by Alice Nelson
Outside it started to rain, the sudden roar of it like a surge of traffic. A cracking summer thunderstorm. The child stirred at the noise. Constance rose slowly to her feet and walked to the window, lifting the curtain to look out. The view of the sky was mostly blocked by the next tower and the girl let the cloth drop and stood there silently, her shoulders hunched.
She looked so out of place by the window, transplanted from whatever town or village had been burned away beneath her to this apartment six floors above Harlem, the plaster crumbling down the wall beside her. There was no landscape Marina could picture Constance against. Everything receded behind her like a stage set; the tableau of the tiny apartment, the brown towers of the projects, the streets of the city. She would never know what memories of home flashed up for the girl, what curve of land or stretch of river she held in her dreams.
Before Marina left, she wrote out her address and phone number in careful print on the back of the receipt for the groceries. Constance stood in the doorway and watched her walk away down the dim corridor, the child’s wail starting up behind her. As she hurried towards the stairwell Marina heard the catch of the door closing and the clink of the chain being drawn. She could still hear the little boy’s screams from several floors down.
It was late afternoon by the time she got home. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, but there was a heavy, bruised feeling to the afternoon. A leaden cast to the sky, the promise of another storm. She pushed open the wrought-iron door under the stairs and stepped into the coolness of the house. There was a perpetual grey semi-light in this room just below the street level; they always kept a lamp lit on the table in the tiny downstairs vestibule. The nuns who had lived here before them had a pendulous glass lantern permanently burning in the downstairs window to show that this was a place of sanctuary, the doors of the church always open. It was heartening to Marina, the warm glow of the lamp, the inherited sanctity of the place. It was up to them to maintain it, she thought.
Jacob was already home, his briefcase and a pile of newspapers on the hall table, a clattering noise and the smell of something cooking in the kitchen. He always finished work early on Fridays. The eve of the Sabbath. They never missed the Friday night dinners at Rose’s house. Sometimes it felt like the week coalesced around these Shabbat meals; the walk across the top of Central Park and south to the Upper West Side, the five of them gathered around Rose’s dining table, the predictable order of the evening.
Jacob was boiling oranges in a pot on the stove for a cake –his Aunt Esther’s recipe. She had been a woman with a litany of desserts and, childless, had bequeathed her zealously guarded recipe book to Jacob, her favourite nephew. Almost every Friday since Esther had died two years before, he had baked one of her cakes to take to Rose’s house for Shabbat, carefully deciphering Esther’s handwritten recipes. It was a kind of mourner’s Kaddish, they joked.
Marina sat at the kitchen table, watching Jacob mix the batter for the cake, a smear of flour on his shirt.
‘Do you remember the Rwandan genocide?’ she asked him.
He looked up at her, wooden spoon in his hand. ‘God, where did that come from? It’s not something that you forget.’
‘But can you remember the details? Was there a war going on?’
‘There’s always some sort of war going on in Africa, isn’t there? Why are you asking?’
‘I met that African girl again today. With the little boy. They’re from Rwanda.’
‘What African girl?’ Jacob asked.
‘The one I saw on the street before we left for Fire Island. I told you about them. Her name is Constance. And the child is Gabriel.’
‘Where did you see them?’
‘Just at the bodega.’ She did not tell Jacob that she had visited Constance’s apartment. He worried about her, she knew, ranging around the streets like she did. They still didn’t know the neighbourhood, he often reminded her, didn’t know which blocks they should avoid, which corners were the dangerous ones. Jacob didn’t even like walking past the projects; to set foot inside them would seem a rash and risky act.
Marina watched as he poured the batter into a cake tin and placed it in the oven. They should know, she thought, exactly what had happened in Rwanda three years before. A handful of details, a collection of images – it was not enough. Not to know, to choose wilful ignorance, was a kind of dishonouring.
