The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  The bus passed the edge of the convent’s grounds. They got off.

  “Now,” her aunt said, “there. That is some place, no?”

  There was a wire fence and line upon line of pecan trees that had been planted in precise straight rows years ago and had grown very tall and dense. The ground under them was dark and mossy and without a speck of grass.

  “The gate is this way here,” her aunt said. “You take the big bag.”

  It was drizzling very lightly. Annie could hear its soft whispering sound in her hair. They walked around the corner following the fence, and passing a church with a high pyramid of steps and a brass rail running down the middle.

  “There,” her aunt said. “Over there we are.”

  She had to lift her head to see: the heavy carved-wood doors set in a gray cement arch. There were two narrow iron stairways curving up to it, one on each side.

  “You go that way,” her aunt said pointing to the left, while she herself started up the right.

  Annie climbed slowly. Halfway up, she had to put the suitcase down, and rest, the stairs were that steep.

  She stayed at the convent for ten months—until one day, almost without thinking about it, she wrote a letter to her father, saying she was very homesick—but looking back, she couldn’t believe it had been that long. Probably because she didn’t remember it as a whole. She remembered just little bits and pieces. Her great-aunt’s face, brown and wrinkled with a crinkled quivering little chin and a sharp beaked nose, with a white circle of starched linen for a cap and a wider circle of shiny smooth linen for a collar. The long dark halls, with black linoleum in a narrow strip down the center. The dark formal parlors, wood-paneled and smelling of furniture polish, with straight high-back chairs of heavy oak, claw-footed. And the windowless vestibule before the leather-padded chapel doors: dark pillars and black-red carpet and a single red vigil light burning. And Mass on winter mornings, before the heat had come on, when her knuckles turned red with little white criss-crossings, when even the candle flames looked cold and unsteady.

  She was tired all the time. Mornings when the bell rang to wake up the convent, she could hardly open her eyes. Her body seemed so long and heavy on the bed she did not think she could raise it up ever again. She fell asleep during Mass, even in the cold; once she slipped out of her pew and clipped the side of her head against the floor. All that winter she felt that her body was not part of her at all. She felt stiff and strange, her legs and arms hurt. And when she looked in the mirror she saw under her eyes heavy black circles with little cobweb lines of veins in them.

  Evenings she learned to crochet because there was nothing else to do. She finished a pale green stole, folded it in a drawer and did not wear it. Then she began a bedspread, the same color, because it was the only yarn the convent had.

  She shared a room with a South American girl whose name was Beatriz Valdares. She was short and very dark, with the figure of a nursing mother. Her family had sent her out of the country when the rifle bullets of revolutionaries crashed into their living-room. So Beatriz waited impatiently, writing long letters home, four and five pages at a time, in violet ink. Though she had been at the convent three months, she had learned hardly any English.

  She and Annie disliked each other immediately. They divided the room by a chalk mark down the rug. And when Beatriz left for the week-end—she was always gone visiting friends—she would point to her side of the room, double up her fist, and shake it.

  The very first week Beatriz went to her cousin who was a nun and complained that Annie talked in her sleep all night long. But there were no empty rooms in the convent and so she came back in worse humor than before. That night she shook Annie so hard that her fingernails dug into her arm, and left little blood marks.

  Annie lay quietly, and tried to remember what she’d been dreaming. Finally she pulled the covers over her head and tried to go to sleep.

  Lying there, without moving, she heard Beatriz get up. There was the faint rustle of a taffeta robe and then the very faint creak of a door. Annie sat up and switched on the lamp to be sure: the other bed was empty. She looked at the clock: it was five minutes to twelve.

  Annie turned off the light. Her head was hurting, and she felt too tired and sick to be curious.

  Occasionally during the months that followed, she would wake up and find that Beatriz was gone. She noticed that it was always the same time—a few minutes to twelve—and that Beatriz would be gone a little less than an hour. Annie did not care. It was a long time before she was well enough to be curious.

