by Joan Crate
“I brung you a pig,” Olaf said. “Father Alphonses, he said you were pretty short of food at the school, yah? It’s in my truck.”
Fortunately, the pig was already butchered and wrapped neatly in brown paper packages. Brother Abraham helped Olaf unload the meat from the back of his truck, and Sister Bernadette happily inspected each bundle with its childish print in grease pen. “Pork chops,” she cried, elated. “Shoulder roast. Spare ribs!”
“Enough, Sister Bernadette,” Mother Grace reprimanded, and Bernadette’s voice dropped to a squeak as she stuffed the first few packages in the small upstairs freezer.
The rest of the meat Sister Bernadette directed to the large freezer downstairs. While the men bustled in and out, bringing cold air with them, Sister Bernadette strutted around the kitchen and into the dining hall, chattering about how nice it would be to have pork and how pleased she was that Mr. Johanson had cut the chops and roasts in portions of just the right size. By the kitchen stove, Sister Cilla, uncharacteristically animated, rubbed Rose Marie’s hands, called to the men, and joined Sister Bernadette with her own enthused utterances. Mon Dieu, it was like a country social!
Mother Grace folded her arms on one of the dining room tables and laid her head down, completely exhausted. She was slipping into sleep when voices rose in the kitchen. Brother Abe, Olaf, and the two sisters were laughing loudly, being far too familiar. Just then, Sister Bernadette called through the door, saying she was about to make tea.
“Can I bring you a cup, Mother Grace?”
“Yes, you may,” she snapped. After all the commotion of the day, she wanted nothing more than a warm drink and a hot-water bottle. She lowered her head again and drifted off.
Stirring sometime later, she noticed her tea had not been delivered. Was Sister Bernadette so busy giggling like a schoolgirl that she had forgotten her? Hearing another wave of laughter from the kitchen, she cupped a hand over her ear and listened, feeling like the chaperone at a child’s party.
“Do you know how to take a pig to the vet?” Olaf asked in his singsong accent. “In a ham-bulance, yah.”
Giggles and guffaws.
“Why do the pig go to Las Vegas?”
“Why?” the sisters murmured.
“To play the slop machine!”
It was simply too much for a sane person to tolerate. She rose and made her way to the kitchen, where Rose Marie was timidly observing the spectacle of four foolish adults from behind the stove, clearly the only one with an ounce of sense. As Mother Grace glanced at her, Rose Marie gave her an odd expression: her eyes were cast in what appeared to be world-weary resignation, her mouth folded in an impish grin. It was as if the child could appreciate Mother Grace’s frustration at the unseemly behaviour of the sisters while finding the whole scene humorous. It was, of course, and for an instant, she felt a smile form on her own lips. Then she remembered herself.
“Rose Marie, please set the tables for supper. It appears everyone else is far too busy.”
As the adults turned to her, she approached the farmer. “Thank you so much for your generosity, Mr. Johanson. We at St. Mark’s are indebted to you. Brother Abraham, will you see Mr. Johanson out?”
“I was going to bring you tea, Mother Grace, but you fell asleep,” Sister Bernadette cried, but Mother Grace waved the woman silent and headed for the stairs and her bottle of aspirins.
Merde! she exclaimed to herself, more because she had a reason to be angry than because of anger itself. Surprisingly, her irritation was all but gone.
11
Voices
HER LITTLE BEDROOM on the nuns’ floor spoke to Rose Marie. Prayers whispered from the walls: God our Father, Jesus Christ, my Lord. I adore You profoundly. How I want to adore You.
The sound seemed to be coming from the walls. “Hush,” Rose Marie whispered, but it was no use.
Please help me to know You that I might live faithfully as a follower of Christ, came the voice.
She turned on the mattress, hands jammed to her ears.
Most Holy Trinity.
She shoved her head under the pillow.
I believe, I adore, I love You. By the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart.
Instead of blocking the words, the pillow drove them inside her skull, where they bounced and clattered, worser than even the fire worms . . . poor sinners like me. I pray, Mother of God, that through your intercession, I will answer the call to religious life and be inspired.
