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

I suspected he had his own guess and was trying to get me to ask him.
    “I’ll tell you where. She’s going to the Silver Slipper to bring him home for his breakfast.”
    “Why would she do that?”
    “Because she wants to. She doesn’t want him to miss it or forget.”
    “When has he ever forgotten to eat?”
    “He hasn’t. But that doesn’t mean she can’t go there and remind him.”
    I wanted to drop the subject, so I picked up my pencil and resumed my reading. I wished Martin would do the same, but he wasn’t giving up that easily.
    “Why? Where do you think she went?”
    “You already asked me that.”
    “You never answered.”
    “I said I didn’t know. That was my answer. Now let’s finish our schoolwork before she gets back or else we’ll be in trouble.”
    Martin flopped back in his chair, defeated. He didn’t like my responses, though thankfully, he believed them. The truth was, I didn’t know where my mother was going. I could imagine a few possibilities, and none was heartening. Maybe she was leaving so she wouldn’t be home when my father got back, punishing him for his absence with her own. Or maybe she was going back to the rectory to do some work for Father Svitek, some overtime to make up for the money my father was wasting at the Silver Slipper. Or perhaps she was going to meet someone, a man even. Images of her in her kidskin gloves holding another man’s hand began to bloom in my mind, the man’s face hazy. I shuddered to shake the vision from my head.
    The nagging feeling of not knowing what my mother was up to had gotten to Martin. I could see that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his schoolwork. He began to fiddle with the shirt my mother had left on the table. He pulled it close and studied the way she was sewing the collar back on, examining the stitches and the pins that held the half-sewn collar to the shirt.
    “Be careful,” I warned. “Or you’ll stick yourself.”
    “No, I won’t,” Martin protested, then he let out a hissing wince. He had nicked his finger on one of the pins.
    “See,” I said as he sucked the tip of his finger woefully. “Don’t get any blood on the shirt or then we’ll be in real trouble.”
    “I just wanted to see how it worked,” Martin mumbled, his finger still stuck in his mouth.
    “Then you should’ve asked.”
    I slid the shirt around and propped it up on our schoolbooks so he could see the way my mother had started to resew the collar. Martin needed something to occupy him, to take his mind off her hasty departure, and so did I. I took the needle out and used it as a pointer, showing him the little stitches that held the collar in place. I explained how to pierce the material with the needle and how to make a single stitch. To my brother, it was as if I was creating magic.
    “How does that little piece of string hold this big thing together? It’s not strong. It’s tiny.”
    “Alone it’s tiny. But together with more stitches, the thread becomes strong. Strong enough to hold the collar on for good.”
    This was miraculous to Martin, inexplicable. “Can I try?” he asked, excited but hesitant, as if he might not be able to control such magic on his own.
    I passed him the needle, smoothed out the fabric and pointed to the spot where he should start the next stitch. Martin took a deep breath and pressed the needle through the underside of the collar. When it surfaced, he seemed almost surprised.
    “Not too far,” I instructed. “You want the stitches to be small and strong.”
    “Small and strong,” Martin repeated. He scrutinized his stitch, making sure it matched my mother’s. While he forced the needle back through the fabric, creating a single stitch, I tried to recall how I had learned the technique myself. I sorted back through my memory, digging for a moment when I had sat with my mother like this and she had shown me how to draw a needle through cloth and line up each stitch. Then I realized that that moment