  Then, one night, in the very early spring, when she heard the door close softly, she got up and followed. She did not stop for a robe or for slippers, though the floors were icy cold and she shivered inside her flannelette pajamas. She caught only the tiniest flash of the robe down at the far end of the dim hall, so she followed, walking on her heels to keep the boards from squeaking. She did not realize where she was going until she got there: down the narrow side steps to the door that led to the back garden, the dark grove of pecan trees she had seen on her first day. The door was open about an inch. She tried peeping through, then put her shoulder to it and pushed. It grated softly—she turned and raced up the stairs to bed. She was asleep before Beatriz returned.

  It was not until the next day she figured out what had happened. It was so simple, she should have thought of it sooner. Beatriz had a man waiting for her. It couldn’t be anything else.

  When Annie saw her next, she couldn’t help staring at her.

  The girl frowned. “Que rayos te pasa?”

  Annie looked at her, imagining what it must be like those cold nights down in the dark of the pecan trees. And she started giggling. Only it wasn’t so much a giggle as a laugh that caught somewhere back in her throat. Finally she had to turn over and pull the pillow over her face to stop.

  The next time Beatriz slipped away, Annie got up too. She stopped to pull a sweater on over her pajamas. She peered down the hall, but remembered the outside door and the sounds it made when opened. She went back into her room and leaned out the window, leaned far out, trying to see. No use: they would be around the corner of the building.

  It was a bright night, with an almost full moon. There was just a sliver gone. The trees, which came up to the level of the second story, were still and silver-colored. The peaked bell tower of the church was spotted and moldy in the light.

  And she saw something else: the broad ledge of the window sill continued like a belt around the building, trimmed here and there by grinning gargoyles and curly-maned lions.

  She swung herself out on the ledge, and stood up, slowly. She balanced herself carefully, swinging her weight from one leg to the other, back and forward, getting the feel. The ledge was too narrow for balance with both feet together, but with one hand holding to the brick wall, she could walk easily, her feet crossing one over the other.

  She stopped to rest at the first of the gargoyles. She hooked her arm around his cement neck and looked about. Straight down, through a break in the trees, she could see the clipped grass. The moon was so bright she could almost pick out each single blade. Above—she craned her neck back—the brilliant misted sky with only faint touches of stars. And quite suddenly she wondered what it was like on the island—it was a clear night; the bay would be flat and gleaming, with just little wrinkles like an old mirror. And on the boats the rough decks would look soft and smooth as teak; their stiff tarry nets would be soft delicate folds.

  She sniffed. But there was no smell of salt or marsh. Only the clean odor of cut grass and the faintly murky odor of the old building.

  She inched on until she had reached the corner of the building. She peeped around, down into the pecan grove. She still could not see anything. A lion’s head ornamented the corner. She stopped for a minute, thinking. She would have to step around that projection; she would have to make the right angle turn without losing balance. For a minute or so she stared at the lion that blocked
her path. In the moonlight she could see every grain of cement that made up his face.

  Then she turned, facing the building, put the fingers of her left hand in his eyes, hooking them for a little balance. Her right arm reached around his head. And hugging the concrete, she stepped.

  For a second her foot touched nothing, and she felt a little flutter of panic in her stomach. She was reaching too high. She brought her foot down along the edge of the building until it found the ledge. Then very carefully, spread-eagled on the corner of the building, she shifted the weight to her right foot, then brought the left leg over. She felt the cloth of her pajama knee scrape and tear, but she did not even bother looking. Her fingers were tingling with excitement, as she straightened up on the other side and let her breath go out in a hissing sigh.

  She forgot why she had come. She forgot to look down into the rows of pecan trees for the couple. She forgot everything except the feel of the concrete under her bare feet, the wind, and the bright hard moonlight. She could feel how sharp and cold the wind was but she did not care. She was as warm as if she had a heavy coat.

