I see Bessie hesitating.

It’s Lee who helps, though I don’t know if she means to. ‘Where will she go, Mother?’

‘Why, she’ll go to the other, won’t she. Now there’s two. They’ll be company to each other, I should think.’ Bessie pauses. Waits for me to leave. ‘Over in Northside,’ Bessie prompts. ‘That’s where she is.’

It’s always women who eat sins, since it was Eve who first ate a sin: the Forbidden Fruit. Some say that’s why so many foods for sins are fruits. But there’s other foods as well, like cream and leeks, that aren’t fruit at all. There’s some reason in it, for cousin sins will sometimes have the same foods, like covetousness and envy both being cream. But there’s also some with no reason. Why are thieving and thinking ill of the dead both roast pigeon? It’s like how there’s two words rock and stone that mean the same thing, but the words don’t sound alike at all.

There’s also lots of dark beliefs about sin eaters. Folk believe a sin eater grows closer to Eve with every sin she eats. So looking at a sin eater opens you up to Eve’s eye. And hearing her voice, you might be lulled into temptation, so you say the Maker’s Prayer to drown out her voice if ever she speaks outside of Recitations and Eatings. To touch a sin eater is worst. It’s a curse and burns the flesh of goodly folk. I touch the skin of my forearm, but it feels the same.

I think about Hans and Greta. In the fairy tale, Hans and Greta’s parents send them into the woods to collect mushrooms and berries. The children leave a trail of acorns to find their way home, but squirrels eat them. It gets cold and dark, and Hans and Greta fear they’ll starve or freeze, but then they see a light. It’s in a cottage made of brambles, rose hips, cattails, and other things folk eat in lean years. It isn’t theirs, but Hans and Greta are so hungry, they eat the rose hips and cattails anyway. The door to the cottage opens and an old sin eater comes out. She welcomes the children to warm themselves by her hearth fire. Hans and Greta go in and apologize for stealing food from her house. The sin eater just smiles. Hans curls up by the fire and falls asleep, but Greta stays awake and hears the sin eater singing:

Lost children roam,

I lure them home.

They steal and sin,

While I laugh and I grin.

I’ll toss them in my fire,

On the morrow find their sire,

And eat roast pigeon on their graves, graves, graves!