The Grave of God's Daughter (23 page)

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkened room, then I was greeted by an upturned table. Broken beer bottles were scattered on the floor. In the middle of the barroom a mass of men were struggling in a tangle of flailing arms and twisting legs. All the while a tinny trumpet tune was jingling from the radio.

Then one of the Pierwsza brothers appeared from another room. It was Clement, squat, with his shoulders up near his chin, his ruddy face seeming to cave in under the weight of his brow. He was wielding the infamous baseball bat. Four nails protruded from the end. Clement lumbered toward the swarming mass, footfalls thundering on the floorboards.

“Get up. Get off of him. Now,” he shouted in Polish, charging at the heap.

A few men pulled away, then a pained, guttural moan seeped out from under the pile. Clement hoisted the bat high.

“Move!”

The rest of the men clambered to their feet, though one remained splayed on the floor. At first, all I could make out were his legs, one foot with a boot, one without.

“Jezu Christe,”
Clement uttered, then he dropped the bat to the floor where it embedded itself in the wooden planks. The men
backed off farther still, revealing the man that lay before them. It was Leonard.

I clamped my bandaged hand to my mouth, stifling a scream. Blood streamed from Leonard’s nose and mouth, ebbing over his teeth. He heaved once, then blood sprayed from his lips with a gurgle. The blood rained back down on him, spattering his face.

“Look what you’ve done,” Clement shouted.

“That stupid bastard shouldn’t’ve come back after what he did,” one man yelled.

“He killed her,” another called out. The other men sounded off in agreement.

“He’s a murderer,” another barked.

Clement cursed them and knelt next to Leonard. As he pulled him into his arms, Clement dislodged something from under Leonard’s body, which skittered across the floor and came to a stop at my feet. It was the bottom half of a broken bottle, the rounded end still intact. The jagged, broken rim was slick with blood.

I was holding my breath to keep from sobbing as tears poured over my fingers, hidden in the shadow of the cap. I inhaled once, too loudly, and all the men in the room turned. Their faces were blank and unrecognizable, all except one. It was my father. He was looking straight at me. I drew in a sharp breath. He continued to stare, but he didn’t recognize me.

Leonard let out another gasp and the men swiveled back to him. Clement was rocking him gently, smoothing Leonard’s hair with a stubby hand. Leonard raised his arm to Clement, then it dropped limply. His gaze drifted and settled on me. A thin vein of blood rolled from Leonard’s nose, over his lip, and into his mouth, then his eyes went dull.

“Leonard?” I whispered.

Some of the men spun toward me.

“Get the boy out of here,” one of them said.

My father was staring down at Leonard’s body, his jaw flexed, resisting an expression. If it was disgust or guilt or satisfaction, I would never know. Nobody moved.

I took a step forward, toward Leonard, then two men started in my direction. I dropped the package and took off running.

“Let him go,” I heard one say as the door swung shut behind me. To them, I was a boy, but that was all and it wasn’t enough to make a difference.

I ran hard, arms pumping, dashing across Field Street to the butcher’s shop and flinging myself against the front door. Mr. Goceljak was with two women, customers, each in wool overcoats and clean shoes.

“They killed him,” I shouted. “They killed him.”

The women went wide-eyed and exchanged glances. I was raving, tears streaking my face, my clothes grubby.

“Go around back,” Mr. Goceljak ordered.

“But—”

“Now,” he commanded. The women watched me, waiting for me to obey. I tore outside, slamming the door hard enough to leave the bell jangling.

The alley behind the shop was empty. The door to the curing shed was closed and locked, the bicycle chained by the stoop. Everything was the same. I hated the sight of that alley, that sameness, more than I thought possible.

In a fit, I began to kick the bicycle. First with my toe, then I jabbed at it with my heels, ramming the delicate spokes with my
boot. I kicked the wheels and the pedals and the basket until my limbs blurred with the motion.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

I couldn’t tell if I was shouting out loud or hearing the voice in my mind, yet I kept kicking. The bicycle slumped lower against the railing, hanging on by the chain.

Mr. Goceljak came flying out the back door and wrestled me away from the bicycle, pinning my arms behind me and forcing my head to his chest, the bloody apron pressing against my face.