Narrowsburg
June, 1999
Constance sits back on her knees in the dirt of the small graveyard with her hands folded in her skirt. She has a habit of coming up here in the afternoons when most of her work is finished and the nuns are resting, or on Sundays, when no work is supposed to be done. At first she just came to keep the weeds down, cutting back the hogweed and crabgrass and sorrel. The wildflowers she let stay, but the yellow of them against the old gravestones made her think about how weary and moss-covered they were. The names of the dead nuns were all covered in a spreading pale green. So one day she carried up a bucket of soapy water and a scouring brush and scrubbed all the stones clean, her fingers turning red and sore with the effort of it. Now she comes to clean the gravestones every few weeks.
The spring before, she planted some pale roses and now they are spreading over some of the graves. She has planted other things, too. There is a hardware store in the town where they sell seeds in packets with pictures of the flowers on the front. She was afraid at first of going to the town. Her face, she thought, might be in the papers. Someone might come to take her away; what she had done surely deserved punishing, and in this country there were rules for everything. But she kept her head down and the people in that small town barely looked at her. Even so, she prefers to stay close to the convent. A garden, a river, a graveyard. It is enough.
One of the seed packets she chose had a bright orange blaze of colour. The flower is called Devil’s Paintbrush. Constance thought the nuns might not want it, not with that kind of name. But Sister Vera laughed and said God wouldn’t concern himself about a silly name someone had given a pretty plant. They made a garden too, she and Sister Vera, a big green square beside the kitchen. Neat rows of lettuces and cabbage, runner beans, tomatoes staked with old stockings. Most of what they eat comes from that garden now. The things from home cannot grow in this country. Bananas, yams, manioc. Better not to have them.
In the north corner of the graveyard, under a spreading tree, are the new stones with the names of the dead nuns written on them in gold letters. Three new graves since winter. Kathleen. Mercy. Elizabeth. To see those gravestones with the nuns’ names on them is an odd thing. The names seem something separate from her memory of the nuns themselves. Kathleen’s hair was fine and soft as a baby’s. Mercy kept old lace handkerchiefs tucked into the sleeves of her cardigan. Elizabeth sang with a voice that quavered on the high notes. This kind of knowing will fade away one day. All that will be left of them is the names carved in stone.
There is another new stone, with the child’s name on it. The nuns made it. A small angel perches on the stone, its wings spread as if it were about to fly away. The stone itself has a kind of black fleck in it and it is so full of shine Constance can see her own face in it when she bends down next to the grave. Her hair is not braided anymore, just left as it was and cut short like the nuns’. She dresses like them too now. Straight skirts and blouses and cardigans, sometimes trousers when she is working in the garden, laced-up leather shoes, flannel nightdresses for warmth in winter. A long time ago she put away her cotton pagne. Sister Vera drove her to a shop in the town that first winter and chose things for her. ‘If you’re going to stay here, you’ll need some proper clothes,’ she said. If you’re going to stay. Just like that. As if it was already decided.
Sometimes she can see the child’s face very clearly, his eyes and the way they would stare at her. Watching her, waiting to see what she would do. Other times he seems only to be something she dreamed. So much of her life feels like that. Sometimes now it is hard to tell th
e things that happened and the things that did not, to sort between the daytime and night-time thoughts. Best that it can all slip into a kind of not-knowing, like that feeling of waking from a dream and wondering for a moment if it was true. She hardly knows how to arrange things in the right order anymore. Just the other night she woke with the birthing of the child in her mind. She has not thought about that for a long time. All that blood and somebody’s hands pushing on her stomach, somebody else placing a damp twist of cloth between her teeth so she could bite down. A high keening she barely recognised as coming from her. An animal sound. Better that she should die in the birthing, she had thought then. Her living had already snatched away the luck from another life.
‘Where is your child?’ they asked her when she had come here to Narrowsburg. She knew that would be the first thing they would ask. ‘What have you done with him, your little boy?’ ‘Dead’ was the only thing that she could say. She had thought about it all through the journey there, that this was how she must tell it. If she told them what had really happened, they might make her go back for him. So saying he was dead was not a lie but a kind of saving. Yes, a saving.
