“But?”
He guessed what I was thinking, that my mother might be sleeping and if there was another knock, she would blame us for letting it wake her.
“I’ll get it,” my mother said, appearing from the bedroom still fully dressed. She smoothed back her hair before she opened the door.
It was Leonard. He was sweaty and breathing hard, like he’d run to our apartment from someplace else. He blinked at my mother, fumbling for what to say. I wondered if he had expected me to answer the door and was thrown when he saw her instead.
He muttered something in Polish and glanced at me, almost apologetically, then dropped his eyes and waited for my mother to answer.
“Go home, Leonard,” she instructed softly.
He shuffled in place, debating what he should do next. He looked at me again, woefully. Leonard was scared.
“Go on,” my mother said.
Leonard took a step backward into the alley, eyes fixed on mine as the door swung closed, blotting him from view. My mother didn’t turn around right away. She seemed to be staring at the spot in the doorway where Leonard had stood. When she finally swiveled around, her expression was intent, as if she was reining in her thoughts and collecting herself.
“It’s time for bed. Go and change into your nightclothes.”
“But—” Martin began.
My mother flashed him a look warning him to mind her. He folded his book closed as commanded and dug his nightclothes out from under our pillow.
I was still standing by the window and I could see Leonard outside. He was lingering on our stoop, confused, his head hanging low. After a minute, he lumbered off.
“You too,” my mother said. She ushered me away from the window with a flick of her head.
Martin and I brushed our teeth side by side at the sink in the washroom. Real toothpaste was expensive, so we used pure baking soda instead. The tart taste of the baking soda always lingered in our mouths no matter how much water we washed it down with.
“What’s going on?” Martin whispered, his mouth full.
“I don’t know. All I know is that I want this day to be over.”
“Me too,” he confessed with a glance back at the tub.
My mother was waiting for us when we got out of the washroom. “Now your prayers.”
“I think I’ve prayed enough for today,” Martin mumbled.
Each night we would kneel in front of the cot, hands together, and bow our heads in prayer. We rattled off our prayers in Polish. That was my mother’s rule, as though saying them in English would have dampened the meaning. Normally, I would stare at the ceiling as I recited them. Looking up always seemed more appropriate than looking down or closing my eyes. As I said my prayers that evening, my gaze drifted over to my mother. She was sitting at the table and had taken out the shirt she was fixing for my father, but she wasn’t sewing. The shirt lay in her lap, untouched, while her eyes remained locked on some unseen, skyward point. She appeared to be drinking in our prayers and letting them fill her.
Where are you? I wanted to ask her. Why aren’t you here?
My voice momentarily trailed off and Martin elbowed me to keep going. We finished with a feeble, “Amen.” Martin waited for my mother to tell us to get up. When she didn’t, he turned around to find out why and caught her staring at the wall.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, hastily lifting the shirt from her lap to make it look as if she was sewing.
Martin inspected the wall, searching for whatever had held her attention.
“Go to sleep,” she told us. “It’s time for bed.”
She gave the coals in the stove a final poke, rousing what little heat she could, then shut off the lights and strode into the bedroom. The dying coals slumped and crackled in the stove as a dense darkness billowed in the room. I kept my eyes open until they could adjust. Soon the moonlight from the window was enough to see by. It cast a pale shaft of light into the room, showing me what I had not seen before. There was a mark on the wall, a faint yet perfectly square shadow where the painting of the Black Madonna had hung. With a jolt, I realized I had forgotten about the Black Madonna. How could I have, I wondered, given all I had already done to retrieve it? It was possible to forget things, no matter how necessary or important, even when they were right before your eyes. That was what had happened with the Black Madonna. And that was what had happened with my mother. We were her children, but we had faded into the far reaches of her peripheral vision, and nothing we did to clamor or claw our way back into her line of sight would work.
SOMETIME LATER, my mother padded out of her bedroom and into the washroom. She had sent us to bed so early that Martin and I were both still awake. We listened as she washed her face.
