Chapter 4: Pierogi Sale

"Forgive me for what?" I said.

I did not put the shovel down.

I had been digging since five.

The widow's grave was a foot deep, and the shale was cold under my boots.

"For the scene," Ilona said.

"For the pin.

"Tomas has not slept.

"The old Alpha has not eaten."

She looked at the stones around us as if they were guests who had arrived early.

"You may come back as the Gamma's aide.

"You may keep the cemetery and your father's house.

"The seat itself goes to my cousin's boy, who is forty and has no wife.

"That is the best offer you will be given."

"An aide," I said.

"A respectable place," Ilona said.

"To dig the graves while your cousin's boy reads the names?"

"He will learn the names."

"He will learn them off my stones," I said.

Ilona's gloved hand tightened on her purse.

"You are making this ugly," she said.

"You were ugly in front of two hundred people," I said.

"I just walked out."

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, very low, "Be careful, Zofia.

"The Crown's law is old.

"Your father's shovel hung on the pack's wall by the pack's right.

"If you will not be an aide, I can find a way to be rid of the shovel, and of you."

I stopped digging.

I looked at her.

I had known Ilona Baran since I was six years old.

She had pinned my braids on Easter mornings.

She had held my mother's hand in the pit's gray light, and she had stood in my father's kitchen the week after, making soup nobody ate.

There was something in her face now that I could not read, something under the stone.

It was not hate.

It was closer to fear.

I put that away too.

"Come to the church hall Saturday," I said.

"Pierogi sale.

"You can say it in front of the priest."

She turned and walked down the hill without another word.

The church hall of St. Michael's Greek Catholic stands under its own onion domes, four blue and gold bulbs against the black culm bank.

Every second Saturday the women of the parish fill it with trestle tables and folding chairs.

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