LITMIR.BIZ

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      Mrs. Pilsudski expected the upstairs to be a mess after the long freight train’s passage, Mary and Joseph fallen from the dresser, St. Anthony from the cedar chest. When she went upstairs, though, she found the saints abiding in her absence as she’d left them. Despite her wobbling legs, she kissed each saint, then kissed the feet of the Savior on the cross. Around her fingers she strung the rosary beads, wishing she could keep her hands forever steady with the rosary, steady the way her mind was now that she’d survived the ordeal on the trestle.

      Looking out at the darkening river, she closed her window shades to change out of her dress, girdle, stockings. Surely Jesus could forgive a faithful woman’s incontinence.

      Next she washed up, studying her face in the bathroom mirror. A wrinkled face, but pink like a rose. She let the loosened knot of gray hair fall to her shoulders. Ready for bed, she sat in the wing chair—first, to praise God, then to thank Him for her blameless life. She next sought a blessing on the house, thinking how each room had stood up courageously over the years to the violent surprises of a life near the tracks. “A good house, too,” whispered Pani Pilsudski, thinking of this bedroom, of the adjoining very holy and sacred bathroom, of the holy spare room down the hall. Then she thought of the living room below her with the flex-steel hide-a-bed and reupholstered chairs, holy as well; then of the holy kitchen, bright and airy with the good counter space, stainless steel sink, oven, stove, the dependable, holy, frost-free refrigerator. She prayed for her rooms, her knickknacks, her loofah brush—all precious because she’d worked hard to acquire them. And she was the holy woman at their center, a truly holy woman radiating goodness and humility.

      Next she prayed for the salmon patties in the refrigerator, for the ham and bean soup, for the half-eaten wienie bought from Jadzia’s store. She prayed for herself, too, and for her dear, deceased husband, Stasiu, but mainly for herself, beseeching Jesus to allow her to keep on with Blessed Footcare Work. In fact, once the 9:17 freight passed through tomorrow morning, during the hour she could stand up without the house shaking apart, she’d clean the leftovers out of the refrigerator, then, before the next freight came through, hurry across the trestle, first to confession in the new confessional, then to buy a pound of ground chuck or a soup bone at the market. Once there, she, Stella, would drop a quarter into the March of Dimes canister—no, make that thirty cents, she thought.