“Are you tired?” he whispered.
“Are you?”
“Kind of. But kind of not.”
“Do you want me to tell you about the dogs some more?”
I had been passing along all of the details I’d learned about Mr. Beresik’s dogs to Martin, weaving them into an ongoing tale. He liked to hear about their names and what color they were and how they were trained, although I spared him the stories of their fights. I never told him that was why Mr. Beresik kept them.
“Okay. I could hear about the dogs.”
The faucet in the washroom squealed to a stop and we waited for my mother to reappear. Instead the water came back on, this time in the bathtub.
“Do you think she’s taking a bath this late at night?”
“I guess so,” I said, but I hoped my mother was running the water in the bath to clean it and wipe away the scales left by the fish so Martin wouldn’t have to see them.
“That’s an awful lot of water,” Martin declared.
The minutes crept by and I began to get nervous. A horrible idea started slinking around my mind. A year earlier, the police had been called to Mrs. Koshchushko’s apartment. She had run a bath, submerged herself in the balmy water, and slit one of her wrists with a shaving razor. Her son found her and dragged her out of the tub, naked, wet, and half conscious. He tied a dishrag around her wrist, then went for help. She did not die, of course, but she was left with the winding scar of the hasty stitches that a doctor had used to close her wrist. Martin did not know of the incident and I had only heard of it because I was in the bathroom at school when two girls were gossiping about it. I wasn’t sure if my parents knew or if people in town were aware either. With so many secrets in such a small place, it was no wonder that some fell through the cracks.
“Do you think she fell asleep in there?” Martin asked.
I pictured Mrs. Koshchushko drifting off in a pool of pinkish water, her soul draining out of her. I vaulted out of bed, startling Martin and hurling the covers to our feet.
“What are you doing? Don’t go in there,” he urged. My hand flew for the knob. I was about to turn it. “Don’t,” Martin pleaded.
I stopped myself, held my breath and pressed my ear to the door. A steady drip from the faucet was all I could make out.
“But what if—”
“What if what?”
I couldn’t tell him what I feared. Martin gathered up the blankets from where I had kicked them. “Come back to bed. She’ll be out soon.”
My feet carried me back to the cot and I climbed in over Martin.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
Martin snorted quickly, sensing the lie. “Let’s just go to sleep. Tomorrow things will be better.”
I wanted to believe him. However, I couldn’t fall asleep that night for hours. I was waiting for a sound, even the faintest hint, to assure me that my mother was still in there and that she was still alive. The tension made me restless, though I wouldn’t dare move, not a muscle. Martin was sleeping and I was afraid to wake him. I was also afraid that even a brief shift in weight might obscure the noise I awaited. My neck stiffened into a solid, unrele
nting cramp and the muscles tingled with pinpricks of pain. It was a strange sensation, like a twinkling of lights under the flesh, and I pictured myself glowing in the dark apartment, as though my skin were made of stars. After hours of waiting, I must have plunged into sleep. I bolted awake in the dead of night and craned to see through the darkness.
The door to the washroom was open. The door to my parents’ bedroom was closed. That meant that my mother had returned to bed. I sank back against the wall, relieved, then a feeling overtook me, one far worse than dread. The sudden pain in my bladder almost doubled me over. I had to brace myself against the bed frame to gather my strength so I could climb over Martin without waking him.
As I forced my feet into my boots, worry began its steady climb from my belly to my brain. I gulped it back down. I took the roll of toilet paper from the shelf by the door where we kept it and hurried out into the frigid night air without my coat. The cramping was so violent it made me forget my self-consciousness about being seen in my nightclothes.
The alley was dark. No light shone in any of the windows. The moon was obscured, bound in dense clouds. I dashed around the side of the apartment, the tips of my toes barely touching the ground, barely breaking the frosty outer crust of the mud.
