The Grave of God's Daughter by Brett Ellen Block Page A

I did everything to avoid it altogether.
    While Martin and I began our homework, my mother started chopping a potato on a board at the sink. She cut it into slivers to make it seem as if there was more, though that only made things worse. The bits of potato would grow soft and mushy and, after a few days, they would disintegrate, turning the soup into a heavy, bland stew with the consistency of cream but none of the taste.
    “Don’t touch that shirt there on the table. I’m mending it,” my mother instructed, never taking her eyes off the knife.
    One of my father’s shirts was on the table. The collar had been removed and my mother was in the process of turning it. The front of the collar had become too frayed to be presentable, but we didn’t have the money for a new shirt, so my mother would cut off the collar, invert it, and reattach it so that the clean, unmarred underside was on top.
    “Sorry,” I said, inching my schoolbooks farther from the shirt.
    The big stew pot my mother favored was already on the stove. We were low on coal, so it would take time to bring the pot to a boil. Once she’d minced the potato as finely as she could, she dumped it into the pot, then she took a parcel wrapped in butcher’s paper from the icebox. My eyes locked on the package.
    My mother unwrapped the paper as if she was unwrapping a present. Inside were the cleaved ends of six sausages. I was relieved when I realized what they were. The nubby scraps were the remnants of Father Svitek’s supper. Early on, he had instructed my mother that he did not eat the ends of his sausages and that she was free to have them if she wanted. She took them without fail.
    My mother retrieved the large iron skillet from inside the oven where she kept it, and carefully placed half of the sausage ends inthe center. They were to be my father’s breakfast. She dropped the remaining bits of sausage into the stew pot for us and gazed down at them like pennies she’d thrown into a wishing well, then she stirred them into the mix until they disappeared. She stood there at the stove staring into the pot for so long that even Martin ceased his studies to watch her. When my mother realized we were staring, she went to the sink to wash her hands.
    “All right,” she said, drying her hands on a rag. “I have to go out.”
    Martin and I shared a glance. My father spent his afternoons as well as evenings at the Silver Slipper and would come home only to shave, gobble down some food, and get his lunch. Even so, my mother made it a practice to be home when he arrived to eat and rarely left the apartment afterward. Her leaving before he came back was a bad sign.
    “Where are you going?” Martin asked, genuinely perplexed by the sudden change in routine.
    My mother’s expression flashed with worry. It was the same look I imagined I must have worn minutes earlier when she’d asked me where we had been. She was deciding whether to lie or not.
    “Just out,” she stammered. “I expect your homework to be finished by the time I get back.”
    She went into the bedroom and when she came back out, she was pulling on her dress gloves. They were far from extravagant, merely a thin, brown kidskin, but they weren’t nearly as beat up as her wool gloves, which bore holes from years of use. My mother was also carrying a small sack and trying to conceal it at her side.
    “Don’t touch the pot. It’s hot,” my mother said. Then she was gone.
     
    T HE APARTMENT WAS QUIET except for the sound of the stew pot beginning to boil. I pretended to read while Martin tried, unsuccessfully, to balance a pencil on its point. Finally, he faced me.
    “I don’t know,” I said, preempting his question.
    “But?”
    “I don’t know,” I repeated. “I have no idea where she’d be going or why, so don’t ask.”
    “She’s got to be going somewhere. She can’t be going nowhere. There is no nowhere . At least not around here.”
    “Then where do you think she’s going?”