She had thought of a story. For the hours on the buses she thought of how she could tell it. The story was about a sickness and a hospital in the city. She had seen enough dying, knew how a face moved to a yellow dullness. She could tell them about the dying, but she was afraid they would ask her the rest of it. About doctors and papers and the grave. Then her story would give way on one side or another, like a wobbly table. In the end she didn’t have to say anything. They didn’t ask her questions after that first day. They knew already that she didn’t like talking. The nuns said the child’s name in their prayers and she thought that was all right. A prayer could do him no harm. There were no answers to prayers. No Lord’s miracles to fill people with plenty. She knew this.
After a long time here in Narrowsburg, it was in her mind that she might tell Sister Cecile. She is the oldest of all of them and it has been a whole winter and a spring since she left her bed. Constance sits by her in the afternoons. There is not much else to do for her in her dying. It is not hard work like some of the others were. Sister Cecile just lies there, looking out at the tops of the trees in her square of window. She never asks for much, just to have the window open, even in the cold. The smell of the garden coming at her through the window is like the smell of Ireland, she says.
Ireland was the place they all came from. Somewhere far away and green. Always they talked about how green their country was. Narrowsburg is green too, but not like Rwanda. And not in the long wintertime when the sky is the colour of a stone and it snows and snows. She can never get used to the months of cold. No matter how long she stays in this country she does not think her body will ever be used to it.
Sister Cecile is the one who gave her that prayer card with the Angel Gabriel on it, back in the city. Constance still has it, slipped into the place between the mattress and the wood of the bedframe. ‘A child needs a shelter,’ Sister Cecile said back then to Constance. ‘You must find a way in yourself to give that to him, as the Lord has for you.’ The Lord had given her no shelter, but she wants to tell the old nun that she has done that – found shelter for the child. She wants to tell her and then have it put away, what she has done. She thinks that perhaps one day she might, and Sister Cecile will put her hand on her arm like she does sometimes when Constance sits by her and say that it was a good thing.
But then the nuns made a grave for him. She cannot tell now. That shiny gravestone with the gold letters cost a lot of money. She knows because she heard Sister Vera say that she wished she could just bury the nuns with crosses made of wood like in long-ago times. All that wasted money was one thing. What she did was another, and perhaps if they knew it, they might not want her to stay there anymore. If she told Sister Cecile that she just turned around and left the child, maybe all the kindness would go out of Cecile. Constance could be cast out from here. Better that they do not know.
Constance takes off her cardigan and spreads it on the grass. She lies down under the tree. She likes the way the light looks through the branches and the warm feel of the soil under her. She closes her eyes for a moment, a weariness coming over her. Every morning she wakes when it is dark; sometimes there are still stars in the sky. She is the only one to hear the first bird and the cicadas in summertime. She keeps the kitchen window open while she is putting on the big pot for porridge or chopping vegetables for a soup, listening for the high hum of the insects. It is a way to say the day has started, a different way to the nuns’ morning prayers. After she has scrubbed down the kitchen, light comes into the sky and the others start to wake. Then the hours are easy to fill. Nearly all the nuns have to be helped now. Out of bed, to wash and dress, a pair of glasses found, a blouse ironed, shoelaces tied up. She was shy with it at first, pulling off nightdresses, her hands on the soft withering skin, holding their arms tight as she helped them into the shower. But it has become like any other work that needs to be done. Like washing the sheets and clothes and hanging them up on the line at the side of the house, or mopping the floors, or sweeping the leaves from the path.
You must be tired, Sister Vera says to her sometimes, wanting her to rest. Constance has forgotten what tired is or is not. Better to have something to bend her back over, for her hands to do. She sits up and brushes the leaves off her skirt. Corduroy, the fabric is called. It is soft like the fur of a small animal. There is a notebook in her room where she writes down the names of things. Corduroy. Maple tree. Crab apple. Only a handful of them needed for talking, but she likes to know them. She whispers them over to herself at night sometimes when she cannot fall asleep easily, the same way she used to chant English numbers when the child was wailing.