The door to the outhouse was ajar. I gave it one hard, warning kick, and when there was no sign of fleeing rats, I flung open the door and slid inside without taking the time to shut it all the way behind me. The burning soreness in my bladder released and subsided. It was like waking from a bad dream. I felt conscious again. I wiped myself, pushed my nightdress down, and was about to run back out when I heard something, not the scurrying of feet but a thumping in a three-part beat. It was the unmistakable, plodding rhythm of Swatka Pani stalking across the mud with her cane.
She was wending her way along the back of the apartments, checking the outhouses, I guessed. It was then that I noticed I hadn’t completely closed the door to the outhouse and had forgotten to lock it. I leaned close to the jamb, poised to run if I had to. Swatka Pani’s pace slowed. She was mere yards away. Then came another set of footfalls. These were light and quick and coming off Third, right toward the row of outhouses. The wind was picking up, blurring the sounds from outside. The laundry on the lines was snapping. The walls of the outhouses trembled.
The wind slowed, but I could no longer hear the footsteps. Neither Swatka Pani nor the other person had gone away, but they weren’t moving either. The muffled hiss of whispers rose out of the silence. Swatka Pani was talking to whomever she had encountered, though not in her normal, brittle tone. This was different.
As I strained to decipher the words as well as the voice of the other person, I let my gaze fall to the stone slab floor. Three rats had crept into the outhouse or had been inside all the while, hidden. I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out. One scurried along the wall while the others sniffed at shallow puddles on the ground. I was surrounded.
The voices outside stopped for a moment. I pinched my nostrils and held my breath, waiting, then the whispering resumed. I raised myself onto my toes and watched as one of the rats neared, boldly nosing my boot. Another rat followed, whiskers glinting. Tears boiled over onto my cheeks, each a burning bead on the chilly flesh.
The whispers grew into sharp, nasty rasps. They were speaking in Polish, but the words were running together. Then I heard one word chime over the rest.
Smierc.
It was the word for death.
My body began to quake. I was standing on my tiptoes in the freezing night air, clad only in my nightdress, and my legs were threatening to give out. The three rats had encircled me, tails snaking alongside my boots. Then, from under the wall, two more rats entered, hopping onto the stone slab and darting across the floor to join the others. A scream welled in my lungs, rising like a glass bubble. I gripped it in my throat, swallowing over and over again. I tried to stifle the chattering of my teeth, gritting them, but it was no use. I wedged the heel of my hand under my chin to drive my teeth together, but still my jaw continued to quiver. The cold had taken over.
The conversation outside ended abruptly. The voices dropped off. I held my breath again until I heard the footsteps of the other person. I leaned into the door, trying to see through the narrow crack between it and the jamb. I glimpsed a shifting shadow. The person was marching off, away, back toward Third. I could see a sliver of Swatka Pani in profile. She did not move, not for a few moments. She was watching the person leave, making sure they had gone for good. I suddenly felt a weight on my foot. Without looking, I knew what it was. One of the rats had climbed onto my boot.
The scream that had clogged my throat was replaced by the urge to retch. The rat was balancing itself on the toe of my boot and snuffling at the laces. My stomach heaved. I gritted my teeth harder and dug my icy fingers into my cheeks. Through the crack in the door, I watched the silhouette of Swatka Pani wavering, then turning. The shuffle of feet and the thud of her cane hitting the mud began again and slowly receded as she made her way back along the outhouses to her house at the end of the alley.
After that ominous cadence had died down to nothing, I jerked my nearly frozen leg with all my might and catapulted the rat into the air, hurling it against the outhouse wall. I threw myself against the door with both hands, sending it flying back on its hinges as the other rats scattered. I was running blind, my feet hitting the ground in time with the thrashing of my heart.
I ripped open the door to our apartment and the bottled-up scream bled out of my lips in a whimper. My knees buckled. I grabbed a chair to keep from falling to the floor. My body was so numb with cold, I imagined that if I fell, I would literally shatter. Soon the icy weight of my body was too much to bear. I sank to my knees and slumped on the floor.
