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

nightclothes. I had a cotton nightdress, but because it was so cold in the apartment, even with the coal stove burning, I usually wore the sweater from my school uniform over it.
    Once I’d pulled the sweater over my head, I inadvertently found myself staring eye to eye with my own reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. My hair crackled with static and a few strands stood out, floating buoyantly in the dry air. I surveyed my face as if it were a map. The curves of my cheeks and the sloping bridge of my nose seemed unfamiliar to me, my own features foreign. I was a stranger to myself. I didn’t look like my mother, that had always been obvious, but I bore little resemblance to my father either. His forehead was wide and high and constantly furrowed while mine was short and narrow and split by a widow’s peak. His eyes were big and persistent, as though nothing could escape even his view. My eyes were deep set, the lashes dark. Meeting my own image in the mirror was like catching someone staring at me in the street. Before long, I felt compelled to turn away.
    After I brushed my teeth, I realized I had to go to the bathroom. The sensation sent a surge of panic through me for a single, piercing reason—it meant I would have to go to the outhouse. Nightfall brought the rats up from the river where they lived in the pipes that drained waste from the steel mill, the salt plant, and the town’s sewers directly into the Allegheny. Under the cover of darkness, the rats came out to scrounge for food, and each night they would invade the outhouses on Third, tunneling in under the floorboards in search of any morsel or scrap. I made it a practice not to drink anything with dinner so I wouldn’t have to enter the outhouse after nightfall, but the pressure below my belly left me no choice.
    I slid on my coat and boots and peeked out the front door. Though people were often seen going to the outhouses in their pajamas, I was shy. The thought of someone seeing me in anything other than my regular clothes was nearly as frightening as the rats.
    It was cloudy, yet the moon was bright enough to see by. The wind had died down but the cold night air was severe enough to prickle my skin within seconds. To reach the outhouse, we had to cut between the apartments, along a narrow path that led to an even tinier alley where the outhouses were lined up at the rear of the apartments, each flanked by rows of laundry lines. All the sheets and clothes and towels that were hanging out to dry on the lines hung still, iridescent in the moonlight.
    I gently kicked the door to the outhouse and shook the handle. That was supposed to scare the rats away. I pounded on the door once again for good measure.
    “Okay, if you’re in there, please leave,” I whispered, hoping that if the rattling wood wasn’t enough to scare them off, maybe a human voice would.
    The interior of the outhouse was pitch dark. There was no light, no window, only a ledge for a candle, which I didn’t have. The stone slab that served as a floor was slick with mud. A wooden seat with a hole cut in the center served as the toilet, but the wood was often wet, so I never sat down. As I hiked up my nightdressand prepared to squat over the hole, a pale gray rat scurried across the floor, unintimidated by my presence.
    A shriek caught in my throat. My brain seized the noise before it could escape. If I screamed, the sound would wake everybody on the alley and I would never hear the end of it from my mother or, for that matter, from anyone else. Fear kept my feet glued to the floor even as the rat edged closer to sniff at my boot. It sat up on its hind legs, drawing in a scent, then on reflex I punted it aside and threw open the outhouse door. I barreled down the pathway and whipped around the corner and into our apartment.
    I hurled my boots from my feet and was about to climb back into bed when my bladder reminded me of why I’d gone outside in the first place. There was no way I