The Grave of God's Daughter (2 page)

Shortly after her son had drowned, pneumonia took Swatka Pani’s husband, leaving her utterly alone. With the money her husband had left her, she easily could have moved away from Third, perhaps even to the coveted River Road. Nevertheless, she stayed, rarely leaving her house at the end of the alley, the only decent-sized structure nearby. People said that all of that tragedy had made Swatka Pani’s heart dark. She grew cruel and, most would claim, insane. People refused to cross her, afraid that the punishment might be to suffer her same fate.

Since her son’s death, Swatka Pani had refused to go anywhere near the river. If anyone even mentioned it in her presence, she would spit on the ground. The word alone was a hex. Yet Swatka Pani still needed her precious dirt, so she paid Leonard Olsheski to go down and fill her buckets, then bring them to her garden. Olsheski was in his twenties, built like a bull, with strapping shoulders that dwarfed his neck and head, but he was also slowwitted. He stopped attending school after the third grade, though it was mainly because the nuns wouldn’t have him. He couldn’t keep up and was prone to outbursts. One minute he was quiet and docile, the next no one could hold him down. However, as Leonard grew older and his father, his only caretaker, died, the people of Hyde Bend had taken pity on him. He was allowed to clean the barroom at the Silver Slipper Tavern in exchange for a cot in the back, and to make money for food, he carried people’s groceries or moved boxes or shoveled snow. It was Swatka Pani who kept Leonard busiest. Once a week, like clockwork, I would see him lugging two heavily-laden buckets along Third, then empty them into Swatka Pani’s garden. Later, he would return with two more buckets, unfazed by the weight or exertion, content to have a task.

Leonard spoke only Polish, but his was so broken and stunted it was nearly unintelligible. Worse yet, he often stuttered out of shyness. Leonard’s two front teeth were long and prominent, so much so that they slid out over his bottom lip even when his mouth was closed, like a rabbit’s. It was another reason he rarely talked or smiled. Most people couldn’t understand him and would ask him to repeat himself, which only made Leonard more nervous, so he usually wound up walking away in embarrassment. But I could understand him.

Once a week, Leonard would go up and down each of the alleys, knocking on doors and asking, “You need me work?” Whenever he got to our apartment, his eyes would grow eager at seeing my face. My parents always instructed me to tell him to go away. Even if we did have work that needed to be done, we couldn’t afford to pay him. Nevertheless, when Leonard would come by, I would slip him a sliver of cheese or a small apple if we had one and hope my mother didn’t catch me. Then Leonard would break into a broad, elated grin, which he quickly hid behind his hand. He would thank me with a nod and go on to the next apartment in hope of work or some other kindness.

On Third, Leonard usually had little luck. Most of our neighbors were as bad off as we were. Many were widows or women whose husbands had run off and left them with nothing except children to feed. Though we were as poor as the rest, my mother kept Martin and me apart from the other children on Third, the same way a mother in a wealthy family might keep her children away from us. She never said we were better or different than the other people on the alley, but her actions implied as much. So neither the children nor the adults paid Martin and me much interest. If they did, it was to whisper about how haughty we acted and that we didn’t have the right to—we lived exactly where they did.

The insults and gossip came mainly from the women because there were so few men who lived on Third. My father was one of just five and one of only two who had a steady job. He worked at the steel mill on the late shift that went from ten at night until six in the morning. The mill ran twenty-four hours a day and every eight hours the whistle would blow, signaling a shift change. It was a low, doleful wail and the sound would expand and drift over
Hyde Bend like a haze that lingered in the air. Afterward, dozens of men would file out of the mill’s main door, their faces and hands and coveralls coated with grimy soot, as if they’d all just walked out of a burning building.

My father was a ladle liner. The ladles were the giant vats into which the molten steel was poured, and the mill had nine of them altogether. Each was ten feet across and nearly twice as deep. The ladles were lined with bricks to insulate them and keep them from cracking under the heat of the molten steel. The bricks crumbled quickly and wore down from the scorching temperatures. It was my father’s responsibility to climb into the massive ladles and chip out the old bricks by hand with a hammer and chisel, then replace them one by one. It was grueling labor that left his muscles sore and his hands permanently chafed, the nails etched with black.