“Stop. Stop it,” he said. He pushed me up against the shed to restrain me. As soon as my body stopped moving, I started to sob. Mr. Goceljak loosened his grip on my arms and they dropped to my sides. The cap fell from my head as I wept, and my hair slid down onto my shoulders and stuck to my teary cheeks.

Mr. Goceljak kept his arms around me and let me cry. He held me lightly, as if he were holding a glass rather than a little girl. He was the only thing keeping me standing. If he had let go, I would’ve crumpled to the ground.

“Leonard came back, didn’t he?”

I nodded, chin quivering, and Mr. Goceljak sighed.

“Would’ve been a full shift’ve men from the mill there this time a day,” he said, calculating how bad it must have been. He shook his head dismally. “That boy never should’ve come back here. Something like this was bound to happen. But I s’pose he didn’t have anywhere else to go. No family. No friends. Nothing for him to go back to ’cept what he knew.”

“But I—”

“What? You thought you were going to fight off all of those men? You might’ve done some damage to that poor bicycle over
there, but boy clothes or not, you wouldn’t have had a chance against ’em.” Mr. Goceljak tipped my face to meet his, to make sure I knew how serious he was. “You couldn’t have helped Leonard. You understand?”

My head pounded from crying and my eyes ached. Even nodding hurt, but I did it anyway to prove to him that I’d understood. Mr. Goceljak let go of my arms and I wavered, then steadied myself against the smokehouse door.

“Easy there,” he said, preparing to catch me if I fell. “Think you can walk?”

“I think so.”

“All right then, we have to get you inside and cleaned up. You look worse than the bicycle.”

The bicycle was listing against the steps. One of its wheels was turned up and spinning slowly.

“I’m sorry about the bicycle. I don’t have enough money to pay you back for it.”

“That’s for sure considering what I pay you.”

Mr. Goceljak led me inside, where a few pots were boiling on the stove, steam rattling the lids. The syrupy smell of the stewing meat made the room feel warmer than it was.

“Let’s start with the pants,” Mr. Goceljak said. “They even look dirty to me, and that’s saying something.”

I went to untie the rope belt he’d tied for me earlier, but it was no use. My fingers were numb.

“Let me,” Mr. Goceljak said. I tried to step out of the pants and couldn’t get my balance. “Lean on my shoulder,” he told me, leaning over so I could reach him. I shook off the pants, legs stiff, and he pulled them from my boots, then put them aside along
with the cap. “Now we’ve got to do something about those bandages.”

Mr. Goceljak unpinned the wraps and removed the bandages as gently as he could. My palms were worse than before. Without the protection of the bandages, they quickly turned an angry red. The skin around the blisters was puckered and still slick with ointment. “These are pretty bad,” Mr. Goceljak lamented. “You got more bandages at home?”

We did, but I couldn’t use them, couldn’t be seen with them on. Mr. Goceljak took my silence as his answer, then riffled through one of the drawers and came up with a roll of his own. “You put ’em on at night. Once you’re in bed if you have to, then wake up early to take ’em off. But put ’em on, okay?” He held the roll out to me, but my fingers were too stiff to grasp it. “Here,” he offered, slipping the bandages into my coat pocket.

“It’s late,” I said. “I have to go.”

“Just one more thing.”

Mr. Goceljak dug around in another drawer and came up with a little black comb. “Can’t have you looking like you been in a fight. Well, not more than you already do.” He held the comb out to me, then realized I wouldn’t be able to hold it either. “Sorry. Forgot. You want me to do it?”

I was too tired to be embarrassed or to protest. Mr. Goceljak stepped around behind me and ran the comb over my head in tentative strokes. The tines of the comb slid through my hair and down my scalp. This wasn’t how my mother brushed my hair. This felt different, gentle, soothing. Then Mr. Goceljak hit a knot and the comb came to a tugging halt.

“Sorry,” he said and I actually felt him flinch. “Sorry.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

Mr. Goceljak began again, working his way around my head until he reached the front. “Now what do I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it done?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t see.”

“Don’t have a mirror here,” he apologized. “No need for it.”

“I’m sure it’s all right.”

Mr. Goceljak was worried about whether he’d done a good job. “Best I could do.”

