The Grave of God's Daughter by Brett Ellen Block

she had said, all of it. Better yet, I wanted to unremember the incident altogether. Forgetting something meant that some trace of thought must linger in the back of the mind, hiding in some secret corner. I didn’t want the memory of Swatka Pani to occupy any space or make a home in my head. The worst part was that I knew it would.
    “It’s my fault,” Martin blurted. “I was in the library at school. They got a new book and I wanted to read it. It’s my fault we’re late.”
    My mother eyed Martin, but his face was placid, certain. I knew he was lying and he knew he was lying.
    “Fine then, get inside. Supper’ll be on soon.”
    She made room for us to pass and closed the door behind us with an admonishing snap. The coal stove was burning low, but it was warm inside the apartment, a comfort from the cold and all that had happened. That comfort quickly burned off once I considered what Martin had done. I feared my own lies, but not the way I feared for Martin and what might happen to him for his. He didn’t deserve to suffer for what I had started.
    Since I could remember, the nuns had hammered the notion of sin into our skulls, pummeling us with threats of hell and damnation. The way they described it, each lie we told was like a straight pin thrust into God’s heart. Martin had put his very soul in jeopardy without a second thought simply to protect me, and the gravity of his deed could have toppled me where I stood. Though I had begun in earnest and with the best of intentions, my lies had somehow become contagious and I believed I had infected my brother with them.
    “Take off those boots,” my mother said, returning to the stove, “or you’ll track mud from the gutter all over.”
    Still shaken, Martin and I did as we were told. We removed our boots and lined them up near the door the way my mother liked, toes to the wall. She claimed that that was where all of the dirt went, though as far as I could tell it went everywhere, on the toe, the heel, the sole. Even the laces had to be washed regularly or they’d become caked in mud, ratty and untieable. My boots were filthy from all the running I’d done that day. The leather was dull with dust and clods of mud clung to the sides. Martin’s shoes,on the other hand, were relatively clean except for a few blades of grass that had gotten caught in the treads. Martin’s boots were another donation from the Benedictine nuns, also used and handed down from boy to boy in some other family. The boots were too big for Martin, so he often wore two pairs of socks to make them fit, yet they still seemed so small and delicate and precious. Seeing my brother’s tiny boots sitting there next to mine made his gesture even more poignant, the guilt of what I had done to him even more fierce.
    Martin was trying to act normal, but he was shaken. He took out his school books and prepared to do his homework, as he did each day when he returned from school. I always did the same, though it was only to keep him company. Schoolwork held little interest for me. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it either. I simply didn’t care one way or the other. The work never seemed challenging. Worse yet, it didn’t seem to matter. I imagined every twelve-year-old reading the same books, doing the same math equations, and printing the same grammar lessons all across the world and it depressed me. Nevertheless, I did my assignments, filled in all of the blanks and turned the work in on time, without fail. To do otherwise would bring consequences worse than any homework assignment—attention. If one of the children didn’t turn in their homework, they were made an example of by the nuns, who forced them to stand in front of the classroom and explain themselves. Then they had to stay after school with the nuns and copy Bible verses. I would willingly copy a thousand verses rather than suffer under the eyes of my classmates for even a second, but the punishment came as a package, so