  The tops of the trees were on a level with her feet, soft trees, still as a painting. A car went by on the street; the headlights flicked along the trunks and broke into little snatches of light in the leaves.

  She was moving with more assurance now. Her feet seemed to have learned to find the way. She spread her toes flat and broad and clutching as she moved. Her body felt so light, so very light. The air up here was different from the air down on the ground. It held her up.

  She stopped for a minute and closed her eyes, the better to feel the air all around her. “If I let go,” she said aloud, “if I let go …” The air would take her and lift her, even higher. She could hold her arms stretched out, and the air would lift her, the way a bird is lifted, though he doesn’t move his wings, floating in great swooping upward circles, right in the path of the light that was funneling down from the moon.

  There was a faint smell of jasmine vine. Her mother had always used that. She’d put whole flowering strands in the armoire with her clothes, so that she always smelled of summer. Her mother who was dead. Her mother who was gone for good, who would never come back.

  She began to cry with her eyes still closed.

  Her fingers were loosening under the soft pressing of the wind. Her left hand patted the bricks of the wall, gently. And she took a few more steps forward, waiting for the wind to pick her up, for the wind to lift her up, for the wind to carry her away. She was holding her right arm straight out and a little back, in the arc of a bird’s wing. And her left hand was brushing the wall lightly. She was moving back and forth to the touch of the wind. And the faint sound of the trees beneath her.

  There was a loose piece of brick on the ledge: it had fallen out of the crumbling old wall. She stubbed her bare toe against it, knocking it from the ledge. It snapped through the little branches and thudded dully into the ground. There was a strangled sound over to the right, and then everything was very quiet again.

  Annie clung to the wall with two hands, laughing softly to herself, feeling the two pair of eyes that were fastened on her from below. She forgot about the wind and the way she had wanted to lean on it and be lifted away. She made her way across the side of the building until she came to the flat ladder workmen used when they were repairing the roof: three rungs up to the slant of the roof and then a single long piece of board flat on the slates, with short cross-ties for steps. She climbed quickly, sitting at last on the peak of the roof. Her toe was hurting. She twisted up her foot, trying to see in the bright moonlight. There was a little blot of black blood on the big toe. She squeezed; the little spot grew.

  A car engine started. She looked up and around. Over at the edge of the grounds, over on the dark back street, she saw a car drive off. A dark car, without headlights.

  So that was how he came, she thought. She’d frightened them off. She giggled softly. “Nearly dropped it right on their heads,” she said aloud.

  She sat up on top the roof, pressing her sore toe and looking out over the trees and the little peaked roofs of houses and the straight lines of streets and the little spots of electric lights—frilled, most of them, by the trees; and down a little way, the green and red glow of neon signs; and still farther, the tall buildings of the city itself. She stared for a long time at one with a peaked tower, a point sharp as a needle.

  She turned her head slowly, keeping her shoulders straight, and she swung around the horizon: more trees and little irregular heaps of houses, and here and there a taller apartment building. And over, way over to the right, the moon picked out the arches and the criss-cross bracing of the river bridge, thin little spiderweb lines.

  She sniffed the air. Just the musty night smell of an old building. The smell of jasmine was gone. And then she remembered that the vine did not bloom this early, there would be no flowers in March. … She looked over her shoulder and up in the sky; and was surprised to find it empty.

  She got to her feet, unsteadily, and swaying just a bit. She backed down the ladder, one foot after the other. Halfway she stopped and looked up, up the steep black angle. She saw how the slates were cracked and chipped and how some of them were blown up by the wind. And she looked behind her: the same slates slanting down at a sharp angle and where they ended, little puffs of trees.

  She got to the ledge and stood holding to the ladder. The wind blew in little gusts; she shivered and held tighter to the wood. She stood without moving until her legs began to cramp.

  “Hey,” she called. “Hey, hey, hey, hey.” She waited. Nothing. “Up here, up here.”