My father arrived home from work around the same time the sun rose. Our apartment had only two rooms, so even if any of us were asleep when he came home, we couldn’t stay that way for long. Of the two rooms, the main one housed a deep porcelain sink, an icebox, and an oven that also served as a coal stove, as well as our table and chairs, a radio, and a single cot where my brother and I slept. Martin was small for his age, so we managed to share the bed, sleeping back to back, me against the wall to keep him farther from the cold that constantly seeped through the siding.

The other room, which my parents used as their bedroom, was in the rear corner of the apartment and was barely wide enough to hold their sagging mattress. In the front corner of the apartment was a washroom, which held a narrow tub and a tiny washbasin, with hardly any room left over. The apartment floors were made of
wooden planks that creaked under even the slightest weight, and the walls were a brownish tackboard. The only decorations to grace the apartment were a wooden cross, mounted over the cot where my brother and I slept, and a small painting of Matka Boska Czestochowska, the Black Madonna. In it, the Holy Mother was cradling a swathed baby Jesus, their faces soft yet unflinching despite the fact that the skin of both mother and child was nearly black, the color of burnt flesh. It was said that when the church where the original painting hung was set ablaze by nonbelievers, the painting survived despite the ravaging flames. Stranger still, the colors of Mary’s robes and the baby Jesus’ swaddling clothes remained bright, unharmed, while the skin had darkened, as if mother and child had indeed been burned alive.

The painting of the Black Madonna was a miracle in and of itself, a symbol of the power of faith. My mother had paid eleven dollars for the nearly miniature copy, an enormous sum for us, but to her, it was worth it. She cherished the painting and prayed to it daily, locking eyes with the Madonna and whispering to her, pleading almost conspiratorially. For what, I did not know. My mother would gaze at the painting with such desperate, unrivaled adoration that I grew to fear and hate it. That flat, lifeless object had what I never did—her devotion.

The Black Madonna hung over the table where my brother and I sat with my father every morning when he returned home from work, the eyes of the Holy Mother and child peering down on us vigilantly. While we ate our bowls of oatmeal, my mother would fix my father his dinner, usually a few slices of bread and a thin soup made with vegetables and whatever meat we had. We weren’t allowed to play the radio in the mornings. After hours of
working in the deafening din of the steel mill, the noise of the radio hurt my father’s ears no matter how low the volume. He would drink exactly three bottles of beer with his meal and smoke while he ate. Crumbs of bread would stick to the end of his cigarettes though he was too tired to notice or care. He was also usually too tired to speak, or had no interest in talking, so we ate together in silence and all that could be heard was the sound of our collective chewing.

As soon as my father finished his meal, he would go straight to bed and shut the door behind him. That meant that no one, not even my mother, was to bother him or to enter their bedroom. We never did. My brother and I would quickly brush our teeth and put on our school uniforms, shabby sets of blue sweaters, pants, and skirts that had been given to us by the Benedictine nuns because we couldn’t afford to buy them. I had to pin my skirt to hold it on and Martin had to cuff his pants to keep from tripping. Each day we donned our ill-fitting uniforms and readied ourselves for school as quietly as we could. Any noise was liable to send my father flying out of the bedroom screaming curses. Though we spoke only Polish at home, these were words I did not know, words so sharp the sound alone would make me wince. So we learned how to step lightly on the ever-squeaky floorboards and how to speak in silent gestures rather than words.

We could tell when my father had finally fallen asleep by the sound of his snoring, then my mother would order us into our coats with a nod and guide us out the door, closing it soundlessly behind us. Every morning, she would walk us to school, not because she chose to but because she worked next door, at Saint Ladislaus church. She was the cleaning lady. Given the church’s
size, hers was no small task, hardly a job for one woman, however, asking for additional help would have cut into her pay, so she did it all by herself.

