Chapters (55)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of Characters
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Part Two
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- A note on the Author
“Why can’t I even go to the bathroom without you watching me?” It was the first question I asked of her and the first answer she gave me. With less of an accent than I had expected, but with much stronger anger, she said, “You know why.”
“No—” squealy, squealy princess voice “—I don’t … oh, wait. Yeah, okay,” I conceded, “I know,” although until just then I had quite forgotten “… but listen, it didn’t work and so I’m not going to do it again, am I?”
“We don’t know that.”
In “we” I saw not the hospital establishment, the doctors and nurses on the emergency ward, but a phalanx of middle-aged Polish ladies, watching me from every angle.
“Oh come on. Any sensible person must know that it’s too grand a gesture to fail at and then immediately attempt again. You’re missing the point.” I looked at her. “Or maybe you’re getting the point and I’m missing it completely. Forget about it. You can watch me pee.”
At that, she turned her back.
Thus reprimanded, I crept back into bed and, pulling myself under the covers so my head was covered too, I pretended to go to sleep. Soon I was asleep. When I woke up, it was late at night or early in the morning and the lady was gone. In her place sat a withered white nun. She was staring at me, or attempting to. Her eyes were unfocused, tripping her up somewhere in the middle distance. There was a beatific smile on her splotchy face. There was a sweet smell in the room that wasn’t sweets and wasn’t goodness either. It was bourbon. The nun was drunk. As she registered me, I tried to pretend I was not awake, but winking at me, she cooed, “Ahm praying for you, little girl.”
She didn’t look like she was praying.
She tilted forward in her chair. “Are you a good Christian girl?”
“No,” I answered, peering grumpily out from the corner of my sheet, “I’m a good Jewish girl.”
“What’s that?” she asked, although I knew, from the way her red ears perked up, that she had heard me perfectly well the first time.
“I said, I’m Jewish. Sorry I can’t be of more use to you.”
She moved toward my bed. I thought, in a moment of sheer terror, that she was going to strangle me with her bony hands for murdering our Lord Jesus Christ. But, leaning into my face, she whispered, so the bourbon on her breath stung my eyeballs, “Then you are my cousin. And ahm praying for you hard!”