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Time Between Trains. Anthony Bukoski
Читать онлайн.Название Time Between Trains
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780983325444
Автор произведения Anthony Bukoski
Издательство Ingram
The freight trains contributed to her shaking hands; maybe they were the reason she retained water, because she was so nervous all the time—then a slip of the knife, then a cry of pain, then a customer’s toe to bandage. If her mistakes continued, she’d lose people’s trust.When it all got too much, the widow stared at herself in a mirror and wept. “Starość nieradość,” she’d exclaim. “Old age is no good.” The loneliness, too. If she didn’t keep the television on to distract her, she’d think all day how life conspired against her.
Lord, how much there was to dwell on. She still hated the sodality women for bringing up an old story about her. During Mass once, she’d had to make a quick exit. In the ladies’ room, she pulled down her living girdle to relieve herself of what she called “water buildup.” As she hurried back to receive communion, a lengthy piece of toilet paper clung to her skirt. Though Mrs. Pilsudski concentrated on the Body of Our Savior during this sacred moment, on the trip back to her pew, people snickered, altar boys laughed. The parish was still laughing, because certain sodality women couldn’t shut up about the toilet paper that’d looked like a miniature bridal train. Even the priest at coffee hour said to her as though she were Mr. Whipple, “Don’t squeeze the Charmin, Stella.”
“Jezu kochanej,” she muttered, embarrassed even now at the memory.
At home she’d rouged her cheeks, pulled her gray hair into a bun, put on eyeglasses that pinched her ears. Despite resistance from her girdle, she’d pushed her body forward to work her feet into good, solid shoes. Finally, out came the wool coat she wore year round. Thus prepared, she set out across the trestle above the Left-Handed River, gradually coming to her wits’ end what with the heat and with the heavy work and social pace she’d been setting for herself.
Clear of the trestle now and of the barley field where in the fall she picked caraway seeds to chew on the way to Mass, she spied St. Adalbert’s Church and across from it the school with its gymnasium where the sodality circle met. She felt the coat hang heavily from her shoulders. Something else hung in her mind: the demons who would talk about her and her wet spot, Baba this, Baba that. The main thing was that she—the once envied, respected Mrs. Pilsudski—was leading rosary sodality tonight, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Each so-called Rose, or worship group, was here. She heard the good Polish ladies of Rose One chattering in the school gym downstairs; the Lithuanians of Rose Two; the Slovaks of Rose Three. (Oh, those Slovaks irritated her using their word sokol instead of the proper English word sodality. Harriet Bendis especially got to her the way she always played up to the priest.) On and on Mrs. Pilsudski counted how many Slovaks were here, how many Lithuanians, how many Poles.
Upstairs above the classroom and gym, Sister Dorota in coif and wimple sat on a couch with white lace doilies. Wiping the remains of a heavy supper from her chin, she wiggled her toes in the warm water of the metal pan Mrs. Pilsudski kept with the nuns.
“How are your feet?” inquired the podiatrist when she came in, out of breath from climbing the stairs.
Falling heavily to her knees, she swished water in the basin, trying to concentrate on the rosary sodality. But all she could think of was the thief and grocer Harriet, the Slovak the ladies called Jadzia, who’d recently presented the old church a new confessional. Jadzia, Jadzia, she hated the name! “If Jadzia’s behind the counter at her store and you order a pound of wieners and are just a little over, Sister, she’ll break one with her thumb and throw the piece back in her meat cooler. What goot’s a half-inch long wiener to Jadzia? ‘Mrs. Bendis,’ I always say to her, ‘I pay for wienie. Don’t break it t’at way.’”
“Ow,” Sister said when Mrs. Pilsudski nicked her toe as though it were a wiener on Mrs. Bendis’s grocery scale.
“Here. It’s not bleeding. We’ll soak it,” said the bunion scraper.
She cut around on the nun’s other foot, feeling privileged to do such humble service—like Mary Magdalene would. She cut off a slice of callus like a slice of pear. She scraped at Sister’s other calluses.
“I have sodality meeting,” Mrs. Pilsudski said a moment later as she washed her hands in the kitchen. “I’m tonight’s leader.”
Hoping for the nun’s blessing, she heard only the four other nuns discussing their favorite TV reruns. Mrs. Pilsudski powdered her face. A light blue ribbon hung from the sodality pin above her heart. She adjusted the ribbon and pin.
Taking a breath, she corrected her posture. Though she did-n’t fear leading the women in the Apostles’ Creed, she did fear the Hail Mary. That prayer would confuse her, for lately—no, it’d been a year or two already—she’d been saying the rosary without thinking what the prayers meant. At home she’d pray with the TV on reruns of Mister Ed or Green Acres. Her lips would move reverently, fingers edging along the beads, but her mind would be lingering on what Mister Ed said to Wilbur. In the middle of the Hail Mary, she’d laugh at how they made the horse’s lips move or she’d sing the Green Acres theme.
At sodality she’d lose her concentration, too. It never failed. While other ladies bowed, she’d stare at Mrs. Waletzko’s dishpan hands or calculate how much hair Mrs. Simrak had lost.
“It’s ‘Hail Mary, full of the grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou amongst the women, and blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus,’ not ‘Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners . . . ,’” she told herself. She always got the Hail Mary and the Holy Mary mixed up. That was what came of watching TV nonstop: you didn’t pay attention to your rosary. Fifteen times she said it: “Hail Mary, full of the grace—”
Downstairs, forty-five sodality women waited. Each, according to the rules, was to say three rosaries by herself per week, one for each of the three mysteries of the rosary.
Each mystery contained five smaller ones, such as the Mystery of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.
Checking behind her to see that no baby-soft Charmin stuck to her, Mrs. Pilsudski peeked in. The newest sodality members sat at the lower end of the warped hardwood floor, the older ones at the gym’s other end. Someone was saying, “Baba,” thought Mrs. Pilsudski, but overcoming her fear, she marched in. “Prayer time,” she said. After hurried talk and the rustling of glass, plastic, and wooden beads, each Rose held the crucifix of her rosary.
The Apostles’ Creed and the Our Father passed smoothly. As Mrs. Pilsudski began the first of ten small beads with “Hail Mary,” though, a spiteful voice cut her off.
Forty-four selfless voices responding to the Hail Mary, and one selfish voice had to rush her response.
Mrs. Pilsudski tried again. “Hail Mar—.” Before she finished, the voice said, “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” in perfect English. Two beads deep and it was a prayer war.
The widow had heard that annoying, urgent voice for years at the grocery store saying, “It’ll be forty-five cents for this” or “sixty-three cents for that.” Now Mrs. Pilsudski was hurrying to get away from it. The faster she, Stella Pilsudski, said, “Hail Mary,” the faster the other woman’s voice: “Holy Mary.”
“Hail Mary.” “Holy Mary.” “Hail Mary.” “Holy Mary.” It was a holy race.
Jadzia, the conserver of wieners, exalted herself with each response, which was just like her. She was wearing a summer suit, sensible for tonight’s weather, conceded Mrs. Pilsudski, though perhaps a bit formal. The corner grocery store magnate had had her hair fixed, too. The bouffant did little for that turned-up snout. Now the widow Pilsudski’s own hair fell about her forehead in sweaty ringlets. Her winter dress trapped the summer heat. She could feel her hands and legs swelling with water, her head growing light.
“Hail Mary, pray for us, the sinners,” she said. “No, Hail Mary, I mean, full of the grace. That’s what I mean.”
“Holy