Constance looks up at the sky through the branches. Already a shift in the light, a widening of shadows. Soon the nuns will be shuffling down to the small chapel for vespers, the evening prayers. The day is divided into times for praying. God wanted so much of people’s time, Constance thinks. Sister Cecile told her that it was written in the psalms. She has found the right page for her and read the line aloud, her finger moving under each word. ‘Seven times a day I have given praise to thee, for the judgements of thy justice.’ Thy justice. Sister Cecile has never told her what that meant. What they should give praise for seven times a day.
Constance stretches slowly to her feet. She needs to go and see to dinner, heat the soup she made that morning and set out the bowls. There are stewed apples and vanilla ice cream for dessert, a jug of lemon cordial cooling in the fridge. She has learned all the things the nuns like. As she comes up the path that curves around the back of the house she sees Sister Vera standing in the vegetable garden. She is wearing one of Constance’s aprons over her blue dress. Her hair is mostly still dark, but there is an edge of grey to it. She stands there very still, her arms folded across her chest. Many times Sister Vera misses prayers. Constance sees her from the kitchen disappearing up the path to the apple orchard and the woods beyond while the others are all in the chapel. Some days she will stay away for the whole afternoon. Once, earlier in the spring, she didn’t come back until after night had fallen, after the rest of the nuns had eaten dinner and gone upstairs to sleep. Constance waited anxiously in the kitchen for Sister Vera to return. She hates the dark herself, the thickness of it up here in the mountains. Not one flicker of light. Not one consoling noise. Just when she thought she would have to take the flashlight they kept in the laundry and go out searching, Sister Vera came through the kitchen door. She didn’t say anything, just lit the stove and put the kettle on. She made them both a cup of tea, stirring sugar in for Constance. They sat there in the kitchen for a long time with their tea, no talk between them. Then one of the sisters called out from upstairs. A clatter somewhere above them and another call.
‘Sometimes,’ Sister Vera said to her at last, ‘I just need to go away for a little while. To put it all down for a moment. Just for
a moment.’
She didn’t have to say more about what she meant. Constance knew. Sister Vera was like the mother of all the old nuns. It had been that way sometimes for Constance with the child in the city. One day in summer, when it had been so hot that the sweat came down her forehead and into her eyes, she stopped in a small park and untied the wrap that bound him to her back. He had been squirming and kicking her and when she slapped his legs to make him stop, he only kicked harder. She staggered then, almost tripping over, and the child screamed so loudly that people stared at them. Suddenly the weight of him felt too much for her. She did not think she could take one more step, could not carry him for one moment longer. The heat had brought a kind of dizziness over her. She put the little boy down on a bench and walked away very quickly along the path out of the park. She would walk around one block, she thought. Just one block on her own, to know what it was like. To not have to carry him, to not have to take his hand to hurry him along. Nothing would happen to him in the space of just one block of walking. But she could not stop after one block. The heat that day was so thick there was a shimmer in the air, but she could not stop walking. She walked all the way to the start of the big park and stood by the water. There was a small beach on the lake there and some children were throwing rocks into the water, the grey ducks gliding away out of their reach. What would it feel like, Constance wondered, to put her feet into that water? To sit on the sand with the cool of the water at her feet.
Then a panic came over her and she turned and ran back towards the child. Fourteen blocks. She counted each one in her running. How could she have left him for that long? She ran across the avenue near the small park and a man driving a taxi yelled something angry and sounded his horn. When she came through the park gate she thought for a moment that the child had gone, that someone had taken him. But there he was, sitting very still on the bench where she had left him, not even crying. Just looking straight ahead with a strange, pinched sort of face. He didn’t make a sound when she walked towards him, but she could see a tremble in his lip and when she picked him up his heart was beating very fast. She held him against her, pressed into her chest so it felt like there was no boundary between them, that his pounding heart was her own.