“Be quiet!” she screamed. Sobs swelled through her brain, and blurted through her ears. “Whoever you are, be quiet!” Springing up on her bed, she jumped on the mattress to knock out the sound.
Then she saw her. Oh, that nun! In a nightdress. Throwing herself on her knees, her face scrunched up like she was cut or burnt or beaten. Her nightcap plopped on the floor, revealing short, bristly hair. I implore you, Jesus, that nun cried. Come to me now. Show yourself, Jesus!
“Shut up!” Rose Marie yelled. “Go away!”
And she did. The nun melted into the wall.
“Mama,” Rose Marie whispered as she climbed under the covers and pulled them over her head. “Help me. Even if you’re in that san-i-tor-i-um.” But Mama didn’t come to her, couldn’t help. Anataki was far away for the holidays and wouldn’t be squeezing into bed beside her with whispers, giggles, and summer dreams. Even though the shadow nun had left, Rose Marie was scared. Night wrapped her up, squeezing everything out until she was as flat as the sheet under her on that shadow sister’s bed.
* * *
The morning of January 3, Rose Marie moved her nightdress, school uniform, underwear, stockings, face cloth, and toothbrush back to the dormitory. She had a hard time sitting through lunch with the sisters, and she took only a few bites of the “perfectly good ham sandwich” Sister Bernadette had made her.
“It’s yummy, Sister Bernadette. It’s just—”
“No wonder you’re skin and bones,” Sister Margaret remarked, and Sister Joan tilted her head forward to get past Sister Margaret’s big fat bosoms and give her a dirty look.
When Sister Margaret and Sister Joan started talking about “all the work, what with the students returning today,” Sister Cilla patted Rose Marie’s hand and whispered, “Eat what you can, dear. In another half hour, we’ll be running around like crazy.”
Once the sisters were finished with their meal, Rose Marie was on her feet, not even thinking of clearing their plates. She skipped out of the dining hall before Sister Bernadette could call her, threw on her coat, boots, and mitts, and ran outside. Squinting down the road, she couldn’t see any of the school buses rumbling towards the school, so she took off down the trail to the barn, where she wasn’t even supposed to be, ran back, then around the school one, two—five times until she was hot and panting.
Soon the yellow school buses arrived, one teetering over the white horizon, and then another. Three buses, all in a row, wheezed up to the school and stopped to let the girls scramble off.
“Anataki!” she cried, not caring if the sisters heard her use the not-allowed name. Throwing her arms around her friend, she breathed in the smell of snow and smoke. Clutching hands, the two of them jumped up and down, squealing.
“What’s the point?” Sister Margaret, a few feet away, demanded of Sister Joan. “We send them home for two weeks, and once they get back, we have to start civilizing them all over again.”
“Acculturating them,” Sister Joan corrected her.
Rose Marie didn’t care what they said. Taki was back! “You want to go upstairs and play dolls?” she whispered, and as soon as Sister Joan started the “orderly procedure” of lineups, they snuck up to the dormitory.
Once they were sitting on the floor under Rose Marie’s bed, Taki reached into the waistband of her skirt. “I got something for you, Rosie.” She pulled a packet wrapped in white hide.
“What is it?”
“Unwrap it and see.”
Rose Marie did, and inside she found a blob of b
read twice as big as her hand.
“Imis-tsi-kitan, Rosie.”
Rose Marie brought it to her mouth, and that’s when she smelled Mama’s fingers wrapping dough around a willow stick and cooking it over a fire, the trees singing around them in sharp green notes, the creek gurgling, and, oh, she shoved half the piece in her mouth and closed her eyes, allowing the taste to fill her.
12
Forgiving Ruth
JANUARY WAS A dark, stunted month that stumbled headlong into February with its screaming winds, coughs, and scalding foreheads. By midmonth, a full third of the girls had fevers.
On St. Valentine’s Day, which Sister Margaret proclaimed to a weepy Sister Cilla “the most stupid day in all Creation,” both dormitory supervisors had to take shifts watching over those students confined to their beds. The very sickest girls were tucked in the six beds of the infirmary, a small room off the dormitory, and Sisters Margaret and Cilla kept an eye on them as well as the sick girls in the dorm, while the healthy senior girls were put to work doing the extra laundry.