  Then she remembered: no one slept on this side of the building. Just the library and the reception parlors and the little private visiting-rooms. There was no one to hear her. The back of her throat began to ache. She started to cough and almost lost her balance. She began to inch her way back, slower this time and uncertainly, her left hand waving straight out for balance. By the time she got to the cement lion at the corner she was covered with sweat; it was running in long trickles down her back; it covered all her face in little round blobs that turned icy cold in the wind.

  She stood hugging the lion with both arms, whimpering softly, shivering each time a gust of wind hit her body. It did not occur to her to call again.

  The moon had gone down a bit. She stared directly at it, then closed her eyes, seeing the green moldy reflection.

  Hugging the lion as tight as she could, she stepped out and around the corner. Her foot missed: too low. But before she realized it, she was down on one knee, almost. She had to drag herself upright again. Her leg muscles burned and one of her fingernails snapped back and off. She took a few short breaths. She was beginning to panic: she could feel the fingers run across her scalp. She was almost crying as she tried to swing around the corner again. Her foot reached the other ledge. She tested it: solid and balanced. Her stomach was quivering, fluttering as she swung her weight around and over. Her hands were so wet they slipped a little and she dragged the right leg too closely over the concrete: she could feel the flesh all along her shin tear. But she was on the other side. Right down the way, not too far now, was her window. She could see it even, the white curtains blowing out like the skirts of a dress.

  She began to move quickly now, too quickly. Her fingers caught at the window frame, and she bent down. One foot slipped. Her toes made a final grab: there was only air.

  She pitched herself forward, hard as she could, arms out straight, reaching. She fell across the sill, her elbows hooked inside. The sudden pain made her eyes reel. She shifted her balance, wearily, until she tumbled headfirst into the room.

  The floor was cold under her cheek, and her body ached in pulsing waves. Her closed eyes were dazzled by light, little crumbly points of light like grains of sand.

  She could only think of one thing, and her body quivered with disappointment as much as pain: I didn’t get to see them, I didn’t get to see them at all.
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  ANNIE CAME BACK TO the island in early summer—in May. She had learned three things at the convent: to chant the responses and the hymns at Benediction, to do some very fine embroidery, to crochet in wool. She came with her suitcases full of stoles done in green wool and tablecloths of unbleached linen covered with leaves and birds until there was hardly a piece of cloth showing.

  She had learned to sit very straight at table. “Now,” her Aunt Justine said when she saw her, “that is the way a young lady sits, for sure.” And she brought her own daughter to see. “Sit at the table, che’,” she told Annie, “so Therese can see how you do.”

  So Annie pulled the straight chair up to the table.

  “See,” her aunt said, “you should do like that. Sit like the nuns.”

  Annie had been home a little over a week when her spine relaxed.

  “But you forget all you have learned!” her aunt said.

  “But she look better this way,” her father said. And he put one arm around her shoulder.

  Annie slipped away, pleasure burning in her stomach, but her face frowning and her manner brusque.

  “What the matter with her?” her father called after her.

  She did not look back. She ducked around the corner of the house and around behind the little shed where he kept his skiffs and pirogues out of the weather. Then she sat down on the ground.

  From there she could hear her father and her aunt talking—she couldn’t make out the words, just the sounds of the voices.

  She picked at the ground with her fingers. A blackbird flew down to watch. She put her head on her knees and began to cry.

  She could not, for the life of her, have said why. She cried easily that summer, mostly when there was nobody to see her. The tears came spurting out and she felt better for it. Her eyes didn’t even seem to get red.

  A FOUR-HOUR TRIP FROM the island—almost straight east—is Port Ronquille. It is a larger town than Petit Prairie, because of the sulphur mines. One whole tract of land around the plant—a good ten acres square is colored bright yellow. Everything yellow, the ground, the trees, the little scraggly tough chinaberries, the machinery, the wood sides of the buildings, the barges into which the stuff is loaded. They say that for twenty miles around the sun is yellower than anywhere else—but they like to talk.