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it, and Father Rock would poke at her until she fell off. They were like an old married couple, really. Mathilda might’ve been an extra finger on an otherwise perfectly balanced pair of hands.
    It was nothing she wasn’t used to. At St. Joseph’s, the Superior and her attendant sisters were drowning in children. In what had originally been an orphanage solely for boys, girls were still greatly outnumbered, and were appreciated most when neither seen nor heard. The underpaid help were even less attentive—the doorman, the shoemaker, the gardener—all far too busy or too bitter to notice a skinny, silent girl. Which left the chaplain and visiting archbishop, men whose longed-for gazes touched down rarely and were gone.
    Vera’s come to a standstill beside the altar, leaning on her mop as though on a cane. “Aunt?” Mathilda says gently.
    Vera clutches her belly.
    “Aunt, are you all right?”
    She expects the little woman’s head to snap round.
Of course I am
, she’ll say, or
What are you gawping at
? or even
Don’t I deserve a moment’s rest?
Mathilda expects anything but what she gets—her aunt’s face swivelling slowly, pale as a votive candle in its tunnel of glass.
    “No.” Vera grimaces. “No, girl, I’m not.”
    “Fetch Thomas,” Vera says, once Mathilda’s helped her back to the rectory, up the long, thin flights to her bed.
    “Shall I fix you a bicarb?” Mathilda asks, tucking the blankets down.
    “You ought to spend more time with him. Fetch him now. He’ll be a comfort to you.”
    “Yes,” Mathilda says absently. “I’ll go for Doctor Albright.”
    “Suit yourself.” Vera shuts her eyes. “It won’t do a stick of good.”
    Doctor Albright has been practising too long to pull his punches. “It’s too far along,” he says firmly. “There’s nothing for it but to start her on morphine for the pain.”
    “We understand,” says Thomas. “Thank you, Doctor.”
    His arm is a burden across Mathilda’s shoulders. She fears it will buckle her knees.
PANEM CAELESTEM
(
bread of heaven
)
    There was something obscene about a feast. Every autumn, the Fairview Catholic Ladies’ Committee put on a fowl supper in the basement of St. Paul’s. There was always plenty of everything good—wild sage dressing, candied sweet potato, noodle ring. August overheard all about it at school. He probably could’ve attended. His presence would’ve been tolerated, just.
    “Did you ever go to the fowl supper?” he asked Aggie the year he turned ten. “You know, when you were—younger?”
    Her face went dead a moment, then pulled itself into a smile. “Never mind.” She messed a fragrant hand in his hair. “I’ll make us a fowl supper all our own.”
    And so she did. The chicken was so big its breast touched the top of their little oven, so the skin there turned shiny and black. Aggie made his favourites—fresh buttermilk rollsand corn on the cob—and the only green vegetables were cut up small and savoury, mixed with butter and breadcrumbs, and stuffed into the bird’s behind. August ate enough for two men—the one who’d left them and the one he would someday become. He was full to bursting long before dessert, but Aggie’s pie spilled sliced apples and raisins from its lattice top, and her face looked desperately on. He managed two fat wedges smothered in fluffed cream. Undid his top button and shovelled it in.
    It all came up in a hot rush out back of the shed. He went down on his knees while Aggie washed up the dishes inside, barked like a dog until there was nothing but a froth of bile.
    Not long after the fowl supper August began showing up early to Mass. Week after week he huddled at the back of St. Paul’s, watching the altar boy prepare from afar. He began to anticipate every step, the exact moment of genuflection, the precise order in which the candles came to life. It wasn’t fair. The altar boy was one of the schoolyard’s cruellest tormentors. He already had his father’s