Sister Bernadette trotted up to assist once she was through with meal preparation. “I wish I had a bit of sugar to make a cake to honour St. Valentine.” She sighed as she pulled a clean sheet over a stained mattress.
Sister Margaret snorted. “St. Valentine had nothing to do with all this cake and romance stuff, far as I can tell. All he did was instruct couples on marriage. God’s laws. There’s far too much of this lovey-dovey nonsense, if you ask me.”
Sister Cilla sniffed more vigorously, and Sister Bernadette huffed, “No need to take your bad humour out on us, Sister Margaret.”
Mother Grace, breathless from the long climb upstairs, listened to them from the entrance of the dorm. So it was St. Valentine’s Day. She had forgotten. In truth, there was no reason for her to remember it, though for a fraction of a second the image of Father Patrick, young and strong, popped into her mind.
“Let’s not air our dirty laundry in front of the students, sick as they are,” she scolded as she made her way to the infirmary, opening the door on a barrage of retching. Vieilli, things were worse than she had thought. “Water,” she announced. “I’m going to get you water, and I want you all to drink it. Sister Cilla,” she called out the door. “Bring a pitcher of water and glasses for these girls. Chicken soup, Sister Bernadette.”
They would do the best they could. Aie foi en Dieu. Though sometimes it wasn’t enough.
* * *
Both Anataki and Rose Marie suffered a low-grade fever, watery eyes, and scratchy throats, but it didn’t slow them down much. Even though she was achy-boned and yawning, sleep was a problem for Rose Marie. At night the lightbulb hanging over the entrance cast shadows that kept her awake. She shifted in her bed, clutching her thin blankets and turning this way and that.
One night, the dormitory was unnaturally quiet. No snores or squeaking bedsprings. She couldn’t even hear the girls breathe. It was like no one was there. “Mama, Papa,” she whispered over and over, until she was able to wade into the sleepy grey river and float away.
The scrape of an opening door jarred her back to her hard bed in the dormitory. Raising herself on one elbow, she looked behind her to see a girl slip from the infirmary. Ruth Crier. Smarty-pants Rude, as she had taunted her. Oh, but now Ruth’s face was swollen, her eyes puffy, lips cracked. She was sick, too sick to be out of bed.
“Ruth,” she hissed.
Ruth walked towards her, looking to the far end of the dorm. For her big cousins, probably.
“Ruth, are you okay? You’re not supposed—” Ruth was right beside her, and, oh, Rose Marie’s skin turned to ice. She could see right through her!
“Ruth. I’m sorry, you know, about our fight, that time I—” Tears smeared her vision. “Don’t go,” she sputtered. “Get back to that hospital room. Get better.”
She tried to say more, to ask Ruth to forgive her, to beg her to stay, please stay with her in the dormitory, at the school, in the world, but her words were sinking under a sea of sad, and all that came out were sobs.
Ruth wasn’t listening, anyway. She couldn’t hear. She was already gone, a ghost, a shadow.
13
The Prodigal Son
STANDING BEFORE the nuns in the dining hall, Mother Grace waited for Sister Bernadette to deliver what appeared to be one of her more successful attempts at an omelette and take a seat. “Sisters,” she began, “I don’t need to remind you that three students died from fever in the past week: Lydia Weasel Foot, Ruth Crier, and Maryanne Little Horse. Close to a dozen girls are still ill. Keep them in your prayers.”
Wimples bobbed wearily.
“I have an important announcement. Father Damien, now going on four years deceased, may he rest in peace, will be replaced by Father William, arriving at the school at the beginning of next week. Some of you may recollect William,” she added, carefully draining her voice of any telltale scorn. “He served at St. Mark’s when the boys were still in attendance at this school, as a dorm supervisor—was it eight years ago? Then he went to St. Gerard’s for—what was it, three, four years?”
“Five,” Sister Joan snapped decisively.
“No matter. He then returned to Montreal to complete his education and take his vows as a priest.” That Father William, then Brother William, had not left under the best of circumstances she would not mention.