Saint Ladislaus church sat in the center of town, a towering stone building topped with a brick dome. Though it was hardly as large as either the mill or the plant, the church somehow felt bigger than both of those buildings put together.

Ground was broken in 1903, and to save money, the townspeople dug the hole for the foundation themselves with shovels and buckets. That way they could put every last cent into the church itself, making it a place of majesty and splendor, their own glimpse of heaven. Inside the church, soaring vaulted ceilings were held high on the shoulders of finely carved columns, and the vast dome rested on chiseled limestone arches. The interior of the dome was painted with lavish frescos depicting the apostles, all hovering benevolently in a sky festooned with clouds. A choir loft crowned the back of the church along with a massive organ whose bronzed pipes rose far into the rafters. Row after row of dark mahogany pews created the ribs that led up to the large center altar, which was adorned with painted statues of the saints, each with a doleful face and flushed cheeks, making them seem overly alive. The life-sized statue of Saint Ladislaus stood by itself in the left-hand corner of the church, near a side altar. Like a worshiper arriving late to Mass, the statue had a conspicuous air about it. The stone version of the saint carried a staff and wore a white cape detailed with gold and robes painted in rose. He was clean shaven with a kind expression, yet his eyes were distant, perpetually preoccupied. Unlike other saints, Ladislaus was not martyred nor was he holy. He was a bureaucrat, a man of high birth who brought the
Catholic faith to the people of Hungary and Slovakia. He then Christianized and colonized Transylvania, uprooting pagan traditions and building churches throughout the land. Afterward, he was made king of Hungary for his gift of religion. His acts were more businesslike than saintly, and the distracted look on the face of his statue appeared fitting. It was as if he were aware that he was unlike the other saints, perhaps unqualified, and afraid of being found out.

Keeping the church clean was a colossal task. The floors were swept daily and mopped once a week. The wax that dripped from the votive candles constantly had to be scraped. The pews required a special oil that had to be massaged into the wood once a week, and each statue was to be dusted with diaper cloth. The process was overwhelming. Though that was only the half of it. My mother was also charged with tending to the rectory and its sole occupant, Saint Ladislaus’s head priest, Father John Svitek.

The rectory was a drafty, ignoble house that huddled near the rear haunch of the church, cowering in its shadow, clearly an afterthought on the part of the builders. Despite its inglorious location and plain construction, Father Svitek ran his home like a mansion.

For a man of the cloth, Father Svitek had an air of hardness that made people treat him more like a dignitary than a priest. He was a stern man in his sixties, tall and lean with the posture of a stone pillar. His long hands and severe chin made him look even more elongated, as though he was the same height as his own shadow. Father Svitek’s manner was as rigid as his comportment. He was always curt and to the point, even in his sermons, and he spoke in crisp, meticulous syllables. Words were a commodity he
didn’t want to overuse. However, he had a habit of whistling softly whenever he wasn’t speaking. It was a cheery sound that was incongruous with his persona, and it was the only gentle thing about him.

When he wasn’t in the pulpit, Father Svitek would sequester himself in his study. He would leave lists of chores for my mother to do, duties in addition to washing all of his laundry by hand and cooking every one of his meals. The priest also demanded that my mother keep the house so impeccably clean that dust had no time to settle. The windows and floors were done weekly and the sheets changed three times per month.

Father Svitek earned only a meager stipend from the church, but because his family was wealthy, they provided him with whatever extra money he needed and Father Svitek preferred to live up to his means. In spite of his vow of poverty, he had a new radio, leather-bound books, and a down mattress. Though the priest’s possessions were common knowledge around Hyde Bend, no one ever complained about the comforts he awarded himself. No one would dare. They would never speak out against a priest.

Another extravagance Father Svitek indulged in was having fresh meat delivered regularly, a luxury my family would never know. Besides her pay, the only other benefit my mother received from her job was being allowed to take the priest’s leftovers home for us, and that was simply because he refused to eat the same thing twice. Father Svitek worked my mother the way a farmer would a mule, then acted as if giving away his uneaten food was more than generous recompense, yet my mother never complained, not once.