The Grave of God's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

English, as if it was our private language, a secret code we kept to ourselves.
    “What?” I asked, hoping to bluff my way out of having to answer his question.
    “The painting.”
    I couldn’t tell my brother what I believed. I couldn’t bring myself to say the thought aloud. “The hook on the back was broken,” I answered. “He probably just took it to a handyman to fix it.” It was true that the hook was broken, but it had been broken since my mother bought the painting.
    Martin nodded, easily persuaded for once, and I was thankful for that much.
    “So why is he at the Silver Slipper?”
    “I don’t know. Drinking, I guess.”
    “But he can drink at home with us at breakfast.”
    “Maybe he doesn’t want to drink with us.”
    “Why wouldn’t he?” Martin persisted. He was holding my hand harder, trying to press out the answer he wanted to hear.
    “I don’t know.”
    My tone was enough to convey that anything else I might saywould be more than he wanted to know, so Martin let the subject drop and we walked in the opposite direction my mother had gone and into the rain.
     
    T HAT DAY IN CLASS , Sister Bernadette gave a lecture about the martyrs of North America. She told us the story of Father Lalemant and Father Breboeuf, two French priests who had come to this country as missionaries and who had spent years with the Huron Indians preaching the word of the Lord. One day, a rival Iroquois tribe attacked the Huron village, and Father Lalemant and Father Breboeuf were seized and tortured. Red-hot hatchets were applied to their bodies, heated spear blades hung around their necks, belts of bark soaked in tar and resin were tied around their waists and set ablaze. Because he continued preaching to them throughout these tortures, the Iroquois gagged Father Breboeuf, cut off his nose, tore off his lips, and poured boiling water over him as a parody of baptism. Finally, large pieces of flesh were cut off the bodies of the priests and roasted, then their hearts were torn out and eaten along with their steaming blood.
    Sister Bernadette recited the account with firm purpose and without a hint of disgust. All of the nuns took rare pleasure in recounting such horrors to us. Like soldiers who never saw combat, the gory tales of the saints were their adoptive war stories, and the nuns reveled in the fear they stirred in our souls.
    Sister Bernadette spoke English, but like the rest of the nuns, her first language was Polish. So if the students wanted to whisperin class or talk about her behind her back, we spoke as quickly as we could in English. The jumble of words was impenetrable to Sister Bernadette and often made her angry enough to bring out the dreaded twin rulers from her desk drawer. When held together back to back, a pair of rulers made a formidable weapon, especially when slapped across the top of the hand. Children bore scars for weeks at a time from ruler blows. Most wore them as badges of honor. I’d never done anything in class to warrant a lashing with the rulers and had no intention of doing so. I only spoke when questioned and never raised my hand. That way I remained inconspicuous, hidden, and that made day-to-day life at school bearable.
    Later that morning, Donny Kopec came to class sporting a broken arm tied in a sling made of rags. He impressed everyone, including Sister Bernadette, with the story of how he’d broken his arm while riding the bicycle he used to make deliveries for the butcher, Mr. Goceljak. Donny had hit a rock and was thrown over the bicycle’s handlebars and into the middle of Field Street. He described the bicycle rearing up and tossing him through the air, then he claimed he’d heard the bone in his right arm break and mimicked the sound for everyone to hear. Unlike the gruesome stories of martyred saints told to scare us, this was the sort of gore we couldn’t get enough of and Donny was forced to repeat his story—which grew grander and more life threatening with every