I told you everything, admitted I stole the knife from the fish plant where I worked, past tense, a place I’ll probably never set foot in again, full of co-workers quick to judge, to turn their backs on me, good riddance to them, I say. And yes I knew how to use it, what do you expect after four years of twelve-hour shifts, knife in my firm grip, glistening under the blinding glare of fluorescents, that keen edge and double bevel ideal for the job, something I thought about every time I sliced through cartilage, stabbed below the gills, made that guillotine chop at the head and sharp slice from one end of the belly to the other, intestines, liver, heart, kidneys flooding the grey stainless-steel table, shades of purple and red flowing down the assembly line to the filleter, dressed same as me in a uniform and apron with that long front pocket, perfect for hiding the knife till I got it to my locker, slid it into my backpack, brought it home where I laid it on the false floor in the bathroom cupboard next to my birth-control pills, under the porcelain sink that he once slammed my skull against.

I wasn’t going to risk getting pregnant again with another daughter, risk having him do like he did with the twins, not hiding his lust. You’d swear I didn’t try hard enough to keep him satisfied, as if such a thing could be humanly possible, never once in the world did I refuse, not because I wanted him, God no, but only to keep him away from my girls who right now are probably crying for their mommy, eyes swollen, sweet voices hoarse from asking “What’s goin’ on, Grandma?” She staring bleary-eyed at nothing, can’t figure out why I’d do such a horrible thing to her son-in-law, he a saint in her eyes, always playing at his charade, Mr. Nice Guy, whose real self I couldn’t expose to any social worker, guidance counselor, teacher, mother, friend. They’d never believe me.

So now you’ll understand, Detective, why I called it my knife in shining armor—standing guard, ready to protect me and my daughters from this brute, savage, sadist. And just so you know, if it hadn’t been for them, I would have high-tailed it to the end of the earth, as far away as I could get. But I stayed for their sake, to shield them from him, from hurt, from shame, from trauma, from something that would scar them for life, all the while in the back of my mind picturing the day when one of them might have a tummy ache and need to stay home from school while Mommy’s slaving at the fish plant and he’s lounging in front of the TV, courtesy of workmen’s compensation for a nasty back injury after a fall off a scaffold—a fall that by all rights should have put him six feet under and would have if there were a just God with me on his long list of souls to be saved, and while he’s at it, save my girls from their grief, from someday finding out that their daddy was a monster who took such perverted delight in inflicting pain on their mommy, she holding everything together as best she fearfully could, telling herself there’s got to be a reason for it, maybe to do with karma, something awful one of her ancestors did that she’s paying for even though she knows she’s the last person on this planet who deserves to be accused of anything more than loving her children, meanwhile never knowing when he’d leave them motherless.

I’ll stop there, Detective, no point saying more. Your sly smirks tell me you don’t believe me one iota, same as no one believed the thousands, probably millions of other women nearly choked to death by a man. And you can be one hundred percent certain that’s what he intended to do—choke me. Talk about premeditation. For the record, make it crystal-clear that I acted in self-defense, and please don’t say a woman in my situation only has to jump up and scream, “This has got to stop.” Don’t say it because you can be darn sure no one’s ever going to listen to her, might as well be buried alive, suffocating, shouting “Help,” not caring about herself, only about the daughters she’ll do anything for, even if it means admitting guilt, knowing deep down that women are always found guilty, and didn’t I learn in catechism class in primary school about disobedient Eve, tempted by the serpent, by selfishness, tarnishing us all with original sin, with eternal pain and suffering when we, including you, all know she was only a scapegoat.

And that, Detective, is the truth. So help me God. True as this trail of bruises on my neck.

The Resistance Painter

by Kath Jonathan

    The Resistance Painter is a gripping novel of wartime betrayal and survival. A Globe and Mail and Toronto Star instant best seller, it has been called "timely and timeless" by Janet Sommerville in the Toronto Star and recommended on CBC Books. At the heart of the story beats a question as urgently relevant today as it was eighty-five years ago: How do we live with integrity and compassion in the middle of a war? The novel introduces us to Jo, a young sculptor in 2010 Toronto who specializes in interviewing dying people in order to make a stylized sculpture for their grave sites. When her new client Stefan tells a life story eerily similar to her grandmother's wartime history, Jo digs for answers, catapulting the novel back into Warsaw 1939 when her grandmother Irena was a young woman faced with a brutal Nazi occupation. Irena and her sister Lotka must decide how to survive while helping family, friends and country. Irena joins the Polish resistance and becomes expert at conducting people through the dangerous sewers of Warsaw. Her sister Lotka follows a different path. She becomes a surgical nurse whose skill is respected by occupiers as well as resistors. Irena survives to become a lauded artist, whose stark, tender paintings hold terrifying secrets, while Jo discovers a voice and a family she never knew she had. For more about the author: www.kathjonathanauthor.com. Available from Bookshop, Amazon and your local independent bookstore  

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