The coal in the stove had long since burned out, yet a faint current of warmth was still drifting through the room. I lay there on the floor, letting the heat swim over my body. Even the floorboards were warm against my skin. I tried to get up, but every muscle had hardened. The only things I could move were my eyes, and the first thing I saw was the sleeping figure of my brother, his body curled tightly under the blanket, his cheek nestled deep in the pillow.
Silent sobs rippled inside my chest. Tears flowed down the sides of my face, tracing paths along my ears and into my scalp, where I could feel them purling around each strand of hair. My flesh stung as it warmed, then I started to shiver uncontrollably. My bones were rattling inside me and my teeth were clattering. My body was no longer my own. It belonged to the cold.
As I lay there on the floor, I decided that hell was not the fiery inferno the nuns insisted it was. Hell was a frigid, desolate plain where there was no shelter, no rescue from the cold. Once the shaking let up, I crawled on my hands and knees across the floor to my bed. I didn’t want to wake Martin, but the numbness left me clumsy and I ended up dragging my unwieldy legs over his. The motion shook him out of his sleep. Drowsy, he blinked at me, eyes heavy.
“Are you all right?” Martin asked.
I was too weak to answer, so I lay down beside him and huddled close.
“You’re so cold,” he said. “What happened?”
“Just stay next to me,” I said. “That’s all. Stay next to me.”
I AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING to Martin tapping my shoulder, gentle yet persistent. “Please wake up,” he was saying softly. “Please.”
“What is it?” I asked, reluctant to open my eyes. It was as though I’d fallen asleep only seconds ago.
“Something’s going on.”
Sallow, watery light was draining in through the window. It must have been a little past dawn.
“Listen,” Martin whispered.
From outside came the unmistakable murmur of voices, doors opening, footsteps. That would have been normal on any weekday, but it was Saturday. Martin waved me over to the window. “Come and look.”
My body was still sore and stiff. When my feet touched the floor, each muscle ached with the
renewed burden of carrying my own weight. I struggled to the window where Martin was waiting. He had pulled over a chair and was kneeling on top of it.
“See,” he said. “Something must have happened.”
Third was a flurry of activity. Women in their robes and nightdresses were standing in the alley or on each other’s stoops, clutching their clothes tightly to keep warm while whispering to one another and pointing toward the far end of Third. A few children huddled close to their mothers, listening in and gawking at something down the alley that I couldn’t see. Then a man in a police uniform strode by, his pace swift.
“I told you,” Martin said. “The police are here.”
Another policeman was at the door of one of the apartments across the alley. He was talking to a woman who had her coat on over her nightdress and rags knotted in her hair. Rollers were costly, so women used rags or even newspaper instead and slept with them on so their hair would be curly come morning. The woman shook her head at the policeman, jostling the rags, then gestured to the end of the road at the thing that we could not see.
“What are they all pointing at?”
“I don’t know,” Martin said.
I was going to the door to see for myself when Martin grabbed my sleeve. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see what they’re all talking about.”
Martin was about to warn me not to when the door to my parents’ bedroom opened. “What’s going on?” my mother asked, pulling her robe tightly around her waist. Her hair was tangled, her eyes dark. “What are you doing up?” Martin hurried off the chair, saying, “Something—”
The key slid in the front door and it swung open, cutting Martin off. My father charged inside. He had his coat over his arm, then hurled it aside, revealing a towel below. A bright red bloodstain was blossoming on the cloth.
“I fell. There was glass on the floor. I didn’t think it was that deep at first, but…”
My father collapsed onto a chair and laid his bleeding arm on the table. His eyes drooped. I thought it was the pain that had weakened him, then I realized he was drunk. My mother rushed to him and realized the same.
The Grave of God's Daughter Page 11