As the dining hall buzzed with speculation, she removed her glasses and pressed a finger and a thumb against her eyelids. She reminded herself that though she had been disturbed by the rumours surrounding William when he left St. Mark’s, her knowledge of them could very well give her a certain power over the man, one she might be forced to use if he should decide to wrest control of St. Mark’s from her grasp.
“Be sure to welcome Father William back to the fold,” she added, sitting.
* * *
The next morning after Matins, she motioned Sister Cilla to her office. The previous evening over three fingers of brandy—certainly no more than four—she had come to the conclusion that if God wouldn’t show her the way to fulfil her destiny, then she must find it herself. The pompous voice of Sister Joan had clanged through her mind, declaring, God helps those who help themselves.
“Your new assignment, an additional assignment,” she told Cilla, “is to assist Sister Joan in the classroom.”
“Oh my, yes, Mother Grace,” Sister Cilla replied, looking both pleased and flustered. “That will be along with—”
“—your assignment of assisting Sister Margaret in dormitory supervision? Yes, Sister Priscilla. Unless you feel that is too much responsibility.”
“No, dear, oh law, I didn’t mean that, Mother Grace.”
“I’m relying on you, Sister,” she confided, “to bring young Rose Marie Whitewater to me, should she . . . upset Sister Joan or try to escape her class. It’s part of my plan . . . I don’t want any more . . . untoward incidents. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mother Grace.” Priscilla nodded enthusiastically.
Mother Grace was pleased. Perhaps all would work out for the best. Sister Cilla had a certain melancholy that had not been alleviated by dormitory work, and by giving her this new assignment, she could very well be killing two birds with one stone. Vieilli, what a terrible expression. Another one popped into her mind, one that Father William had bandied about years ago: Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop. And if anyone should know, it would be William.
* * *
Father William arrived at the end of March, two days after Mother Grace’s birthday, one she again passed without mention. The temperature had risen from thirty-four below to “a balmy minus-nineteen,” as Brother Abe announced before lunch. Father Alphonses met William at the Hilltop station as he stepped from the train into a gust of wind that, according to Alphonses, very nearly swept him off the platform.
“Welcome back,” Mother Grace greeted William as he entered the dining hall. Father Alphonses excused himself and went upstair
s to visit Father David in the priests’ suite. “And congratulations, Father William.” As he sat on the bench across from her, she reached over, touched his shivering hand, and whispered, “We’re all very proud of you.”
Father William looked tentatively at Mother Grace, a hint of gratification in his eyes. But before he could open his mouth, she hurried on.
“I’m sure you’ll find yourself very busy. Father David, you’ll see, is very old now, and not always”—she paused—“sound. More provocative than ever, but at least he still remembers how to say Mass.” She forced a chuckle. “But I’m sure you’ll be taking that over from time to time. My, what with serving as our spiritual guide, preparing sermons for your flock, giving Mass, and hearing confession for all the intermediate and senior girls—Father David will still hear the sisters’ confessions—you’ll be run off your feet. It’s a heavy load, to be sure, William.” She was careful not to mention the school administration, which was considered by the Church to be the job of a priest. “I certainly don’t envy you your new responsibilities.” She patted his hand again, smiling warmly if disingenuously. She had not mentioned the name of the young boy.
14
Works of Mercy
ROSE MARIE, SITTING in class, felt an itch in her tummy. Ruth and two big girls dead and now the shadows and sickness of the school were seeping inside her, making the fire worms wriggle and burn. She couldn’t stand it! One foot shook, her fingers twisted, and as soon as Sister Joan turned to the board, she slid out of her seat.
No sooner was she out the classroom door than Sister Joan was screaming her name and Sister Cilla was on her tail. Before she could pick up speed and run through the front door, Sister Cilla had her skirt in her fist and was hauling her in like a fish on a line.
“Let go of me!”
One hand squeezing her upper arm, Sister Cilla dragged her down the hall.
“Let me go!”
Dropping to a crouch, Sister wrapped her long arms around her, wiry and warm. “It’s all right, Rose Marie,” she said. “God will show us the way.”
