  “Man is a creation of body and soul, brought to life in the image and likeness of God.”

  Sister Elisabeth smiled, pinched off a corner of the cake, and placed it—still warm—in my open hand.
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  “Thank you,” I said before my mouth filled with nutmeg and cloves. Then a sip of milk, cool in its pewter cup. I wished Father Johann could see me now and felt a secret, sly grin at how incensed he’d be at the picture of this tiny, insolent girl so pampered and privileged at the catechism. Hazarding a glimpse over the top of the cup, I wondered how great a risk Sister Elisabeth had taken in bringing such a delicacy. Moreover, why would she bother? When our eyes met, I had my answer, in all of its simplicity. Sister Elisabeth was kind.

  “Shall we continue?”

  I wiped my lip with my sleeve and handed back the cup. “Yes, Sister.”

  “Now, my sparrow. Why did God make you?”

  This had been the hardest question of all, the first time I heard it. The others, about God and creation, were easy. Anybody with a soul could answer. But this? Why would God make a little girl with a dead mother and a weak father and mean brothers? Why would he make her if all he intended to do was pick her up and drop her in this place, surrounded by other girls whose lives held no more meaning? I had nothing to offer this world, not even enough to offer my friend Girt, who still sometimes wept late into the night. Katharina von Bora was needless and small, but with Sister Elisabeth’s initial prompting, I’d learned the answer.

  “God made me to know him. And to love him. And to serve him in this world for as long as I live. And then, when I die, to be happy with him forever in heaven.”

  I knew I’d recited the correct answer, but I hoped Sister Elisabeth wouldn’t give me another piece of cake. It didn’t seem right, somehow, to be rewarded for saying a truth that didn’t seem real. Or at least one that didn’t bring with it any sense of joy. Why couldn’t the answer be reversed? Why couldn’t God have made me to be happy in this world, and to serve him in the next? The moment the thought entered, I squelched it, in fear of the next question.