“It’s fine, really. I’m sure it’s fine.”

“All right then, I guess you should be on your way.”

I doubted that Mr. Goceljak was aware of it, but that was the same phrase he had spoken to me every single day since I’d met him. I liked that we had a routine, that that was the way things always ended.

“Should I come on Monday?” I asked, half-expecting him to fire me there and then.

“Wouldn’t be Monday if you didn’t.” Mr. Goceljak offered me a smile. “Here,” he added, taking two quarters from his pocket. “It’s Friday, payday.”

He held the quarters out to me. “Oh, sorry,” he said, then he dropped the quarters in my coat pocket along with the roll of bandages. “You don’t have a hole in that pocket, do you?”

“No, it’s all sewn up.” There had been holes in each of the pockets when I got the coat from the nuns. There were holes in everything we wore. That was a given.

“Good. We don’t need you losin’ the bandages or the money.”

He opened the back door for me. The bicycle lay wounded against the steps.

“Sorry,” I offered again.

Mr. Goceljak waved me off. “Hey, you didn’t say if the woman—” he began. He was about to ask me what had happened when I went to the house on River Road. Instead, he looked me up and down, taking in the sum of what I’d been through, and simply said, “I’ll see you Monday.”

F
IELD
S
TREET WAS FULL OF PEOPLE
, all gathering outside the Silver Slipper. The women kept their distance while packs of men pushed in close to the Slipper’s front porch. Even some of the shopkeepers were leaning out of their stores. Though there was nothing to see, just people standing around as they had outside Swatka Pani’s house, I couldn’t bear to look.

Sister Anne was standing on the steps of the school holding Martin’s hand in a rigid grip when I arrived. He was staring at his shoes, his books clutched in his free arm.

“What’s going on?” I asked in English. The nuns refused to be addressed in Polish. To them, English was the formal language.

“Your brother has a discipline problem,” the sister declared, her accent sharpening each word. Martin rolled his eyes furtively. “He tried to steal one of the books from the library.”

“Martin?”

“I didn’t. I—”

Sister Anne squeezed his hand between her bony fingers. “He had not checked out this book,” she said, holding up the one with the lamb on the cover, “and he packed it up with his school textbooks and tried to walk out with it.”

“But—” Martin tried again. The sister clasped his hand hard, choking off his excuses.

“There’s got to be some mistake. This book is Martin’s favorite. He checks it out all the time. Why would he try to steal it?”

“Like you said, it’s his favorite. Maybe he didn’t want to have to check it out anymore.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Girl, are you telling me I’m mistaken? That I didn’t see what I saw?”

I was standing on the step below Sister Anne and she was towering over me while clutching Martin, unwilling to let go.

“No, Sister,” I apologized, trying to pacify her. “All I’m saying is that maybe he forgot. He’s so used to having the book and checking it out that he probably thought he’d already signed for it.”

Martin looked up at Sister Anne hopefully. “That’s what happened. Really, Sister. I forgot.”

I took the lamb book from him and flipped to the back cover, hands aching. “See,” I said, offering the book to her. Martin’s initials filled the check-out card.

“Fine. But don’t let it happen again.”

Sister Anne held out Martin’s arm to me like a leash. I went to take his hand and she eyed mine, the top of which still bore the welts she’d seen earlier. Though I’d convinced her to let Martin
go, the welts confirmed to Sister Anne that she was right about us, that we were bad children capable of back talk, stealing books, anything.

“Come on, Martin.”

Martin scurried to my side and we hastened down the steps and away from the school. Out of the corner of his mouth, Martin whispered, “Do you think she’s still watching us?”

“Yup.”

“When we get around the corner, you think she’ll go inside?”

“Yup.”

“Then can I stick my tongue out at her?”

“Yup.”

Once we’d turned onto the next street, Martin stuck his tongue out in the direction of the school.

“Feel better?”

“Much.” He slid his hand into my coat pocket as we walked. “I did try to steal the book, you know.”

I stopped midstride, forcing Martin to lurch forward to keep his hand in my pocket. “What?” I asked, assuming I’d misheard him.

“I wanted the book, so I took it. You saw for yourself. Nobody reads it but me, and nobody likes it the way I do, so I thought it should be mine.”